49: Why Your Individual Purpose Matters to Your Agency w/ Roy Abdo — The Innovative Agency

The Innovative Agency is a podcast designed to help marketing agency leaders answer the question, what's next in their industry? If you're looking for actionable ideas about how to operate and grow innovative agencies, you've come to the right place. Let's get into the show.

Welcome everybody. It's Sharon Torek back for another episode of The Innovative Agency. It's great to be with everyone today. And I am really looking forward to today's conversation with our guest about how you translate as an entrepreneur, your personal experiences into your client work or into the building of your business. And today's guest has got what a story that I think you're going to really enjoy. I really enjoyed it. I had an opportunity to speak with our guests just a few minutes ago and we were getting ready for the show and I'm just so inspired about the way he pulls the thread of his individual story into his motivation to help his clients tell their stories to their customers. So Roy Abdo, I want to welcome you today to The Innovative Agency. I really appreciate you making time to be with us.

Of course. Thank you for having me. I'm excited and, uh, heard great things about your podcast and I'm looking forward to be a contributor and helping more entrepreneurs and helping more agency owners succeed in this, in this space.

Well, I think they're definitely going to get a lot of great takeaways from your experience and, you know, developing your agency, which is called Digital Revamp. Tell us a little bit about your agency and what it does and who it helps.

So our agency is mainly helping two audiences. We first help our clients. Create content around digital ads, create customer journey, figuring out where they should be and why they should be there and what content they should be there and what's making, what's bringing them clients. And the second audience we usually serve is other agency owners. We've created some classes and some digital resources where anyone can just plug in and kind of learn our best practices. And this way they can just use them and use those frameworks in their own work.

I love it. I love taking what you've learned running your own business and turning it into a way to helping your peers. So we're going to get into that in more detail because that's, that's really a thread that runs through a lot of why you do what you do.

Yeah. I mean, that's what I tell them. Like, purpose is a big thing for me personally, and I encourage every listener, everyone out there figure out what makes you, what makes you tick, what makes you grow, what makes you, you know, become who you are, more of who you are, because it's inside of you calling you. And a lot of times we just disregard it and we just get busy with the day-to-day. But knowing your why, knowing, like, there's a really good book on this, probably you guys know it, it's called by Simon Sinek, It Starts With Why. I'm a big believer of the purpose. So my personal purpose is I believe that every single person on the planet can and should do what they love to do. And a lot of times we just get distracted with life and, and people around you might be judging you or you don't have the guts to do something. I'm a big believer of like putting a plan of action, surrounding yourself with the right people and go out to build things and provide value to people.

Well, and speaking of life disruptions and sort of reality stepping in and maybe taking us off track in terms of pursuing our why or our purpose, you have a really interesting story. Personally. And, and I mentioned it only because it really sounded, as we were talking, like it informed the way that you developed your business and the way you approach helping your clients as well. So tell us a little bit about your journey personally coming to this country and then founding your agency, because I definitely, like I said, think there's a thread that we can pull through to the way that that Digital Revamp helps clients today?

I mean, my journey kind of started a little in a crazy way. I was 21 years old and I left my home country, which is Lebanon in the Middle East, and I was supposed to be going to Greece for a 3-week program to study abroad leadership and conflict resolution, a program that's run by Georgetown University in Crete, which is a beautiful island. Have you been to Crete?

I never have, but I would love to be there.

Oh, it's beautiful. So what happens is I get into the island, I walk into the program and the program director goes, uh, Roy, I hope your family is okay. I'm like, why? She goes, the war. I'm like, what war? Apparently there was a war that happened the day I left between Hezbollah and Israel and they bombed the airport. So I was one of the last planes to leave Lebanon before the airport was bombed.

Oh my gosh.

What happens is my 3 weeks in Greece turned out to be almost 2 months. And I moved from being a student to almost being a refugee, trying to figure out what to do with my life. And because of that story, I was sleeping on people's couches. I didn't know what to do. I was 21 years old. I don't speak Greek. And the program director, after everyone left, program director, after like another third week, fourth week, calls me. She's like, hey, Roy, I got you a scholarship to go to school in the States. Are you interested? I'm like, sure. She goes, but yeah, you have to pay your own flight and difference of the scholarship. And it's in Georgetown. Which is, and the total is about $10,000. I'm like, thanks, but no thanks, because I don't have that kind of money. So another week went by and somehow she met an alumni of another school in Missouri called William Jewell College. It's a small liberal arts college in Missouri. And the college president offered me a full scholarship and plane ticket to go to school for one semester there. So she called me and said, hey, listen, I got you this full scholarship. Are you interested? I'm like, sure. I literally ran to the American Embassy. And, uh, I got my visa and I got on a flight. I had $30 in cash, 2006. I had a Nokia phone and I land in the middle of Missouri and I've never been to the States. So you can imagine my cultural shock. Like I thought America was more like New York, San Francisco, Vegas, LA. I land in Missouri, not knowing anything about Missouri. I'm like, where are we? But on the other side, one, one great thing I loved was I spoke English, right? Because I couldn't, get around in Greece. It was so hard. As I'm walking out, I had this one luggage which is everything I own. I'm walking out of the airport, I had the address on a piece of paper, I had like my $30. I'm thinking, I hope the money is enough to get a bus, train, you know, something to get from the airport to the school because I have the address. As I'm walking out, I see a sign, "Welcome Roy." I'm like, who knows me in Missouri? It turns out people from school and the hosting family were out at the airport to pick me up without even knowing me. And that's when I fell in love with America. I'm like, this country is awesome. There's some good people who don't even know me out of nowhere, took time out of their life to go out, pick this random dude coming all the way from Greece. So that tells you how awesome the world in our side of the world is, like how good-hearted those people are. So they took me, they took me from the airport and I did one semester at Williamsville College. I saved some money and I moved to Georgetown. For another semester because I still have the scholarship, I'm already here, and I saved up some money, and I, you know, got a paid internship in D.C., so I moved to D.C. I did another semester here. At that point, I made a decision. I want to change my life, and I wanted to stay in America and become an American citizen, but to become an American citizen, you have to get a green card. To get a green card, you need to get a work visa. To get a work visa, you need to get a degree. To get a degree, I need one more year of school, and the problem is I can't loans or scholarships because I'm not a US citizen and I cannot afford to pay school here because it's so expensive. So back in 2007, I had this idea, how can I reach the most amount of people in the least amount of time to help me with something? So I started a blog with my story. I put a PayPal account on there and I started emailing people asking them, hey, you know, here's my story, here's what's going on, here's how much money I need to pay for my school to graduate. And within a month and a half, with the help of several people, I was able to raise about $35,000 online that I used to pay off my undergraduate. And everybody tells me like, hey, Roy, why didn't you start Kickstarter or GoFundMe? I'm like, dude, in 2007 there was none of those. And I was only worried about survival, you know, I was just trying to get my life together. So with that, I pretty much—

Let me stop you right there because I want to know, I can't wait to hear the rest of this, but I want to know how you conveyed in your messaging that you were not a scam artist or a legit—

uh, here's what I did. Marketing message. Yeah, there's one thing I understood early on in my life is like, if you handle— if you know how to handle objections, a lot of things will go through your way. Because right now you don't trust someone because they might be a scam, they might steal your money, they might— you might not get the value you want to get. So what I did with my blog, I partnered with a church so people can get tax deductions. On their donations and the church would donate back the money to me. And also the school, I had the contact information, they can donate directly to the school, not even to me. So they could do it through PayPal or they could send the money to the school directly. So I give them 3 options and then all the contact verifications, everything on there was just transparent. Because I'm a big believer in like, if you understand what the incentives, if you, I mean, there's a big saying on this by Zig Ziglar, if you help enough people get what they want, you get what you want kind of thing. So a lot of people want to help and they want to feel good about it and they want to get their tax deduction. They want to feel the impact. I made sure to have that in my story.

So something for everybody.

Exactly. Yeah. And then because of that, the, you know, it worked out. I paid off my undergraduate and I graduated in 2008. Remember what happened in 2008?

I sure do.

So not only want a job, I want a job that for those who don't know the financial crisis, if you didn't think about it. So everybody knows. Yeah.

I don't know.

Sometimes you forget, like I forgot what I ate yesterday. I mean, why would I remember today? So what happens is not only I want a job, I want a job that sponsors my visa and get me a work visa so I can get a green card and all this kind of stuff. So at that point, no one was hiring. Like Americans are not able to get a job. Why would they hire an international student? And I realized one thing, I met a good mentor coach, which he told me this one line and I repeat it all the time in my presentations. "People don't hire resumes, they hire people. Figure out how to meet more people and show what value you can bring to them, and you're going to get hired." I was like, "Okay, I don't know people. How can I meet more people?" I went on LinkedIn. LinkedIn was the early days of LinkedIn. It was still for free. And I sent over 1,000 messages in 2008 for different people that I'm trying to meet for them for a coffee. I was like, "Hey, here's how I can help you. I noticed you could do this. Here's my background. I'm good with languages. I speak English, Arabic, French." I've done finances, I've done digital. Before even digital, like I was really good with technology stuff, like IT stuff. Before, I mean, backstory, like a side story. Before I left Lebanon, I had a small internet provider company. The only reason I started that company is because the internet was so expensive. So I figured out a way to do like small distribution of the internet and I got my internet for free. So I was telling them, hey, here's what I've done, here's what I can build. And the next thing you know, I got a job in a TV and radio station. and I was helping them to expand overseas in the Middle East and North Africa with my languages and help them open up different offices. And they're the one who pretty much, uh, I worked with them and like for like 6 years and they did my work visa. But it turns out if you have a work visa and you're trying to get a green card, it takes you 3 to 5 years with an undergraduate degree. If you have a master's, it takes you 1 year. I'm like, okay, let's go get a master's. At that point, like, I applied again to Johns Hopkins, but the problem was I can't leave my job because I lose the work visa, and I cannot afford to pay for Johns Hopkins. So I had to figure out a way to pay for my MBA in marketing, by the way. So what did I, what did I do is, you know, like when you do an MBA, they give you a lot of class projects and like homework and stuff. I convinced, and I started talking to my professor, instead of doing class projects for no reason and put them in the drawer and forget about them, let me just figure out businesses who could use those projects, do the projects on them, and then, you know, sell it to them and then take the money and then pay the school and pay the class and then take a project, present it as my class project in my class. So the first couple projects, of course, I did for free because no one's going to hire someone without that kind of experience. But my early projects were like, I did a website for a restaurant, I did branding for a staffing agency, I did an email marketing campaign for like another, you know, like event planning company. And then pretty much whenever they saw value, you know, they start paying me and I start paying my school. Next thing you know, I paid off my entire MBA. And at the same time, like the whole rideshare was, was picking up, the whole shared economy was picking up. And I was the early adopter of a lot of those technologies. And I realized Lyft, Lyft and— actually before Lyft, Sidecar. Have you heard of Sidecar?

I have. Yeah. It's been a while.

Yeah. So they were launching in DC and they need someone to help them with their marketing activation. Same thing with Lyft. So I worked with Sidecar, and I realized one thing with Sidecar is once I sent my application to help them with the marketing activation, which means what? Getting them drivers, getting them riders, getting to help them with the messaging, help them spread the word, figure out what the audience is talking about, and then reflect it back to them. I realized what Sidecar, the problem was, is when you open the app, there was too many options. You can pick the car, you can pick the driver, you can pick the time, you can pick, you know, the sharing the ride. And you're talking about early days of rideshare, people were too, were afraid of this whole thing anyway. So Sidecar kind of didn't go well, but at the same time Lyft was picking up. So I realized Lyft wanted someone to help them with their marketing activation in DC. So instead of sending them an application, I sent them like an execution plan. Here's the things that I would do. I would host an event here. I'd have the, you know, you have to pay the drivers a flat fee no matter what to be always outside that event. For that event, you'll have the early adopters, and then you give them free code. Once the event ends, they're going to take that free code and use the ride, use the car. That's how you start activating the, you know, this model. So Lyft liked it. And next thing you know, I was working with Lyft for like 3 to 4 months on their digital marketing activation. And, uh, at the same time I finished up my MBA and I had like a bunch of clients. I realized, okay, maybe I should start consulting. At that point I realized like one thing I wanted to do, if I wanted to do a digital marketing company or consulting company, I need I needed to be like one of the best out there. So I started looking at like studying different companies and what makes them special, what makes them unique. And I realized a lot of those companies are not position-driven, they're personality-driven. By that I mean is like they don't hire for a position, they hire for talent. And those talented people, they could build their skills to do different things. And there's a really good test by a company called Gallup, which is called Strengths Finder. So I'm like, okay, it's like a personality test. Once you take it, it will give you like what your personality traits are. I'm like, okay, this is a cool test. I love it. I took it and I fell in love with it, how it was able to help give me the words to use and figure out who I need, who I need to, you know, with me to partner to build this company. But I also realized that Gallup doesn't have a good digital marketing presence and they don't have a good digital journey or customer journey. I'm like, hey, why don't they be— I mean, I would like them to be my client. So what I pretty much did, I saw they have an open position for a consultant, but instead of just applying, I actually drew what could be a better customer journey for them and how much money they're leaving on the table by not doing that customer journey. Pretty much like they're not doing retargeting campaign, they're not doing email drip campaign, they're not doing the right Google ad campaign. So next thing you know, I was hired by Gallup as a consultant to help them architect their digital marketing for their StrengthsFinder product and then redo the company kind of messaging and digital strategy. So I was working with them and kind of build them on different capacities in terms of like their clients' work. So I had a chance to work with Bill Gates' Foundation. I had a chance to work with Eva Longoria and met Mark Cuban and met all those fancy people. At the same time, I realized, I think I need to scale this bigger than me instead of consulting. So pretty much at that point, I started kind of looking for different teammates to help me scale this company in terms of like, because I was doing a lot of it. I was doing the creative pieces and I was doing the architecture. Like my personal, like I tell people, once you figure out what you do really, really well, Then the second piece is you basically complement yourself with others. And you're going to tell me like, hey, I don't know what I do well. I tell people, look, look back in your life, a time in your life where you're doing something so well and it came to you so easily. And what happens is because you've been doing it so well, it's for you, it's so easy, you take it for granted. And that's your value proposition in life. That's what's your natural calling. Just embrace it and develop it, build skills around it, learn more, fail doing it. Fail a lot doing it. So it becomes better and better. I started kind of like figuring out who should I build, who should I hire, what are the team members. And next thing you know, we've been helping different clients. And the way, like right now, because of the model that we broke down, we help enterprise clients in terms of their digital customer journey. And then I have a small— like I still have the passion that I started for the midsize and small businesses to help them scale to become those big businesses. So we also help small and mid-sized businesses to figure out how to leverage, like, as simple as Google Ads, as simple as Instagram Ads or Facebook Ads, or a better website for themselves, or a retargeting campaign. And I break it down to the customer journey piece. And what do I mean by that is, in any business, you have ideal customers. And if you don't know your ideal customers, you should be rethinking who should be retargeting and why. Why should they buy from you? What kind of value provide for them? So I tell businesses, it's not about being everywhere, it's about being where your customer is. And how you discover that, as simple as picking up the phone and calling 5 of your previous clients, ask them, hey, what social network you're on, what magazine you're reading, what are you doing, who you're following, you can figure out where they're trying to go. Because the worst thing you can do is ask your customer what they want, ask them where they're trying to go, ask them what they're trying to achieve. And then from that, start deducting, okay, what is the product you could develop for them and how you architect the journey for them? And, and kind of like, this is the route that we take with, with our clients.

Well, what I love about— and then what I love about your story, I love a lot of things about it. But what I think a lot of agency owners and leaders listening to this could take away from it, and what I hope they take away from it, is that Just like you said, that being excellent is about figuring out a time in your life when you were really great at something and it felt effortless. What you did was take an experience that was challenging, could have ended in a number of different ways, many of them not positive, but you, you took what you learned through that and, and now you're applying it first in your consulting work, but now in your agency work. To help your clients figure out how to help their customers have better journeys through their products or their services and their interactions and experiences with those clients. And so I just think it's a great lesson in taking what you and your team members, whoever is doing creative work on your team or are executing on behalf of, of the agency for a client, and putting it into action by looking at things through the lens of what the end buyer is feeling and experiencing. You're taking probably all the emotions and challenges and fear and excitement that you had as newcomer to this country. And what the part about the story I didn't know until we started the show was that you hadn't planned to come here. But so you took those twists and turns as a, as a customer, if you will. In this case, the product being eventually citizenship in the US and really mapped the different points at which things could have turned very differently and how you solved those challenges creatively. And I think agencies and their brand partners all need to know how to do this well. And so I really love how you wove your personal experience into your professional experience now. Of helping your clients help their customers have better brand journeys. And I'm sure they appreciate it too. Yeah.

I mean, I think like I tell people, like a lot of times we, and that's one of the reasons why I love working with SHRM, S-H-R-M, which is the biggest HR organization in the world. We help them with their content, with their digital strategy and such. I tell them like, there's no anymore, not anymore. There's like a personal or professional life. There's your experience, there's your life. And, you know, you expect people to take, you know, work to home, but also you have to expect them to bring home to work these days. If they're working after hours, you know, they're going to bring their work stuff home there. So I just think like, first on a personal level, as we're in a day and age where we just, you know, building experiences for ourselves, adding skills to ourselves, and we just have to figure out every single day, how can we apply it and how to make them valuable. And then how to basically help others become valuable with this experience that we're having.

Yeah, and I think marketers' challenge is to figure out how whatever it is they're offering, whether it's a product or a service, how does that make the experience a more favorable one, right? How does it— how is it either easing a pain point for the customer or helping them get somewhere faster or help them get farther or whatever it's doing, but, and how can they make the end customer see how that interaction or that experience is going to help them be in a better place, you know, get, have a better future, whatever that, whether that better future looks like saving money on something that you have to buy, like car insurance, or whether that better future looks like, you know, taking your family on a wonderful vacation or whether it looks like, you know, immigrating safely to some other country. I mean, it can mean a lot, a lot of different things, but How do you help them make their way to a better future, whatever that means?

And I think what happens, that story that I just shared with you, like I, so as of December, I became an American citizen.

Oh, congratulations.

Thank you. It's one of the best achievements of my life, I would say. And I posted my story on LinkedIn, how I got through it, because I had to go through 13 visas to be legal. I had to, you know, do what I did. Uh, you know, a lot of people made fun of me throughout the process, like, oh my God, you're never going to get it. It's been so long. Whatever those things are. And I wrote that, I wrote it all up on LinkedIn, my story on it. Take a guess how many people viewed that story.

I don't know. I'm guessing a lot.

Just say a number.

1,000.

1.2 million people.

Wow.

Because I mean, I'll tell you like what happens is a lot of times throughout our life, we just get discouraged. We get, you know, I mean, I tell them the reason why it went so viral, because a lot of people saw themselves in the story. They saw the struggles they're having to go through. They saw the pain they had. They saw how people are making fun of them. So I mean, as simple as now when I go around, so thank God I've been doing— I mean, there's something like my life calling. I feel like I want to still inspire more people to go out and do what and build the things they want to build. A lot of times when I give those presentations, I tell them like, if your friends around you are making fun of you, you should cut off those friends. If your staff is not crazy enough to do things like, you know, going after the, you know, the moon or the stars or whatever those things are, just, you're not in a place where you're innovating enough. And the main takeaway I always tell them, if you're in business and every single day you should be thinking how to put yourself out of business, how to create new things to put yourself out of business as a company. And our job as a marketeer is to help tell our clients, hey, here's a trend happening in this. Have you thought about creating this into a product? Have you thought about Turning this into, you know, bigger than the solution than the post or something. And this would help a lot of companies. And the second takeaway, I tell them, after you think how to put yourself out of business, you should be a media company before a product or service company. And what I'd say when I say that is like, when we do the digital mapping and digital strategy consulting, so our process goes like, let's say tomorrow we onboard the client, we figure we'll first assess what they have and what they need and what their current capabilities are. And help them kind of architect what is the next phase for them, how they can grow on digital. Like maybe they should hire more videographers, maybe they should hire more graphic people, all this kind of stuff. And I tell them like, because you're in the day and age before your product or service company, you should be a media company and your staff should reflect a media company, having people creatively doing stuff or partner with an agency. And even if you partner with an agency, like you should have internal capabilities of understanding what to ask the agency and be informed of You know, what is it that you need from them to help you get more customers or tell more stories or, you know, get that retargeting campaign on or that email marketing campaign, whatever those things are.

Right. Well, I definitely agree with you that every business is a media company to some degree or should be. You know, the reasons why are multiple, but, you know, the primary reason— this is just my viewpoint— but the primary reason is helping is translating whatever your values are into a reason, a reason why your clients or your customers want to do business with you versus somebody else who's out there in the market. And there's such a, content is such a loaded term and it's become such a widely used and overused term that I almost think I can see through the internet right now, the eyes of listeners to this when it airs in a few weeks rolling, because, you know, we've been talking about content as an industry for 15 years now, but it doesn't mean that you get to take your foot off the brakes because there's so much noise out there. You have to figure out a way to educate your, the world. And by that, I mean your ideal client, our customer about why you do what you do and then what you do. And the only way to do that is to be relevant and targeted in content. And you're right, that means becoming a media company, figuring out the best ways to reach who it is you want to reach, and then creating the best stories or case studies or, you know, helpful tips or whatever it is to, to Show them why you care about putting them in a better position than they are in today. So totally agree with you. We all need to be media companies and that's any size business, small, medium enterprise, whatever.

Yeah. I mean, so that's why I said like, and so we have two audiences that we serve. We serve our clients and also we serve other marketing owners because I realized after, you know, being in this industry for like now on the agency side, like 3 to 4 years and a consultant even more than that, I realized like even you could be a marketing company, but unless you have worked in a content perspective and content creation, which I was lucky enough that I worked in a TV station with all, all I was doing is creating content and figuring out audiences and I start mapping those content to the internet and how it's, how to translate to communities. And this is why I tell them like understanding the media landscape and how it divide between what's owned media, shared media, paid media, earned media, As an agency, you have to be thinking from that lens of that perspective and then creating the customer journey through those 4 media spectrums. And you'll be surprised, a lot of those agencies, the digital agencies that are either starting off today or have been in business for so long, because they came up from a traditional model, they're not thinking of the shared media perspective and the power of the targeted paid media perspective. Or if they're starting new, they haven't thought from their own media perspective or traditional media perspective how they could leverage those stuff or their own media perspective. So, so I realized there's a need for that. There's a need for someone to help people articulate what is the digital strategy like and why it's important. Like, you know, and that's why we created, we created a class for agency owners or even people who want to study marketing or be in the marketing space to understand. So this way they can be informed what is it in marketing that they want to do, or what is it for the customers they want to do? Are you going to be focusing on their own media? Are you going to be focusing on your shared media? Are they going to focus on the paid media? And how are you going to connect all those puzzles? To create that customer journey, to create that, you know, someone going from unaware to aware to consideration to buying, to create that consideration page, to create that, figure out the content value you're going to create for them, right? Because it's not just putting a photo online, that photo needs to be informative, needs to add value to that customer, they need to see you and trust you. And then, because at the end of the day, like, people are everywhere, like, whether you're a B2B, B2C, you know, B2G, you know, business to government, You're people to people, you're in the business of people, and understanding the struggles of those people, the fears of those people, the drives of those people, creating content that answers those fears, those objections, and then once you create that content in different forms, either telling the story in a video or a photo, and then basically figuring out where the conversation is happening around those fears and putting that content there, that's the magic recipe for driving the great customer journey. and then you drive them to where? To a landing page or versus a website versus the, you know, maybe like they fill out the form directly on Facebook because they don't want to leave the platform. You got to be obsessed over where is your customer trying to go and then make their journey faster for them.

Right, right. Well, absolutely. And I can't think of a better place to circle back to than, than a reference to the customer journey, whether you're, whether you're using content to do it, whether you're using technology, to improve it, whatever it is, it's so crucial to the work that agencies do for their brand clients. So you are currently, and this event will have occurred already by the time everyone's listening to this, but you're on the West Coast right now about to present at TechCrunch, correct?

Correct. So yeah, I'm here. So I'm here at TechCrunch. I'm like, I was blessed because I, because the work that I've been doing and I think I've been putting content, I tell them, how do people find you these days? Like, yeah, I put a lot of content. If you go on you go on my LinkedIn, there's content. If you go on my Instagram, there's content. So because of that content, now I'm getting invited to speak in different places. So I'll be speaking at TechCrunch, and I just recently came back even from Tajikistan, where I was speaking for the State Department, on behalf of the State Department, at a tech conference. And the main takeaway, the main stuff that I talk about is like the entrepreneurship space, the innovation space, kind of figuring out the main takeaways, like, like the things like I tell people, like, you don't have to be building the perfect product from day one. That's the wrong approach. That's the paralyzing approach. It's one step at a time. It's like baby steps. It's like start kind of like taking that simple start with like a consistent email marketing campaign and simply starting with like a better foundation for your website. I didn't get a chance to work with those big companies overnight. I started working with a small company, then at the mid-sized company and the bigger one. So kind of like this, a lot of times when I talk about kind of bringing back the idea, the dream into a practical action, and I tell people like, you gotta be as an agency, as an owner, as an entrepreneur, mapping your daily action to basically get to that goal you're trying to achieve and make sure you're intentional about what you're doing every single day to help you get there. So that's kind of like the conversation I'll be talking about tomorrow. And I'm also presenting a client. Which, I mean, one of the things that I love working in a digital space is we always look for solutions that could be groundbreaking and change things. That's why I was excited working with Lyft, and now I'm excited to work with a company called Kangaroo, K-N-G-R-O. It's an app that's looking to connect travelers and shoppers, and they want to turn every traveler into a courier where you basically take an item with you to a country you're traveling to, and then that person who lives in that country, they will pay you to bring an item with you. Oh, so I'm here also presenting for that, for that client as well.

I love it. Well, I really appreciate Royce sharing your story and your ideas with us today. I think we can all always do better at improving our customers' journeys, whatever those are and wherever we're trying to help them get. I love your personal story. Obviously it's really inspirational and I think agency owners will be able to take away a lot of practical insight about how they translate, you know, the personal into the work, uh, like you're doing every day. Uh, if people want to reach out to you or learn more about your work or Digital Revamp, what's the best place for them to find you?

Yes, there's multiple ways, either royabdo.com, which is my personal website, or digitalrevamp.com, which is the agency website. And also I post a lot of content on LinkedIn. So it's R-O-Y. ABDO, Apple Bravo Delta Oscar. And on Instagram, it's also ROI.ABDO. My main activity is between my YouTube channel and my Instagram and my LinkedIn. That's my, like, my three focuses. I mean, I'm also on Facebook.

I love how you threw that in at the end.

Yeah, I mean, I have the page, but I'm more like on the story. I think stories now are taking over the world, right? So that's why I'm more on stories.

Yeah. You know, I'm getting tired of having to put my thumb down on the screen just so that I can make something stop so I can read it. Yeah. But anyway, I'm digressing. Well, Roy, I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. Really enjoyed the conversation. And thank you for spending time on The Innovative Agency today.

Thank you for having me and good luck moving forward.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. And we'll talk to the rest of you on the next episode of The Innovative Agency. Thanks, everybody. The Legal and Creative Agency Protection System is a legal toolkit designed to help busy agency leaders manage legal issues like client contracts, freelancer relationships, intellectual property, social media compliance, and more. Get resources and helpful content about agency legal issues now at agencylegalprotection.com.

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