Hey, everybody! Welcome to this week's episode of The Agency Accelerator Podcast. First of all, I hope you are having a fantastic, productive week. Also, I hope this episode is going to help you do that even more. This is a bit of a winding episode because we're talking about everything to do with being an entrepreneur and all about having the right mindset. Thinking about succession planning and selling your agency.

I'm excited to have Kevin Urrutia with me. He runs for the media but as you will hear, he has his finger in many pies and has started a whole number of businesses. We’ll explore what drives him. Some of the lessons that he's learned and some of the advice that he’ll give to you to make sure that you maintain that winning mindset. So, let's get on with today's episode. 

Welcome to the latest episode of The Agency Accelerator Podcast. We are getting inside the mind of an entrepreneur today, and I am really excited to have Kevin Urrutia with me. Kevin's done lots of things, so my introduction is not going to really do injustice. 

Kevin started out as a software developer, then he moved into e-commerce starting Chester Travels, which I believe sells suitcases. He grew that business to $1.5 million in just 18 months. He also then started a home cleaning business, which grew to $3 million. Now, he runs a digital agency called Voy Media. If that wasn't enough, he's also the co-author of “Digital Marketing Made Easy” and key concepts of digital marketing and a podcaster, too. Welcome, Kevin. That sounds like that you don't have enough hours in the day to do all of those things.

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, so exciting. I've done a lot of stuff, but mostly I kind of what we were talking about earlier. It's just in the beginning. It’s just, that's what I wanted to do. Be an entrepreneur and make things. That's sort of like the mindset I've always sort of had when I was younger. Sort of doing things.

Yes. Just before we jump into this question. Let me just tell you, I've just got a new cleaner. The new cleaner has started her business during the pandemic, so she's being a bit of an entrepreneur. I was telling her about my typical day because, like you, I've been self-employed for a long time and she said, “What drives you?”  “What motivates you?” Then, I thought that was a really interesting question. I thought I'd start this interview off by asking you, what drives you? What motivates you? 

At least for me, what drives and motivates me is, it was always like I've always wanted to do my own thing, and that has always driven me. It's like that concept of I'm my own boss. I have my own things and build my own products or companies. 

At least for me, growing up, I would always like to see people and I'm like what makes them different from me? And, I was like reading about them like this person is a normal person and I was like I can be that person. I've always thought I could do it. That sort of always joins me where I always thought like this person must be super smart.

I like reading it. I'm like, no, this person just doesn't. He knows a little bit more than me, but I could do it, too. That's sort of in my mindset, if they could do what, I could do it too. It's as simple as that. That's sort of what always drives me. 

Are you running lots of businesses at the moment? Or, is that story I gave you just a bit of your sort of linear timeline?

It depends. What I'm focusing on right now is mainly Voy Media, which is my marketing agency. But back then, when I was sitting by other companies, I had all those things that I was thinking about like, the Maid cleaning company was first. I started that one right after I quit my job in San Francisco. I was there for about two and a half years and I got to go do my own thing.

I saw the cleaning company and while I was doing it, that's kind of when I thought of the idea of doing the outdoor gear company, which is momentum and that spun out of still running the cleaning company but using the resources that I had. The income that is coming in for the cleaning to get the inventory to hire the staff.

Then from there, that started the out the luggage company and that sort of all these sorts of things kind of were built around the same time with, like, five years. However, in the beginning, everything was a mess. While working on things at the same time, and then as things get bigger, we sort of like spun out people. For example, when this guy works for me at the cleaning company, he's pretty good. Let him just run the outdoor gear company because I just don't have time. 

That's kind of how it happened eventually, staff that split. And then you're saying that separate Slack channels or separate email channels like we can't have employees doing this and this because it makes people confused on what is the responsibility. But in the beginning, I tell people like we just did everything at once because the cleaning company is providing a lot of the cash flow to fund stuff.

Yeah, and I guess when we're starting and we're younger and naive, perhaps, a bit more naive, we probably are more willing to take those risks. Let's just talk about some of the hurdles to growth because a lot of our listeners are, it's sort of in one of three phases that are in startup mode there in growth mode, or they may be in advanced growth. What are some of the hurdles that you see real currently for smaller businesses and to growth? What are some of the things that our listeners should be mindful of in that journey of growth? 

Journey of growth, I think one of the biggest things it really depends on is service-based businesses like mine. I always tell people like my companies aren't too complex or service-based. Honestly, one of the biggest hurdles to growth, at least for the cleaning company and even for employee media, is just having great employees that are trained up to do the work that you want them to do.

I think that's very hard on the industry that you're in, cleaning for example. Cleaning is very easy, so we would get a lot of people saying, “Hey, I'm a cleaner. Anybody can clean, I could clean, You can clean. I'm not the best cleaner. Maybe you are a great cleaner.” But that sort of quality of cleaning is hard to sort of getting right. I think cleaning is even harder because everybody's definition of clean is different. Like a bachelor's cleaning is different from a married person's cleaning.

It's like we got to account for all these things. At least for us making sure that we have a checklist in place and getting them trained up. We know for at least for the Maid company. We know the role of making mistakes, so you should always have that mindset. So for us, if something's not right, here's how you can contact us so we can make it right so they can get that great experience because I think a service-based company is all about the experience.

Even though you might not like it. Hey, here's how to get a refund. Here's how we're gonna come back the same day to fix mistakes for you. I think having that sort of system in place, allows you to grow because you have a great experience. Now, at least for us here in the U. S, we have a lot of help. Yelp and Google reviews are so important for growth that that's sort of how you build momentum. That's how you get more people to come. Again, that applies to a lot of industries as well.

Yes. I think that's good. Reviews online are so important, and you obviously don't want to have a bad one but have a good one if you can get it. What's your feeling like right now we're recording this in October 2021. We are all kind of hoping that we are coming out of a pandemic. We've all learned to work differently. How do you think finding people has changed because of that? 

Oh, that's very tough. At least for us, It's been interesting because my background Rob is like programming, so I always kind of did remote work. Even when I was in college.

I had one tiny bit which is like a software company. We were developing apps for people in places like New York, California. When I was in upstate college in Binghamton. It's like nowhere. Then, this remote concept was always similar to me. When I went to work in San Francisco, it kind of went away because we just worked in an office and then there was a pandemic. It was like, this is how I was working and I was like, 18 or 19 right in college like this makes sense.

Then, for me and Wilson, who’s the other founder, we thought it was very similar. But I think for other people, at least for us, and we've been hiring for at least for Voy Media. It's been like a hit or miss for both people. We've had people joining in like a week, then quit because they just can't do remotely. I'm so used to the office and we could see that they are struggling like hey, again on camera. Like I don't want to be on camera but you just have to. This is how you look like you can't change it. You're like, 25 years plus you can't change your look.

It's at least for us. That's been difficult to find. These people that we know can work autonomously without having to be like I don't want to. I really don't want to have a company where I'm tracking you. That's not what I want. I don't want to be doing that. Some people like, okay, maybe we do time tracking but that's not fun for me. I don't want to check in time logs. I just want to trust you to say like you're gonna do your work and finding those people was tough.

I believe that when you work for something, people will want to do their best work. No one wants to go to work and be like, I'm gonna want to do anything today. Of course, there's some, but not like in some fields, industries that were probably in at least the programming you want to be the best programmer out there. You want to make the REST code. You don't want to go to work, like writing nothing. 

Yes. It is in the UK at the moment, there's a real skill shortage in the whole marketing agency field, and so it's tough to find people. It's been that way for a while, but it's even worse than ever at the moment. Is that true in the US that you’re finding the pandemic has actually meant you can look further into a field for people? 

Yeah. I mean, for us, we have such a shortage of finding great marketers. I think one thing that people realise is that everybody can do marketing. It's kind of like any skill or not like any skill. But like there are people that you know, you go to Google ads, you get certified on your Facebook as you get certified and people like you on my Facebook as a marketer. That's like the basics of Facebook ads.

But then some people truly understand how marketing works. As in when you're talking about growth. How to understand growth? How to understand your profits and margins? How to understand hiring? How to understand inventory? That is all part of marketing, and you're sort of seeing this mesh of things that actually make a growth market.

Someone who truly understands the business. At least for us, one of the hardest challenges that we find is people that can understand, like, yes, this is how you upload on Facebook but that doesn't make you a marketer.

You understand how to read the data. What's the click-through rates? How do you optimise the images that have to be copied? That's still a shortage of people truly understanding the fundamentals of marketing, and there are only a few people that can do that because they actually spend the time to go back and read like, Oh, glory to read these great books of authors that have done it before.

That, at least for me, is a shortage of those people. I always tell people, those marketers, they're great and they're how they probably have their own business or they have their own company. They're not gonna be working for me. It's like, harder to find, like those great people. 

That is a good point that you make, which I always feel like everyone in the business needs to have a bit of a commercial head on their shoulders. They need to understand the difference between and delighting the client and over-servicing. They need to understand the difference between profit and loss. 

I always facetiously say to my client, so you're running a business or a charity because if you're over-servicing your clients by more than 10 or 15% then you're running a charity, and don't think often it's because the team, the younger team members, just want to do a great job for their clients. When the client says jump, they say, How high? But they don't have this commercial nouse about them. 

Yeah, and it's so true. And it's something that we always struggle with the agency. It's probably to rub that, okay, a client wants an extra thing. It's like, do you want to charge them? Do you want to delight them? It's like a battle between should we charge them because we need the profit? But should we just, like, get them upset? 

As an agency owner. You always want your customers to be happy, and it's always a battle of like, all right, fine, we'll do a free landing page because I know it's gonna make them happier and know they're going to stay again. But I think it's so important to realise, okay, how much money are you making? It's funny because I always said that I'm not running a charity, either. It's so funny because I always say that like we said, we're not running a charity. We need to make one here. 

Yeah for sure. I think this is a whole other topic that we could just talk about. I think one of the things is that if you make a conscious decision to over-serve a client because you want to delight them and you want to help them. The key to that is to make sure the client understands that it's an extra on top of what they are normally paying for so that when you don't do it next time, they're not disappointed because they understand you were kind of helping them out.

It's so funny because we always try to say that too. You were just like, I hope they understand that this cost us money. I don't know if they will understand that because they think it's free, right? Every client is like, ok, this is just free. But when you do it once they expect free every single time. 

I wrote a blog or email, Kevin, before called “Can you just”, that dreaded term that clients use. Hey, Rob, can you just do this for me? Can you just do that? And in their mind, it's five minutes of work. But of course, it's two hours working. So we just have to be really mindful about that. 

Any other hurdles? We talked about just starting an agency and got to the point where might want to hire some people and we discussed that is a big hurdle to finding the right people if they've got any other thoughts around, like those early-stage hurdles to growth if you cast your mind back to your agency or your cleaning business or travel and so on.

I think the biggest hurdle again is still what I think people get over people. Sometimes that's stuck with them. They think that they need to be doing all the work, all the service. I think that is something that early on. For me, I don't want to be doing that because if I'm doing all the work, all the servicing, then I'm never gonna grow like a business. That’s where a lot of people get stuck.

For me, the realisation was when you look at a bodega or like a street corner. You see, the owner of that business, they're doing the cashier and stocking. It was like, these people are quote and unquote running a business, but it's actually like a full time, harder job. I don't want to be doing that. 

Getting out of that mindset. I think it's so important and very helpful for businesses, at least for me. People come to Voy Media and they see me.

I'm on a podcast, YouTube and everywhere and he was like, Oh, I thought it was kind of gonna work with me going with my team, but they've been trained by me. They've been doing stuff. I think that's sort of a big hurdle that people need to get rid of because again, I understand that you want to do the service. You want to do the work because you're the one that knows everything, but at a certain point, you just can't scale and grow the business.

I think ultimately you want to grow your business and you don't want to be the one managing the marketing, but again, it really depends if you do want to do that, great. However, still, find somebody who's gonna be like a COO that's going to help you actually grow the business, because it's too hard to do. At the same time, when you think about growth, you also need to think about servicing your clients.

Yes and, interestingly, an entrepreneur is, I always say, the spark that got their business going, but they also become the roadblock to growth in the end because they kind of got to get out of their own way. They've got to realise that they need to let other people do the work. Other people may not do it as well as them or in the same way as them. But that's okay. 

Yeah, that's so true. And that's something that you are always going to have to at least find a process system for how we're going to do things. Even for us. I think that we should always update our internal system or internal processes, depending on the employees we hire. Okay? It seems like this person made this mistake. How do we avoid that? That way the client isn’t upset next time. Okay, let's do a roadmap call. Let's do a bi-weekly call. Let's do this. 

Have a cause. Invite them to Slack again. Again, as a business owner, how do you optimise your company? You can actually bring on these people to serve more clients and again keep delighting them with a great experience that you want to provide them?

Yes, as tedious as it might be for an entrepreneur document your business processes so that you can replicate yourself and replicate the service that the client gets. The experience that the client gets is so important. 

Then now this agency has grown, they maybe you've got say, they've got 10 staff. I keep putting you on the spot by asking the same question. But I'm just interested to hear your experience of being there yourself. When I get to that size where I have delegated, maybe I've got a COO and I'm getting stuff off my play. What are the next hurdles to get to that next size? That sort of $1.5 million revenue target.

I think the biggest one for us to get that has gotten us over that hump it was having, at least for me, was a great sort of sales process. I think as small business owners entrepreneurs, I never want to do sales. I was like, sales are scary and it's not for me. I'm a programmer. I went to school for computer science.

I always thought that sales are a weird thing, but then I read tonnes of books and realised that sales are just a process for your project to understand what you're truly selling or have to deliver. And I think for us like in the beginning it was very just me talking to them. But then once I document that process. This is the email we will send out. This is the follow-up email. This is the calendar link.

You set an agenda in the first call. Here's what I talk about, making sure that the prospect knows that, ok, this guy is a professional. We're not gonna just randomly talk about stuff. I think that sort of helped us. Another big one too, honestly, is just having a salesperson. I say that like my friend calls that, he might be part of this too, Rob, it’s like as a founder, you always gonna inherently close more than like a salesperson.

My friend calls it a founder bonus where you just talk to the founder. They're gonna like what? They're attracted to you. You're probably charismatic. Talk to them about your service in and out, so any questions they have there are none of like, Hey, let me go talk to my founder. Hey, let me go talk to the boss, and so we can do that, right? I never knew about that until I hired a salesperson. 

That's sort of like a big one is having a great sales process and always updating it. I think again our sales decks probably update maybe every three or four months. Even our salesperson, why are we always up to them? Because every month I listen to your calls. This is how we can make it better. I was like, ok, we didn't close this month. Then this is how we're going to close again. 

It's always having that entrepreneurial spirit inside your business too. Grow each part of it. We literally just updated our deck. Yesterday, it was good to go. Let's pitch this right now. 

Yes, and who is ever going to tell you to give you the best feedback about improving things like your clients and your prospects. Then, we should all be constantly listening to the feedback that we get, listen between the lines and help those improvers. It's really interesting. I don't know about you, but I met a lot of my clients and I asked them how they get their business. They all rather proudly tell me that it will come through referrals and word of mouth. 

But as I say to them, that's not the sales process. That's just luck. That’s an opportunity. That's only going to get you so far. When you want to grow beyond what you know a certain size, you've got to have a sales process in place. 

I think that's so true. Like people always say referrals and word the mouth. That's so unpredictable. At least for us, we're doing cold outreach. We're doing cold calls. We’re doing podcasting. We're doing YouTube videos.

It's everything to get people to know our agency and then, great, you found us one way. Now let's sort of slip through the way to work with us doing your marketing, your Facebook ads or Google ads, whatever it might be. Again, that's the only way to have predictable growth and revenue essentially for your company. Especially as you get bigger. You have twenty (20) - Thirty (30) people. That payroll is just like we need business.

Yes. Like you say, the problem that referrals and word of mouth are you have no control over when they come in. You also have no control over the quality or the fit for your business. You've got to do something more than that, right? 

Yeah, for sure. Even for me, we've got a lot of referrals. Multi-referrals, they're kind of not looking for it. Then, it's like the sales process is always a little longer for referrals.

Even though people think it's easy. I'm like when someone searches for it, they’re like the market is there. The demand is there. In referral, it's kind of, let's go connect another month and I'm like, all right, are you working with me or not? Right? 

Yeah, I always sort of teach my community that you don't want to be qualifying those people with your time because your title is the most precious commodity. You need some other processes to qualify people in or out because you want to. You want to be talking to the people that have demonstrated they've got a need. They understand what you do. They've got a budget. They've got a time scale. They've got a problem that you can solve. Those are the people you want to invest your time with. 

I just want to pick up on one point that you said a bit earlier, which I think is worth reiterating. That is when you're growing a business, of any kind, you have to make a choice. At some point is, am I building the brand being me, or am I building the brand being a brand? Therefore I can replicate myself through other people and through the service that we deliver. I think that that's an important judgement that people need to make. Otherwise, they stay in a sort of freelancer space forever, more kidding themselves that they're growing their business. 

That's so funny because it's something that we always fight. So much of Voy Media is based on my personality, Kevin, everybody knows me. But again, I also have Voy Media setback. 

For me, I like someone like Gary Vee,  where, hey, you have Gary Vee, which is the guy. But then he also has vain and media, which is everything that runs behind him. That's really the way I emulated it. Where some people are just like kevin.com. Everything's the brand, right? Something like yourself which is just like everything is your name. For me,  I'm like the face of the company but everything still goes to the branded Voy Media. I think that's super helpful to sort of distinguishing that.

Again, it's not perfect. It's something that I think about too. Something my co-founder, Wilson, and I will think about too because you got to think about it. Let's say five (5) to ten (10) years from now, you want to sell the company. What are you selling? Am I selling Rob? Am I selling Kevin? Or, am I selling the brand? That's something that early on you're not thinking about, but you know anything from ten (10) to twenty (20) years, and you never know what could happen. You want to sell it and that's something we are thinking about.

Again going back to my original businesses. In the beginning, when you have, every company has one bank account. One penal, that's a nightmare. Then when we want to sell it. You ask yourself, is this expense for this company or this company? Then, you realise, when you want to sell a company, you don't make these mistakes anymore. 

Everything is a little bit separate now, but I think for any sort of business, I still personally think that having your brand is great in the beginning because that's going to get your clients. It's going to get your referrals as you become bigger. Okay, start separating it. 

That's what we did. At least for us, you kind of separate. If you separate those two again with the sales process, they come in for Kevin. They email me but I’ll tell them that they may talk to a salesperson. For them to realise that it's not just Kevin but it's the company of Kevin has and Wilson has, and that sort of help establish.

We've gotten a lot better at that within the past year because, as I said, I just really got a salesperson a year ago. I was doing all the sales calls and it felt very like, Yeah, I work with Kevin’s company. Then once I see Kevin, the salesperson, it's very weird. I joined sales and they kind of like, Oh my God, the CEOs here. I'm like, Hey, what's up?

I'm not saying anything, but they get so excited. This is so weird because it's me. I was so used to just these calls and talking to these people. But again, in the beginning, that helped the growth of the company because they didn't want to come for work with void because they did talk to me. That was super beneficial to growth. Though, eventually, this isn't sustainable for me. I'm on call six times a day. I'm exhausted and I can't be doing that.

Yeah. I really like the concept of the founder bonus. That's a good one. I haven't heard that before. The next question I wanted to ask you which you've already answered in the first part actually. If someone hopes one day to sell their agency, what advice would you give to them? Besides what you just said, which has built a brand and don't build it on you. What other advice would you give them? 

I haven't told the agency yet but some things that I've sold a previous company before. Again, have a separate bank account. One thing I think that's important for people to think about, too, is to sell your company when it's on a high versus on a low. That way, you can just get the highest valuation possible. You're not questioning these numbers. 

What does this mean? Why isn't it as low? That's what I've learned from my other companies where you want to sell it when it's its peak. Yep, even though you're not ready and again, if you want to sell a company, it's something you need to think about for at least a year because you're not going to find a buyer instantly. Especially if you have an agency doing anywhere between five (5) to six (6) million because an agency is like a lot of people.

I've heard a story. My friend Josh sold an agency and he said he sold it within six (6) months. The founder was unable to run this because he had never run an agency before so he took it back. It's so weird. Like mix. Ideally, you want to work with a company that has bought an agency before, so they know the struggles. They know what it really is. When I talk to other agency founders, I might say, since you've done an agency, you know the struggles, the good and the bad. I think it's so important to think about. 

I can relate to that story. When I sold my agency, we sold. We actually sold a big U.S company in Minneapolis and they weren't a marketing agency. It was not poor. It was not a good match. After two years, I was tied in for two years. They offered to sell me the agency back for a pound but I said, no thanks. Because they killed the brand. They just wanted me to take the people and the responsibility.

I also think another really good point that you made is set on a high. I would extend that to say, sell when you, the owner, are feeling really positive and not feeling burnt out. I sold my agency when I would say I'm tired and burnt out and I'm sure that would have impacted the value that we got for it rather than that you say, selling up or selling it on a high. 

Let's just do a couple more things. I just wanted to get your thoughts on what makes a really good entrepreneurial mindset. What's kind of right thought processes someone needs to have if they want to have the sort of success that you've had?

 I think for an entrepreneur mindset, I think it's being willing to just try new stuff which sounds easy. I mean, you all have friends that you tell them a new idea and they're like, this isn't gonna work but you haven't even heard the idea yet. It's like, I was talking to a friend recently and I said that it should be like a security guard for people.

She's said, no, this is why it's gonna be. I was like, why are you so negative? I think it's so simple but being open to ideas and stuff and willing to try things, it's so important for an entrepreneur mindset. I have tonnes of friends. I told them that I wanna start a cleaning company. They’re like, what are you thinking about? you’re a computer scientist. For me, this could be fun to do but they’re like, why would ever do that?

You don't even clean. Meanwhile, I just said that it’s fine and I think about something else. 

Another thing that entrepreneurs get stuck in, at least the people that want to do business, is they think they have to do that job. That they're like signing up for cleaning. I've never worked for a cleaning company. I've never cleaned before. My hiking company. I hiked like everybody, quote and unquote hikes but not an active hiker. But, I can research, what are tracking polls?  What are backpacks? What are people looking for?

My luggage company. I’m not a traveller. I never sold luggage before, but I knew about manufacturing. Again, it's you. Hear it all the time. Follow your passion, which is I think it's great if you're super-rich because you can do whatever you want. But as an entrepreneur, you're just looking for opportunities to make money and then go ahead.

Once you make money, then go follow your passion. Then go do whatever you want and waste money. Even for me, marketing, I never went to school for marketing, but I understood how to market because of my business. This is actually interesting to me.

Being open to stuff I think is super important. I like reading about entrepreneurs, at least for me. I personally love reading about startups and a lot of things about Elon Musk and Marc Andresen. Early entrepreneurial guys. That stuff excites me. 

When I'm feeling kind of low, I gotta read an entrepreneurial book because it's gonna be exciting. I really like reading about these journeys from building stuff. I don't really read fiction, but that's sort of like, at least for me, what I think is important and what helps me.

Yes. I think that piece of advice about not having to be able to do the job is a really important one. I think a lot of time people think I have to be able to do everything. I can’t possibly delegate as I could do it myself. That just isn't true. I think the other thing I would say, be open-minded and try new things. Don't be scared of failing because, you know, we need to fail. I can tell you. 

I've been running this business for nearly fifteen (15). Well, I'm in my 15th year now. In terms of me getting into the online world. I can't tell you how many failures I've had. I've had a lot more failures than I've had successes so far. That's part of the journey that gets you to the next stage, right? 

That's so funny because after I tell people all the things that I wake up and take for the agency and take the cleaning company and you think of all the failures, you're just never gonna get done.

You probably had this to where you wake up, you're like, Wow, that was crazy. That's a crazy thing that's gonna happen today because, like, someone just quit out of nowhere. This client just complained about this. I'm like, Oh my God, you can't possibly think of everything but your response is, let me try to figure out how I'm going to fix this today. Just having that mindset of let's get it done. Again, a big thing, too, is working with teammates or having a co-founder. Because that's going to make it so much easier than again having someone stressed out or freaking out. 

Yeah, for sure. Really quick question before we end because I'm conscious of time, but I know Voy Media works in the digital marketing space. I was just interested to ask you, what kind of trends do you see coming down the line in the whole digital marketing world? 

The biggest trend that I see, at least for me, is that marketing is getting harder, which is good because the entrepreneurs are getting savvier. They just know more. They understand where before, you probably know Rob, dropshipping was so big where anybody can go online. 

That made markets easy. But again, the quality of products was down. Now, with everything being much harder, much more difficult, I think the quality entrepreneurs are getting there where it's like they're truly understanding everything now from business to marketing to having a great quality product. At least for me, it reminds me of 15 years ago, when there's all this great product, and then there's this weird space in e-commerce time where drop papers came in. Everybody was in a market and like you have all this weird stuff online. Now that's going down. 

I'm seeing great quality products where I was astonished that this is actually a new invention.  Where before it was like another person selling a T-shirt. Another person selling another mug. I'm like, when is new stuff going to be out there again? I'm seeing that happen again, which is exciting because it’s great for us. As marketers, we can work with innovative products again. 

Yeah. The success of anything like that is the ability to market it right. Because almost no one's operating in a vacuum with no competition, whether you're running a business like your agency or coaching practice like mine. We're all competing where there's a lot of noise, and so we've got to be good at finding ways through that noise.

So, Kevin, if people wanted to reach out to you. Find out more about your, your journey and Voy Media, where would they go?

They can just email me kevin@voymedia.com or just go to voymedia.com. You can find me there, but that's pretty much the best way. 

Okay. I need to ask you one question. I've forgotten to ask you which I ask all my guests. This is really important because we're just heading towards a hundred episodes and in one-hundredth episode, we're collating all of this into one episode. If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice when you're just starting out in business, what would it be? 

One piece of advice. What would I give? I would say again, “Just go and do it.” Don't be scared of failure. I think that's the biggest thing that I would give myself. In the beginning, I was very scared, even kind of being on camera. That was very scary for me. I was like, oh, my God, people are going to judge me for how I look, how I talk.

Eventually, once you get out of that mindset, it's over. You can do whatever you want. You can't change yourself. Just go and do that. That's one of the biggest things where I see people. For me, it took me a while. I get a coach and everything to do. Mentally prepare yourself for this stuff. I think that's probably the biggest advice I would give myself. 

Yes. Feel the fear and do it anyway. That’s a good piece of advice. Great. Then, we will include your link with your email address and your website in the show notes. I just want to end this by saying thank you so much for joining us today. I know that the listeners will have got some good nuggets from that. Also, I learned this term of founders bonus, which is really good. I’m gonna use that again. Thanks for running us today, Kevin.

Thank you, Rob. Thanks, guys. 

Kevin is an interesting guy, isn't he? I hope you found that episode useful and you've got some ideas and thoughts. Maybe ways of looking at your business slightly differently.

If you did enjoy it, please consider leaving a review on the Apple podcast and share this with your colleagues. And as ever, I hope you have a great rest of the week. A brilliant, relaxing weekend and I'll see you next Thursday for the next episode of The Agency Accelerator Podcast