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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Jack Porter Smith. Jack is the founder of an award winning international PPC agency and a values first leader with a bold stance on team culture. Over 12 years, he built and exited an agency known for client results, Team loyalty and a No BS internal code. He's also one of seven founders featured in the new book, agency exits by Ali Newton Temperley, where he shares some of the hard lessons behind having to step away for health reasons. I wanted to have Jack on because too many agency owners burn out trying to scale without ever really defining like the kind of culture that you actually want within your organization. He is a great guy, has some great takes on running an agency. And in this episode, we discuss building an agency team that would never work anywhere else. Why strong internal values matter more than client demands. What most leaders get wrong about HR and team loyalty and more, lead gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most it's unpredictable, it's slow and it's usually expensive. Jia flips that. It's the all in one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Jia automates lead gen follow up and content and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at get gia.ai/dynamic agency, and now Jack Porter Smith, it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. What was your personal code that you promised to never break? Right?
Jack Porter-Smith 1:53
The code? It's a complex thing, because it's something I discovered over a long time, right? So it wasn't, it's not like on day one, I started the agency, and I've got these 10 elements to my code, and it developed, you know, maybe added one or two things a year for 12 years. So it just became things I wasn't willing to bend on. And I think the other key thing is I went from early 20s to mid 30s, so I developed as a human too, right? And, yeah, what mattered to me and why I was running the business. So some of them are quite just straightforward and mechanical, so I won't say yes to any RFP just after long enough in the business, I saw what I had to see so that, but even that, that made my team's life so much easier, too. They don't go chasing the wrong opportunities. They don't bother they don't even bother me, like, Hey, we've got this $2 million farmer opportunity. Do you want it? No, don't even waste our time. Move on and and what I love about the personal code is it's personal. I couldn't care less if you know you agree, they agree, because it's you. It's what works for you, right? But a lot of it was to do with HR and leadership. So something that I was always really, really strong on is I would never reassign a staff member, because if you spend more than a year in an agency as a junior, I guarantee you someone has asked you to be reassigned like some grumpy client over a drop ball or You're not gelling or a mistake, or whatever, and then, as a leader, it's, you know, you have that other side of empathy is this is going to destroy your confidence. It's going to create gossip in the office, you know, and it's also going to set a negative precedent to the client that every time something gets a little bit tricky. Oh, we can just bang our fists and they'll move Jenny and bring in Steve or whatever. So whenever I got those requests, I would probably spend about two hours drafting my reply, reducing the swear words each time and I went in really hard, you know, both with partners, because we shared a lot with partners. So we had about 50 reselling partners, as well as direct clients, and I always went in really hard on them. And my closing line was always the same, you do not want to be this client. You're having a bad day. We've made a mistake, whatever it is, trust me, you do not want to do this right and and so I would always just be fully transparent with the person. So again, let's say we spent $10,000 in the wrong campaign in the wrong country. It's a big mistake. But if that has translated to Oh, Ed's an idiot, remove Ed from the account. Put. Someone senior on whatever my response was always, you know, Ed is just part of the bigger team here, right? There's leadership, there's training processes, SOPs, three other colleagues that should have caught it, but you just don't see them. So it's always important to to protect them. For me. And I can tell you, like, I think the thing going around the internet is like aura points these days, and there's no greater way to get aura points with your team. But it's not just for that. It's a learning moment. And you know, whenever these clients sent these sort of crazy hissy fits in, I would always show the team member the email verbatim, so I didn't sugar coat it, and I said, Daniel, you did kind of make a whoopsie here. But you know, then we work through it together. We bring Daniel into the client conversation, and five years later, I see them hugging at a conference, and they're best friends and everything worked out. So you know, rightly or wrongly, that's just an example of my code is there are things I just will not budge on if it cost me a client, I really don't care.
Chris DuBois 6:11
So, all right, I got three, three things to get in here. First, the when you said, I said no to all RFPs, so I know there's an agency owner listening right now that is, like, pumping his fist, like, yes. Like, screw RFPs. And this is proof that you can say no to RFPs and still become a successful agency. Personally, never won an RFP. Like, it's never Yeah. Anyways, so that's a completely separate conversation. But like, Yeah, I know there's someone out there, the on the not reassigning people to it. So I wonder, within your client agency relationship, right, the ability to just say, like, Oh, you did that. I don't like it. We're done, right? Like, what? How would a marriage look if, if that was the case, how would like, any other relationships? Like, no, actually, hang on, we have a problem. Let's work through this. Like, let's talk about it. Because I could, and I have an example, actually, I could get into but it's like, we we have the chance to get better together here. And like, we both have a common goal. Why don't we work on it? I had a client who we were just not they were an emerging brand or in an emerging market, even so, like, there it was hard. Even if we had won every single keyword that we could find in their marketplace, we'd have maybe 100 and, like, 50 visitors to the website, right? So we had to use some other like tactics to make things happen, and we're struggling to figure it out. And eventually I came to the client and said, Hey, look, this is on us. Like, I don't know how to help you. I think you I think you should probably find another agency who could be a better fit. And they actually said, Look, we know you are trying everything you can to make this happen, so we're going to, like, we want to stay with you, because if we start with someone else, they have to learn everything about us. They have to learn the market, right? And we're just starting from scratch, but like, we have this, this going where we're we're learning and getting better. And four ish months later, everything took off like it would be. Things finally clicked. It worked, and then they started growing. But if they had restarted with a different agency, that wouldn't have been the case, they would have had to push that back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 8:13
And even to a lesser extent, another team member, like say, you had acquiesced and moved team number three into number one seat. Again, they're resetting the relationship. They're the learning process, the understanding of the market. Yeah, definitely. And that's the thing, is learning through adversity, because that's what I always wanted my team to learn. And that triggers another point, by the way, I think you and I are about the same age. Ish, I mean, I'm 35 I'm guessing you're about
Chris DuBois 8:39
that 36 so I got you, got you my whole year.
Speaker 1 8:43
So we, we grew up in a time where professionally, we still had to learn how to be professional like, you know, full time in an office, making the cups of tea. I mean, sitting in a freezing cold boardroom, waiting for a scary client and the generation of talent coming through now just doesn't have that. And I don't mean to sound like a dinosaur, and it's not a critique, it's a fact, far less people in our space will now ever know what it's like to sit in an office, right and and the etiquette you learn from the senior person sat next to you from your manager being two desks over and shouting at you if you've done something inappropriate and that like conduct is a missed opportunity in a sense of training. So as leaders today, we have to rethink, how do we actually protect these people and let them evolve into a positive career? Because they've already lost all of that that the natural learning opportunity you and me had. So now, if they're just behind the screen, you know, usually remote these days, and then all of a sudden, they're just getting, like, reassigned, as if they're cattle instead of the leader, actually, because the heart that's easy thing for the agency owner doing it. Oh, I'm really sorry. Yeah, they messed up. We'll put them in a bin and. Place them. And, you know, I meet Sarah, right? That's the easy thing. Difficult thing is working through it with them. So I see that as a duty to the staff beyond the client, and I will never apologize for that. They were always my first priority, because obviously, if you have a good team and a happy team, your clients will be happy.
Chris DuBois 10:18
So, yeah, there's also this, like, it forces the team's mindset to be around, like, I will be successful here, and so it's not a the client don't like me. I screwed some of that. Now I'm gonna go elsewhere, right to a different client and just work there. Yeah, hopefully they take a lesson. But like, now it's, no, I need to figure this out, because this is my responsibility? Yeah, sense of ownership that has to come down, which only makes your organization stronger. So
Speaker 1 10:46
and they're bond with you, you know they trust you, right? And don't get me wrong, I had a mutiny and all sorts of chaos earlier, but by the end, anyone would you know this is going to go public? Anyone who worked for me or with me would attest no one left. One person left in my last three years, and within a month, he has to come back. So all these things, this code of leadership, it really adds up, but you have to be long sighted about it. I'd say,
Chris DuBois 11:16
yeah, what I like about it too is that even if it is a personal code, so it guides your perspective, for from your your business and so, especially today, and this is something like as a positioning coach, right? I'm talking about this all the time. It's like, you the way you stand out isn't just by having, like, a niche that says, you know, we work with manufacturing companies in this country and doing this. It's like, Yeah, but anyone could do that. What's your perspective? Like, how are you viewing all of this? And it's not just about like, how do I want the work being done? It's like, how do we show up? And so your company culture is really, no one can just come in and copy your culture. They can copy the tech you're doing, they can copy the models you're using, but they can't come in and copy your team, because you've said it in a special way. I think that's probably one of the reasons why you were so successful with your agency. Is like you had that from the start, where a lot of people skip over it,
Speaker 1 12:12
yeah. And you know what? Like now that you've connected those dots. So as I say, we had a lot of partners, right? So we would go to a lot of agency conferences too. And say, we would, you know, sponsor an agency conference. I was speaking at it whatever. And like at all the cocktail parties or meals or poolside parties, I'm not even joking, like so many times, people will come up to me because I would always have a team of six or seven around me at every event, you know, helping out and doing this. And that they would always come up to me and like they could sense our bond, they would always come up and say, how is your team so amazing? How are they doing? Or how did they know to do all that, you know, how are they such great ambassadors? And it was always really hard to put into words, but I think this conversation is kind of the crystallization of that is look after them, run to a code that they will respect, and they will run through a brick wall for you. And but it's hard to tell someone that a champagne cocktail mixer type thing, right?
Chris DuBois 13:12
When you get like, the cliche, you know, just let them be experts. Like, let them, let them do their job, and, like, take care of them, let them do that. But like that really is the thing. Like, it sounds cliche, that's advice that a lot of like culture coaches would give. Like, when I was in the army, so I was running a basic training company at, like, the infantry's basic training stuff, and I would often have drill sergeants from other units asking to be part of our Hey, sir, how do we, you know, like, move into your unit and one that's not really how it works. Like, you don't get to make those decisions like that, but, uh, but I realized it was just because it wasn't anything like crazy that we were doing and stuff. It was just, I took care of my guys to make sure they were good, and so if they didn't have to be at work, it's like, go home. Like, go rest. Especially for drill sergeants, they're waking up at, you know, two in the morning so they can drive in to wake up the soldiers at four in the morning so they can work all day, put the soldiers to bed, finish their paperwork, and then they get home by midnight, sleep a couple hours. It's just like, hey, how about we shift that? Because it doesn't have to be the case. And people saw it, and our unit's performance got better because we were taking care of the guys who were able to do their job, and they knew if I get my stuff done, no one's expecting me to be here anymore, like they're expecting me to take care of myself. You know, I
Unknown Speaker 14:24
got two things that's triggered. The first is, do they call you sir in the
Chris DuBois 14:29
army? Yeah, well, as an officer, so
Unknown Speaker 14:33
call you sir from now on, then, oh,
Chris DuBois 14:36
yeah, a little different. Maybe, maybe someday I'll learn knighthood, and that'll be a that'll be a thing. That's cool, though, but
Speaker 1 14:44
the serious thing it triggered is, you know, I was at a conference last week, as we were talking about with 250 agency owners have a lot of conversations. And it is curious, because the number one thing a lot of people complain about is, HR, ask any agency owner. Right? What's your top three issues? What's stressing you out? It'll be something to do with someone being sick, not performing, firing someone, hiring someone, right? And this is going to sound so bad, but honestly, like I was at a few dinners, a few conversations, and what I actually heard was contempt toward not necessarily the humans of the team, but even the notion of having to lead a team, you know, the things, the type of conversation we're having, I was trying to espouse those, and they would be, I don't want to do that. I don't, you know, I don't want to lean all the way in. I don't want to. And it was just fascinating, because what I was hearing, if you don't want to love your team till it hurts and take bullets for them and stand up for them and have policies that protect them from unreasonable clients, unsafe workplace conditions, yada yada, then what I'm hearing is you don't actually want an agency like the two are actually mutually exclusive. Like contempt for having and running a team and having an agency are mutually exclusive. So it's this fascinating thing of you think you want an agency, but everything you're saying says you don't right. You know
Chris DuBois 16:12
also, just quickly, are you You consider yourself introverted or extroverted
Speaker 1 16:19
based on energy depletion, introverted, like I can do the whole public thing, but I get very hired very quickly, yeah, just
Chris DuBois 16:27
wondering too how much I feel like a lot of agency owners got into it because they were creatives and they just loved their craft, yeah, and that generally they were introverted, and that's how they rolled into those like, just learning how to do something really well, and they just enjoyed that and being alone working on that craft. And so when you have a team, it starts to deteriorate some of that energy and just adds, like, some tension there where I'm very extroverted. I love being with the team, like I get energy when I am working with people, and so it's very easy for me to just roll into that, but yes, curious
Speaker 1 17:05
I get that, you know, but at the same time, like, you know, if I've done a whole workshop with the team, you know, quarterly, whatever, quarterly pulse day, I'm loving every second of it, but as soon as it finishes, I need to pass out for like, 12 hours. It's a weird it's a weird one, yeah, but
Chris DuBois 17:21
it is definitely you just got me thinking too, like, I have a client right now who's going through a couple HR issues, and I've seen him when, when his business had, like, no leads coming in, and, like, the stress levels of being like, Oh, I might have shut down. My agency was nowhere compared to I have these HR struggles right now to deal with. And so there is something about like that human that you're it's like you're responsible for them. You have to be able to work with them like that just adds this other level of tension to make the problem, I think, just feel harder. I don't know if that that even makes sense, but there's probably something
Speaker 1 17:56
there. There is, and I think it's, it's also shifted accountability, like a lot of these conversations, the leader is blaming the staffer, whoever and whatever they are, you know, such and such is unreliable, dropping the ball, not being truthful, whatever you know. But the introspection is seldom there. It's like, what am I doing wrong? And that's why, as I say, I had a mutiny in 2017 I'm not kidding, more than half the agency left in 10 days, and it was a coordinated Exodus. They tried to get even more people with them, but they didn't. And obviously at that time, I felt like a victim. You know, what's happening to me? Why me? This is terrible. Everyone, you know, everyone, are words that I won't say here, but like, obviously, later in the cold light of day, you realize all the conditions that set this event up. And it began with me not being a servant leader. Like, I think that would be probably the label to put on. It is servant leader, and some people roll their eyes at that, but being a servant leader and hiring and firing and managing based on values, because that was the other beautiful thing, like post mutiny, when we rebuilt on values, the team took care of itself, right? So, like people knew, we had quarterly values reviews. Everyone knew what the values were. We all voted on them once a year. And so if someone knows they're not exhibiting a value, I didn't even have to fire them. They got a minus. If they don't want to change, they're gone. So they didn't even wait. They literally just threw themselves off the bridge right when we were rebuilding. And then even, like, five years later, we accidentally let a bad apple in a really toxic just mistake. It happens. Three of the sort of core group came to me one day. I can't say too much, but they came to me one day and they said, Look, this person is behaving terribly. And. Here's the evidence. This goes against all our values. I fired in the same day, like just, it's as simple as that, because it's like the colony is looking after itself now, because of, because of what you've instilled, right? But if you don't work to get to that point, you're always in that cycle, pre mutiny for me, of just bringing people based on credentials, qualifications, technical abilities, pay them as little as you can get away with, work them as hard as possible, and then moan when it doesn't work out right. You have to.
Chris DuBois 20:31
That's why you need to validate the culture fit, but it's not as much like, do I think this person will get along with the team? It's like, no, do they actually embody the values that we want to put out. So if your culture is the standard that you set like that means there is a bar. And if you bring in this higher and they lower that bar, the rest of the team is going to feel that, and they're gonna they're gonna see it drop. They're gonna say, No, not a fan. But if they can raise that bar, at least hold it, hold it level, right? Everybody's gonna be good. They're gonna be able to be able to, like, self correct and work through with them?
Speaker 1 21:02
Which ones would you say you transferred from army life to agency life?
Chris DuBois 21:08
Which one like
Speaker 1 21:09
values or, you know, culture element like, how much of that did you bring over? Slash have to leave behind?
Chris DuBois 21:16
Yeah, that that ownership piece was huge because I learned that pretty quickly within the Army. They're like, if you don't, if you can't own it, and like, say, Hey, this is my mistake. I'm gonna fix it. Like people's lives are on the line. At some point it's like, you have to be able to say, this was my mistake. I'm going to learn from it. Hey, everyone else, here's, here's what I'm doing to get better. Teamwork was probably the biggest I was, I can't remember who I was just talking to, but like when I was a platoon leader, so you got, you know, 30 something guys under your your command within a battalion. You've got, there's, you know, 12, 1216, other platoons, and there's so much competition between them, which I think in some ways is very healthy, because you're like, we're all going to go, you know, have each other's back. Like, I want, I want to know when I pick up the radio and call for support that there's another good unit that's showing up to support me. But there was sometimes so much competition that they were like, stealing resources from each other and kind of like, trying to put, put each other down in various ways. Hunger can, right? And I just had a different mentality. Then that somehow came. It was like, it was for we had to do a PT test. And it would army, old PT test in the army was just two minutes push ups, two minutes sit ups, and a two mile run. And there was one unit that was doing their average was, like, 10 push ups higher than my platoons. And so I'm like, why is Why is their average so much higher? And so I just went to talk to the platoon later, and like we worked it out, like I saw their training plan, and like we talked about it, I shared how we have, like, our runtime was so much better than theirs, and we moved on. Excuse me and but like my my unit got better at push ups, like we got and we, you know, became one of the better units when it came to all the physical events and stuff, just by changing some of the things from learning from others. But every evaluation I had in the army mentioned my like teamwork as like something. I was reaching outside of just my unit to make sure that others were supported, and we were building this up together, and it was, we're all on the same team. And so I think that is transferred here where it's like, I just want to play positive some games, like I want to find, even if you're a competitor, to me, it's like, how can we That's fascinating. Yeah, that's probably the biggest one, stuff I had to leave behind. I think the tackling things as aggressively, I think left when I still take very deliberate action. I think I've been asked before, like, because I do a lot of stuff on my own, I'm producing a lot of content coaching. All my clients I do. I'm still in the Army Reserve. I got my family, and they say, like, how do you do it? Do it all. It's like, I just get really focused to work on the things that need to be worked on. Like, I'm not working harder than anybody else. I'm just, I'm able to, like, push everything else off, get really zoned in on what I need to be, yeah, and then knock it out. So I kept that from the army, but I remove the like, the who, you know, like, let's go, like, yeah, just like, X, I realized a lot of people don't work that well when they're, you know, being told they have to work like, let's go and send Yes, other ways to motivate people when there's no uniform code of military justice. So that's that's back in your decisions.
Unknown Speaker 24:32
Yes, we have to be a bit more delicate, right?
Chris DuBois 24:37
Something I want to get in before we go. So you're pretty public about all the health issues and stuff you've had, and I think that's what kind of led to the the you separating from the agency over time. There are probably other agency owners listening to this that have had moments like that where it's like they have other even if it's not health issues, there's other concerns, other parts of their life that are that need a lot more attention. And they're now reprioritizing saying this is more important to me. How did you go about the mental shift to be able to like, accept that this is the case, and go through that?
Speaker 1 25:13
I think the best thing to do is to position myself as a case study of what not to do. I don't want to claim any wisdom or that I made many right decisions in the respect of managing health versus growth or agency or business ownership, the really short version, for anyone who doesn't know the context, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 2019 I suffered with it long before that, but that's just a diagnosis, delay and there. And then at the time, they said you should have a surgery, take some bits of your bowels out, put it back together. And but I said no, because it wasn't without its risks, and I didn't want to take five months out my agency, whereas what you know, it's major work. So that's what they said you need, right? So I was having fun. I was running around the world, you know, because I was Scott, Scotland based, but my agency was Toronto, doing events all around the Americas, clients everywhere. So I was having fun, right? And then covid, and then had a kid, and then nearly died. So that five years gap where I should have done the right things I didn't. I made the call far too late to step away. So when I think about and by the way, I just want to link something like I think it. A lot of illnesses are exasperated by stress. There's a definite mind body connection. And something that I think is always key to emphasize is I actually think a growing, thriving agency is more stressful than the opposite. Staying flat or going backwards could be perceived by some as stressful. I would say it comes with some angst. I've been there, but also the last five, six years, we were just on a crazy growth trajectory, you know, doing all these events and tours and books and 1000s of clients and a growing team and yadda yadda yadda. And even though it's good stress, it is significant stress, and I think that's the trap I fell into. I was running on adrenaline. You know how you must have seen this in the army, like, apparently, if someone gets stabbed, I've never been stabbed, but if someone gets stabbed in the back, they don't realize it, because the adrenaline for like, 15 minutes. And I did like, a five year version of that, riding a high. What I and even when I was diagnosed, it took me a year to tell my family, two years to tell my board, four years to tell my team, because I didn't want to be perceived as weak or be treated differently. And so that's really where my mistake started, was not being honest at the start, not seeking help. I should have slowed down. I should have had proactive surgery. If your illness is such that needs one I should have, you know, it took me 10 years to hand off sales. I should have done that as soon as I was diagnosed, which was year five. Should have promoted and then managing director underneath me quicker should have made a path to going non executive. Quicker should have had therapists, you know, just all the holistic health stuff. It's so easy in hindsight. And I was actually speaking with someone in Ibiza last week. He's almost the exact same. So he was listening to my story, and he looked like he'd seen a ghost. I was like, You okay? He's like, Yeah, I'm okay, but I have got these gold stones, and I think I'm making them worse with stress and not look after myself. And and then he said, I am thinking about putting an MD in place underneath me. And I said, Why are you still thinking about it like this agency is already taking its toll on you and and I think it's just a notion of, there's never a perfect time to step back to do less, because I'm growing, I'm having fun. That's what you really need to take a really mature decision and look past, because the health cost is obvious, but also the opportunity cost, because for him, if he actually proactively does it now and puts in a number two underneath that runs more or less the business. A, he'll have time and mind space to look after his health. And B, there's every chance that will unlock his, you know, mind space for a zone of genius, stuff that will really move the needle. But it's a funny thing. It's something that everyone defers. Every agency owner on a planet defers the major stepping away from the active founder leader role, because they don't want to start paying lots of people, 234, $100,000 a year. If I could go back in time, I'd have done it all different, for sure. So I can't claim any wisdom, only a survivor story. If.
Chris DuBois 30:00
Yeah, but you got it now, so the ability to share it in in retrospect, is still valuable, yeah, the and there is something to so, like, even, okay, wait, I'm not trying to compare this in any way. I gotta say that for the audience, I don't think you'll take it that way. But so I had a, like, a vein treatment a couple weeks ago to just seal off one of my veins because of some issues. And had a ultrasound last week, good this week, lot of pain in my groin pain, like across that vein. And so I called the doctor, hey, this doesn't feel right. You know? What's up? And I've been being very mature, even my wife will vouch not doing leg workouts, not like pushing it, even though I wanted to. But the doctor said, Well, we can get you in today. Like, I got a lot of meetings today, like, let's, let's push it to Friday, and I ended up having to go to the emergency room last night to to just get it done, like something looked at because I was in so much pain, and had I got it looked at before? Though I could have moved probably one meeting, maybe two meetings to, like, shift things around. Instead, I was up till, you know, after one in the morning. And, like, waking up, waking up late. Now, we have a different doctor's appointment that I have to go to, and it's like, and so not a huge issue in the grand scheme of life, but it is this, like, this mentality of like, well, work me is more important. But had I just done it in the first place, I'd actually not have to shift as many meetings now as I'm going to, and I could actually have just kept my schedule mostly intact. And so I do think there's this from a lead maybe it's a leadership thing where it's like you don't want to let people down as well, and so you feel like you have to martyr yourself in order to make it happen.
Speaker 1 31:49
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. That is the nail on the head. And even, like a really super quick, easy example, every agency leader on the planet needs more staff than they have at some point. So every quarter we'd sit down and say, right, what's our needs and realities and utilization rates? Turns out we need a PPC, campaign manager, a client services manager, an ops manager, and a salesperson as the active MD, like in the trenches. MD, I was in charge of sales, like I said, for the first 10 years. So that line item was on our annual issue list for three years, because every time we came to the quarterly meeting, no, no. You hire someone in client services. You need someone in media. That's no problem. I'll keep sales and it hits that Mario thing is, they need help more than I do, and I don't deserve to put myself first, because I own the business, which is a very dangerous thing, and you ultimately just you've got to listen. And like you said, as soon as you start getting warning signs from your body, you know someone once put it to me, your body is your alibi, because you don't want to leave, and it's really giving you the biggest broadside it can without killing you. And eventually I got the message right and said, Oh, I better take a few months off, which turned into something else, but it's a head over heart thing,
Chris DuBois 33:16
all right. Well, as we wind it down here. I got two more questions for you with the first meeting. What book do you recommend every agency owner should read?
Speaker 1 33:28
Well, you said I couldn't say traction, because that's boring.
Chris DuBois 33:30
Yep, I command it's gonna hunt me down for saying that.
Speaker 1 33:38
No, in seriousness, it's not boring. It's just lots of people are already familiar with it. So I will go ahead and plug a brand new one. Ali Newton, temporal ease, agency exits, because what's interesting about it, short version, seven founders interviewed all completely different exits, myself included, some by design, some not by design, various horror stories within and obviously loads of nuggets of wisdom, because it's not something people necessarily go into their agency with a ton of clarity on. Do I want to exit? What would it be like? Because there's 17 different ways to do it. A real eye opener.
Chris DuBois 34:18
Yeah, I'm excited to read that one. Of my pieces of advice to agencies, especially as they're starting out, is that you don't necessarily need to build for an exit, like with that being the plan, but you need to build for options, yeah, so that if you decide to sell, you're ready to go, and in order to maximize your options, you kind of need to go through a lot of the stuff that you would do for an exit,
Speaker 1 34:40
yeah? Or indeed, if you have to sell right, like me, like and I have genuine, very close friend agency owners who have triple heart bypasses, other terrible immune it happens way more than you know we see on LinkedIn. So having those options, as you put it, that's what got me out and the agency forward. It without, you know, any mess or financial difficulties for anyone or stuff like that, right?
Chris DuBois 35:07
Awesome. Last question, Where can people find you?
Speaker 1 35:10
LinkedIn, my alter ego, snacky, Jackie, but my LinkedIn profile is just search my name, Jack Porter Smith, and I look forward to making friends with you.
Chris DuBois 35:20
Awesome. Well, Jack, I am glad that we cross paths and we're going to continue doing some stuff together. So
Speaker 1 35:25
very grateful to be on Chris. Thanks a lot, and good luck to everyone listening and watching.
Chris DuBois 35:35
That's the show. Everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on substack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai