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Welcome to Funnel Vision, Hosted by Mikael Dia, Founder & CEO of Funnelytics - a revolutionary marketing analytics software that allows marketers and business owners to map and track their sales and marketing campaigns visually.
We feature Marketing Agency Owners and Performance Marketers to highlight the tactics, tools and strategies they use to grow their own business and their clients.
Funnel Vision brings you 3 episodes every single week that aim to highlight the strategies used by successful agency owners and performance marketers in a 20 minute format.
Aside from their unique topic of the day, our guests always answer one big question:
What is your best growth tactic?
For more content, check out our YouTube page, newsletter or connect with Mikael Dia on LinkedIn!
[00:00:00] Mikael: What's up, what's up, what's up, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Funnel Vision show. I'm really, really excited. I've had some really cool chats with our next guest. Shauna Traguna. She's here to talk about how she's been able to grow her agency, exit her agency, build a new agency only to kind of almost dismantle it and, and like take it down a notch to rebuild it and scale it again.
[00:00:26] Mikael: And, uh, and this journey that she's been on has been extremely cool to see and to hear about. So I can't wait to share that entire experience with all of you. So Shauna, welcome.
[00:00:37] Shawna: Thanks so much for having me. It was awesome to be here and, uh, and get to chat with you.
[00:00:41] Mikael: Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm excited to hear a lot about, uh, what you've done and how you've, you've been able to kind of grow and, and take your, your business and your agency and your mindset to kind of that next level.
[00:00:51] Mikael: So for those who don't know, let's start with your humble brag. Who are you? Uh, what have you been able to do for your client? What have [00:01:00] you been able to do for your own agency? In other words, like why should people listen to you?
[00:01:04] Shawna: Awesome. Yeah. So I'll start sort of at the beginning. As you mentioned, um, I have, this is what I'm doing right now is my current agency, but it's not my first agency.
[00:01:13] Shawna: So I would say my humble brag to start off with is that my first agency, which was born out of the birth of Twitter and super early on when social media wasn't even a term that people use. It hadn't even been invented yet. Um, my first agency was sort of born out of that. Um, and it was completely by accident.
[00:01:31] Shawna: There's two parts to that that I'm super stoked about. One was I was just doing it on the side, doing it for fun. Um, well, I was a corporate trainer in my past life. And people always say, Hey, you know, it's so hard to get funding for cool things, but what I actually actually happened to me was I was just doing consulting and talking to hanging out on Twitter, hanging out on Facebook, hanging out on these new social platforms that were super early.
[00:01:55] Shawna: And just making a little bit of noise and having fun with them. And I was actually approached [00:02:00] by an investor who said, how much do I have to pay you for you to quit your job, do this full time and make us both a lot of money. So I technically can really get out of the blue. And that's how First Agency went from like consulting, playing around, just playing the tools and getting to know stuff.
[00:02:16] Shawna: Um, that's how I went to First Agency. Literally somebody threw money at me and said, go make a business out of this. And so did that for seven years. And we did the agency to agency model because there were a lot of ad agencies and traditional marketing agencies out there. So it was a really easy model for us to scale without having to do a ton of sales or trying to convince people that social media marketing, cause that's what we focused on in the first agency was social media marketing, we were called ReSoMe, which was short for relevant social media.
[00:02:45] Shawna: And so by having agencies that already had a book of business, That just wanted to add social marketing to their existing print ads or whatever they were doing, it was much easier for us to scale, get clients and grow. Um, a big flex that we had there is that agency was actually [00:03:00] acquired after I'd done that for about seven years, I was looking for exit opportunities, looking for different things, and one of our clients when they got wind of that actually said, if anybody's going to acquire you, it's going to be us.
[00:03:10] Shawna: So our first agency, one of our clients was like, we're not going to let you go, so we're just going to bring you in now. Um, so that was, that was super exciting. Um, stayed there for a bit and then now, like, I was there for a bit, then, you know, kind of sat back, wanted to relax for a bit after I'd done agency life for a bit.
[00:03:26] Shawna: I was just going to do some consulting. Um, so had my exit, did my time, and then went and did consulting, but then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, There were a ton of people and businesses out there that were just needing to get online, needed digital services immediately. And I could not sit by and just say no to these people whose businesses lives were hanging in the balance.
[00:03:47] Shawna: So I jumped in and said yes, and I did what I knew how to do. And I flipped open an agency, um, within the span of a couple of days, called all my old contractors said, name your price, let's save some [00:04:00] businesses. Um, and we did. So we've grown this business up a little bit differently. Um, and I would say our flex now is we've really leaned into ABM and we have a little internal target that we have multiple case studies for now, um, which is when we launch a new ABM client, which is account based marketing.
[00:04:17] Shawna: Um, we take a hundred clients and we want to get 80%, um, engagement from those prospects within three months. And we have multiple case studies where we're nailing that consistently. And so we take a ton of pride in that and it's a, it's an internal challenge that we hit every time. Or I shouldn't say every time, I shouldn't say every time, but we've got a number of, that's, yeah, most times.
[00:04:33] Shawna: Uh, and I would say the ones that where we don't hit it, it's not, I will say it's not always our fault. Sometimes there's something that we have to pause or hiccup. I know it's a very marketing spin, but. Yeah, we're pretty consistent on that. So those are my, those are my flexes. Acquisition, um, you know, turning up an agency, growing up an agency within the span of days, and now hitting some crazy aggressive targets for our clients pretty consistently.
[00:04:54] Mikael: Wow. Okay. So let's, let's take a couple steps back, um, because we went from basically a social [00:05:00] media agency, really a social media kind of consultant to then growing a social media agency to then being acquired by. One of your client to then kind of having a little bit of break, uh, realizing you're consulting, you're doing some, some stuff on the side with your time.
[00:05:15] Mikael: And then COVID hits, you then decide, okay, I'm going to help a lot of these clients out. We spin up an agency out of that, get your old team back. Uh, and now you've kind of really refined this one agency to be account based marketing where a business that has a very clear ICP, a very clear ideal profile, you find 100 of them, and then you want to engage with at least 80 of those 100.
[00:05:41] Mikael: So, I mean, impressive and very, you know, you've gone through an interesting journey. Let's, let's talk about the growth of the first agency. Let's see. And exiting that agency. I want to talk about, um, what that was like, what was that process like? Um, [00:06:00] how did you go through the exit? Walk me through a little bit of what that process was like.
[00:06:07] Shawna: Yeah. So, so first touching on the growth, as I mentioned, we were, our model was mostly agency for agency. So not a lot of companies, like not a lot of people knew who we, who we were because we were white labeling for a lot of agencies that were out there. So our relationships, our clients were other agencies that already had clients that just wanted to add social, um, to their roster.
[00:06:23] Shawna: And so that was. We were able to grow very quickly just by adding, because every extra agency we added, we added a book of clients, right, within a short period of time. We did have some of our own client, um, and some of our growth, which I've replicated in this second, uh, iteration out here, was all relationship based, where we would get in with one key client, show them some pretty cool results, And I am not shy about asking you for referrals, like, awesome, okay, so you can see what we did.
[00:06:51] Shawna: I want introductions to all of your business friends, all of your people in the industry. You tell me what trade shows I need to go to. And you and me are gonna [00:07:00] go and tell this story elsewhere. And, uh, and we're gonna get some more business this way. And what's nice about that, so number one, we got a ton of business and it was all sort of referral, testimonial based business without having to write up a full case study.
[00:07:14] Shawna: Um, because it was coming as referrals from those organizations, but in our pitches, we were promoting that client and showing them how successful they were and like. So it was very reciprocal, um, and I still use that model today.
[00:07:24] Mikael: So you went through this process of, um, on one side, you were kind of this white labeled agency to agency model, but then you built a lot of relationships.
[00:07:33] Mikael: Do you do agency to agency now with your, your ABM model?
[00:07:36] Shawna: We do, absolutely. Um, I would say it's less than 50 percent of our, our business now. We have some really strong client specific relationships. Um, and we tend to add a lot of value being able to have full FaceTime with technical client. Um, so we definitely still serve agencies.
[00:07:52] Shawna: Um, and, but like, we like to have those close tied relationships with the, with the clients, especially the more technical, the more FaceTime and the more like, [00:08:00] Relationship building we need to have to really bring that value. Um, and so we have migrated more. So we do have a lot of, um, partnerships now where we have other agencies where before we might have been white label and now we're coming in as a partnership and we have referral agreements between the two organizations.
[00:08:15] Shawna: So I'm not going to say that the model is completely changed, but it has shifted because we really want that FaceTime with that end user and in White Label, that doesn't always happen.
[00:08:26] Mikael: Right. And that's for sure. Like when you're the White Label, your job is to deliver the service. You don't care as much about the results.
[00:08:33] Mikael: You care more about, are you delivering on time? Um, because You know, you might, but most people who white label the goal is margins and delivery versus the client and the other agency has to deal with the client and the repercussions of, you know, poor results, et cetera. Now, it doesn't mean you retain them, of course, but.
[00:08:50] Mikael: Um, I find that when you have to speak to the client, you definitely are a lot more accountable to be result driven versus deliverable, uh, driven. [00:09:00] So I want to hear a little bit about the growth of that first agency before you got to the exit. What were your challenges? Like, you know, you started off on Twitter, you started off doing, you know, this, and then somebody came to you and said, Hey, I want you to do this for us.
[00:09:16] Mikael: And I want to make money with, with this. So growing an agency is not easy. What'd you do? Like, what were your challenges? Um, do you remember specifically like sometimes where you were kind of really struggling to grow this? Cause it sounds good. You grew it and then you exit it. It's like what everybody wants, but that's not the reality.
[00:09:35] Shawna: No, yeah, definitely. There were some very stressful times. So we got into this industry before the industry standards existed. Um, clients did not understand and especially our agency clients. They knew like there was all of this buzz around what this new social media, what the potential was and what the possibility was.
[00:09:54] Shawna: And there would be these breakout case studies that would like You know, go viral everywhere. And everybody expected us to be able to replicate [00:10:00] it. Like, that's not how this works. And the platforms were changing, like. Well, they still changed consistently, but like at that time they were rolling out completely new interfaces, like Facebook was rolling out new massive features, LinkedIn was rolling out massive features, like every three months we would barely get skilled up on it and implementing it for our clients.
[00:10:18] Shawna: And then another massive change would happen. It was a really dynamic time. And so. Keeping like being able to keep up with our existing deliverables in a changing landscape, being able to manage expectations with our clients when they're seeing only these one or two like golden child, um, stories that are going viral, you know, like that, that was a really tough conversation to have and at that time.
[00:10:40] Shawna: They were just like, oh, well, then you, like, if we weren't hitting something, they were just like, oh, well, then you obviously don't know what you're doing. I'm like, well, yeah, only one person, like, you can't be, you know, Michael Jordan, like, not every business can be like a superstar. And there was, there was not the, um, So those were definitely challenges, right?
[00:10:55] Shawna: Now people understand that, hey, you use social media different for personal brands [00:11:00] versus B2C brands versus D2C brands versus B2B. Like all of those are, yes, you can use social and you can use digital marketing for all of those things, but you don't use them the same way and you can't expect the same result.
[00:11:13] Shawna: That was not the case back then. So growing was a lot of just. Showing what we've done before, committing to experimenting and like picking, being picky with clients that we took on, um, that understood that, you know, this was a new frontier, we were going to figure it out together, but like our job was to figure it out, um, and so there were, you know, we had some clients leave us that thought we didn't know what the heck we were doing, but really their expectations were just unrealistic.
[00:11:40] Shawna: And they didn't understand what they were getting into. Um, but then we had other clients who had no expectations and were blown away. Right? So it was, it was a very challenging time. Now there's standards, there's benchmarks, there's, you know, case studies across all industries and platforms. So it's, it's a much better, it's a much easier way to manage expectations here.
[00:11:58] Shawna: Yeah, clients still ask to go [00:12:00] viral, but like, you can kind of chuckle and say, okay, well, here's what viral in your industry looks like based on these hundreds of case studies. Good. Um, so it's a much different space now. People are much more educated on it. Yeah.
[00:12:12] Mikael: Yeah. I always find it funny when people are like, I just want to go viral and it's like, but okay, what do you mean exactly?
[00:12:20] Mikael: Like, um, okay. So what was the tipping point then if it, you know, obviously you're talking about like late, you know, early 2010s then, right. You're talking about like, uh, or late two thousands, early 2010s. Um, what was the tipping point where things started to really ramp up before you even got to that acquisition stage or was it, you know, you were growing steadily, but always ups and downs and challenges, and you're just kind of fed up and you're like, we'd have a really good service, but I just don't want to do this anymore.
[00:12:47] Mikael: And then you look for acquisition. What was that like?
[00:12:50] Shawna: So the catalyst was actually the emergence of, um, high, like Um, we were a social centric agency and after [00:13:00] those, you know, first few years, those sort of six, seven years that we were in it, um, the players, the new players that were coming on board were players that were data first.
[00:13:06] Shawna: They were like app developers first. They were web developers first. They were coming in with like these highly technical, integrated, embedded things. And our team was really strong on the. Native platform. So there was, and I wanted to be data centric. And so I knew we were going to start struggling if we didn't figure out a way how to integrate some of these more advanced, we were doing Google Analytics, we were doing all the standard stuff.
[00:13:32] Shawna: But I wanted to offer, because I knew it was now an opportunity, I wanted to offer more. I wanted to be able to have more data. Um, and I knew that that was a bit beyond my expertise at that time. And just by running the business, I didn't think that by myself, I could figure out how to bring that. So then you think, okay, well, if I can't do this by myself, what are my options?
[00:13:50] Shawna: mergers, acquisitions, and as much as I want to say we were successful, we weren't in a position to go and buy other companies. Um, and so then the other option is like have conversations with companies you can [00:14:00] merge with as it can potentially acquire you that have those skills and can take you to the next level as you move from social media to a more digital marketing, completely, um, integrated, full marketing stack, um, which is where, where it was going at that point in time.
[00:14:17] Shawna: So that was Yeah, so that's what started the, the M& A conversations. We had some clients, and in retrospect, I probably should have told my clients ahead of time that this was sort of the plan, but I thought, do, I was like, keep that separate and then we'll just let them know what happened. But I did end up getting, um, an inquiry out of, uh, out of another city that they were looking to get foothold in our region with the types of clients that we had.
[00:14:40] Shawna: And so we were going through that M& A process. Um, they were looking to, we, we hadn't decided whether it was going to be one or the other, but they were a direct competitor to one of our clients, um, which was also in the software space. So that was, it was a good fit for us. That was going to help meet the needs that I felt and that we were going to fill a gap that they had.
[00:14:56] Shawna: So we were just trying to, we were going through due diligence, but because it was [00:15:00] one of my existing software client, um, competitors, I gave them a heads up. And I'm like, Hey, by the way, I'm about to go through due diligence with this. If there's anything you don't want this company to know, like, let me know, or like, I'll give you the professional courtesy of like, we can terminate here at this point, just cause I don't want to jeopardize your business and your marketing for that.
[00:15:19] Shawna: Like, Ethics and integrity are worth more than like the extra couple, you know, dollars that you would have for having that extra client on the book. Um, and then that client responded by saying, we didn't know you were open to M& A, if anybody's going to acquire you, it should be us. Um, and that company was, was Iversoft, a software company here in Ottawa.
[00:15:39] Shawna: Um, and we got like record time because they didn't want, they want, they didn't want anything else to get in and happen. Um, eight days, I think is what it was that, uh, it took us to that acquisition, um, from getting lawyers involved. Uh, just because we were, we had the existing relationship, it made sense once I realized they were open to it and they realized what I was trying to do, then we're like, let's just do it.
[00:15:58] Shawna: Let's just make it happen. Like, let's not drag it on. [00:16:00] Let's do this. And yeah, a week later, the paperwork was done. The week after that, we were moving into their office.
[00:16:06] Mikael: Wow. I think, uh, I think there's a quick disclaimer. Uh, don't expect eight days for an M& A to fit in by default, because that's, yeah, that's, that's impressive.
[00:16:16] Mikael: That's really, really cool. Um, yeah, it shows you that, like, there's opportunities for M& A anywhere if you're really good with your client, if you have a really good relationships, um, and that's a really good opportunity to find, okay, hey, one of these clients could be, uh, an acquirer of the agency. Just on that note, very quickly, and then, and then we'll slowly start wrapping up here.
[00:16:39] Mikael: What's one tip that you have for that M& A process? So let's say somebody's looking to sell their agency. What's one tip that, you know, that stands out that's like, this is something everybody needs to think about?
[00:16:52] Shawna: So, I would say probably one of the biggest things for me was, um, it, document everything.
[00:16:58] Shawna: It's the processes that [00:17:00] are going to be purchased and where that, that's where your value is if you're a service business. Um, and we didn't have at the beginning of that process, we didn't have every, we knew the processes. We were acting them out. They were all in our heads because we had, like, developed them as we went through.
[00:17:12] Shawna: Um, but to be able to point to something and say, this is the value that we bring, uh, like this is the, this is what you're buying, really, like, when it, when we, that whole process started, it was like, oh no, you're buying Shauna's brain. Um, and Shauna's experience, and I'm like, well, that's not, because then, now I have an obligation to be part of that acquisition, which isn't the best, like, it's not, if you're looking for exit, that's not the exit you want, right?
[00:17:34] Shawna: And so because we didn't have that documentation, then all of these sort of contingencies had to happen. So as a service business, if you're trying to prep or want to like have a long term plan for any type of merger or acquisition, the more documentation, the more processization, more like productization you can have of your services, the easier it is for the personalities in the business to be [00:18:00] separated from the value of the business.
[00:18:03] Mikael: Yep, I totally agree. Um, this is why software has such high multiples because you're, you're selling something that is repeatable and, and, and scalable. And this is why, um, services typically have lower multiples is because it's, it's heavily people centric and most services aren't actually productized enough where it is an assembly line.
[00:18:25] Mikael: So that makes, that makes a lot of sense. Sean, what's your, what's your number one growth tactic? If you want it to grow an agency again, start all over again, what's your number one growth tactic? I think I know because you kind of said it earlier, but, um, I'll let you say it.
[00:18:38] Shawna: Sure. So, um, I. AVM account based marketing is going to be like the number one thing.
[00:18:44] Shawna: Um, now, now that we know how to do it now that there's, you know, sophisticated systems for it. But what I would say, and of course we sell it, we use it for ourselves. We use it for all of our clients. We hit some pretty great targets with it. Um, it's like largely predictable. Um, so love that. And you get your ideal clients right out of the [00:19:00] gate.
[00:19:00] Shawna: Um, you don't have to sort of fight time with You know, lower quality, uh, lead. But what I would say is that if you pair account based marketing with real life relationship building, that gives multiples, like you're getting multiples of return on that because like, if you're bringing it into the real world, you're using testimonials and referrals with an account based marketing base.
[00:19:24] Shawna: If you're able to niche into like an industry or a vertical or a community, Um, and be able to compare, like, combine those two approaches. That's like magic happen. That's, that's what I would recommend.
[00:19:38] Mikael: And then stack on, just, don't be shy to ask for referrals.
[00:19:41] Shawna: Yeah, exactly. That's what I meant by that. So, that relationship part, like, Ask for referrals, be bold, do good work.
[00:19:48] Shawna: The first part of that is do the good work, right? There's more. If you're not doing the good work, then there's, you're not going to get very far asking for referrals and introductions to everything. But if, uh, if you can do the good work, if you can show the results, if you can impress [00:20:00] people. Um, and then you can say, Hey, and you have to go to their competitors.
[00:20:02] Shawna: You're not asking for like to help their competitors compete against them, but like their entire supply chain, right? All of their partner, um, the all, like anybody that's associated that could help them, that those organizations, they get amplified and elevated, that it's going to help this business. And a lot of our, a lot of our clients are interconnected with each other for that reason alone.
[00:20:21] Mikael: Awesome. That's really cool. Shauna, where can, where can people learn more about you?
[00:20:25] Shawna: Awesome. Yeah. So we can learn about, uh, the agency and ABM and content marketing at Eclivity. agency. That's our website. You can learn about more about me and my consulting and speaking at shaunatragana. com. And, uh, I would invite everybody to follow and connect on LinkedIn.
[00:20:39] Shawna: Love having these conversations and would love to have more of these. Awesome.
[00:20:43] Mikael: Yeah, LinkedIn is, uh, I used to be Facebook and I'm like, yeah, I can't do it anymore. I can't, I can't go on that platform. So LinkedIn is definitely the best place to go. Uh, I appreciate you, Shauna. Thank you for sharing a lot of the insights around selling your, exiting your company, um, how you're, you're growing again.
[00:20:59] Mikael: And, uh, it's [00:21:00] really cool to see. I appreciate your time.
[00:21:02] Shawna: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.