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Alex James returns to Agency Forward to make the case that in a post-AI world, having a niche is no longer enough — agencies need a distinct perspective that enrolls their market in a new way of thinking, or they'll blend into the noise.
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 Alex James, and this is a return visit. Alex is a positioning strategist who works with B to B agencies and founders to help them develop a clear, differentiated perspective that goes beyond just niching down. His core belief is your perspective is your product. I brought Alex back because the conversation we had last time sparked a ton of response, and I wanted to go deeper on something that's becoming more urgent in 2026 AI is making good enough air quotes around that output the default, which means that niche alone isn't going to protect you anymore. Alex has a strong take on what does in this episode, we discuss why a niche is now the floor, not the differentiator. How to Enroll your market in a new way of thinking about your category? What it looks like when perspective is baked into the DNA of an agency and more. No one was asking for another community, but I made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested and right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today, so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow, you can join a dynamic agency dot community and now. Alex James, 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, Alex, welcome back. Repeat guess here on agency. Forward, I want to get into a bunch of stuff from last episode and some new stuff, but I want to start with you have said that perspective beats niche, and you say niche, right?
Alex James 2:02
No, I say niche. I say correctly.
Chris DuBois 2:05
Okay, sorry. Nisha, the how is Excel? Ai accelerating this right now?
Alex James 2:13
Yeah, so I don't, I don't know if perspective beats niche, but you've got me saying it. I don't know if perspective, but, I do think that a niche is no longer enough. It used to be enough that you could essentially just say, hey, we do x for y, and that would be enough to differentiate you. That focus was a differentiator, but now it's the default. Everyone has niched down in some way, shape or form. And so what is required now is not some kind of default, we do X for Y statement, but really it's we do X for Y because z and Zed. That is your perspective. That is your logical argument against how things are typically done in your industry and four, how things should be done in your industry, that argument is actually the reason to pick you. That is the reason for people to buy in to what it is you're doing. And that's the evidence that you're giving to your prospects that you are niched justifiably, not just because. And so when we think about how AI folds it into this, I think it's become very clear that, especially in 2020, early 2026, everyone's everyone woke up to like, Oh, this is actually the promises that we've been told about. Ai, we're now starting to see them come true. And it's now become very clear that good enough is no longer good enough. Output is so quick, so easy. AI is also like an incredible learning tool. You can learn so much and so you can really become a specialist at a much faster clip than you ever could before. And so what we need to think about is actually, yes, we do need to think about what AI can do, but we also have to think about what AI cannot do. The gap that is accelerating between perspective and niche is that a niche will kind of get you to the starting line, but a perspective will actually get you in the race. And what gets you in the race is not just declaring, hey, we have this specialization, but it's enrolling your market in a new way of thinking about that specialization. You know, I talk about your perspective is your product all the time. It's kind of my main that's my main perspective. And I didn't always talk about that. I used to talk about, hey, yeah, you need a messaging strategy. I do messaging strategies for B to B companies. That was my that was my niche. And when people would reach out to me, they'd say, Oh, yeah, you know, we need a messaging strategy. We're talking to a few people now, when people reach out to. Me, they say, oh, we need a perspective. They use that word specifically, and that's how I know that I have, like started to enroll my market in the belief that I need them to believe in order to see the value in what I'm providing. And so that is where every agency really needs to be leaning into heavily right now, because it is the last line of defense. It's the last line of differentiation. It is the only moat. Is not just what you do, it's how you think, right?
Chris DuBois 5:31
So, all right, I'm just, I'm taking notes as we go, because that's how this works. But the I gotta go back, yeah, so I say niche, because the niches are in the riches, right? Or the riches are in the niches. So it's a niches or in reaches, or, I guess, doesn't work. But I agreed on your like, your market focus is, is no longer enough. So I think it's, it's still one of those things that's like, it's required, right? Like, you still you need to have that focus, one from the like, demand side, it's to be able to target these people, but also from the supply side to get reps serving these people and talking to them. But it's not defensible anymore. Like, when you could say, like, we're the only agency for construction companies, it's like, now someone can just show up and say that. So like, how do you prove you can do it? Right? So it's one of the it's like, you need it, but it's not going to actually get you over the finish line here. And so I do the same like the point of view. I call the point of view perspective, right? Is a because I think where it goes, where I see a lot of other or a lot of agencies kind of mess this up, is that they think it's just like a tagline on their website. And what I love about how you frame up perspective is that you can't have a perspective unless you're actually willing to change something right like you, like it, it constructs like your belief system. And so something that I've been working with all my clients on is like, what structural changes does this cause for you in the agency because you have that belief. Because if it's just a tagline on your website, like people are going to see through, it doesn't do anything for you. But if I know that you have this belief, and you've actually built your business differently because you hold that belief, now, if that resonates with me, you're the person that I actually want to to align with. And so I appreciate how perspective forces that idea. It's like, it with perspective, there is consequence and like, that's the ideal here. It's like, when we're trying to differentiate, there has to be a consequence in you making this choice. Otherwise. Why does it matter? Yeah, it
Alex James 7:37
has to be sacrifice. There has to be you have to be willing to give up something in order to go further, and that, what I found is that, like that, sacrifice often has already been made, they just don't know it yet. And so you're they kind of already, almost every client I've worked with already has their perspective kind of ingrained into the DNA of the business, because, hey, this is how they like to do things. They've started up an agency. It's because they left their previous agency that they were in house at because they didn't like how things were done and they wanted to do things a different way. And they started up their agency, but they've led with this very like, general positioning of like, hey, we do SEO for gins or whatever, but they are doing it in this very specific, very different, against best practice way. And so it's really just making that obvious so that your buyers see it before they buy it.
Chris DuBois 8:35
Right? I think what you just said is, like that key, key point, if, if you're doing something that is a best practice, then it's like, everyone does best practice. That's why it's a best practice, right? Everyone is going to do this. So there's nothing strategic about it, because everyone would naturally make that choice. But when you're not doing it that way, and someone could look at it and say, like, that's not for me, it's like, boom, now we have something strategic, because there's an actual choice made, yeah, or now, I guess, with clients who don't necessarily have, like, a strong perspective as they're coming into you, what are the things you're doing to help them figure out what that is, or what it could be,
Alex James 9:19
I'm always going down to really what it is they are already doing that they cannot see the value of because that's where the perspective lies. It's, it's, it is that it's like, what are you doing that is against that is contrary to best practice? What are you doing that most of your competitors don't and or what do you refuse to do that most of your competitors do that. Second one's also very, very key. Like, hey, everybody does this. We think it's a total waste of time, total waste of money. We think that most of our competitors are basically ripping people off. That's absolute gold. That's where we will find your perspective on how things are typically done, versus. How you think things should be done, and when you can make a compelling argument for that. Then, then that's how you get people to buy in and come to work with you, specifically, not just someone like you. This is my big this is what I wake up in the middle of the night screaming about people listing their services on their homepage. It's like, okay, you're just you have a menu. People can go through and read it and tick the box and know that we can do Google Ads great, even if they do come to you for that, they're not looking to work with you. They're just looking to work with someone like you. This gives you zero leverage in the engagement. This gives you no position to charge a premium. This keeps you busy. It keeps you in the same place. It's a total defeating race to the bottom. Thing you need to not be known for. Again, don't be known, known for what you do, become known for how
Chris DuBois 11:04
you think, right? I just so I'm in a community that has solopreneurs and someone put up their website asking for advice. And so first for the audience, don't it's, don't just take advice from people on your website, like, for like, at face value, I guess it's like, if you don't have the context right behind the decisions, like, I can tell you to make all these changes, but I don't know your numbers on the site like this page might be crushing it, and I'm telling you to change things that don't make sense. So yeah, take it with a grain of salt. But the but with this guy, his homepage was awesome. Like it had like he was, he was actually making a claim against agencies as a fractional and I was like, You shouldn't be in like, agency dependency. Basically, you should be able to have control of your own pipeline. So, like, if you lose that agency, if you lose all your marketing, that's problem. And he built a strong case. But then you go to his pricing page, and it was like, you could choose. It was a nice little pricing module, I'll give him that. But it was like, you could hit a drop down for CEO fractional, COO fractional, CFOs, fractional CMO, and each one had, like, a list of services in each one, you check the boxes. And then it even asked, How many days do you think you would want us per month? Or want me? Like it's an individual, right? Because it's a solopreneur community, and then it builds up a like a pricing system for you. And I'm like, Man, you had me until that because now, like you as an individual, there's no way you can be an expert in all these things, and you're giving me the freedom to decide what I want, how I want it, when I want it, like I just lost all the power. Now I can go find anyone and so you're you versus like you. That's I mean, that showed up.
Alex James 12:47
Yeah, there we go. That's a great example. And I always think about Blair ends where he talks about how every professional engagement is a polite battle for control, like the agency will be seeking control, but the client will also be seeking control over what the agency is doing, and then it kind of goes back and forth. The agency does need to win that battle for the good of the client. You are the expert. You know this more than they do. You have the patent recognition that they do not. You need to put yourself in that position of control from before they've even spoken to you, and you need to maintain it at every single touch point. And part of that is, I'm actually very against, I don't know how you feel about this, Chris, I'm actually very against putting pricing up on the website. There's a big debate about this, and I seem to be on the on the minority, losing side of this debate every single time, but I'm going to stick to it, because I think what it does is signal to the buyer that this is the most important thing that they should be considering, and what it really fails to capture. It forces it's a commoditizing function automatically. Now they can go and compare you to other people with similar offers and look at pricing and compare you in that way. And that is exactly what they will do when you hide the pricing and you say, hey, like, we can talk about this, and it's not like I'm making up the price on the spot, like I do have standard pricing, but let's talk about it through a conversation. You're filtering for something else that money cannot measure, which is chemistry you need to kind of click with your client. You actually want to develop this chemistry, this alignment, this CO, conspiratorial relationship of like, Hey, we're actually in this together, and we're like, figuring stuff out. And this is fun, and this is great, and we're and we're like, we both have the same goal, and we're both running towards it, and we're gonna, like, butt heads until we get there, because that's what it takes, and because that's fun, and because it's it's worthwhile, and putting your pricing there just diminishes all of that. And that is actually, I believe, the most. Important thing in a professional engagement, it's, it's the chemistry, because if they don't, if you don't have chemistry with your client, that means that they're not fully trusting what you're recommending. If they're not fully trusting what you're recommending, then they're going, they're always going to default to the safer option. And the safer option means that you will get the same kind of C plus results that everybody else gets, which means that you will never develop like the track record that you need to actually advance up levels to bigger clients, more worthwhile clients, you end up stuck in the same spot because they don't trust you enough to take on your recommendations, because you don't have that chemistry. Does that make sense?
Chris DuBois 15:42
It does. I know you framed it very well, and this might be the first thing we disagree on, but the I don't know if you've ever met Peter Giordano. I'll do send you an intro after this, but he's he does pricing coaching like he he's a nerd when it comes to pricing. I've literally brought him into client engagements when we're not sure how to price something. He has come in and just like, it's a master class, it's awesome, but he agrees with you. So there you go. He's a pricing expert and understands that piece. I think I'm gonna give the best answer of it depends. I think so. Like, I think the pricing going on your site depends on your positioning, because when you do put pricing on the page, you are signaling something for how you want to be seen by your market. And so if, if I'm putting pricing up and it is exceptionally high, it's because I want to be seen as someone who is higher priced. I want there to be a stronger like, qualification process. Like, don't waste my time if you can't pay this for the engagement. So, like, I can see the reasoning there. I have pricing on my site, and it's because I want to, I want to be seen as accessible for smaller agencies. And so there was a deliberate decision of how I want to price this out to make sure they know that I'm I'm not going to charge them 10k a month often. Like, in order to make this happen, it's like, no, this is much more reasonable for you to get what you need. And so, yeah, I think it's for me. It's just, there's also a buyer Centricity piece to it, of like, if the more questions I can answer for the buyer before we get in the call, the better. And usually I do, like, I have one call closes for almost everything. And so actually, I think I probably had two or three that required a second call. And for those, they were looking at multiple options, and they said, actually, because you put some of this information like readily available, they helped us make this decision and so, so I guess that would be my counter argument.
Alex James 17:45
That is a very good argument. I do think it goes into the so actually, I think, like Fletch, is a really good example of what they're able to do, which was take early stage B to B, SAS positioning, and essentially commodify it in a way that advantaged them. And said, hey, you know what? There is a very set process. It's two weeks. This is what you get. This is how much it costs. They were able to codify all the steps. Whereas before Fletch, and I know, because I used to be one of these people that was like, you know, writing copy for SaaS companies and stuff, it was, it was very like, hey, like, they're, like, it's all wibbly wobbly, depending there's so many factors, they were able to come through and really, really cleanly define, here is the process, here is a result, here is what I get, and here is the price. And I think that worked really well, really, really well for them, because they were the first people to do it. I think anyone following fledge taking that same approach would necessarily have to price less than them, right? And it kind of goes into this factory to consultancy, transformation that agencies need to make, where it's like, okay, cool, like previously being a factory was, was perfectly fine. Like, you could come in, hey, we need to tick these boxes every week. We need to schedule four Instagram posts every week and manage the ads here. And like, this is what we do for our clients, and we keep them around for six to 18 months and then, and then, like, there's plenty of businesses out there that need us, so we're so we're fine, but that that kind of like, tell us what to do and we'll go do it is it doesn't cut it anymore. And the consultancy that agencies need to become is really like, Hey, we've diagnosed where you're at, and here is what you need to do next. And when it comes to, like, price. You're saying, I I'm gonna stand firm on that ground here and say that, like that, that consultancy relationship that agencies need to step into. It's not that it can't be priced in like a standard, packaged way. It's like that my stuff is but putting that price out there signals something closer to commodification than I'd be comfortable with, yeah, yeah.
Chris DuBois 20:30
And so I guess, for going back to the positioning piece, right, it's like, yeah, that's not how I want to be seen, which is interesting the commodification piece, like, obviously the word has negative connotations and stuff. So like, I the dynamic agency OS is has a curriculum. Like, when people hire me, they're working, we're going through a workbook, and I'm going to throw in stuff throughout to that I know will help them. But like, there is, like, a very structured path, and so it is probably way more of a commodity than just, like, a kind of loose coaching where I have a general system and but I wanted to go back to Fletch real quick, because that is an awesome example, and it is, I think, more reason for why people shouldn't put pricing on their site. Because so Fletch did it because everyone generally had an idea of how much this should cost. But when they started getting their pricing on the site, and, like, getting building up, I don't know, like that started getting traction. I guess the like, they were already pretty well known, and they were building up even more of a following. So like, if you went to their website, it's because you follow them on LinkedIn, you already knew what they do, you know all of this stuff about them, and then you see the pricing. So they already kind of commanded the problem ownership. They started, they put out a challenge for others to do the same thing. And there was one agency coach at the time that I saw put it up, and the goal was to put the pricing as high up on your site as you can, so that people could see it. And so his he had his headline, and then the very next thing was pricing. It's like, I don't even know what problem you solve at this point, so like, I can't make a decision if this is even valid pricing. Like, it was almost wasted, and so, yeah, it was that one kind of good reason for no pricing on the side, I guess,
Alex James 22:09
yeah, yeah, no, I saw a bunch of people doing exactly, exactly that. And yeah, like, exactly, like, if you haven't got that pre built demand coming in, then your pricing just doesn't matter how what you price it at it, it cheapens you. If they're not already very, very bought in, and they're not basically already decided that they want to work with you, right?
Chris DuBois 22:34
That's exactly, yeah, but everybody's going to copy flat. I've literally seen people grab their frameworks and just put them on their site, like we sell these, and it's like you actually, you just screenshotted that, like you didn't even try making it your own, but something that came up at the end of your rationale for not having pricing. You're talking about strategy versus like execution. I want to get into this piece because I've started to realize some things with with agencies, where, for a long time it seemed like they were everyone was told, like, don't, don't just do the execution. If you're just tactically focused, you're going to lose you're going to be a commodity, right? And you're going to lose respect. You're just, that's going to be it. You got to go strategic. And so everyone shifted to strategy only, but now it's like, we're running into this piece where it's like, yeah, they need your strategy, like they need that expertise, but they don't have time to actually deliver on this. And so now the strategy is just sitting there going stale, and nobody's actually getting a result from what you're showing them. And so like, I guess, are you seeing similar things within your own marketing and stuff, and then with your clients. Of how, like, the ones who are, I don't know, outperforming the rest, are finding ways to blend strategy and execution.
Alex James 23:51
Yeah, 100% this is something that they're, I mean, we both witness this is this huge swing to strategy only, like, don't sell implementation and, and I think that was every, every, every correction is an over correction. And I think that was an over correction.
Chris DuBois 24:13
And are you following us politics?
Alex James 24:16
It's not up to me. Yes, I have to. But yeah. I mean, I think a lot of there were a lot of coaches out there like, yeah, telling, telling agencies, hey, you need to stop selling deliverables. You need to stop selling implementation. You just need to sell the strategy. Because that's where the that's where the value truly is. And I'm with you. I think that's only half right. There's that quote strategy without execution is just an expensive conversation. I think, I think that's pretty spot on. I also think that if you were divorced from the execution for too long, your strategy, your strategy also suffers as well. Kind of lose sight of what actually is like, what actually works and what doesn't, and like they're very, very interconnected. And so I think really it comes down to not getting rid of implementation. It's because you're right, like your clients do need help with that, and they still don't even know what good looks like and the strategy falls apart or lives by the quality of the execution. As we all know, the way that I would go about and the way that I advise my clients to go about it is to say, yeah, like, have the strategy in there, the strategy that you're already doing, by the way, but just separate it out into its own line item, put price tag on it, and make sure that, like, I often say, like, make the strategy piece the most expensive thing, and then make the deliverable that's attached to it, or whatever, the deliverables significantly cheaper. Like, it can be the same total price that you would have charged overall, but just like, weight the pricing differently, so that it sends a signal of, hey, our thinking is the most important thing that you're buying from us. And the implementation is almost, is almost free, like it's low cost, but you're keeping us around for our brains on our hands.
Chris DuBois 26:16
There you go. We can come back after the pricing, pricing on your site debacle. We can come back to something we agree on, yeah, because, yeah, that's what the my core offer concept is like has to be recurring revenue. So there has to be some sort of tactical delivery on there that we have to keep doing. But some people don't want that. And so we have a bridge offer which just pulls only the strategy piece or like or the initial project out that you can just buy this, and we're going to deliver this and show you why you also need the rest of this. And so we kind of choreograph the strategy into the execution, and then we end up selling them through the core offer anyways, because of that. Yeah. But I think what I like about how you frame that up is also like, you could tell, tell the client, like this, this strategy piece is the most important. If you have a team that can deliver on this. We can just stay on and coach you like, and consult for this to make sure that those tactical deliverables are, are at, you know, the standard that they need to be at in order to get that result.
Alex James 27:12
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm, I've seen, like, people have a lot of success with that approach as well. Of saying, Hey, you have an in house team. We're not here to replace them. We're here to upskill them, where, actually, this is a capability building exercise. And from what I'm seeing currently in the market, that is, there's a premium attached to that. Businesses really do want to be self sufficient and and not dependent on on on agencies, but solar, yeah, that solid that you're speaking about earlier of like, hey, get rid of agency dependency. That's a really strong message that I can imagine is resonated with a lot of people right now, because so many people have been they have felt like they've been tethered, anchored to their agency that they can't escape from, and they would love to, actually, yeah, hey, we're not. We're not, we're not an agency. We are a capability builder. We're going to be here for this is our 12 month accelerator package, and there's like, a defined result at the end, right? That's way more compelling than, like, a hey, we're going to charge you every month for box ticking 100%
Chris DuBois 28:20
and it's because, even if they keep you on at that point, but they end because they could deliver, but they have you as a trusted resource, it's like, I don't know. They're just building redundancies within their own system. And so now if a team member leaves, or right, someone goes on maternity leave, or it's like, we were good, like it's okay, yeah, hermosi sent out an email this morning about this, how he hires agencies, and it's he tells them up front, I will pay you more, but it's going to be so you can train my team as you go. And so I think the future is we're going to see, over the next probably three to six months, all these smaller businesses that listen to them are requesting that a lot more. So just get ahead of that.
Alex James 28:57
Everybody. Yeah, you literally do have to have to pay attention to what homozy is talking about at the moment, because he does literally have a big community.
Chris DuBois 29:09
Had a sales call this morning, and someone's like, yeah, so I looked at your website and I saw looks very hormozi esque. And I'm like, what? And he brought up some of the things that hormozi has in his new like money models book that have been on my site for years before this book was published. And I'm like, like, that's how you see brand. You need personal brand so that you can have the idea first. Yeah, exactly. Anyways, all right, shifting gears. One of the things that I've been hit by with a couple of my clients is that, as they, I mean, it's kind of related to niching. Niching, sorry. And just like having their expertise that they talk about a lot, my team is going to get bored talking about the same thing over and over and, I mean, my response has generally been some sort of like. Too bad. Like, do you want to make money? Do you want to, like, make this happen? Like, okay, find something else. Entertain yourself. I go fire up Netflix. But how are you doing this? How are you what are you recommending to people?
Alex James 30:13
So I think there's so many ways I want to attack that question. Number one, you will get bored if you're saying the same thing over and over again. There's a question of depth to the message that you're relaying. That if you have the right level of depth, you can kind of keep plumbing that well, and keep digging down and keep finding water. You notice, if you have a shallow perspective, you will hit bedrock very, very quickly. And it probably tells you that this is what you're attaching to, is something closer to a trend, rather than a principle. The way to think about it is not just, Hey, we have our leading perspective. What you really want to do is build an ideology. You want to build a belief system. And what that requires is three layers. And this is stuff that I kind of had to figure out after I've been talking about, you know, your perspective is your product, since 2024 as I've, like, made good on that promise and really delivered it. I've, I've noticed where, okay, well, where is it, like, what's missing, like, what is not enough. How do we keep people engaged and keep people on message, keep people relaying the same perspective? And what it requires is this three tiered belief system that you that you kind of need to engineer, or really just get clarity on, because it's often already there. Tier one is belief. What is the mindset that your market currently holds, the kind of old, outdated false assumption mindset, and what is the new belief that they need to bring in. So if we use like HubSpot as an example, the mindset was, the kind of status quo mindset that they were seeking to replace was that the buyers were the ones who lacked power in the relationship, and the sellers were the ones who held the power because they had all the information, they were the gatekeepers of information, and they for therefore, they could dictate what the buyer knew, what the price was, how everything worked, the buyers were dependent on them. HubSpot said, Well, you know what? No buyers can now self educate. They don't need sellers anymore. It's no longer like taking your car to the mechanic and just hoping that they're not ripping you off like they actually the power dynamic is flipped. And so the belief that HubSpot put forward was the game has changed, and the way that people buy is different now. And so you need to adapt to that. Once you accept that belief, you go, okay, cool. Well, what should I do about that? And then HubSpot had the answer, and that was where we go, a tear down from belief to approach like, what is the methodology that you should adopt now that this belief has been established? The methodology was you need to stop doing outbound sales and stop paying for attention and ads and trade show booths and all of that interruption stuff, and start earning it by doing inbound marketing. No outbound sales, more inbound marketing. That's what it's all about. That's the overall methodology. And then within that, they have the tactics like the actual actions that you take to make that methodology come to pass. And so, yeah, stop doing stop paying for attention, stop doing ads, stop doing trade show booths. Start publishing content that educates your buyer, that helps them with stuff that they're already searching for, because when they do, then they will associate that with you. And then, hey, you're doing inbound marketing, and you're giving them the power and acknowledging that this is how buyers should buy, and this is how the buying cycle goes now, and the results of those actions prove that belief is true. And so it becomes this kind of virtuous cycle of, like, here's the belief, here is the approach that you should take as a result, and here are the actions that you should do within that approach. And now we've got, we're back to the belief, okay, right? It's all congruent. And so when you have this framework set up, then you're tackling, you're not just like saying the same thing over again. There are so many angles of approach that you can take. It's almost like a solar system, like your sun is at the center, and you've got the orbiting planets, and each one of those is its own conversation, its own interesting Deep Dive. And there are each planet has moons that you can kind of attach to. And so you. You can actually and what it actually does is not limit. It frees you up to talk about so many things. But now everything that you talk about doesn't feel random. It's all connected. It's all feeding into the larger to the larger belief, the mindset shifts that you're trying to change. You're not trying to, like convince people. You're just trying to change their minds on something, get them to see it in a new way. And so that is what I found to be very, very, very, very effective when it comes to helping people stay on message without getting bored.
Chris DuBois 35:41
I like the Solar System metaphor, like, it makes it much easier when you can say, like, look at like, Yeah, this is your central hub. Here. We had these other items that we can talk about. But even within those or other little things that you could bring up, it gives them a lot more. And it's probably an asteroid in there every so often, right? When you're that's, that's the LinkedIn post with your dog or something, yeah, all right, like that. Shift gears one more time to the future of agencies. It's what this podcast was rooted on the and actually pause for one second because I'm getting hit with a huge Blair, yeah, all of a sudden, sunset. All right, that's the problem with having mirrors behind. I'll clip that for now. That's fine, but all right, podcast was kind of started to talk about the future of agencies. The whole agency forward, right? When you look at 2028, two years from now, what are, what are you seeing as the most critical pieces for an agency to be able to stay relevant within the market?
Alex James 37:00
I think it's really it comes down to what agencies have been able to rely on, doesn't work anymore, and that is passive marketing versus active marketing. Actually, just, I meant the client that I was mentioning to you earlier, 65 people, digital agency. They get most of their clients through Google ads. You know, people searching digital marketing agency, insert city name here, get a lot of traffic through there, and they have like, a 50% close rate, like, they're pretty good, and they still get a lot of qualified leads through that channel. But for the last six months, the 15 to 20 qualified leads that they're getting through that they have closed literally 0% of them for six months straight. And that tells you something, that tells you that it's no longer enough just to be discoverable or visible, you have to be memorable. And that's actually what I said to them on the you know how sometimes on a sales call, you just say one sentence and you just know, like, Oh, cool. That's the sale. Like, locked in. That's what I that's I was, that's what I said to them. I was like, My hunch is that it's no like, it's no longer enough. You figured out that it's no longer enough to be discoverable, you have to be memorable. And they said, That's it. That's validating everything that we've been witnessing and we can use. I mean, yeah, all those years of learning copywriting went for naught, yeah, but this is, this is what I'm seeing. It really, really come down to, is, is memorability. How are you not just the agency that they find when they're searching around, about the agency that they think of when they first run into the problem that you solve. This is the future and the way to do that. I'm very convinced either I've talked myself into it or I've stumbled onto some kind of truth. But it is your perspective. It is your logical argument against how things are typically done in your industry and for how things should be done. Just to give you, leave you with one example of this in action. I'm actually working with a, ironically enough, an agency coach right now who reached out to me. He's actually, he's one of Australia's biggest agency coaches, and he's got this incredible track record of just coming in and turning agencies around. He took an agency from 25 staff to their now 110 staff, doing over $20 million in revenue, and he just has dozens and dozens and dozens of case studies just like that of 345, Indexing agencies, he's just got it down, and yet, for him to close the sale, it he told me, it takes about 10 to 15 touch points, and I nearly fell out of my chair. But it's because even though he has all this credibility, all this track record, it's all proof, no perspective, and this is what he's hired me for. He's like, hey, I can do all of this stuff. And yeah, great, you can. But there's no unifying perspective that tells me how you approach problems, that tells me how you think. Like, speaking of homozy Again, there are much there are some titans of industry on YouTube. Now, do you remember when YouTube was just like, bedroom freelancers telling you how to make your first
Chris DuBois 40:48
tenure whiteboard? And they're just like, exactly,
Alex James 40:51
and now there are, like, genuine, like, titans of industry that are more successful than homozy, but homozy actually has they get a fraction of the views that homozy gets. And it's not that homozy is giving like, better advice. His advice is often very like, generic and kind of like, you know, it's made to appeal to the masses and not that actionable. But you know how homozy thinks? He doesn't just give advice. He shows you the logic chain that leads up to that advice. This is why, this is my hunch on, like, why I think people worship him, because they understand how his brain works. They understand how he thinks, understand how he approaches problems, and it rewires their brain as well on how they approach problems. And so this is how agencies actually need to be thinking as well. Is how do we approach problems? What is the avenues that we take to solve this? Not just that we solve them, but how we solve them. This is what it comes down to, not just what you do, but how you think. You get people excited about that game over you've won the hearts and minds, and that is what the agency of the future needs to be embracing.
Chris DuBois 42:11
Let's, yeah, no, no disagreement there. So let's, let's wrap at that point, two questions for you, which I'm hoping you have a different answer for the first one of, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?
Alex James 42:26
Yeah, this is a book from someone that you've had on the pod before, actually, all right, Jack Porter Smith has this great book called he's got a few books, but he's got this great one called 60 seconds of glory, which is all about, like, the 60 seconds at the end of a live event that you host, where you kind of make your pitch and and sell people in and it's a bit about that. But really, what it's about is how to run a live event. I've read a lot of books. I'm sure you have to where it's like, oh yeah, there's some good ideas I don't exactly know. It like, I have to think about how I would implement this. This book is like a it's a playbook on exactly goes into deep, deep specifics and tactics on here is how to make a live event successful in terms of, like, how many invites to send out, how to send them out, what to say in the emails that you're sending out, what to say in the reminder emails, what the run sheet of the day is very specific. And it was so refreshing to read something that tactical, where I could see I didn't have to connect the dots. All the dots were connected for me. And I mean speaking of defensibility in the age of AI, this is something that, this is why I read the book, because I think this is something that we're going to be seeing a lot more of. Are these live events. And so I really strongly recommend 60 seconds of glory. Jack Porter Smith, great, great read.
Chris DuBois 43:54
Yeah, I can second all that. Like, I mean, as soon as I met Jack, I got the book, and we've been talking about different things strongly recommend, like, I'm changing things for my next summit because of that book. And so it's awesome. So Jack, when you listen to this, because I assume you listen to this, you are appreciated. Last question, Where can people find you?
Alex James 44:18
Can find me on LinkedIn. Alex James minimalist marketing.co, is my website, and just Yeah, to point you to a specific resource on there, you'll find I have an agency messaging diagnostic where you can just answer a few questions, and it'll tell you exactly how strong you are across differentiation, communication and perspective, and give you some specific advice on how to bump those numbers up. And yeah, had a lot of really, really positive feedback on it. So three pop in,
Chris DuBois 44:48
and I can't remember if I brought this up on the last podcast, but my first like intro to you was actually a messaging course that you put out, and I would. I don't know if you're still selling that or offering it. That was like years ago now, but, but that actually got me, like rethinking even my own message messaging, and how I approach messaging as a copywriter at the time. And so I recommend you do something with that if you're not, but also find that please do
Alex James 45:17
Yeah, that that, course, is called message matters most, and it goes through, really, essentially what I take my, my high ticket clients, through, I treat it as a bit of a I've got my, my agency clients that are doing over a million dollars, who that's my ICP, and my courses for everyone smaller than that. And so, yeah, I've had about 250 people go through it, yeah, very, very positive feedback. And if you want to get, if you want to know what I sell, my clients, go through that course and you'll get the same thing for 200 bucks instead of 20,000
Chris DuBois 45:58
Yeah, I can't recommend that enough. So that was a even, because, even now, I still refer back to it for for stuff I'm doing, like just really, I got my note. I have a notes. Doc, anyway, Alex, thanks again for joining repeat guest. Always a pleasure to have you.
Alex James 46:15
Chris, thank you so much for having me back true on a thank you, awesome.
Chris DuBois 46:19
And then we'll see you again for episode three. At some point, I'll be there. 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 sub stack, 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