Why These Agency Partners Did an Eight-Month Soft Launch Before the Real Partnership Started with Josh Hanosh & Kevin Howe | Ep #919

Hey guys, welcome to the show. Thanks Jason. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us.

Tell us who you are, what you do. I know there's two of you, so I'll let whoever wants to go first. Go ahead, Kevin. Josh, why don't you go?

Yeah, my name is Kevin Howe. I am one of the co-founders of 329. And as far as the agency is concerned, I primarily run our web design and development arm. Cool.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm Josh Anish and I'm also a co-founder and I handle all things strategy when it comes to marketing. So I handle that side of the agency. Okay.

And how'd you guys get started? I know you guys started with two different agencies. So kind of who's the accidental agency owner who wanted punishment? I mean, who wanted this freedom that we get?

I feel like, yeah, you should go. Yeah, I was probably the, you know, wanted it. I had been talking about starting an agency for a long time. I went through graphic design school, worked in the agency world for a while.

And I got to the point where the agency I was working for was shutting down our division. I ran their web division at the time. They were shutting down a web division? Yeah, around 2010.

Yeah. They were doing more like, I don't know, at the time they just called it creative. So it was video and they just didn't have the web chops. And the agency was in, they were really focused in the home builder market.

And so it was. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

Yeah. They do a lot of tourism and things now. So yeah. So they were shutting it down and I came home and kind of like anticipated this long drawn out like conversation with my wife of like, hey, I want to start an agency.

And like, I was all ready to like, not argue it, but argue it. And it was like a 30 second conversation. So he's like, yeah, go for it. And so I started an agency the next day and my old agency at work turned into my first client.

So it was a good, good relationship at the time. Cool. And you, Josh? Yeah, I, I started in education.

I taught math and computer science for eight years. And one of my students one day, which was my last year of teaching, um, asked me why I wasn't doing what I told them to do, which I told them, I was like, you guys should explore a career in computer science because you can travel the world and work from anywhere. And no one really cares where you're at as long as your project's done. And this student after class was like, Mr.

Hanisch, like, why aren't you doing that? And I was like, that's a great question. Like, I have no good answer for that. You're like, I fucking quit now.

Yeah, literally. I mean, that was Christmas break. And I went back and spoke to my ex-wife. And I was like, at the end of this year, like, I'm going to stop teaching.

And if I can't make what I made teaching my first year of being a web designer at that point, I was not planning on starting an agency. Then, you know, I'll just stay and I'll, if I can't make it, I'll go back to teach. If I make more or the same, then I'll stay. And luckily, I need to make more.

Yeah, it was. And I haven't looked back ever since. My first two employees started the Friday lockdown was announced for the pandemic. So that was a fun experience.

Yeah. But, you know, luckily the pandemic was good for us because people needed to get online. They needed to run ads. And I hired, you know, what I was not good at and what I did not enjoy right away.

And that was the beginning. You know, when the when COVID happened, I was like, man, we're all freaking toast. Like I was like, I was literally moving across the country. I was like, I remember like wiping down stuff going like, are we going to die?

Like, and then I remember, you know, when we finally made it out here, cause I live in the middle of nowhere, which is nice, especially during COVID. I didn't have to see anybody, but I remember doing, um, I did a free training for like 14 days. It was like this 14 day quarantine. and I called it.

And it was just like every day I'd jump on and like, I was just trying to help. And, um, you know, it was a weird time then. Yeah. I did something similar.

It's with our local chamber. Um, I got on for like two weeks every day, walking people through how to set up their Facebook account, their Instagram account, like how to run ads. Um, and, and that actually, you know, I think every agency owner can look back to maybe two to five either clients or moments where they are like, you know, my agency really took off from those moments or really changed. And we got like a $60,000 deal from the local chamber to help businesses build websites.

And I just remember parlaying that into hiring more people. And, you know, that's, it's hard sometimes to say the pandemic was good for us because I know how bad it was for so many people. Yeah, yeah. Kevin, what was your pivotal moment when you were like, that one thing that made a major difference for you?

That's a good question. I mean, COVID is such an inflection point. I think for me where at the agency, it was like closing my first sale, right? I came out and I had this other agency that was a client of mine.

and they got me through. I was able to make enough money to kind of pay the mortgage and keep going. And then I was able to close my first client. And that was like my proof point of like, okay, people will hire me to do this.

And then people kept hiring me and then I had to hire people. And so it was this like, it just kind of self-fulfilled over time where it's like, okay, I can actually do this. And, you know, I'm your typical, like, you know, they talk about a small business owner where you're, you know, I wasn't trained to run a business. I knew how to do a thing.

And then I went and started an agency, but I was able to get people to, to buy what we were selling. And then I don't remember what year, but we signed a contract with Meta. It wasn't even Meta at the time. It was still Facebook.

And then Facebook went into Instagram and Instagram went into, they had another company Atlas that they sent shut down. It was like, okay, we can do this. Like big companies are trusting us and yeah, it just, it just kind of snowballed. yeah it's uh as soon as you get that little momentum you know my my momentum was when i realized there was a lot of stuff in the business i hated at that and i realized i could build the business around me rather than the business building me right like yeah you know like probably if you look back when you hired your first couple people i mean let me ask you this when you hired your first people, were you good managers?

Were they the right people? I mean, for me, yeah, it was interesting how much teaching actually prepared me for managing a team. I feel like classroom management, understanding how people learn, like dealing with social growth in the classroom. You already had patience, which, I don't know, Kevin and I probably don't have any fucking patience for people.

I still don't have any fucking patience. I still don't like, yeah, we were on a meeting this last week and somebody was like, oh, you went full dad note. I was like, yeah, I just don't. Josh is much more, I don't know if amicable is the right word.

You handle those situations better than I do. I still don't do that very well. I have one of our mastermind members that's just been growing like gangbusters and he just hires teachers. Hmm.

Smart. Because they can explain things in a way. Like, for example, I went to a conference and I had someone that was presenting and they were talking about AI. This person was like eight levels ahead of anybody else.

Everyone in the room felt so fucking dumb. yeah right and you would think when you start an agency you if you can make people feel dumb that means you're really really smart and they're going to hire you but no one wants to be around the person that makes them feel dumb so i always say be one or two levels ahead of your clients and that's why i like teachers so much i never liked any of my teachers all my teachers were I wish I had you as a teacher. But like they hired teachers that can explain things very easily and have patience.

And I thought that was brilliant So I knew that when I was asking this one I also think I don think this is true of every teacher but I think a lot of teachers don have as big of an ego And I think that there's a lot of agency owners that have this ego and think, you know, I, you know, you don't know SEO, you don't know GE, you don't know complex blood belt. Like this is like above you. Like I'm not going to explain this. And I've noticed that when we take the time to explain how things work, I've never lost business because they're like oh thanks for telling us the secrets like we're going to go handle this ourselves it just makes them feel like they're on the same playing field as us and that they understand what we're doing so that when they see that invoice every month they're like okay I understand what this is for and I see the value and I don't feel like an idiot around these people well I think too like teachers are there to serve right like obviously you don't get into teaching and make money.

I mean, which is a shame for, you know, the people that are, you know, kind of building the future. But, you know, when I look back at, when I would explain our process to some of these big companies, like when we were doing websites, I'd say, I'm going to explain the process of how everyone else works and how we work. And then you pick which one you like and i would walk them through so they could actually even go do it they were and i would communicate and they were like why are you telling us everything i'd be like well because i know you're not going to want to do it but i want you to understand that i know what we're doing and we have a process we're not just going to say what websites do you like which basically is why your whole industry looks the same because all these companies don't have that creative process or the skills in order to extract out the information that you know you can't communicate yet we have a process to do that and we're going to start with one concept at a time everyone else is going to do three they're going to pick one on target one off target one in the middle and hope you pick one of them we start with one at a time 25 percent of time we'll nail it down perfect 50 percent of time be a couple little tweaks the other quarter we're so far off the mark we know exactly what not to do again yeah like okay i get it that's easy yeah kevin does a good job of that in meetings um it's something i picked up on is he just he called it as it is he talks about the elephant that's in the room which is that other people are shopping other agencies and he calls out the fact that companies don't do that often they don't hire agencies every year, every month.

And so they go years between. And he does a great job of explaining that idea, which makes the client feel more comfortable and that we're actually there to help and help them through this process of actually picking an agency. Yeah, someone the other day was on our site and they were like, hey, your site was so helpful. Thanks for comparing what an agency coach does to an agency mastermind.

you even listed out your competitors and compared and and it wasn't like bashing them it was just like saying like hey if you're under seven figures you should go to here if you're like our programs are designed for people that are already successful in doing this or if you want like if you need more foundational stuff yeah find a coach but if you want me right like and i just laid it all out like i'm like literally this is it like here's all our competitors like how about it Like, yeah, go, go for it.

And they're like, why'd you do that? Like, I thought you would try to kill them. I'm like, well, I'm killing them with kindness. Yeah.

Yeah. And it gives you better leads. Yeah. People don't know how to hire, right.

They don't know how to compare agencies. That's a lot of rights. So like, you're not comparing apples to apples. You're not, you're like, you think you are, but you aren't.

And you don't understand, you don't even understand how to like, you don't understand the gaps that you completely miss. Right. And so that's a lot of our explanation. Now we're seeing though, everyone just throws our proposals into AI and then they have AI rank them and then you win or lose like at some point based on this AI ranking.

But they don't know. I didn't even think about that. Oh yeah. I now run my proposal.

I mean, I now run all my proposals through multiple AI systems. I ask it to rank it based on the conversation we had or the RFP. And then I tweak until I get a certain level ranking and I won't submit it until we hit that point. rfp oh yeah you know the two winners every rfp oh what do you know the two winners to every rfp oh yeah it's uh no i don't do but tell me i can't think of it the one that wins the first one out yeah also if you if you don't know about the rfp before it's issued like you've already lost yeah yeah request for punishments real yeah problems yeah they're brutal like you know what here's my deal like if you're working with government contracts i get rfps right because they have to go through their stupid process but that's that's why i never worked with the government after i did one of them um but one thing i'll tell everybody with rfps we'd have some pretty big companies come to us with it we'd say there's a lot of missing things in this rfp we're going to decline at this time but if you want to get together and go over some of these things i'm more than happy to do and i would sell them like a little foot in the door about 75 75 all the time we'd get it yeah yeah that makes sense yeah makes sense no the the it's like a monkey's paw in sales right it's like that little the carrot on the stick that makes sense we don't do a lot of the big ones but i'm actually seen and i think it's because of ai an increase in the amount of like project briefs that they'll call an rfp and then you look at it you're like oh you just generated from ai that you want a website redesigned and you want it to be optimized for search and ai like and if you can decline that like get on an actual call or decline a lot of times they'll be like why did you decline everyone else is doing this yeah we won't do them without a meeting i won't do a blind rfp like we have to have a meeting.

If you won't meet with us, like we're not, we're not going to do it. It's to your point, you're like, you're not, we're not going to win on paper alone. Like that's not how we're going to win a bid. So if you're not going to meet with us, like we're not going to submit.

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That's e2msolutions.com slash smart agency. Go check them out and tell them Jason Swank sent you. yeah yeah it's i'd always have like that admin or that office manager and i and i would i i would know immediately i would just start asking questions i knew this person had no ability to answer and my purpose was to make them feel dumb unfortunately on that part but to pass me to the person with the real decision I be like hey man I want to look i want to make you look good you know let get on a call with your boss and we go through this yeah right and uh yeah it usually always worked but cool awesome um why'd you guys merge together i'm just curious you know there's a lot of agencies out there you know i've i've i've seen a lot of successful relationships of partners i've seen you know the other part as well so why why merge together and how'd you guys do it like did you guys try each other out for a while or what yeah i'll start from my side so i've been running the agency since 2010 and you know had tried like oh we have key employees that I think can take things on and hired salespeople and all this, like to try and get things off of my plate that could help us grow.

And it just never came to fruition. It was just always half-baked and I couldn't kind of get past the threshold. And I hired the last salesperson we hired and that failed. And then it was like, okay, I need a new solution.

And I was talking to a mutual friend of Josh and mine. And I just kind of off the cuff made the comment like, man, Josh and I should just merge. And he's like, yeah, you should. Like, you should call him and you should have this conversation.

And for me, what it came down to was, Josh has an expertise that I don't, that the agency needed. And we work really well together just as people. And we'd known each other, right? So we ran in the same circles and I knew who he was and he knew who I was.

And we kind of soft launched it. So we worked together for about eight months where we were, finances weren't shared, company name wasn't really shared. Like there was this rip cord that we could pull and we could bail. And then after those eight months, like this is working, we did all the legal paperwork and launched.

And what I've found is, you know, Josh has an ownership mentality that I was never able to get anywhere else. Like as much as I tried to hire somebody with it, like it just wasn't there. And he balances out where I'm deficient. So as we do things and we need more marketing, that's where Josh exists, right?

And I can fill in all the website and the client management and that stuff that I have a little more experience on. And so far, it's working really well. Yeah, I would second that. I mean, Kevin was really instrumental in my early years.

I created like a Topgolf. There was a Topgolf league in our town, and I invited a bunch of friends. And Kevin and I were in EO together and I invited him and this common friend of ours and a couple other guys. And I just remember it was a Thursday night and every Thursday I look forward to it because I would come talk to Kevin about like, here's what's going well.

Here's what's not going well. How are you guys handling this? And like he just shared like all of his wisdom that he gathered. And for me, I, so this friend that connected Kevin and I had a business partner and he and his business partner were just like rocket fuel.

Like their, their partnership came there and they sold their company like five years later for like 10 or 12 times their EBITDA. And like, just, it was a great success story. And I saw how they interacted with each other. I saw just how they handled the company based on their strengths.

And I was just like, no, I really want that. I felt a little lonely. I mean, that's kind of, you know, lonely at the top. And, you know, I had my COO, her name is Mackenzie, like she's amazing.

And I would not have had my company and or 329 would not be running as well as it is without her. And I just felt like I needed another owner to be having these conversations with and someone that knew more than me. and Kevin's definitely done that. And to Kevin's point, like, he is much, he's way better on the web development side.

So we just built this AI analytics and optimizer called Visible. And, you know, it was an idea, and he took it and ran with it and actually, like, got it built, like, with our development team. And that's not something I could have done. Like, I'm much more on the strategy side of marketing.

yeah what i guess one important question i want to ask that everyone's wondering who's better in top golf josh unfortunately he said he said josh all right i just wanted like how i was like real serious uh yeah actually the real question is is this i feel a lot of times there was multiple roles that I went through in the agency where I was like, I feel like I'm holding the agency back. Right. Like the very beginning, you know, it's fun, right? Like we're the operator, we're doing everything and anything, right.

We're doing the sales, the development operations. And then we're like, man, when I take my foot off the sales, then the ops goes down and vice versa. Then we hire people. And then we think hiring people, we're going to work less.

It's actually the opposite. We work more because we're doing their job, our job and managing them, which doesn't seem really fair because I, you know, like I look back at my career, I was a shitty manager. I am still a shitty manager because I don't have now, Josh, Josh, you're the exception because you're a teacher. You have the patience.

But Kevin and I are shitty managers. I'm going to assume that because we don't have patience. And we're like, just do it. And what I had to learn was I had to delegate outcomes rather than tasks.

And I also had to learn that I needed to hire people that could manage themselves. Yes. Right. And in order to get there, I had to design like a system.

And like you were talking about the, you know, Kevin designing, you know, the AI system. You know, I kind of look at that as like an architect, right? Like you have to build these things so people can make decisions or do their job better. Is that a fair assumption or?

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like for me, like I recognize that when I hired McKinsey, I am just not an in the weeds, like detail oriented person. I'm very much visionary. And if anyone knows about EOS and the book Rocket Fuel, like I'm visionary, she was integrator.

And I can see that transferring over into 329. I feel like I knew I looked at the merger as a way for me not necessarily to do less, but to do more of what I like and what I'm good at, which I feel like moves the needle more for the agency. And I think we're seeing that right now over the last probably nine months of the things that we've been working on. And I feel like the first 12 months was just us, like just getting the merger done and like the teams together, the finances and like, it was way more work than I anticipated.

And I can see that Kevin as well. Like I, and I mean, I don't mean to speak for you, Kevin, you can confirm this, but it seems like he's also able to do more of what he likes, more of what he's good at and focus on things that he can do to, to move the needle for the agency. where do you guys think your your bottleneck is right now with your guys role i'm just curious like where are you the bottleneck in your agencies where you should go you you you screw shit up on purpose like have you ever gone through that like i've gone through that so many times like i'd go into a creative meeting and they'd be like no i'm good and i go in a marketing meeting now i'm good like because as my role went up the business needed me for something different and then you know like when i achieved kind of the true ceo role not just the title like i only had to work 20 hours a week and i didn't know what to do because i was used to working 80 hours a week yeah before that so then i would go fuck shit up on purpose so i felt needed i don't know that i had that i don't know that i fuck anything up on purpose well like it's you're probably not doing it on purpose but i just look back going i knew i shouldn't be like like someone would like it for example like an employee would come to me with a problem, I'd solve it right away.

Or I saw the fender bender happening and I would stop it versus letting the fender bender happen just avoid the train wreck Right And then then my employees started going well jason will save us we don have to worry about this and then yeah then i reversed back right like it was just like that is something i had to learn and again like how managing people translates to managing a classroom like teachers out of the goodness of their heart um help their students too much. There's not enough time in a classroom to let kids struggle.

And I felt the same way with our team. I think early on, I was like making sure that they were okay and that they were like having, but they liked their job and that. And then as we've gotten busier and Kevin's pushed me more in this direction where it's like, we're all professionals. We all are smart.

Like same as you, Jason, like we always hire people that are very like can do, like we'll figure this out. and we've had we've pushed our team to rely on us less and give them more autonomy and we're just there kind of as like guardrails making sure that like you said there's no like train wreck I feel like going back to your question like my bottleneck where I'm the bottleneck is I want to do too much too quickly so like as soon as we were you know the the light came on for GEO and I'm just like okay like we need to like understand this we need to get like a sales process I need to build a talk and then Kevin and I were like oh we can build a software platform and then it's like oh the software platform can do these and it's just like we're just like moving a mile a minute and our team is just like you guys chill the fuck out like we're just too too much yeah yeah my my I think the owner should be the gas pedal and the team should be the brake and it's a happy medium in order to get up, you know, Pike's Peak that, you know, the mountain race, right?

Because if you just have your foot on the gas, you're going to go around the corner and you're just not going to be able to hold it and you just spin out or fall off the corner. So you got to put a bunch of dream squashers on your team of what I like to call them. Like I have this big vision. And then they were like, no, like rain, rain me back in.

And they literally, my team, so when we, every year for Mastermind, we have a retreat in a really cool place. And for the past couple of years, I've always been asking the Mastermind members on day one, I say, you know, this is toward the end of the year. It's like fall. It's amazing.

Like they're going to, people are going to start checking out. I was like, I want you to ask your team this. What does your team want you to start doing, stop doing, and continue doing? and send them an email and I want you to see what you have.

So everyone went around and then everyone's like, well, Jason, why don't you do this with your team? I was like, fuck it. We'll do it live. And the rule that they implemented that I think I do 90% all the time.

Right. Is I have to do a 24 hour rule. So like I'm one of the fastest implementers you will ever see. I will have an idea and I will go do it and we'll be done until I go to sleep.

I like, I will not go to sleep. And they're like, you just need a 24 hour rule to think about it before you actually execute. So that's smart. Yeah.

I think one of the things that I'm seeing is, is that like visionary role, Josh and I share that a little bit. And I, and I think where I have struggled and still struggle is how you take that. Like you were talking about, you were building systems and operations and then handing those to people. Like I am terrible at that, right?

So like some of the stuff that I'm doing, like sales is a good example. You know, no one's going to be as good a salesman as Josh or I, right? But there are ways that we can have people to like increase, say, volume in the agency or whatnot. And we just, I don't have the documentation.

I don't have the training. I don't have the personality to like bring someone under my wing and like teach them all this stuff. and you end up with these little things that are in my court that don't need to be in my court anymore. And you talk about getting to that like CEO level, those are the things that have to start getting jettisoned.

I'm going to give you something that will help you with this on the sales part. Okay. So if you think about why are you guys really good at the sales, it's because of all the stories that you know, based on the problems that you've helped and you can explain it. So if you really start document, like thinking about your methodology.

So like at agency mastery, When I brought our scale specialist on, right, he didn't even know what an agency was. But he had the capability. And I had the systems in place. And I'm going to describe them to you so you can borrow them and go do this.

And then you come out in Colorado and hang out with me. Right? Okay, cool. So what it is is this.

Document your methodology. So ours was attract, convert, scale so people have the opportunity to sell. So I created a Trello board. I thought back at all of our client success, our case stories, our testimonials.

And I said, any of our clients in Attract, which is basically a lead generation, that kind of stuff, anyone's in Convert, which was sales or building a sales team or handing over sales to people, right? I would come up with those stories. And then every day I would go over one or two with our sales team. so then they start understanding the story so when someone mentions a problem they can go to that rolodex and hit it now the other part is how are you selling most times people bring a salesperson in they go go sell something they don't have a system or a process to go do so what i always would say is it kind of goes back to my offering ladder like selling something small to something bigger and bigger and bigger.

So I would have them shadow me on the discovery call, which is a free call. Then when I had the confidence, I would shadow them. And then once they were good, they would send me the best recording and the worst recording from those free discovery calls. Then I would do that with the foot in the door, the next call and so on and so one and so that's a system right there's a lot of other things that go into it but if you can start documenting those success stories handing that over to them then eventually they'll build their own and then they'll sell well way better than you guys ever could because they're 100 focused on it that's really interesting i've never had it explained to me like and if i as i'm thinking about as you're like yeah a lot of our sales calls are their stories and you're kind of like doing discovery and like a little bit solving on the fly because i've been doing it for i was 19 when i started in the agency world i get it i have so much information to pull from that's a really interesting way to look at it yeah and and you get and you got to look at it as it's not sales you're not selling you're helping so if you can train your team to do that they'll be way better than you like most time when people ask me about the mastermind i'm like let me just set you up with darby go talk like like like i don't know how to do it anymore like i don't want to do it anymore and then so much time back so go do that and then you'll be like in like three months you'll be like this is awesome i'm depressed that's when kevin's gonna start fucking shit up on purpose then you start fucking up shit yeah you just yeah you weren't at the um what i would call like kind of the like up here yeah yeah i haven't gotten to the point where i need to feel i still have too much to do yeah exactly but when you start having less to do josh now you know you'd be like kevin's fucking up shit like oh it's great guys thanks so much for for coming on the podcast uh and sharing your story um and just being transparent that's what the the show's been about for the past 12 years and uh for everyone listening if you guys you know my book launched a little while ago operator to owner uh it goes through the five roles that we all go through in our mind and And I think the role that a lot of us think we're at, we're actually not.

If you go to operator2ownerevolution.com, there's an assessment that you can take. It's free. It will tell you what role you're at and then what strategy you need to do in order to get to the next one.

So go do that now. And until next time, have a swank day.