Duane Melius has worked eight years in journalism, social enterprise, and media production in London and over six years across Southeast Asia in a digital agency environment. He’s previously had clients in banking, automotive, food & hospitality, FMCG, entertainment, and more, and those clients have been both B2B and B2C. He has millions of dollars of Digital campaign experience. Duane specializes in growing teams that use digital channels to reach niche and mass audiences with ROI-enabled campaigns, activities, and retainers.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- The challenges traditional agencies are facing in going digital
- Why you need to use digital in your personal life to be able to sell it (and why your team needs to do the same to create great digital content)
- The importance of mastering the area of digital your agency has as its core competency while keeping familiar with other areas
- Staying on top of what’s new in digital
- Qualities that make for great digital employees
- Using reporting to show your clients how your digital efforts are improving
- Ways to interview for new digital skillsets that you don’t have inside your agency yet
- Using a multi-step approval process to make sure mistakes don’t get made with digital content
- Making the content approval process easier on clients -- especially when there is compliance involved
- The good and the bad of digital tools (and why there’s often more bad than good, especially with social media)
- Why clients might start to take their social media in-house and what agencies can do to stay invaluable
- Unlocking the competitive advantage which exists within your people
Ways to contact Duane Melius:
- Twitter: @dmelius
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
As soon as I heard the tax law had passed, I made one call – to Eric Levenhagen, my personal tax advisor who has helped me craft my own tax strategy for years and today works with many agency owners across the country.
I had two questions for him: 1) How do we need to alter the tactics we’ve been applying for my businesses and 2) Will you be on my podcast and help my listeners understand how the tax laws will impact them?
As you’ll hear, we got right to the heart of the matter and spent the entire episode talking specifics about how we can take advantage of the new law and what we’re going to have to shift because it’s no longer advantageous or possible.
I hope you’ll listen and walk away feeling like you have a better handle how the new tax law is going to impact your agency and your personal finances.
Eric Levenhagen founded ProWise Financial Coaching (formerly known as ProWise Tax & Accounting) in 2005 Eric’s mission is to perform a comprehensive service for his clients, unlike any other firm out there, and help clients lead a life of financial abundance.
Eric is both a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Tax Coach who integrates both disciplines into a holistic, client-centered approach towards maximizing his clients after-tax income and wealth.
Outside of the office, Eric enjoys spending time with his wife and kids. His hobbies include reading, following college and professional football, and music. Finally, Eric is an aspiring traveler and hopes to be able to take his family many places around the world someday.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- What isn’t changing with the new tax law
- The big deduction changes you need to know about (both for S Corps and C Corps)
- Income pass through: the specifics of the 20% deduction you will now get on income that rolls down to your personal taxes from your agency and any other businesses you may own (as long as you don’t make too much)
- Why we don’t know everything about the new tax law yet (and why it will take months or years to figure everything out)
- The loopholes that are going to appear in the next few years and why you need a tax strategist (and not just a tax preparer) to find you those loopholes
- How the new tax law will impact agencies that make stuff for clients and those that consult and sell their knowledge as a stand alone product
- How the way C Corps get taxed will help those making over $100,000 in net income but hurt those making under that threshold
- Are there any things that agency owners should shift from their personal taxes back to the business?
- Keeping versatility in your tax plan so you’re not stuck if and when things change again when the tax law changes again
- How to get your money out of your agency to invest elsewhere under the new tax law (and why it differs for S Corps and C Corps)
Ways to contact Eric Levenhagen:
- Website: www.prowisefinancial.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Jeremy Knight spent 20 years as a B2B publisher creating publications for the private equity and fast growth business sectors. With digital technology, the Internet, and social web Jeremy believed making clients the publisher in a new media age was not just a good idea, it was the foundation for building a business. After all, building an audience was a better proposition than renting a list or leveraging third party routes to market, right? He launched Equinet Media in January 2009.
Discovering HubSpot in 2011 was a game changer. The blending of a content marketing play with an inbound methodology propelled the business forward as everything we did for clients had measurable outcomes. Today Equinet is an Inbound Agency, working specifically for the manufacturing and professional services sectors, operating on the EOS system and delivering services through an agile scrum process.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Jeremy’s transition from publisher to agency owner and the challenges he faced in that transition
- How Hubspot changed the game for Equinet -- even when it was far less powerful in 2011 than it is today
- Why CMOs are going to lead revenue and why sales and marketing are two halves of the same whole
- Hiring for attitude and training for aptitude instead of hiring based on skills alone
- Why you need to focus on developing different skills in all your team member when you keep all the work inside your agency and never outsource anything
- Why your team needs to have access to and understanding of the tools inside a tool like Hubspot, even if using them is not part of their day-to-day job
- What Agile is and how its point-based system works
- Learning how to implement Agile into your agency so that it matches up with inbound
- Why Agile doesn’t work the same for every agency and why you need to be ready to customize it
- Using Agile to figure out what works needs to be done to achieve the best results
- Why Jeremy uses two sets of points within Agile -- one for the value it provides a customer and another for the effort it takes his team
Ways to contact Jeremy Knight:
- Website: www.equinetmedia.com
- Twitter: @TheJeremyKnight
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyknight
- Email: jeremy@equinetmedia.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!