John Hall is co-founder and CEO of Influence & Co., a content marketing agency that helps companies and individuals extract and leverage their expertise to create, publish, and distribute content to their key audiences.
In five years, John has grown Influence & Co. into one of the largest providers of high-quality expert content to more than 1,000 of the world’s top publications. Under John’s leadership, Influence & Co. was ranked No. 72 on Forbes’ “Most Promising Companies in America” list in 2014 and was named Empact’s “Best Marketing and Advertising Company of 2014” at the United Nations. Influence & Co. was also recently mentioned in Inc. as the No. 1 company dominating content marketing.
John has weekly columns for Forbes and Inc. and has contributed to more than 50 publications, including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, The Washington Post, and Mashable. John was recently recognized as a “must-see” and one of the most authentic speakers in Forbes. His talks have inspired thousands of leaders, marketers, salespeople, entrepreneurs, and others to improve their performance.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Thought leadership: why it’s something you have to do
- Creating a thought leadership content marketing blueprint
- Why your blogs should have the author’s name for a byline -- not the agency’s name
- Strategies for creating content that isn’t generic
- How to build thought leadership into your schedule so that you actually spend time on it -- and what to do if you can’t
- Finding the ideal mix for publishing content on your own site vs. externally
- Big mistakes agencies make with their content
- Why thought leadership content marketing is here for the long haul
Ways to contact John:
- Email: john@influenceandco.com
- Twitter: @johnhall
- Website: www.influenceandco.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johnhall4
- Book: “Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You”
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!
Mark Winters’ passion is helping entrepreneurs get unstuck so they can pursue their freedom. Depending on the unique situation, Mark’s talent for introducing just the right combination of perspective and process sparks teams to start moving, move faster, or begin moving in the proper direction - with clarity. As a teacher, coach, and facilitator, Mark spends most of his time directly engaged with entrepreneurial leadership teams as a Certified EOS Implementer—helping them implement EOS in their own companies. He's delivered over 400 full-day EOS workshops with companies from around the U.S.
Mark has been an entrepreneur since the age of 28, after catching the “bug” during B-school at the University of Chicago. At last count, he's started/bought/sold/shut down 11 different companies. One recent venture, as a Founder and CEO, had a very successful exit – yielding a 100x cash return in less than 3 yrs. All this activity has led to some recognition, including being named a Tech Titan finalist as an emerging company CEO, and listed as “40 Under Forty” by the Business Journal in both Milwaukee and Dallas. Mark is a "Freedom Forum" member as an EOS Implementer. He was also awarded Rookie of the Year and Chair Excellence distinctions by Vistage International.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- The “visionary” and the “integrator” from “Rocket Fuel” by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
- How visionaries and integrators can build trust so that integrators can take control of what visionaries create
- What business owners need to do when they are an integrator and they need a visionary (most owners are visionaries)
- If you are a visionary, how to determine if you have an integrator on your team and what to do if you don’t
- The seven-step visionary integrator connection process for finding the right integrator
- How to know if you’re going to be able to sell your agency to your integrator or not (and what your exit plan can look like in both scenarios)
- Things that make visionary-integrator relationships fall apart
- The five rules and five tools for visionaries and integrators
- Assessing whether you need an integrator
- Why you need to read “Rocket Fuel”
- The Rocket Fuel Maximizer for getting more out of this topic
Ways to contact Mark Winters:
- Website: www.rocketfuelnow.com
- Twitter: @MarkCWinters
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/markcwinters
- YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/PelotonVentures
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!
John Rossman is Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, a keynote speaker, and an author. John is an expert at crafting and assisting clients to implement innovative and digital business models and capabilities including Internet of Things, marketplaces, and API driven platform business models. He is a sought after speaker on creating a culture of operational excellence and innovation. John has worked with clients across various industries, including retail, insurance, education, forest products, industrial products, and transportation.
John’s notable assignments include The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Nordstrom. and several of the world’s leading retail and insurance organizations. Prior to A&M, John was an executive at Amazon.com where he launched the third party selling platform and ran the merchant services business.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why you need to get really clear on what your future looks like
- John’s favorite Amazon leadership principles
- Why you need to be proactive and take action
- The importance of prioritizing getting to the right answer over getting along
- Structuring interviews so you find the employees that are actually willing to grow and improve
- Amazon’s “think big” and why it’s all about experimentation
- John’s best hiring practices like getting independent opinions before making a hire
- Strategies for breaking something down to its simplest form
- How to get your employees to take ownership in your business
- How to communicate principles in a way that everyone understands they’re the standard
- How John helps companies figure out their principles
- The impact having clear principles has on a business
Ways to contact John Rossman:
- Website: the-amazon-way.com/build
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![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year, give him a unique perspective on running an agency today.
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams
- Offering AE bootcamps
- Conducting individual agency owner coaching
- Doing on-site consulting
- Offering online courses in agency new business and account service
Because he works with those 250+ agencies every year — he has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Two types of agencies: “Artisan bakery agencies” (every project they produce is custom made for a client) and “Wonder Bread factory agencies” (where they follow systems and processes to produce the same limited set of things for every client)
- Why clients often work with both of these kinds of agencies, sometimes even at the same time
- Misconceptions owners of both kinds of agencies have about each other
- Assessing what type of agency you own (and why it may fall in the middle of these two types)
- Some of the pros of running an “Artisan bakery agency”: you can hire millennials, you can be a partner for your clients, and the prestige that comes with the work
- Some of the pros of running a “Wonder Bread factory agency”: you have a lot of clients and losing one won’t kill you, cheaper employees, the agency is easier to sell, and clients are easier to obtain
- Why “Artisan bakery agencies” still need to specialize and focus on their niche
- Aligning your goals with the kind of agency that helps you fill those goals
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
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!