"The Marketing Agency Model Is Broken" - Law Smith guests on 6 Figure Podcast Rebels
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Entrepreneurship, life advice, and personal growth. 2:27
Domain names, business names, and branding. 7:15
Using AI to personalize marketing outreach. 12:17
Education, parenting, and food waste. 15:10
Customer service and automation in business. 20:43
Customer loyalty and advocacy in marketing. 26:43
Jamie Atkinson 0:00
Hi. My name is Jamie Atkinson, founder of podcast closing.com. And this show is built for six and seven figure entrepreneurs with podcast who are looking to grow and scale their customer acquisition using that show. If you're a six or a seven figure entrepreneur with a podcast and you want to get featured on this show to talk about your own podcast journey, got a top 100 interview.com Now over to your glamorous host Brittany church ebook, and don't forget to subscribe for daily interview content.
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 0:31
Hey guys, welcome back. It's Brett here from the show, as usual, and I'm here with a very exciting guest. Last Smith, you guys, he's a stand up comedian, a fractional CMO. He is the owner and operator of toca Baba. And law, you might have to correct me I might have butchered how I said that.
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 0:53
He took a baka? Yeah,
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 0:54
talk about it. Okay, I got it. Great. He's also the host of sweat. Sweat equity. Podcast, you guys. So we'll get into that in just a second. But more I just wanted to take the time to really get you to, you know, come on here and start by sharing your journey. I mean, how did you get to where you are today?
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 1:13
Um, well, not without some dark holes with a divorce. But you know, I started doing stand up and 2007 and I worked at a mutual fund company called dimensional fund advisors, which was way out of my academic kind of brain was a grant for a bunch of, but like 20, guys, in my client services department that I would go to stand up every night in LA, I moved back to where I'm one of the rare people that was born and raised in Tampa, the rare third generation, because Tampa and Florida in general. It's everybody moves here from somewhere else, right? It's a sunny state, it's a sunny state for shady people. As I saw a bumper sticker growing up, I love that. And so I didn't want to be an actor in LA, I just wanted to do stand up. And I had started kind of and was going to remote or online business school at Auburn as well, while being a road comic while working during the day, and eventually got into the marketing area. I have a business plan writing background as well. So I have a weird mix of I'm 38 years old, I'm in between kind of the pre internet like pre internet for everybody age, and always having internet age, right. And I feel like that has helped me in a big way kind of be able to communicate, like a lot of digital marketing is what I do during the day. And so trying to explain it to low tech kind of people, it helps because it helps me from my stand up background to be able to explain it to almost any audience. And so, so in 2014, I started my own marketing agency with one client with Jerry Maguire that was working at another firm and they didn't want this client that was a startup and it was a luxury bathroom client. And I said, You know what, I'll I'll come get a run with this guy. And I'll just out hustle, I didn't take any outside capital, I just grinded so and relied on that one paying client. And that's the best story I can tell because I started my my agency with that one client was called Waterloo washrooms. They got and then they sold in 2022 conglomerate, which is what they were looking for getting acquired.
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 3:54
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to kind of elaborate on exactly how the journey went. And, you know, you have a lot of value to add behind leveraging conversations. So let's dive into that as our first topic. Why is it so important to really leverage the conversations you have with whether that's clients or guests? That
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 4:19
yeah, so on on sweat equity. It's not my intention for our guests to become either I can be contracted out as fractional CMO or they become a client, but I my mentor was kind of telling me hey, you know, you're kind of not you have a great rapport with these people because he listens to the show. Eric reading her and I host sweat equity podcast, the number one comedy business podcast in the world because there's no one else in the genre. And so he was like, He's pushed me into ways that are really good. He's like, do you think your movie your comedy career right now? I'm creating content, you know, on a daily basis. And I was like, Fu, you know, like he was right. And then the other part was, you know, we established this good conversation with. And now we're getting a lot of really great guests that, you know, we have, we have Booker's coming to us to put their people on, instead of us going out having to find everybody, and we're getting these CEOs. And these were really interesting stories. And more than not, we ended up gelling with them, even just via zoom. And, you know, I never want to be gross with the podcast and be like, you know, Hey, you came on, let me let me see if I can make you a client kind of thing. It's more like, you mentioned this, you've got a hole in your game here. I think, Eric, and or I can help you with this. And so it's not the intention, the show is kind of its standalone thing, but it can be leveraged, you know, one for the other. One thing I found, when, when I'm talking to prospective client, is, I tell them a, Hey, I'm a stand up comedian, and I it's my moonlighting career, I've been doing it a long time. Whoever your favorite stand up is, I'm probably not like them, because they always pitch someone that they love. And I'm, it's, it's over 1000 on that. But I go, I'm gonna use some weird metaphors. And I kind of I kind of go in between professional and casual, kind of in the same paragraph or sentence sometimes. So just bear with me, but if I'm trying to find a through line with you. And the other part is, if you want to know, my character, and kind of, I can't hide myself over 400 episodes, over 10 years of the podcast, so you can, that's if you need to know who I am as person. There's plenty out there to look at. And that usually will open the conversation up a lot, right? It'll, it, you're in the trust business and sales, right? When you buy something you're trusting, you're trusting that whoever's pitching it to you. Is isn't a snake oil sales up. And so I feel like it kind of gives me a cheat code to kind of go, Hey, here's what I'm about. I like to be silly and make really crude jokes a lot of the time. Because I just thought that's what makes me laugh. But my actions are way different. Like I like to, I should put this on my dating apps that I'm on. I've never never been arrested. I've never had a you know, I've never started a fight. Now, I should put I've never had an STD. And I remember what else haven't you had to go? Like? I've never what it was I had like a hit list. And I was really this off to a friend of mine, who's a brand advisor. And he was like, why are you putting this on your dating apps? I was like, I don't know. Sure. I'm not addicted to drugs. All those, you know, like, sadly, I mean, I'm in a really rare I have a day job. I have my own company. I have passions. I got a vasectomy. I don't know if that matters. But for the dating app medicine people are well. But it's, well, it's one of those things where, you know, I try to be just really upfront, I've been called, I've been called an aggressive optimist. So I think people find me intense sometimes. But it's only because I'm the biggest male cheerleader for friends and family that tells me they want to do something, I'll be the guy that calls them up and follows up because, you know, that's what they asked for. Or if it's a client that wants to do something, that it's very ambitious, same thing, if I if I feel like their proof of concept, or their business plan looks good. Or just their vision, and they need help guiding through that, you know, we'll start goal setting will start all of that. And then the really the best leverage leveraging I can I have is just word of mouth referral, because the hard part about I'm gonna say mostly digital marketing, we do offline as well. But, you know, most of the time, we're in the shadows, and we have to be confidential. And so it's really tough to promote humblebrag your own work. Because it's something that should I really respected too. It should be confidential for the client, unless they're, they allow you to talk about it. So I don't know if that answered your question, but that was I can rant pretty. As long as you let me go. This is
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 9:55
great. No, I want I want to see how what would you say Which is like, let's talk about your client acquisition Now, you mentioned referrals, word of mouth. Let's talk about what is your main source, though, of business? Like, where do you get most of your clientele from?
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 10:16
I was looking at that the other day, honestly, a lot of it is referral. Because it is like, having the secret weapon, especially for like, I have a law firm niche, a lot of small, medium sized law firms that hire me. And not because my name is law, it's Lawrence or Miss Jackson if you're nasty, but you know, it's one of those things where, you know, lawyers don't want to give up their, their, their queen piece on the chessboard, to other attorneys, because they are all kind of very, they are very referral based, you know, if they don't have the practice area, they have someone they know to refer that case to. But when it comes to getting them leads, you know, it's tough, because they don't really they're not going to refer me out. But I've been able to, you know, how about this. So the main the main chunk comes from, you do good work, good work begets more work, right. So that's kind of my philosophy, number one. And that's probably 50% of the client acquisition I have. The other chunk is I have kind of what I call preferred partners, right? You're here are people I complement or supplement with, or, or talk about like a supplement complements. With like, I have a apple it. The only business certified Apple IT provider in the Tampa Bay area, shout out to scalp it. And the way I kind of look at it, they do the back end, we do the front end. And so okay, we've referred clients back and forth. Because though they have a lot of attorneys, they have a lot of professional services, businesses, very similar kind of target audiences we go for, and they, they always get propositioned to do marketing. And they're like, we don't do that. Here's our go to. And same with me, if I find out someone's, you know, Apple based, you know, for their whole business, I go, Oh, these guys are great. You won't ever have to go in the Apple Store. And they're great communicators to they'll walk you through it. Because if my stuff if my marketing language sounds Greek to clients, the IT side as a MSP managed service provider side is like hieroglyphics, it's that doesn't even make sense to most people. So those kind of relationships, I sought out. I'm proactive in that. And and another one is, I have a Rolodex of subcontractors I use there's too many specialties in marketing now. Especially with the craziness of AI just kind of getting to everybody in the last year. And so occasionally, I'll have a subcontractor that goes, Hey, that's like an SEO person that I sub out, and they'll go, Hey, I need full server, sell your, but I'll handle that SEO for this client. So sometimes you get some of those. But like video partners, that kind of thing. You know, who do we complement best with and then I vet them out proactively. Same with the subcontractors. Interesting. But, but really, if anybody's listening, that isn't marketing, it sounds like I don't do my own marketing. And that's really what I'm trying to work on this month is I can only say, the children, the cobblers children has no shoes, you know, quote so many times, because you don't, most marketers don't get around to marketing themselves. But you can only really say that so long. It's like telling everybody you're gonna like run a marathon. Right? And you're doing it to, to be to be held accountable a little bit. But you're kind of front loading the praise, in a way. It's like, oh, good for you. That's great. And then no one ever follows up with you on it. So you just get you get all the you get all the praise at your brunch. But, you know, you can only do that for so many times before. It's like, all right, you know? So plus, I'll get called out if something we're doing branding, marketing, strategy wise, isn't publicly running at full steam, because they're like, Well, if you don't, we don't treat your own house. Well, how are you going to treat in the neighborhood
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 14:43
slowly. Now I just kind of touch on delegating and outsourcing. Since you had mentioned a few things about sourcing out now. When did you know it was time to outsource and delegate within your company?
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 14:59
All right from the get go, I that the marketing agency models really broken. You know, a lot of there's a lot of them that are successful. And they'll tell you that they've figured it out. I've been inside those I've been, I've been plucked to be, you know, an inside hire that points. And the problem with again, there's so many specialties now, right? That I can probably list off about 50. Like SEO, PPC alone, you could be awesome a Google ads, but you might not know anything about the other search, Pay Per Click advertising, right. So you need, you need certain people. And so my whole idea was like, okay, most agencies break when they get a little big, right? There's a couple of like, benchmarks, they get five employees. But those five employees can't do everything, right. And so it's one of those things where now you have a bunch of full time salaries that you're trying to feed. And so I always looked at it, like, I'm not going to hire anybody full time until I have to. Now the flip side of that is, you, you have to be really good. I call it like a depth chart, like a football team's depth chart because I'm a meathead. And I would literally have like index cards on the wall. Okay, this person's SEO, and then also, every client has different set of variables, right? So if I need a PR person, what's PR, right? Well, it could be PR, so segment and you could go I need a PR person that does offense, or I need a PR person that's going to get us our client on Forbes, because we need a credibility boost, or I need a or they're very industry specific. Just for example, like a sports PR person doesn't have the connections that an entertainment one does, or a product, you know, a product PR company does. So my thing was always like, Alright, get the best sub, you know, sub contracting team for the client and their needs first, not try to jam a bunch of full time employees to to either slowly or incorrectly or both. Try to execute services. Does that make sense?
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 17:26
It does 100% This is huge. And this is key right? So law I know that our episodes are really really short but I want to give you like the next couple minutes here to talk about anything that you have focused on for the next you know anything that you desire or have going on within the business in the next three to six months from now that you want to share with my listeners or even within the podcast and then also the best way to reach out to you if there's anyone looking to connect with you off my my listenership
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 17:59
Oh, they can go to law Smith works.com or any of my social handles I think or law Smith works you can get to me through that. And, or sweat equity pod.com Or my agency site to Toka bhaga. But it's TOC oba.ga any of those will get to me. Um, you know, it's funny. It's funny you say that because about what's your near future kind of strategy. And I kind of wish we did this interview, like, two weeks. Like in July or something, you know? Because on my birthday is June 25 was 10 days. Yeah. And I don't really celebrate it because everybody has a birthday. That's kind of my my Larry David curmudgeon angle on it. What I do, though, is Christmas. In my birthday, I try to rewrite the goals I have I have goals that I set out for the whole year. And then I'll look at really assess them. Where am I? Because my birthday is exactly opposite of Christmas. Which by the way, sidenote, Christmas in July is garbage. It should be Christmas in June. I don't know why Christmas in July is a thing but it bugged me my whole life. Because if anybody listening has a summer birthday, your summer birthday already sucks. Because all your friends get cupcakes and stuff. They're at school. And then when you have your birthday, no kids are in town. They're all at camp. And you're like, cool. This is sad. This is a sad birthday that no one could come to. So anyway, so I tried to assess. I really tried a goal set. I do smart goals. I'm not going to try to do that acronym, but if you look it up the biggest one is making sure as a quantifiable A quantifiable goal, like I was taught at my, in my economics class in high school, and it's stuck with me, shout out to coach boza, Jesuit in Tampa. He was saying going to church is not a goal, that's not a good news resolution, because that's what he was talking about. He's like, if you say, you're gonna go to church every three, three Sundays out of the month. Now, that's a quantifiable goal. And that's how you'd have two goals set. And that stuck with me to this day. And so I really tried to set those goals and then assess them. That's the other part. I see this with entrepreneurs and comedians all the time, and I talked to him and I go, Are you spending 10 dot 10 minutes a day, just to think about the day, the, the Analyze life is not worth living kind of thing, you know, and most of them, and I'm guilty of this too, like, you can have so many things in the queue on your to do list that you never really make time to do that part. And that part's really important. Because you really have to analyze what is this working? Or is this not working? I think a lot of people get hung up on this. Another real gripe I have is everyone's busy. You know, but But you know, but you know, some people that tell you that and you're like, oh, yeah, I know you're not busy. I know usually. I don't get I don't get on tick. I only post video clips stand up clips on and then the podcast clips and tick tock. But I don't go on it. Because everybody I know that likes it is addicted to it. And I was like, they're like, yeah, man, I spent like an hour or two a night doing that. I'm like, Yeah, most
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 21:43
right before they go to bed and before they fall asleep and right when they get out, right?
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 21:49
Yeah, and I go, I don't, I don't, I had an addiction to like, not real addiction. But I'd play video games like those NCAA college football video game that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever, 20 years ago, at least. And I play that it'd be recruiting fake players to your team in this game. And my roommate walked in is like, what are you doing? Why are you playing this so much. And I was like, I don't know, this is a waste of life. That's how I kind of look at tick tock of like, I don't need that addiction, or I don't need, I don't want to watch Game of Thrones, because that sounds like homework. Now. That's like 60 hours of my life. And I'm not really interested in in any way. So I really tried to go, I really try i a couple of years ago, I really made a, an effort, a calculated effort to go, instead of doing 100 different things. And kind of burning out bandwidth wise, I'm going to focus on being a good dad, and being present with my kids, because I have half the time. And I I don't want them to be a stand up comedian talking about how there's divorced dad was a lift, because I've heard that story a lot. Chris Rock talks about keeping your kids off the stripper pole is his number one job, mine's the mike pole. If they do stand up, I probably messed up somewhere. And the other the other thing is my business. Staying healthy, I have to work out every day. Right? Before we did this, I was like, I'm going to wake myself up and go work out real quick. Because I get my like a mild depression, if I'm not active, playing sports, or doing whatever
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 23:38
you mentioned, like that's really good that you mentioned, I don't mean to cut you off a lot. But, um, you know, I was going to ask you as a successful entrepreneur yourself, you know, what are some successful? Or what are some? What's the word for what or I guess common traits or habits that you see yourself and other successful entrepreneurs have? Is it with you is that you know, you work out every day to give you that energy to give you that they set the tone to the day kind of thing before your meetings or any other successful tips for any other entrepreneurs that can make a big change within business within communication. Outside of the business.
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 24:20
Well, the other two things were stand up in the podcast and those are the five things I was focusing on. But to answer your question, it was like it was how about this? I'll give you I'll give an extreme example. And I'll give I'll give up kind of a practical thing you can do that I did. So. So if you look at all these, these, the Uber top tier echelon, CEOs, entrepreneurs, right, at a certain point, this is a thought I've had lately so I'm workshopping it out with yet but I haven't talked to anybody about it. But if you really look at all of these lines, at Maverick CEOs, entrepreneurs, they all they get to a certain level, and they all focus on their health. And they focus on something. They, they also do a thing where they start, like jujitsu is a big one. If you've noticed a lot of these big time kind of entrepreneurs, I'm not talking about Warren Buffett, who would eat McDonald's every day, and not do that, but I'm talking about this arrows, right? They're all into something, they start at zero. To, to humble themselves to. And to really, it's challenged for them, right. They so if you had their stream at point, you should be working on something like that in your, in your life. And it usually is something health based or sport based or, or somewhere around working out Jeff Bezos looks yoke now, right? Like, I saw, Zuckerberg got his jujitsu belt the other day, and Elon Musk did. And so you're like, Okay, I, if I can incorporate this now and getting routine, I also try to do two things at once. So while I'm on a sit down bike in the morning, I can go through a lot of these pithy emails, you know, zero that out. So I tried to combine the two sometimes, or I'll write jokes, or creative problems. So. So that's kind of like, the pragmatic advice I have is I use an app that's called it's timely.ai. As a think the website, it, it's a time tracker, that it's just for you, you can do it for teams, too, if you want. But time is the in this is the one thing we talked to CEOs, we talked to really high level executives on sweat equity. Time is the one commodity that they wish they had back. And there's sometimes there's a lot of sad regret with that. And I wanted to kind of be proactive in it. So this timely app, it's a, you put it on all your devices, you log into it, it'll it'll eventually be able to guess where do you spent your time throughout the day? Now, the hard part is you have to Yeah, it's sweet. They've been around for a while. But I look, I've referred this I like to be the Suze Orman of, of productive apps and any resources, I feel like that's a lot of value for what I do, too, is being resourceful. But this timely app, if you look at your time, if you could, if you can carve out, like you know, 30 minutes on a Sunday or something to go, did I win or lose this week, did I stay on track with what I wanted to do? Because you can get so flummoxed with so many things you got going on. And then you get overwhelmed. And a lot of people break. And it's like, well, I spent this amount of time in traffic for meetings I didn't need to go to. So one thing I saw was like I was chasing bad clients at one point. They're risky. And, you know, you just get a bad vibe from them, when you're talking to them, that they're not super serious kind of people with their business. And it's like, I found that I was wasting so much of my life. That that could have been filled with working to find better clients or just paying attention. I stopped. So like one thing I stopped doing was stop chasing bad clients. But also I was like, I'm not gonna try to work while I have my kids at home. They're five and six. I can't do that anymore. I can't get away with that. Right? When they were babies. And I was so low. What I like to say so low debt DILF life. I you know, I could kind of get away with that because they they can't really they sleep a lot. And so or they can watch cocoa melon until there. Yeah, and so and so like, it's that thing of like, I found out overtime. Oh, I'm not getting the work done. I think I am and I can't stay up late anymore. I can't do all nighters, I have to wake up early. So that's kind of my that's kind of my extreme example of kind of pragmatic advice. And this is stuff we talked about on the podcast a lot to
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 29:20
amazing law. This has been incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to really come on here and add so much value you're a rock star, Renee I really enjoyed this now. Just one more time the best way for all my listeners to be able to reach out to would be is it through the podcast is it your email what's best for
Law Smith, Fractional CMO, Stand Up Comedian, Sweat Equity Host, and President of Tocobaga Agency & Advisory 29:39
you? Law Smith works.com or any social it's law Smith works. Get it like it works or but ready. You've been incredible. Thank you for having me on. And this was fun
Brittany Chetyrbok, host of 6-Figure Podcast Rebels 29:54
worse. This was fun. Thank you so much. group if you're listening and enjoyed please like and subscribe. If you're a six figure entrepreneur or higher and want to come on just like Law Day today, to talk about what's going on in your business, talk about the podcast a little bit about your journey, please go to talk 100 interview.com I'd love to have you on as well. Thanks, guys. Catch you on the next show. Bye. Bye. Hey, everyone,
Jamie Atkinson 30:17
I hope you really enjoyed that episode. As always, if you want to listen to more daily interview content, make sure you subscribe, and here's three ways I can help you and your business. For free. One, check out my video on how we're building a pipeline that produces 30 plus prime sales calls every single week using podcast setters and a basic interview funnel. And this is actually how I was able to quit social media forever. You can go to podcast rebels.com forward slash setters to if you're a six or a seven figure entrepreneur with a podcast, we actually want to interview you on one of our top 100 shows head to top 100 interview.com And then three, download our podcast closing formula. It shows you how to create a podcast sales team that books out your sales calendar each week using the podcast closing client attraction method, and you can go to podcast rebels.com forward slash podcast formula. Now at podcast closing.com. We help six and seven figure entrepreneurs with podcast create a system for predictable client acquisition without relying on paid advertising or social media by building out podcast sales teams. Now if you want help turning your podcast into a high ticket client acquisition machine, then book a call with our team to see how we can help go to podcast rebels.com forward slash chat. Alright guys, we'll see you in the next interview.
