Joe
Hey, everybody it's Joe Troyer here, and welcome to another episode of show me the nuggets. I'm super, super excited today to have on a very special guest Adam Zilko, who runs a seven figure Dental marketing agency called fire gang. And super excited to bring Adam on talk about how he built his agency and kind of his takeaways and ultimately, kind of the cliche but but super important question that I like to ask people, right. If you had to do it all over again. How would you do it? So Adam, of man Without further ado, welcome to the podcast.
Adam
Thanks man, appreciate you having me here.
Joe
Yeah. So the team, Eduardo on our team did some digging. found out you guys are doing a couple million dollars a year in dental. Obviously, it looks like you've you wrote a couple of books as well. So super excited. Just just to talk to you about your takeaways and building your agency.
Adam
Yeah man, ask away I mean it's we've been at this for 10 years I started with a business partner bought him out a few years back. I learned a lot learned a lot about what not to do. You know, like like anyone you know it's just been a long road It feels like some good some some struggle you know right now, especially with the COVID issue and all that ...
Joe
let's start at the beginning so to speak, how'd you how'd you get into digital marketing? And then how did you kind of end up building an agency and How'd you end up getting into dental and Firegang?
Adam
Okay. I've always had like a love for like computers and websites and and all that. And so even even high school building like web servers for fun, you know, at my parents house kind of thing. And this is back in like the late 90s. So and then Just I've always liked computers. I've always like web stuff and online. And out of college I went to work for, you know, basically a billion dollar marketing company. They've been around for 100 years, and worked with them. They did a lot of print. But this was the transition of where mobile and Google are really starting to take over and eat into their client base because they dealt mostly with small medium businesses. I mean, they had national accounts as well, but and I saw it saw what I was doing at the time as I was there. Basically, they're their first digital product manager, they hired for the company. My role was to help transition and educate and guide and coach the management and sales team corporate so on and so forth, on kind of the evolution the transition from print to digital and kind of, you know, what the landscape looked like how to sell and how to, what it meant. And so on and so forth. So I did some of that. I did a lot of that. And then, and they, they were a national company, they had offices throughout the US. And even I think they had an office in London and another office in like Puerto Rico or somewhere in that area. So in my business partner at the time, he was later hired to do a similar role out of Cincinnati. And so he and I would meet up because we'd fly around, do these events and whatnot. And so we got to talking over time, and we realized, like, Listen, this company is struggling to even just get the basics. They're too big. They're not moving quick enough. And, you know, it was taking them like, I mean, just one. One metric was it was taken on average at 1.6 months to build a single website that was just really subpar. You know, and clients were upset and, you know, you just couldn't have that. So we thought, well, man, what if we just went ahead and did this ourselves. So we do We left and then when I started that and at first we took on anything and everything. You know, we knew a lot of the accounts and you know, we scaled to almost a million like within just a matter of months. I mean it was like just real quick
but it was difficult to be everything to everyone so all these different niches where you know, everyone I mean I had Auto Parts shops to attorneys to car dealers to dentist, of course to medical practices, tax guys everything I mean, I mean some of the weirdest oil companies and one guy I mean, just you not I mean, he was making dog jerky from like, from old meat and up in Alaska and wanted to market and you just saw so and we were doing it all so, um you know, paid the bills and whatnot but we eventually ditched it all because at the time, we saw that as a big option, we're having a lot of success with dentists. And they were their own decision makers, they had a, usually a decent sized business for, you know, the services at the rates that we were charging and they, their average patient value was was reasonably high too. And at the time, when we were really getting into 2010, 11, 12, a lot of things we were doing at time nobody was offering, you know, like, an offer or a promotion for new patients to come in. We did that at a market and nobody had done that. In fact, the doctor at that time had other dentists show up to his practice, I guess according to an upset because they saw the ad and they're like, how would you do this to us? So I've been working and they were just so we we kind of double down and just went in further on on Dental. And you know, switched up our messaging and everything to really focus there. You know, I really want to write a book. And at the time, you know, I guess we we launched our first book early 2014. So, you know, at least at that time, there wasn't really any books, like we were able to jump to the top of Amazon. And it wasn't really any of the other books at the time that were on dental marketing. And so there's just a lot of things that we did early on that, you know, the markets kind of caught up to now, but at the time, they hadn't, and that's kind of where we mentioned it. So. And then, I think I mentioned earlier a few years back, bought out my business partner, he wanted to go do like, you know, dental education and training and that kind of thing. And I decided to take this over and do it myself. lots lots there, too. But, yeah, I mean, that's, I guess, the kind of the history.
Joe
Yeah, that's awesome. So I'm curious. A couple of questions there from what you said. Adam, did you have dentists at fire gang when you decided like that's where you guys were going to niche in like, was like oh man, we're crushing it for dentists so let's niche in there, or how do you kind of stumble or decide on dental?
Adam
When you say that we had dentist at you mean like employed as employees or just
Joe
like as clients?
Adam
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, we had clients as dentists and I were doing lawyers cleaning house, I mean, not with all dentists are, you know, an opinion or listening sorry, but dentists are very, can be very difficult. Some of them are amazing. They get it, they get business, they are the ones that, you know, they'll scale and buy multiple practices and create chains and corporate dentistry or even just have like a group of practices that they own. They're, they're kind of a different animal. They're great to work with. They understand their numbers, very business driven. They get you know, working collaboratively Turns out like the best results and best, you know, is the best approach to dealing with people versus combative with everything and everyone. But yeah, dentists can be very difficult. And so you know, I don't know, I just lost my train of thought. I'm not sure where I was going with that. But yeah, I mean, to answer your question we were dealing with Dentists early on. We have like I said, we had a lot of success. And so I really just kind of decided on Yeah.
Joe
Awesome, man. You mentioned a book as well. And we found out my team found, actually did two books. I'm curious what your process was like for that or any advice you give to anybody listening if they want to do a book?
Adam
Yeah, we've done three now. And what I found that the best approach was to this is, I don't want to like Personally, I want to write it myself. So we found a ghostwriter. What we do is we We would get. So I've gone through this, I went to two iterations with my business partner at the time. And then after I bought him out, I did another one with the team. What I did is we get on and we would record a call, either on zoom or a group call, my team is 100% distributed, which if we get to that, in this podcast has its own ups and downs. But basically, so we do a live video conferencing all the time. So we get on a call and we for hours and hours and hours of talking about a specific subject. And and usually it was the least, you know, the way I would approach it is my my angle to what makes us different, our unique value proposition to it, you know, what the dentist should look like, or the business owner should look like, and why it always kind of has our spin on it. I think everything should so you know, if it's websites, well, here's why most websites, you know, potentially could fail and what you need to do and here's how we do it to Here's the things that we do to ensure that they succeed or they're better or whatever, you know, we do that with paid ads and everything else. So we record that. And then we hand that off to a ghostwriter. And he goes, seven days all that. And you know, probably earlier than that, I guess step one probably was creating like a table of contents, understanding the topics, and then then recording around the first two books, my business partner and I, we did we our second what was kind of an upgrade for the first, we pulled in the team to kind of modernize it and add in a lot of new content. And then the last book after bottom out, I brought in each of my basically subject matter expert managers, if you will. So the person who's running the Performance Team at that time, the performance oversaw the people that do websites, you know, the paid ad people and so on. And so I'd hop on a call with them, and we would talk to It then talk about, you know, what they're seeing work and not kind of all that and then we hand that off, and then they got to kind of oversee the evolution of that shop. So they helped create the content with the copywriter and oversee that to make sure that you know, it had our spin and approach to it. And then it aligned with with what we're looking to do ultimately with the book, but and they would, they would go through kind of that their own chapter, if you will, with some oversight and make sure that it, you know, was was correct. And so they go back and forth with the writer and I would as well and then we are all together and sell publish. Get out there.
Joe
That's awesome. I've heard a lot of people talk about zoom calls or webinars or, you know, doing a presentation or a series of presentations, and then ultimately picking a ghostwriter in doing that process that it seems like you guys did for the first two books..
Adam
Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I would knock anyone that wants to write a book I just don't desire to sit down and like you know, spend hours and hours and hours on something like that seems to me it's kind of more monotonous and I don't like doing that. So I know that if I'm forced to it's going to be a long road in the path of just getting it done quickest is going to be bringing someone that that's what they love to do and getting it done.
Joe
Yeah, so 100% Yep, yep. So let's talk about your your packages or your offering like what what do you think sets you guys apart at fire gang from I mean, I can only imagine how many dental marketing agencies are out there or people that don't claim to be experts and going after the same market as you.
Adam
You know, there is a Yeah, so that to speak to that latter point. There is a lot of new software claim like experts jumping in, I mean, there's a lot of courses out there that teach people how to start and grow an agency. And unfortunately, a lot of bridges get burned, and it does a lot more harm than good. That we find. So we struggle more now than we ever did with just even building some trust, we have to get more creative on how we approach it, and really leverage referrals and so on. But, you know, right before this call, in fact, we've talked to a guy that he's like, Man, I've been burned, like, and I hear that every single day I got burned my last marketing company burn me and you know, it, here's the thing is maybe, maybe the, maybe the dentist did get burned, or maybe they just were a bad partner, you know, and that happens a lot happens a lot more than you think. But regardless, it's their perception. That's really all that matters. So, you know, in terms of like, how we approach this, in our packages, were, we're trying to solve all the problems that we know, you know, don't practice kind of alluded to this before, but dental dentists, they're very challenging, it can be very challenging in the fact that they're,
they understand dentistry, but a lot of them don't understand business and they're not always business like minded or people friendly, you know, they're kind of interest of introspective kind of what am i what's the word I'm looking for here, I'm basically just, they can be, in some cases very difficult to work with a demanding and so on. And so if you don't know how to work with that, it's going to be very difficult. And they'll burn you out. They you know, the burnout our team and things like that. And so I'm trying to figure out well, how do we take as much of that off your plate and own the process because we can always rely on them to do it. I think that's what probably a lot of is but I've seen that in working with a lot of different industries. I've seen them more dentists. And so I guess with our product And packages were we refer to as kind of like an integrated approach, meaning that we're trying to look at all of the things that most companies would say they do you know, your reputation, your ads on Google, your SEO and all that. But then we integrate that into the website. So what are our conversion rates to get into the website? What are the conversion rates then once they pick up the phone call? Or how do we break those barriers down? What are the back end numbers look like? And so we're listening to phone calls, we're coaching the staff, we're looking at the back end numbers. In some cases, we'll install software that pokes out into practice management software, so that we can pull out the data and the numbers and typically when we do that, we have a better understanding of like what's going on in the dental practice than even the doctor. It's amazing. And then we partner with coaches and others that you know, we need to send somebody in because they're struggling happens all the time. Then we typically have a solution. They're like what to do next. And you know, marketing typically gets the the the first Blame of like, things aren't going to plan and the fact that we find it, typically that's not the case. But so our back, revolve around that. And then as we're evolving further, we're starting to segment into more advanced type funnels, and hiring people to actually work those leads. So we're gonna, we have staff that will actually call leads back to work to get them scheduled, and so on. So we're just trying to take as much off the plate at the dental practice because you can give them all the tools and tell them what to do, but it doesn't get done and then again, you're gonna get the blame course how do you how do you solve for that? And that's typically what we wanted. My long term vision of this was just an overall, you know, everything from like, the entire the entire system breathes, I love funnels and all that as that I own the site and the process and I own all of that and they don't want to pay any more than they just, I mean, they just kind of goes away. I did the implant leaves They're getting month after day after day after day, they just stopped showing up, you know what I mean? And so there's like that correlation of value. Whereas you don't always have that with a full on service. I just see patients show up. And then there's an attribution. Like there can be attribution issues or, you know, I don't know where this patient came from. So I think it came from here, but you know, you're trying to tell me it's over here. With some of these other methods, you don't have that so there's, there's there's a lot of ways to skin this, I guess. But at the end of the day, you know, our packages really are just revolving around how do we remove all roadblocks from from when a patient starts to search all the way to getting in the door? Hey, do we got to coach the staff and we got to, you know, look at the back end data and analytics and do we have to make sure everything else works. So our programs really revolve around it
Joe
Yeah, man, I love a couple things that that you said I want to I want to point out and make sure that everybody got a look. I love the full circle analogy right. And really plugging into Practice Management and systems and really understanding what's happening in the business because I feel like most agencies, they stop, right as soon as the lead is delivered, right? Like they're not, they're not doing any coaching at all with the front office staff. They're not doing any coaching with anybody that's handling the phone or looking at any other parts of the business, and they just stopped there. And I see most agencies, I feel like fail their clients at that level, even if they're doing their job, bringing in leads so to speak, doesn't mean that that's profitable for the local business that they're working with.
Adam
Yeah, I mean, the the challenge is that if you don't, if you don't look at everything throughout the entire system, you can't, can't justify your worth in a lot of cases. And you don't know if it's really worth I mean, everyone says they have the best marketing solution out there. I think in a lot of cases, a lot of people do a pretty good job. It's very similar. They're just Be able to show them the business, how it works, and that and that it didn't work or it's not working and why and where they were fix where the issue was. So, you know, if if they're the agency is just sending people to a website that you know, they've got a website, they've got ads, maybe they do some call tracking, because it's easy to put a tracking number on the site and then say, your doctor or your business owner, go listen to this, which these these calls, which they won't do you know, that then, you know, you're just kind of at a disadvantage because you don't really know your numbers and you don't really know like, you know, maybe maybe the website isn't converting, maybe the message is off. Maybe there's something else going on. Maybe your call tracking numbers broken. I don't know. I've seen it all though. Or the person on staff. They hired somebody new and that person while they think they're doing everything, right, there's they're missing stuff. We've seen it all and if we can solve for that, then we provide more value, but we can actually then correlate the revenue we generate. Because even if your website is, you know, if you're an agency and you put up a great ads and you've got a great website and you're driving a lot of leads, but the practice isn't seeing that they're not able to basically quantify that or, or attribute what that has done to the growth of their practice. And they're gonna blame you for it. And I mean, I've seen more cases, cases where the, the actual patients coming in from the internet, were going up. But you know, retention, or the churn rate went also went up from other areas or they stopped, the practice stopped doing other types of marketing, but the agency didn't know about it. So then the practice owner says, Well, I'd do the same amount of revenue as doing a year ago and I'm not making more money. Well, you're in this area, but nobody tracks you don't know. So that you know, having that that information can really help educate that practice. Some of it isn't as business savvy, to say, Hey, listen, this is working or Here's the issue that we're identifying, here's how to solve what we need to do. And then like I said, we had a guy, dental practice, they brought him in as a brother that recently had an MBA and thought he knew it all. And he came in and made a bunch of changes to the operations. And just over the course of one month, they were losing like 80 K and collections. And I mean, they called up brother called up y'all on the team, you're blaming us and our data showed like we haven't. We haven't changed anything, the number of leads are still coming through we could do. We actually had analytics into the software, the tracking the software tracking into the pack semantic software, and we could tell it that rondon patients were still coming through it actually was a back end issue. They didn't know it because they didn't know what to fix. They didn't know what to solve. And that just happens like you know, dentists go to school to be dentists not to be business owners, a lot of times, they don't know and so once we're able to show them that Then we we sent in a coach and helped help them get that stuff fixed. But you know, initially we we took the brunt of the blame and had nothing to do with us.
Joe
I love that. I love that you guys figured out the solution though, right? I feel like a lot of agencies, Adam, if they were presented that circumstance, and the client was pissed, they would have just been like, Alright, I'll cancel your account. Like they just like they wouldn't have went and solved the issue. Right? Just because like a client has a problem doesn't mean like, like, we have to be problem solvers. We have to go figure out what's happening. And if you just roll at every request, like you're not going to be able to build anything, I believe, like truly sustainable.
Adam
Yeah. And it's tough though, because it's hard to it's hard to systematize that, right. It's, in some capacity, you have to have really smart people on your team that are dedicated to that, you know, the action that's been or the years that's been the biggest thing that you know, one of the biggest things I've learned is just really getting getting great people and leveling them up and, you know, empowering them And giving them everything they need. Taking your best people and getting them help, you know, if you've got an account manager, whatever their title is, they're the ones dealing with with clients and they're a rock star. I mean, find out how you put more accounts on under them, you know if their capacity is 30 accounts a month, higher than an assistant so they can go to 45 because that's going to in turn, dramatically improve the quality of services that they can provide, because they're the ones looking at those accounts. I I seldom go in unless there's a problem and look at the guy I I make sure that the team ideally has what they need to be
Joe
100% definitely agree I'm curious, you brought up while tracking a lot and making sure that the front office staff or whoever's answering the phone is doing a good job. I'm curious how you present that to staff or to the dentist in your case so that it comes off as a win. And not a, like you're pissing off the front end office manager or whoever's answering the phone because I found I mean funny about them dental I had a dentist as a patient that had seven or eight practices and just trying to help them convert better on the phone resulted in us ultimately getting canned because the front office manager got, you know, really that though
Adam
so, we've learned that I've seen front office managers, especially if they're new and they get hired and to help with the marketing and their media, self proclaimed marketing manager, director or expert. First thing they want to do is cut marketing cost because they think that's going to be the thing the doctor wants to hear. And we run into issues with with that and lost accounts over you know, you never fight the front desk. So we always approach it with like we're so we have a team of people, of staff. I don't know how many people on that stuff on the team. Now. Several And we listen to every marketing. I did every identifiable marketing related call, I'm sure. So last year, we listened to like 90,000 marketing related phone calls on behalf of our dental practice. And that doesn't include like, existing calls to the practice from existing patients and in all that is marked with it. So then what we do is we take that data, we aggregate it out into an all up report where we tagged all the calls they do they tag, what type of call was it was an efficient call if they converted them or not. So that we've got a bunch of metrics, we're looking at a baseline when when an account comes on board, what are the conversion rates? And then we actually break it down by person to answer so in our dashboard, we'll have Jenny and like, Katie, you know, and we'll have their conversion rate, we'll have it all up. And then what we're looking to do is say, okay, we want to help you take this conversion percentage, and we want to bump that up. And so what we'll do is we'll schedule out a like an hour long sit down by them, and my team are very empathetic and will say, you know, you guys are doing a wonderful job, but here's some things that we can do to improve this. And they'll actually let them listen to the calls that they didn't convert, and provide some feedback on how they could have done a better job. And, and that has been at least the best approach. Now, you know, you can only do so much, you know, they actually have to do the work, but the ones that follow up, we see significant increases in conversion rates. And there's, you know, you look at all the calls coming into a dental practice, and patients are really like, Oh, I want four or five reasons, I think that studies show on. So we train on how to handle and, you know, and that's, I guess, just been our approach to it. There's no it's not combative, it's just like, you know, we understand but let's show you kind of an approach that actually, we've found work and all these other prizes, and it's a lot easier to kind of use social proof to justify this like this. working across the hundreds of other practices, you know, to work for you, you know, just implement these things. Let's start. And if they do, they typically, you know, will do much better.
Joe
I think, I think one takeaway that I had from what you just said is the data approach, right? So if you come to them at a, here's, here's what our clients across the board are doing, how they're converting, here's how you guys we know, we just started with you, but here's where you're at. And then you're like, here's how we can help. Right? And here's how, you know, here's some things that you can do to improve. I think that just showing them the data shouldn't take away anything that's combative.
Adam
But yeah, I mean, it would help. I mean, we're not we're not we basically are telling them we're trying to work with them, and help them succeed, and that we found some areas of opportunity and I think it'd be no different than, you know, going to anyone on our team and trying to level them up. You know, they're trying to do a good job too. And there's also upside to it. for them as well. So if we show them our process on how to convert on the phones and work patients through, they're actually going to spend less time on that call, which is great for them, because that frees them up to do other things as well. And it's gonna make them look like a rock star. And then lastly, you're able to benchmark conversion rates by multiple people in the office. Well, that's even better, because now you can say, Well, you know, Jenny's actually burning it 20% higher than you. Let's help you get to that. Because obviously, she's doing
Joe
Yep. Yeah, man, that's fantastic. Um, one of the other things that that you brought up that I want to point out and really talk through a little bit, because I don't see other agencies doing this and we work with a lot of successful agencies is sending coaches into your customers, right, sending them into a dental practice. Can you talk about maybe like what type of coaches you guys work with or what kind of categories those coaches are in? Because again, I think that's like their You You're, you're on the same playing field as the dentist, you want them to win, right? Otherwise, they're not going to stay a customer. And if they're having a problem, it's in your best interest to really help them make sure that they solve that problem so that I can can help fuel their business. So I'm curious, like, what what kind of coaches you've worked with maybe what's worked, what hasn't? Because I think that that's in the best interest of every agency out there do something similar?
Adam
Yeah, you know, we typically are dealing with coaches that help with operationally operational related aspects of their business. First and foremost. So, you know, most most practices of struggle with us are gonna struggle with almost any marketing company, they're already there, in a lot of cases struggling because they don't know how to run a business at the level they want to be at. And a lot of times it comes from a lack of maybe understanding what's wrong within the practice. They don't really know the numbers. They don't They don't know the the issues that are preventing them from moving forward, right? We all face it's every business is going to face us. And that's why you hire coaches or whatever, right? And so what we're looking at is, you know, bringing someone into Can you dive into this and say, okay, identify, we've identified what we can do a degree but sending in somebody that has experience looking at this working with dentists and say, okay, you know, here's, here's the issues, and we're going to help solve. And I don't know, every coach is going to kind of figure that out on their own. But for the most part, what we're looking for, again, is coaches, dental coaches, that that are going to help them with our operations, case acceptance, things that, you know, we're going to identify as the issue. And that's, that's kind of what we look for.
Joe
Gotcha. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So I think in dental that would just be like, like practice management type of coaches. Right?
Adam
To some degree, yeah, you know, they all kind of have their unique approach to what they refer to themselves as doing but yeah, they help with practice management, some some do. Other other front end, you know, coaching with staff, others do like hiring and recruitment. And so there's a, you know, kind of gamutwith all due willing only go so far on that there's really as it pertains to the operational aspect of it, or the case acceptance aspect of it, if that becomes an issue. So those are the two situations in which we sent somebody. But if we used to send somebody in, it's really like, not their forte, if you will, then they'll know someone that they can refer out at that time. The biggest thing is, you know, will that practice, embrace that feedback and trust it and work with them, and that usually it's a bigger challenge, more so than just even finding a coach. And there's been cases where we'll pay to send somebody in to get get some level of help. But as a long term solution to seldom See, practices stick around like they need. They almost just really need like a hard kick on a pass to figure out they do need help in that challenging for them to admit it.
Joe
100% agree. Cool, man. Let's talk about your your team. You brought up your team a little bit. I think you said that they're mostly remote or all remote. Tell us a little bit about how many people you have on staff, maybe what your team looks like, department wise, do you outsource much?
Adam
We have plenty, some FTEs and then we've got contractors all over US and abroad. probably bring in the number 30 range 30 some range. Everyone's remote 100%. For some, for a limited portion of our our entirety of a company we did have offices, but for the most part since that everyone's kind of been remote. So, you know, that's just kind of the way we've become accustomed to working. And all of our meetings are in front of a camera, Amanda data that years ago, and, you know, just became, you know, the culture, we use a system similar to slack with just one click, it's like part of the Zoho migration or ecosystem So, you know, there's a lot of communication through that we do things like bit like bonus Lee so people can know each other with points. And then yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of been just kind of the way that we've, we've built it and brought it all on, there's been ups and downs. I don't know if you want to get into that. But, you know, I think if I had to do it again, I don't know that I would. You get a lot more out of having everyone I think collaboratively in an office. You see a lot of problems before they really get out of control. And if you really have to amazing people for it to work. And even though it doesn't always, it's just, it's it can be a lot more challenging for all aspects, you know, for example, even trying to hire a salesperson that's going to show up each day and do their job well. They're working remotely and they don't do that a lot, have a tendency to maybe go do other things. So we're already at a more new position. So having systems in place to hold him accountable on multiple levels of that are important too, but it's been a challenge for sure. The upside though, is everyone has a lot more freedom and, you know, our hiring pool is you know, the entire United States versus some area that we may struggle with on top of that, or not be able to foretell and so you know, there's there's certain trade offs to it all.
Joe
Definitely, completely agree I've, I've had both. I've had teams of 25 to 35 in house teams the same size, almost all remote. There's lots of trade offs. You brought up one which is The talent pool right? For me living in West Palm Beach. It's kind of a funky area for hiring palm beaches right here which, and I live in Palm Beach County. So like 90% of the world's wealth at some point lives in Palm Beach County. Right. And so you had like very high level income. And then you have a lot, a lot of kind of lower to mid income. And then it's a steep drop off to just everybody else that is a laborers and working in restaurants and just supporting the company, everybody else. And so here I can say it was it was very hard for me in the past to have a have a team just because the the labor that was here to help me wasn't what I was looking for. Right. They weren't tech background, and if they were they the salaries needed to employ them were ridiculous. Right? Well, I think you got to definitely take into consideration of where you live and your talent pool. And definitely being remote helps widen that talent pool. I'm curious as the CEO as, as the owner, Adam, do you have an office yourself? You work from home,
Adam
I work from home I built an office were working out of. But yeah, I've worked from home for many, many, many years now is kind of just the norm. But there was a time that we had an office and we had some local employees and whatnot. And, you know, as far as that cultural growth drive, but yeah, to answer your question, I mean, I have a home office. Like every every employee.
Joe
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. So for me, personally, I found I had to have kind of a work life balance. So for me working from home doesn't work too. Well. I got two young kids, right. And, and I would just be like working all the time.
So my office for me is actually working Really important. And there are employees that come in, but they're their key employees. And we keep a very kind of high level, I found that if I'm not careful that I get in the weeds very quickly, and I can let their kind of attitudes and daily you know, stress and problems affect me as the CEO and the guidance of the company, and very quickly, you know, we're not doing what we need to do and I'm not leading like I should. Right. So yeah, I've got to protect yourself and your mindset too.
Adam
Yeah, you know, I have, I have a pretty sizable house on so you know, in the office is kind of secluded, and it's, you know, when I go into the office, I'm at the office and that kind of when I leave it just, it almost feels like something picks off and now I'm, I'm not working. So, but again, you know, if I think over the years, if we had everyone into, like, when I fly employees out, we do like company meetings or leadership meetings or one to ones, I fly them out, put them up at a hotel, and then they work here where I'm at for a week at a time or however many days I've got them out, we just get so much more done, that we don't virtually, and there's so much value to that. I see a lot of things that you just wouldn't otherwise and you build relationships, you just don't over zoom or whatever, you're using them. So there's a trade off.
Joe
You can iterate so much faster to like you can see where they're thinking and where they're like what what's not going quite right or the gap that they have that you know that they don't see that you see. And yeah, I mean things.
Adam
Everything. I mean somebody let's say somebody who's like not showing up on time, you know, it's hard to tell that if they're working from home or they're not, they're just every every facet of it, you know, like I said, we've got through some some tough employees and, you know, the team we have is pretty strong and you issues at this point. So that's been a positive but over the years we've, you know, we've lost clients and a lot of turmoil term oil over just bad apples that we couldn't identify quick. Yeah. That's just one of those things if you lose.
Joe
Yeah, it's hard, especially as you get bigger, the company culture becomes so important. And it can take a long time especially working remote to really figure out and then it's like it's too late. No matter how fast you act once you figure it out. It's too late. So it gets difficult keeping the the company culture we found leveled out right. When you're, you're big, even I found that the managing, you know, 15 to 20 person team. I feel like changes a lot. Once you get like 25 Plus, like there's like this tipping dynamic that starts to happen very quickly. At that level.
Adam
Yeah, it's more to me it's more of like guiding the leadership of managers leadership team as to how to, you know, how to create and nourish and nurture that, that individual culture within their own groups. I mean, there's, there's, again, overarching cultural things that can be handed out company wide or passed out company wide, but again, they kind of have to do things within their own groups to the to the capacity which can you know, some people on my team were really good at doing that as well. There are a lot better I my personality and kind of, for me, I, I don't think I never came into this thinking about HR and culture and all that so you don't learn it. There's vast and that's one of the most challenging parts. So there's people that are very good If that was me, I would just show up and do the work and then call it a day. But you know that that's not going to work for most people, you know, they need more than that. And so we have to find a way to provide that. And that gets back to Okay, well, who on my team is, loves doing that and will embrace that, you know, and that's, and that's not me, you know, a lot of cases to an issue to come up with. And so I leave that to them. One why, for example, my VP company VP, she initiated like a full day off and we're about to do like a Netflix virtual watch party here at noon, which is about an hour and 10 minutes from here from now. Just other things, you know, that they do that they'll initiate, I never would have considered that but you know, they've all taken a beating from all this COVID stuff and client stuff. And you know, it's been a rough, really rough couple of weeks, you know, so I don't think we're out of the weeds yet. Now.For 30 days, so it's just beginning in some cases, and I don't know, who knows what's gonna happen here?
Joe
Definitely, I think it's just begun as well. I'm curious Adam, what what would you consider as, as an owner? What would you consider your superpower? Like, if you only had to do a couple of things right, or the things that we're going to provide the biggest leverage and the most leverage for fire gang? What do you think those things are? What do you think your superpowers are?
Adam
its strategy? I love to strategize I see a lot. I basically am very good at thinking outside the box, looking at new and innovative, innovative ways to approach things or just just overarching strategy I think is the biggest thing. And then if there's one one thing would probably be that you know, identifying talent, typically as a as a pretty good I tend to have a pretty good grasp on, on that I know, you know, who are the rock stars and I can try to put them in the right positions and level them up. So you know that that would be kind of a secondary, but I think the thing I like to do most a strategy, I don't I don't like the the grind and the nitty gritty in the low level task based stuff I hate. I hate the monotonous aspects of it all. So I try to stay away from it, almost to a fault. But you know, if you know those things, and you hire people that support you for the rest, and that's what I really try to do.
Joe
Yeah, man, that makes perfect sense. I think, as a business owner, what most of us should be focused on. I talk with a lot of agency owners that seemed like they get, you know, in the weeds way too often when they're not working on strategy stuff, when that's what their team and their company really as a whole needs to push them in the right direction. So that's awesome.
I'm curious. I try to stay away from Covid 19 during this interview as much as possible, Just so that it can stay evergreen so to speak, but you brought it up, and I don't think it's going anywhere quickly. So I want to ask you just real quick, rapid fire. A couple questions about Covid,
Adam
I think. I think regardless, even people looking back at this, if they watched this in a year, they're gonna remember this moment and be able to compare how they went through it. And so I think there's a lot of potential value to that for sure.
Joe
Definitely. I agree. 100%. What do you think about Tele- dentistry during Covid 19.
Adam
So we're, we just did a huge webinar on it last night, and another one a week ago, we're pushing everything into that significant so I own I'm a 50% owner in an actual medical clinic that operates throughout the state of Idaho, with a doctor and we launched that that business couple years back and it's 100%, telemedicine, better the whole process or and so on. And so We've been looking we've been taking that and applying a lot of that into getting in front of dental dentists that are struggling right now. And so we just write me right before this call, I hopped on with my main sales person and a client from a prospective client from last night's webinar on this and just a walk them through. I think that I think that it's the future, I think that the dentists would be very smart to embrace it every every medical professional would be now you can't in some cases, you can't fully treat someone if they're remote, right? Like, you know, in some cases you can somebody's sick and you can ask them a series of questions and you don't need to draw blood or you know, swallow anything that you probably didn't if you did, you could send them out to do that. For dentists it's a little bit more intricate in the fact that you know, you need an X ray, you know, full in depth exam and all these other things. But the the thing that a virtual based telemedicine situation allows them to do How to build a relationship and have a conversation with someone how did that all so they can. So what a lot of people have been doing for a lot of years is often like free consultations for emergencies or anything for that matter, when you can do that virtually and not really take up a lot of time and they still charge the entire consultation show up what we can do then as you give them an opportunity to issue an opportunity to talk to you get to know you and and see that you know, you care, you're empathetic and and that should help. And that's all done before they ever walk into the office. And you're only going to spend a handful of minutes doing that. And I think that you could build a you can build much more value and trust doing that and cast a wider and that's so that's something that we're I mean, we're all in on right now. I just got a call, you know the guy's gonna sign up for a program or shortly, not at the level of the price point we'd like working with Twice.And that's, that's kind of our approach. So yeah, I mean, to answer your question, we're all in on it and that's what we're advising. Active, right?
Joe
That's awesome. Such so exciting. I think telemedicine is huge. I didn't even know that they were doing it with dental. So I was just talking to my business partner the other day, and he brought it up and I'm like, wow, I had no idea. So I think it's, it's really cool bleeding edge stuff and and off the fall along with what you're doing. Sounds like an interesting one for sure.
Adam
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really one of the only approaches they have at this point, you know, with the virus and all that and a lockdown. They're still there is still tremendous opportunity out there in the marketplace, especially things like emergencies, potentially implants, things of that, you know, the same number of people that for example, haven't had an emergency, you know, we're going to have an emergency they still did right? They didn't go away. There's just so few options. And any general practice that gets out of right now is going to, you know, do amazing the clients have listened to us that embraces their, their playing house. I mean, their their ad costs on Google have dropped by just so much. I mean, it's, you start looking at like, the conversion rates and all the other data points around, like how effective the ads are. It's crazy. It was crazy. So yeah.
Joe
We've seen for dentists, and a lot of other businesses right now with COVID 19 You know, cost per clicks down 20 30% conversions were like up 20% and just absolutely crazy. Yeah, you know, yeah, he's dramatically cut.
Adam
So, yeah, we're, I mean, I'd have to pull the data but I want to say like, the the cot like, we're Our I believe our conversion rate is like up over 100% Google after emergencies. I mean, it's it's not hard you just got to follow you know, handful of steps and yeah, just lots of opportunity but it's still a struggle right because everyone is everyone in this thing this came out of nowhere and no one really could plan for appropriately and overnight clients shut down and they immediately don't want to pay anyone and so we have a bunch of clients who still do pay us and didn't ask for production and costs and services and whatnot, but we had a lot more than we did. And so you know, we're just doing the best we can to work with them and still pay our team and not lay them off and we're kind of fighting this at both ends. So it's trying to come up with right now solution that gets, I guess, some revenue in the door, and maybe makes a mix make some good like worse. Get your revenue in the door and work with a handful practices that, you know, we can build some relationships with that when we come out of this, well, then why not really reinvest with us at that time? So? Yeah, it's really the only option I think we have at this point.
Joe
Yeah, for sure. What, um, what do you think as a whole, the reaction has been that you've seen from dentists do you think, you know, we all go through like, it's like a grievance, right. It's like, holy crap, right? Like, as soon as this hit, it was like, man, pull the account, stop it, cancel it, pause it. And then like two or three days later, hey, like, we're getting crushed. And we can't get crushed. We need to pay our team, what can be done? Right. And then we come up with a strategy. We're reactivating the accounts. So you know, there's this grievance of holy crap and immediate reaction, and then a couple days later, a week later, it's like, actually, what can you help us with? We're sorry, we shouldn't have done that. It's more level headed. I'm curious, just as a whole, like, what have you seen? Like, what's, what's the normal case for you? All of your dental clients?
Adam
Yeah, I've seen. So a significant portion of them. And basically I just said, we, we can't pay, we need an option. So we said, All right, well, we'll defer the payment. We're still gonna charge you because, you know, we we are turning anything off. We're not like removing him from from Google, you know what I mean? Like, we, in a lot of cases, there's a lot more work involved to put content out that says we're close to, you know, adjust ads if we do or turn them off or work with them through this process. And again, this came out of nowhere, so we had to figure out what's going to be our policy around it. What are we going to offer practices and so you know, what we did is said well, we'll defer your payments you're still gonna pay those bills Passover other months. And, you know, and I see that like, everyone does it you know, if you got a mortgage, you're not going to just waive those, those mortgage fees. They're gonna still say, Listen, you got to pay Sound money we're just not, we're just going to tag it to the end or, you know, add it somewhere else. And so that's the approach that we went out some practices are like, like, I don't want to pay you at all, because I'm not open, it's like, well, you know, our cost and go away, you know, we, maybe we change the amount of work that we did, but we don't build based on our never have. So we sign a contract or sign a client, we have an intro kind of into a overarching contract. And we, we base that 12 months based on what we on average are going to do for that account, and then we build accordingly. And some months, we have to put in more work and other months, we don't as it's, you know, they're following their advice or their whatever, right. So, I'm right or wrong, you know, we don't we don't work out. And that's it, but, but what we've seen is, you know, in a lot of cases, a lot of practices have come to us and said we don't want to pay you at all or we're upset now. Fortunately, that hasn't been widespread. But you know, it's it's a tough thing because, you know, we're a business. We got a We got employees and mouths to feed and just like them, you know, we're trying to figure out how to how to keep people from getting laid off and not collecting anything. Because people still get unemployment checks. It's like, six, eight weeks out at this point. You know, I don't know what people are going to do, but we've been doing everything we can to pay our staff to keep them on board and, and, and be available. And the other part of that, too, is, you know, some clients aren't turning everything off. They're pivoting and, and they're working with us. And so it's like, you know, we can't we can't be everything to everyone. So we got to we got to try to do what's best for the masses and this kind of approach that we took.
Joe
Yes. I'm curious what was your What was your message to your customers as a whole about what you suggested or what you think we should do? As a whole kind of all fire gang current customers?
Adam
You know, we, we didn't practically like we weren't sure going into this like what was going to happen, you know, sometimes Some states were open where others were getting shut down. And, you know, I mean, we're, I guess a week and a half ago, I was out of the car, you know. So I think it was that short. I have to look at my dates, but I think it was about a week and a half ago. So I mean, this last week is really where things really got out of line. And maybe it was a little bit, maybe it was a, I've got a look at my dates. But the point is, is it just kind of came out of nowhere for a lot of a lot of these practices for us. And so maybe we were probably a little bit more reactive and to properly say, Well, here's what we can do. What I didn't want to do is go to every practice and say, listen, we could defer your payments, because I didn't want to encourage that. Does everyone want to take on that? And no one's doing that. Right. You know, you talk to the lending companies that are not practically going out to all their clients and saying that either so they're just painting off you have an issue, call us and we'll try to work with you on that. So You know, in that regards, I personally didn't have a message. I mainly work with my team to figure out okay, well what's the
Joe
Yo Hey, it's all good, all good Just had to cut out some some middle section there. No problem, we got it. We got good editors, we'll make it. Alright, so jumping back in, where did Where did I lose you? I'm just talking about everything kind of happened quickly. And so we weren't able to kind of be proactive. We just had to get, you know, focus on being reactive and come up with a way to save accounts basically, as we were getting, you know, phone calls and questions coming in. Yeah, you know, the, I think my primary concern was how do I, how do I, where's that line between being enough, like, empathetic with with clients, but still protecting the revenue in the company and being able to, you know, be families and employees and so on and protect them? So it's a hard line because it's different for every client. You know, one client is is you know, saying I'm closing I don't want to have to pay a dime and the other ones like, you know, just happy to continue on paying and find out figure out other solutions during this time. So we see it all. It's hard to create a, like a one size fits all, even though that's probably what they all want. And it's been challenging. We've lost clients in this. We've had someone just say, we're closer, we're not paying you ever again, kind of thing and others were finding opportunity. And so you know, just trying to navigate a problem, but in terms of like, a proactive message on what we're going to do. Ah, I don't know. I mean, I'm going to look back at this and wonder, maybe should I had been more proactive in the communication? I don't know. But man, like, you'll get your inbox. I mean, everyone was communicating COVID 19. It was almost like the GDPR kind of initiative. Like, you know, you're just flooded with everyone saying the same stuff. And to me, I didn't want to approach it with that, because it just seemed like it was disingenuous, it didn't have a lot of value, you know, so We we worked internally to figure out okay, well, what's going to be our process here, and it almost came in stages to, you know, some in some markets, you know, we'd have clients that get shut down, but everywhere else in the US, which is fine, and then all of a sudden it started happening quicker and quicker and quicker. And by then I was like, well, this, this whole thing is going all in. So there's got to make, make what we can work on. You know, so I don't know, I didn't, I didn't practically come out with like a specific message to address everyone and maybe I should have maybe I should have gotten on more calls. I really just worked with the team to empower them to communicate to clients as best they could come up with like solutions and creative options on this. So we create a policy that says, you know, we'll defer your payment we'll have you just pay it back. You know,
that's better than most agencies. So at least you got that done. There's no right or wrong, right?
Adam
Like this is a there's no like, we'll look back at this and say We could have done better, but there was really no, I think there was a little planning, I think for it ahead of it. You know, I, as I saw, I didn't some of those some of the practices that got shut down, or the situation, the markets that got shut down, we're going to be as long as they are and they still have it. So, I mean, we're still going through it. What have you seen a lot of agencies do?
Joe
I think, I think most agencies haven't had a plan for saving deals, continuing contracts, they've just like, whatever their clients have said, they've just kind of folded, right? Like I want to cancel, I want to pause, whatever. And obviously, like, that's the worst thing that you can do for for them. And for you as an agency, I mean, talks about not being able to protect your revenue and revenue, just like quite literally going away overnight. Like, how are you going to support your team? I mean, you're not going to be able to. So I think you did the right thing focusing on on exactly What you did I think that not very many agencies, but some were able to communicate at least like some leadership during it. Not necessarily like, here's how we're going to handle your payment, right? Because they didn't want to do that and I don't think that they should. But more like, Hey, here's some cool things that we made for you about COVID to update your social media. Yeah, we did all that, you know, here's a here's a warning or here's a message to put on the website or we've updated all your websites with something that addresses COVID just to show leadership so it's not like we're the marketing agency just go Yeah. We saw a ton of them just did nothing like okay,
Adam
yeah, interesting. We did that. The other thing too is is to approach them with solutions to keep marketing going. You know, being a product with like, let's advertise Tele - dentistry we, we got out all of our clients, even before the first location was The first market shut down and said Listen, this is how we recommend approaching going into this Tele dentistry. But you know a lot of them they didn't take us up on it and they still just shut down but I'm you know, I don't know how I'm gonna look back and wonder if there's anything more we could have done and i don't know
Joe
i think you know with with where you're at on the Tele dentistry man I think your leadership will show after this right like Adam was freaking on it like He called this thing because it was kind of right place right time for you in your history and in the Tele dentistry or tele medicine. So I think that that was that was very timely.
Adam
it you know, you you you know, we can say that but the the challenge we've had is actually execution on it whereas practices, they just don't want to do it or they haven't taken that approach and maybe they will once they realize this is going to happen longer. But a lot of practice, I mean, we're still getting some practices that are coming back and saying, Hey, I know I want this. But it's early on, I mean, a lot of this, you know, they, they're probably dealt with their own stuff, too, you know, what do they do with their staff closing down and how they get bills, and, you know, all that. And so the last thing you probably want to figure out is how they deal with marketing, but, you know, trying to offer a solution for them to keep the doors open at some capacity and generate revenue when, you know, hard to say, I don't know.
a tough a tough market. I'd also be curious to know what a lot of practices are doing revenue and you know, how they're gonna, if they're even going to come out of this. The, this might be a bit selfish upside, actually, this is that this might flussh out a lot of like, just people that are just self proclaimed experts jumping into the market that are burning bridges and going to become a self proclaim, you know, whatever, right? Just it'll flush out a lot of those account rather than And hopefully, hopefully the good, but it hard is hard to say again, I don't know, I have no idea what will happen.
Joe
I agree with you, I know that it will. We see so many agencies that have just thrown their hands up. And not like ones that are brand new, but I mean, ones that have been around for a while. Good, good business, they do good business, they have good clients, but their immaturity in business led them to just caving when this happened, because they just didn't know how to handle anything.
Adam
And so you actually know, many practices that are agencies that are going to close after this.
Joe
I don't know how they can stay open. Okay, right. Like they just, they were, they played the reactive game and didn't have a policy at all on how to handle cancellations or pauses and let their clients cancel when they shouldn't have right like ultimately, with that happening, their revenue just falling overnight. So hard and having mouths to feed and commitments and employees, like, I don't know how they survive, to be honest, because they were so reactive and didn't have any policies in place at all on how to handle. So I like there will be a big a big restructuring. And I think they're the people that were proactive in working with their clients and coming up with solutions, whether it was deferring or partial payments or whatever it was, it doesn't matter, I think are the ones that are going to be around for the long term and are really going to end up again, selfishly, but they're going to end up claiming, I think a lot of market share very quickly. Once things start to resurface. And whether it's dental or whatever market it is. start to realize that they're coming back open for business, it's going to be like, Oh crap, what do I do? And it's gonna be fun.
Adam
Yeah, it's hard to say You know, the the challenge on the flip side is that, I think that it's going to be a lot of practices that won't want to spend any money coming out of this if it's like 2008, or who knows how long this is going to continue on. But you know, so you kind of have the trade off of like less less people in the market, less agency, but then also less clients. Where's that trade off on? But you're, you know, I, I would love personally to get a hold of anyone that's struggling and just say, Listen, I'll buy your client base, or I'll you know, give you a cut of occurring or something right now. Let us take them over and run on we've got we've not laid off a single employ. So I have all the infrastructure in place. And we'll find a way to take that burden and everyone plans, something to that effect, and I'm sure a lot of that's going to happen, but you know, I don't know, man. Never talk stuff out there. I mean, all the years I've never had anything like this, you know, it's just overnight. All sudden you just got to bed.
Joe
Yeah, that's crazy. Crazy Crazy, for sure. Well, Adam, I really, really, really appreciate you coming on. It was great getting to know you over the last hour or so I appreciate you sharing too, like you didn't keep anything guarded. You shared from the heart, you shared what was happening in your business, real successful, you know business in the marketplace. And and I appreciate that I'm sure all of our listeners appreciate that as well. I want to wrap up with one kind of final question. So at the end of a lot of podcasts, they asked you to recommend three books. I like books don't get me wrong, but I do things a little bit different. I don't know about you, but I'm the type of guy like if you don't capture me in the first chapter of a book, like I'm out, you know, the books gone. I'm putting it down. It's never getting picked back up. So is there one book Adam that you would recommend that kind of made the biggest impact on you or the way that you do business that you would recommend? To, to me and to the listeners.
Adam
That's tough. Man, I'd have to think on that. I mean, I've got some books, like some old ones that I still remember because, you know, it was back when, like, we're still growing and, you know, I leaned on those like, I don't know, built a cell, kind of just old, older books like that. And then non business related, you know, some some amazing books like sapiens, just the evolution of mankind. Very interesting. I just had just bought and loaded up conscious capitalism. So we'll see. I don't know if you read that. You'll your blink was a great book. You know, from our work of Gladwell is a part of Malcolm Malcolm was at the Rockefeller principles was great. So there's a handful that come to mind that I've read and reread over the years. If I'd known I could probably pull up in a better way. People ask me that. What's your favorite movie? Cuz I love movies and I just could never remember on the spot for us, what's your book?
Joe
Man, I don't have just one. I'll tell you the book that's probably been the best for me in the last 18 months has been this book by James Schramko called work less, make more. Sounds like such a hypee title. And it is, but the book is really about simplifying things and and not not getting into the Gary Vee hustle and grind and hustle your face off. Yeah, not not trying to knock off, you know, 100 to do's off your to do list and instead like focusing on what really matters. So James thinks can apply the 80/20 principle to itself. And so the 80/20 principle actually becomes, you know, 4% of your work effort results. In 64% of the results, and like, basically, why would you ever want more than that? It's just too much work. Right? And he teaches you to, to effectively calculate your your effective hourly rate, which is how many hours you work, then, you know, divided from how much you take home. And basically, that should be the way that you figure out what's working and what's not, and how you judge if you're doing good or not. And it was just really, really refreshing. Like, this guy lives a great lifestyle. Family, friends, and it makes a crazy living and it's just a different argument in today's world that I think has has had a lasting impression on me.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, just some capacity. Very cool. object. Okay. Yeah, definitely.
Adam
Great stuff. Any other questions before we wrap up?
Joe
No man, that's it. I just want to Say thank you any place that we could link up specifically for you obviously, we'll link up your website in the chat anything for social or any resources or anything for you.
Adam
I mean, we push a lot of information out on our website and on our list and go get on our email list. I mean, we're gonna we're gonna send you a lot of content but you're gonna see like anytime we're doing webinars or anything like that, it's usually usually kind of what I would believe is leading edge approaches to marketing that a lot of people could probably learn from so like if anyone was on our webinar last night or even last week I mean, this kind of stuff is apply to any industry that should be while it works. But aside from that, I mean people find me on Facebook or anything else to if they want to connect personally. But just all in almost spots. I guess.
Joe
Alright man, we'll link that up. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it man. Have a have a fantastic weekend right.
Adam
Now you too. Good luck.
Joe
Hey guys, Joe Troyer, signing out.
