Joe Troyer 0:31
Hey everybody, it's Joe Troyer, and welcome to Show Me The Nuggets yet another episode super excited today, to have a legend I would say in the agency space on Jason Swank, in a conversation that I was having in the greenroom before one of the shows, one of our guests said, Man, you just got to get Jason on the show. And I thought, Man, that's a great idea. So for those of you guys that don't know, Jason has been around the agency world for a really, really long time. And we're going to be really talking about how to build a large agency and sell it for a profit. And I'm not mistaking Jason has a little bit of experience in that himself. So, man, Jason, without further ado, welcome to the show, brother.
Jason Swenk 1:30
Oh, thanks for having me on.
Joe Troyer 1:31
So super excited to chat with you about your experience building an agency yourself scaling, exiting, and talking then about, you know, the common things that you're seeing in agencies today and in the market from from a coaching perspective, and I think it's so cool when somebody sees both sides of the audience and the coin, so to speak.
Jason Swenk 1:51
Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I ran an agency for 12 years, and always wish there was like a resource, I can kind of tap on or, you know, community I could be a part of, and so it is nice to see it on the other side, you know, and really be able to see the things and really, I think so many agencies are so emotionally attached to their agency that it clouds their judgment, on some of the things that they actually need to do in order to, to get to the next kind of level of, you know, what I look at is like, kind of climbing a mountain.
Joe Troyer 2:24
So, tell me about business today. Before we like go backwards? What What do you currently spend your time doing? What are your investments? Or what are your companies? What's today look like? And Jason Swenk world?
Jason Swenk 2:37
Yeah. Well, with the personal brand, it's all about helping agency owners scale faster by, you know, really showing them the systems and the strategies that work for us. And that has been working for a lot of other clients and members. And I do that by, you know, showing them a framework. And I do that by, you know, helping them build a community of like minded people like them that are sharing what's working with them. And then I also own another agency with a number of really smart people that we've been growing really quick over the past year and a half, and we're a little over 20 million in revenue. So I'm back in to the agency world as owning, not just coaching.
Joe Troyer 3:19
That's awesome, man. So now let's, let's go back, let's tell the audience a little bit about your background, how you ended up in this crazy little marketing space and agency world? That would be awesome place to start.
Jason Swenk 3:33
Yeah, I mean, it was all by accident. You know, I graduated from Florida State. So you know, not well, I mean, hopefully you're not a Miami fan. Since you're in South Florida. I might have to end might have to end the interview. A little short. But I graduated from there and I worked with a company called Arthur Andersen at the time as a computer programmer. But I hated it, I really was not designed to work for anybody, I've been fired from almost every job I've ever had. And at the time, this is 99, I created a website making fun of one of my friends that look like Justin Timberlake.
And, and that was when Nsync was really popular, which I think was from Florida as well, if I can remember right, and I called a fake bandf fake website called In Shit, and it got popular. And then people started asking me to design websites. And so that's how I kind of got my journey of, you know, being a creative agency and designing websites for you know, Hitachi and Lotus cars, Legal Zoom and really building those, you know, those, those sites and those brands. And then 12 years went by like that, and I had a bunch of people wanting to buy it and we sold it and then I didn't know what I wanted to do after that. And then I kind of fell into this this role by accident again. So I guess I just need to kind of, I read, I read really well when I see this writing on the wall going, Hey, go this way.
Joe Troyer 5:04
That's awesome, man. I'm curious. Like, I feel like most of the agency coaches and agencies out there most of the marketplace, so to speak, isn't in the corporate world? Right. And you as a coach, I'm curious. What's your take on that statement? I guess, is that right? Is that wrong? But is it just not marketed as much? Is that why you don't see it? I'm curious, your thoughts?
Jason Swenk 5:29
I really don't really kind of look at anything else. So I can't really comment on that. You know, I always I don't even know what other people are helping out agencies, because I don't want to know, because what I've what I learned, when I was building the agency, and working with so many clients, a lot of times, they would say, hey, what websites, you know, here's a website I really like. And then just sub subconsciously, you would see that and then you started seeing the whole market look the same. So I've always kind of kind of blacked out what other people are doing. You all see some things on Facebook and kind of laugh at what people claim and that kind of stuff. But, you know, at the end of the day, I really don't look, I don't care, I just kind of do what I do.
Joe Troyer 6:15
So in the in the coaching side of things, do you see that most of your, your customers and clients are doing big stuff? Like you are more corporate type of stuff all across the board?
Jason Swenk 6:24
Yeah. Yeah, it's all across the board. I find a lot of people niching down. And I've always talked more about that, you know, kind of like, your past guests, you know, Chris Dreyer with Rankings, right? Like, you can't really get more niche down, then, you know, personal injury attorneys doing over x. And we just do SEO, right. So, you know, he does a fantastic job at that. And I, and he really understands that market. And that's why he's been able to really excel and grow, rather than just say, I'm just going to go after the corporate world, right? It's a little more of a challenge, even though I think when agency owners start they go, I want to work with the biggest brands in the world. And I think it's a lot harder to nowadays, in order to get to that level. And when I started, you know, digital marketing was just really starting, you know, I mean, that's when kind of really people wanted websites. Versus now it's, it's a lot harder.
Joe Troyer 7:25
mn. That's, that's really interesting. So in your agency and your first agency, you're obviously working with very, very large corporations, kind of the who's who, you know, you kind of went viral so to speak, and people started seeking you out because of this website, which is really cool. What What did the average job or contract what, what were you doing for people? What was the relationship? Like, tell me a little bit more about what you did for the customers deal terms length, etc?
Jason Swenk 7:52
Well, when we start working with the bigger clients, that was only to the last five years, okay, before then it was, you know, my first client was a realtor. And then I think I'm Marina. And then like a hair salon, it was just like, all right, all randomness. And we were able to grow to around a million when we were doing that. And then when we really started getting laser focus, and this is kind of by accident, I think a lot of people look at lasering down based on their past clients, rather than kind of lasering down on what they're really good at. We we really kind of laser down on what we were really good at around our creative and certain technologies that we had. So we were one of the first to develop a content management system, an email marketing system and e commerce system. We just, we kept getting bogged down with so many so much clients coming to us that we couldn't even realize that we needed to develop this as a SaaS product. We used to install all this stuff, you know, on the server side for people, so we missed a really big opportunity that way. So a lot of people want to work with the biggest brands, but honestly, they're the biggest pain in the ass is to work with. Honestly, I when I look back, I go. The Billion Dollar brands that you've never heard of are the ones that were our sweet spot. Because you could set your own terms. Like when you work with a Coca Cola, you came and say you work with Coca Cola, we would have to say we were with a large beverage company with a red logo in Atlanta.
Joe Troyer 9:27
Yeah, that's super interesting. Interesting, okay. I want to I want to transition to the new agency, because like you blew my mind when you said how much revenue you've done and how fast you've done it. I guess before though, I think it'd be remissed. And the listeners would probably kick my butt and say, Joe, why don't you ask Jason this? I'm curious. Like, when when you sold the business when you sold your agency originally? Who was the buyer? What What did the what what did they not like? Who were they like, but what did they do? Why did they see value in your company? What did they want it for? How, what would somebody find interesting about the exit of your agency?
Jason Swenk 10:06
Yeah, it's a great question. Because what they told me was totally different than what what the real reason was. So at the end of the day, the real reason was they wanted to buy us for revenue. So they could add more revenue and more EBITDA or net profit to their bottom line. So then they could sell again. Right? So we, when when I sold the agency, we later on sold nine months later, which was really good for me, because then I could exit rather than staying on for two years. Which, which I was I wasn't doing well working for right and working for someone.
Joe Troyer 10:43
Yeah, that was a blessing, for sure.
Jason Swenk 10:46
Yeah. And but I originally thought they hired or they bought us because of our social CRM, and a lot of that, you know, our methodology around that. But that wasn't the case. So, you know, learning and looking back at it, like if you can really start figuring out what's the real reason someone's actually wanting to buy you, then you have a little bit more leverage. Now, we had multiple people that wanted to buy us. So we did really well. And one of the lessons I learned is, make sure, and this is what we do in in the new agency as well of going give someone as much cash up front. Because if you tie it to an earn out, or something else, you really just don't control it anymore, you know, later on. So yeah, it was a, it was a wild ride.
And the other thing that I learned, and I want everybody to take this away of going whatever questions a buyer asks, you always ask that back, and then always make sure like, do they have the same culture that you have? Because I never wanted to put my team that actually got us to that point in jeopardy. Like if their culture was really corporate, and ours was not right. Like we were riding, like, literally motorized scooters, like, like smoke in the office, you know, in our, in our office, and just having a lot of fun. But if it was, like a really corporate place buying us it would have been a complete disaster.
Joe Troyer 12:10
Yeah, for sure. But the culture fit is important. I'm assuming that you had a pretty big team at that point, too. I mean, and when you got a big team that you're trying to take care of, I mean, that's, that becomes really important. And typically I find kills a lot of the deals, is the founders trying to take care of the team, and the new buyer doesn't really care or lies and says that they care. And then you know, their actions speak louder than their words,
Jason Swenk 12:36
you know, yeah. And actually, a lot of times when I go in to, you know, talk to an agency about buying them now, sometimes I actually do a really bad job because I talk them out of it. And I'm like, Look, because when we go in to buy an agency, we're only buying an agency that's over a million and EBITDA, net profit, not top line revenue. Everybody always focused on top line revenue. It's just complete crap. And even even me saying 20 million, that's complete crap, right? Like 6 million is the net profit. That's really what you're wanting to concentrate. So it was complete crap. I was hypocrite for saying that.
But a lot of times I talk people out of it like, Well, why do you want to sell? They're like, life changing number. I'm like, Yeah, but you can get to life changing number in probably six years by, you know, just you're taking a million dollars a year out like, like, why do you want to do that? And you're not in the business anymore? Right? Like, that's what makes it really interesting to buyers is it's very profitable. The owner doesn't is not in the day to day, right. All they're concentrate on is the who who do I need to hire? Who do I need to bring in rather than how and what? And so when I see that in an agency, I'm like, Oh, that's really good. They must have some good systems and strategies in place. They're really profitable. So if they bolt on to us, you know, it's gonna really work well.
Joe Troyer 13:58
Yeah, man. That's awesome. All right. So let's transition then to the new agency. That was the perfect bridge. What do you guys do? Who do you guys serve? Tell us
Jason Swenk 14:06
Yeah. Well, again, we kind of break the the golden rule of when, when I tell people like we're a full service digital agency, because a lot of times when people say that they're really full of shit. But we have we bought eight agencies in the past year and a half. That's how we've grown. So we started with a company or a small agency, a little bit over a million called e-rational. Thomas was the CEO of that. And just, we all had this idea of let's kind of go out let's find some funding, let's invest in it. Let's, you know, build a kind of like a super agency and put all these agencies together that serve the, you know, small business market now. If people wanted to model exactly what we're doing at this time, it would be a mistake of going on full service.
I'm just going after small business. So I want to do a disclaimer on that. If you model kind of how we've got There, that's what I always tell people, because a lot of smaller agencies or medium sized agencies listening in, will go, Oh, I can say I'm a full service and we do everything, we're going after small business, you're going to fail, or it's going to be a little bit more challenging, you're going to hit a cap. It's like Facebook, when Facebook came out, think about, they said, Harvard, Ivy League, you know, other colleges, high schools, and they have layered, right. So if you modeled that, then you can get to the next level.
So I just disclaimer, because I don't want people to know, I want people to succeed and get there, get there faster. So what we do is we come in, and we look for agencies that are over a million in EBITDA, we'll give them a valuation of like four to 5x. Pay him 50%, cash and other 50% and equity in the new entity, because the whole goal is to grow it to over a billion dollars or to go public. And so that can be really even more of a life changing number. But then also to on the front side, you know, it's kind of taking a lot of chips off the table as well for for those people that want to do that. And like I said, I'm sometimes I'm the worst salesman, I'm like to just keep it like, yeah, you're in total control, rather than having someone else tell you what to do.
Joe Troyer 16:17
So you're really buying the companies for, I guess, two strategies, right? One is kind of the roll up strategy. And two, right, so you're getting bigger all the time, you're gaining more customers into this machine. But then also, I would say bolt on, right, because you're adding their products and services. So is that how you're looking at the businesses? Are those the two kind of big things for you, the big drivers is, how many customers do you have? What's the stickiness? How long are they staying? And then do you have a product and service that we can add? So that long term we become full service?
Jason Swenk 16:51
Exactly, yeah. Right. So like, we're, we're just molding it, where most agencies only get 20 cents on the dollar for all of your clients budget, right, you get 20% of it, we're trying to get most of it. All right, we're not going to get all of it. But like, what if we come in and be like, we can do all this because we have the right expertise from all these different what we call kind of citizens of all around.
Now the challenge with, you know, doing a strategy like this is, you know, kind of integration of all the agencies together as well as going making sure that they all believe in the same thing that, you know, we share knowledge, we share everything. And you know, you just can't go, I'm gonna buy this, this, this, this now we're worth this. It's going to take, you know, years and years to do it's, it's a, it's a challenging strategy, you know, so, but, uh, it's a, it's a lot of fun. And when they asked me to kind of participate in this craziness, I was like, sure, I've never done it this way. I've never built a agency that big. So let's, let's go ahead and try it.
It's an awesome adventure, it sounds like, you must have one hell of an operations manager CEO. Something in there, you got some really, really good team members to accomplish what you guys have accomplished?Well, we got really, really good partners and leaders on the, you know, the team, I'm just a small part of it. You know, they're, they're, they're the, they're the ones that do all the work. They're the smart ones. I'm just like, thanks for letting me tag along.
Joe Troyer 18:26
Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. Man. That sounds really, really interesting. What what's kind of your role? What do you spend your time in, in the new business, so to speak in the new agency? What what's what's your contribution there
Jason Swenk 18:41
really advising them on the top line, and then finding the right agencies to bring in as my is my main role, right? Like, at the end of the day, but at the end of the day, even if that if that company blew up, you know, my, my whole my norsthar is just being a resource I wish I had when I was running an agency. And that's why, you know, we do everything, you know, at Jason Swenk dot com and with our podcasts and our videos, and because, you know, we're always at different levels. And I'm a big mountain person, f always think that, you know, there's kind of six different levels of actually making it to the top of the mountain or the summit. And so my, my whole, my whole goal is like, how many agencies can we get to the summit or to their summit, whatever it is, because some agencies don't want to grow to 100 million or 20 million or whatever, whatever number, it's, it's different for everybody. That's awesome.
Joe Troyer 19:37
Can you talk us through high level what some of those steps are?
Jason Swenk 19:40
Yeah, sure. So at first, you know, the first one is really kind of a staging. Right? This is kind of when you're starting to think about starting the agency, right? Like you're kind of starting to survey around of going like, what do I who do I actually need to go after how gain that clarity, right? How do I decide on my niche that I'm going to go after my core offer? And really, at this level, you really need to focus on lead generation and sales, but you're kind of spraying and praying. Right? Right. So that's kind of why you're at the staging. And then the next level up is what I call base camp. And a lot of times when you'll know when you're at base camp, you're kind of always thinking about, like, what do I need to focus on.
And, and what you need to focus on is really kind of automating your lead generation, and starting to close more sales at a higher rate. And in order to kind of graduate, you really have to really start kind of generating leads on a consistent basis and closing them consistently. And then the next level up, you start getting into a steeper terrain, right, and I call this the climb. And this is where a lot of agencies are, and you'll know when you're there, because you'll be like, you know, how do I get further ahead, but it just seems kind of bumpy. And a lot of times when the train gets tough, a lot of times they're like, man, why can't it just go back to, you know, like, the fun stage. And some people go down to Basecamp. And this is really, when you're at Basecamp, it's really kind of you and some contractors, right? And you're just but everything's tied to you. But on the climb, you have multiple team members, you may have, you know, one manager and there may be a project manager, that kind of stuff.
And in order to kind of graduate from that you need to think about because you're doing all of sales owner is doing all the sales, how can I bring on a salesperson that can take over my sales part, because in the base camp, you're all focused around marketing in the climb, you should be all focused in sales, how can I convert that? And then the next level up is called the crux. This is kind of where you're trying to figure out what's your footing. And rather than focused on, how do I get further ahead, it's like, how does my team get me further ahead? Because you start adding an operations person in there, maybe some directors, and it's all about when you get to the crux, it's about how can I build the right team, in order to start really focusing on other things. So if you go back to Basecamp, remember, you know it's based around a marketing system. The climb is a sales system.
Now the crux we're really focused on and operations system, right, in order to make sure everybody's in there. And then in order to graduate there, it's really about how do I lead the team to take over the stuff that I used to do in the business? Yep. Right. So now it's like, you figure out the what you figure out the how I'll just tell you where I want to go. You guys gonna figure it out? Any questions so far? Before I go to the last two?
Joe Troyer 22:53
Make sense? Okay, cool.
Jason Swenk 22:55
And then the next layer up is the, the crest right? So if you're looking at a mountain, like you start seeing some peaks, but you're not at the summit, but there's something like really jagad and, and really, what you're focused on now is, is how does my team, get ahead? So remember, at the crux, we're talking about, like, how does my team get me ahead? Now? It's like, how does my team get them themselves ahead, right. And at the crest, we're really becoming leaders, you know, to the team.
And it's all about, like, our biggest challenge is finding the right talent. So like in our mastermind, for the top, you know, for the people in the crest, the biggest thing we're focused on is building a recruiting system to find all this talent, because we have the marketing dialed in, we have the sales dialed in, and we have the operations dialed in. But now we need more people. So it's all about recruiting. So when you can actually onboard your leadership team. Now it like for marketing for sales for operations, you get those three, now you can kind of graduate and get to the level of the summit, and then the summit, it's all about how does my team get further ahead? rather than how does my team get me ahead? How does my team get further ahead? And it's all about growing leaders.
It's about, you know, scaling the leadership systems. And it's about really becoming the chairman, or right of like, and being able to kind of step away if you want, and do other things, because your team has everything there. And so those are really the six stages. Yep. And so you what we what I do a lot of times is I help self identify where they're at. And I'm like, well, cool, you're at this stage. Well, this is what you need to focus on. If you're at the climb, hey, you need to focus on a sales system. If you're at the crest, we need to focus on the operation system. So you know,
Joe Troyer 24:53
that's awesome. It's really interesting. I feel like a lot of agencies that we work with We do a lot of fulfillment for agencies and one of my companies Invisible PPC. So we see people that have made it up until like crux. You see a lot of people that die at that level of crux. And die isn't the right word, they either regress, or they move forward. They don't stay there. And they make that decision in their head.
They either go Screw it, like you said, like, I don't want to deal with a team. And I want to go back to more of a lifestyle business. I don't want as many team members, screw the employees, no more office all virtual. Right? Or they they make their way past the crux, right. And, like you said, I think a great way to define it is they finally are able to in their business, give their people the outcome that they're after, and get the people to drive the outcomes. And so they moved from creating these sops themselves and being very involved in the outcome to getting their people to drive the outcomes. And I think that that transition is really hard for a lot of people.
Jason Swenk 26:07
It is, it is, you know, I was talking to our mastermind members, earlier this week, and they kind of made fun of me. Because I quoted I guess, a famous author, Dan Kennedy, I don't know, this is not mine, I guess. I never heard of it, because I don't read books. But I, they didn't want to give up what they're always doing. And I said, Well, you trying to do 1000 things at 100% is horrible. If you can get someone to 80%, then that's better than you trying to do all these little things. And they were like, well, that's that's that one book. I was like, I don't know who that is. So that's one way. And like he said, to have like, you need to delegate outcomes rather than delegate tasks. And so when I find that you enter into, like, you're graduating from the crux into the crest, you're really becoming the CEO versus the owner.
And you really have like four or five roles. The number one is setting the vision and communicating it to the team. Often, this is not just an exercise just to write it down and email your team or talk about it at like one meeting. I mean, it's like living and breathing this thing. And then the two is, is being the face of the organization, and a lot of people go, Why don't want to be the face, because then everybody's going to want to work with me. Sure, they're going to want to work with you. But you just don't make that possible. Perfect example is Gary Vaynerchuk. With VaynerMedia. Yeah, do you really think you work with Gary? Hell? No, you don't. Right? You know, the next is, is coaching and mentoring your leadership team, like we talked about that, right? You shouldn't be coaching everybody, and you shouldn't have over four or five direct reports, or that's just suicide for you. And that's why a lot of people want to go the other way.
Because you hire the wrong people. And then others that the other ones are like really build relationships that really assist sales, like you shouldn't be doing sales. If you're doing sales, that's kind of like you pulling up to a doctor's office, and the doctor valeting your car, being the elevator guy, taking your temperature. And then he tells you what to do you're like, really like, it just doesn't look right. And then the last is understand the financials. You don't have to be a whiz kid at spreadsheet. But you have to understand what are the KPIs that are important to tell me that we're doing well, or we need to make a change?
Joe Troyer 28:39
I guess, what do you think? are the things that get people to push past the crux and into the crest? Because I feel like is there is there a difference in talent? Right, you talked about the crest right? How do you manage that talent transition before you get to the crest? Or does that only happen at the crest? Because I feel like you know, your SOPs getting you so far and getting that outcome. But as you start to really grow and you're pouring fire on the sales and the marketing, and we know marketing and this world changes, right, like all the time we're on the bleeding edge. Any thoughts there I guess on on anybody that's watching or listening to the show? And they're like, man, like I'm in that transition right now. Like what would what advice would you give them? I just know, it's such it's such a critical hinge point for so many of our, our listeners and our customers.
Jason Swenk 29:32
The biggest thing you have to realize is what got you to that point won't get you to the next layer. Right? So it's different tools, right? The climb is a lot more steeper and a lot more risk of, you know, dying, right? Same on a mountain. So you have to really make sure that you're taking calculated risks that you have the right team members on the right place. You have to Kind of reset your thinking, right? So like, remember I talked about, in order to get to that point, you were doing a lot of work, you're in the business, you're worried about what how we do it, which a lot of times slows you up.
But if you can start figuring out how to delegate, and really start focusing on the big items, like one of the big things that I go over with our mastermind a lot of times is audit your time. Right? really look at like, are you doing tactical stuff? Are you doing strategic stuff? Are you doing low value, things that you can, like, that's how you should start hiring? Like, at the lower levels of going, I need to hire to replace the little things that I do that are not that someone else can do. Like no one else can set the vision no one else can most of the time, like with what we do can do the podcast or create the content. But why the hell? Are we doing video editing? Why are we editing the podcast? Why are we posting on social media, when other people can actually do that. And so when you start doing that, and then you start going, and you realize to some of your team members are not going to grow as fast as your organization. And a lot of times we try to hold on to them too long, which I get why we do that.
But at the end of the day, we're at a for profit business. And so we have to find a right seat for them. And if they don't have a seat when the music stops, now they can take down the whole company. And so it's it's a hard decision. But it's it's necessary in most cases. And so, and then also to the last part is finding like, if you're really good at sales, and you suck at operations, right? Well, you should be bringing on like an operations director. Like I interviewed, I can't remember his name, but Gary Vaynerchuk COO, and he goes, look, you know, I don't need to bring ideas. That's Gary. Gary has all the ideas, right? I just need to go, here's an idea.
And then I'm the how person, I'll figure it out. And I'll make it work. Right. And so that's the type of person that I needed. And so you have to kind of self assess, you know, and then then you can get to whatever level that you want. But don't think that I think too many people think I'm already stressed out, maxed out at this level. If I add more people, it's more stress. Actually, it's the opposite. If you if you do it, right.
Joe Troyer 32:37
Yeah, really good advice. I think also, one thing that you said that I'll I'll repeat is like it, you know, when you're in that stage, you're focused on training your team and getting leverage through your team, you become, you know, the the coach, right instead of the person instead of the all star player. Right. You're transitioning and the coach. And that's, I think that's a good analogy to help people understand that sticky situations. Right. And that is definitely a major transition.
Jason Swenk 33:04
Oh, big time. Yeah. I mean, you're you're not managing clients anymore. You're managing your team.
Joe Troyer 33:09
Yep. It's a good way to put it. Yeah. This has been an awesome interview. I want to be super respectful of your time. I want to wrap it up. Jason, if people want to work with you, they want to follow you they enjoyed today's episode. I want to make sure to link you up in the show notes. Let everybody know where to go.
Jason Swenk 33:35
Swenk It. That will forward you to the true website. Jason Swank dot com. But you can check out the 1000s of videos or the 1000s of podcasts that we have out there. So you know and just check out you know, the free resources that we have.
Joe Troyer 33:51
I love that this blanket name so today on the episode of Show me your nuggets. I mean, show me the nuggets, we we dropped the link Swenk it so yeah, like sexual innuendos in there. You know us sixth graders out here. Jason man, this has been great. I want to wrap with one more question. Instead of recommending you or asking you to recommend three books. We do something a little bit different here on the podcast. I feel like that's really overused. I want to ask you, what's the one book that's made the biggest difference on the impact in the way that you do business you run business, you see business and why
Jason Swenk 34:32
can I say like maybe a video or a podcast?
Joe Troyer 34:39
You say whatever comes to mind?
Jason Swenk 34:42
Um, I'll probably I probably say, Pat Flynn's podcast, Smart Passive income. I hate the name honestly, because like and he'll even say like there's no passive income out there. But he was one of the Why I created a podcast which allowed me to reach so many people. So that has been pretty influential.
Joe Troyer 35:07
I'm curious, like what, it obviously led you to build a podcast? That's great. Whatdo you find impactful about it? what why do you like it? so well? Why did you model it? Right?
Jason Swenk 35:26
Well, I liked Pat style. He was an internet marketer. And at that time, when I was getting into this business, a lot of inner market, internet marketers were slimy and sleazy. He wasn't he was like, Hey, I'm gonna put out everything I do. That was more impactful for me. I'm going I'm gonna put out everything I do. I'm gonna be totally transparent, honest with you, and just show you how to do it. And I'm not gonna really I'm not gonna ask for anything. If you want to give me money for something. Okay, there you go. And that's kind of our mentality as well. You know, with everything that we do.
Joe Troyer 36:02
Super authentic, good, bad, indifferent. If he did something and it blew up in his face. He's the first to say, this blew up in my face, but didn't go well versus trying to hide behind the veil. So completely get that that's awesome. And I haven't listened to Pat's podcast in quite some time. I'll definitely pick it up and check it out again, Man. Jason, thanks so much for being on the show. super appreciate your time, everybody. Go check out Swenk it.
