Ep 040 – Ben Guttmann, Author
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Featuring: Ben Guttmann, Author
In this episode, I had a fascinating conversation with Ben Guttmann, the author of "Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win – and How to Design Them." We delved into Ben's journey of founding, managing, and eventually selling his agency, Digital Natives. He discussed the strategic steps they took during the agency's exit, including segmenting sales with different partners to ensure every employee found a new job and every client had a smooth transition. Ben also shared valuable insights into the reasons and goals behind exiting and acquisitions, offering guidance for those considering a similar path.
Additionally, we explored Ben's role as a professor at Baruch College, discovering why it's more than just a paycheck for him – it's a fulfilling passion. He discussed his aspiration to become an author and what drove him to write his book. Furthermore, Ben emphasized how his agency experience equipped him with the necessary tools for a successful writing endeavor. Tune in for the full story and gain valuable insights from our conversation.
Ben Guttmann is a marketing and communications expert and author of Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win — and How to Design Them. He’s an experienced marketing executive and educator on a mission to get leaders to more effectively connect by simplifying their message. Ben is a former co-founder and managing partner at Digital Natives Group, an award-winning agency that worked with the NFL, I Love NY, Comcast NBCUniversal, Hachette Book Group, The Nature Conservancy, and other major clients. Ben teaches digital marketing at Baruch College in New York City and consults with a range of thought leaders, venture-backed startups, and other brands.
Contact Ben on LinkedIn or grab his book or sample chapter.
Episode 040 Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Byte Sized Agency Briefs, a webinar series that packs a ton of important agency information on one topic from one expert into a 25 minute brief. Why 25 minutes? Because who has the attention span for much more these days? And you can squeeze in a listen between meetings. with time for a bathroom break or coffee refill before your next meeting.
[00:00:30] Steve: Thanks for tuning in. This is Bite Size Agency Briefs. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outside, where I coach agency owners to build the agency of their dreams. Today, I get to speak with Ben Gutman, a marketing communications expert, and now a new author, former agency owner. His book should be coming out as this is dropping called Simply Put, Why Clear Messages Win and How to Design.
[00:00:52] Steve: Ben. Thanks for joining me. How are you? Thanks for having me, Steve. Yeah. So, uh, before we get into the book, let's talk agency stuff. [00:01:00] Talk, talk a little bit about your agency. You ran it for a decade. You had an exit through, I guess, an acquisition. Um, what was that whole journey and trajectory? Like,
[00:01:10] Ben: Oh man, it was a lot of fun.
[00:01:12] Ben: Uh, so I ran a marketing agency along with a couple of buddies called digital natives group. Uh, we started in 2011 and an old professors. basement. I was, uh, you know, he basically, he was an adjunct. He ran a marketing agency, came up to me and said, Hey, I know you kind of want to start something. Maybe we can figure something out.
[00:01:30] Ben: And we set up shop in his basement up in Westchester slapped their logo on the wall. And we worked our way up from like the local ice cream shop and the local camera shop to eventually, you know, by the end of it worked at the NFL and Comcast and I love New York and a And it was, it was a ton of fun. It was a ton of fun.
[00:01:51] Ben: And then, so, you know, over the years, we eventually moved to our office in Long Island City, a little studio we had in this funky old industrial building, [00:02:00] hired our first employees, hired more employees, moved to a bigger office, uh, got more clients. And, uh, about 10 years in, you know, we decided that it was, it was the time to, you know, begin to explore what the next phase would be.
[00:02:14] Ben: Uh, and we went out and, um, you know, we're very fortunate to find, uh, a couple acquisition partners. We have to split it up into two pieces. Um, one went to another agency, and one went to. Um, like a private equity firm that was rolling up a few small agencies. What was the
[00:02:31] Steve: division? Yeah. So exactly
[00:02:34] Ben: where, so we, we had, we were a full service digital marketing agency.
[00:02:38] Ben: So we did design development stuff like websites, mobile apps, kiosks, those types of things. And then we also did, um, social media, branding, email, advertising, all those different things. If I were starting again, I wouldn't do everything that we did together. But I mean, we were 22, 23 when we started and we basically were [00:03:00] figuring out how to put a book of business together and with no Rolodex and with no, uh, real experience.
[00:03:07] Ben: So we did what we could and we had a diverse set of skills and we put a team together that could do all those different types of things. Uh, but when we go out to market and say, Hey, who wants to buy this? Well, I natives group, uh, not many people want. Everything. What we found when we went out to market the first time, because then COVID hit and we put a pause on it, was we got a colder reception to saying, here's the whole business, go, you know, here's all the team, here's all the senior executives, here's all the different types of clients.
[00:03:40] Ben: That was just a harder fit for a buyer to say, okay, I know where that fits in, in my business. And so after we took a pause because of the pandemic, we ended up, um, basically doing like a reorg and we said, okay, let's build out two separate PNLs two separate org charts and say design development business [00:04:00] is here.
[00:04:00] Ben: Digital marketing is over here. And, you know, we're selling them kind of as like separate offerings. And we had a lot more interest because of that. And a lot of people say, Hey, you know what? I need a website team or I need a, you know, social media team. They know how that fits into their company.
[00:04:17] Steve: I would also think there's more areas for compliment when I'm just bolting on a digital marketing team to my already branding agency or something along those lines.
[00:04:26] Steve: So I'm not sure where they ended up fitting. But yeah, I feel like there's more opportunities for those puzzle pieces. If you got. You know, looser, um, scopes of service that you're offering. How big were you
[00:04:38] Ben: guys when you sold? We were about 20 folks. Uh, we had, um, we had, you know, it's a hybrid teams where people local, we had people remote.
[00:04:47] Ben: Uh, and what ended up happening was most of the team ended up going with the social media side. The design development side was a little bit more of a, kind of a book of business type sale and with consulting [00:05:00] work kind of, uh, as part of the friendship.
[00:05:03] Steve: Okay. Um, how many partners did
[00:05:05] Ben: you have? I had, uh, so there were four owners of the agency.
[00:05:10] Ben: So it ends up, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have, I love all those guys. I wouldn't do that again. Uh, it was, it was a lot. It's just what you needed when we were basically kids starting out. It's what we needed to do. We needed each other. We needed each other's expertise and, and, and kind of moral support. Um, yeah.
[00:05:28] Ben: But part of what happens with, you know, as you get older, more experienced with stuff is that you realize, okay, well, that's also a bunch of mouths you have to feed. And so we, we had division of labor and, and, you know, different areas of expert of, of control and ownership and all those different things, but, um, you know, it's that, that was always a challenge.
[00:05:49] Steve: Did any of you four go with either parts of the business or did you all disconnect
[00:05:53] Ben: fully? Yeah. So, so one of my partners was, um, was very interested in continuing. It was, [00:06:00] everything was copacetic by the way, right? This is our, we had our most profitable year ever. All of us got along, we had great clients, we had great employees.
[00:06:06] Ben: It just felt like after 10 years, you kind of want to move on a little bit sometimes. Um, especially when it's that early in your career is the first chapter of it. Uh, the. So one of my, one of my partners wanted to go along with it. And he, he did, he went along with the social media side. Um, one of my other partners worked a little bit longer on the design development side as part of the consulting stuff, but he he's, he's since kind of, um, faded out from that piece and done his own stuff now.
[00:06:34] Ben: But the. The thing that happens when you, when you do an acquisition is it's all, it's always a bumpy road. It's always, um, it's just a kick in the butt for clients to say, Hey, you know what, I've been with these guys for four or five years, they're really great, but maybe it's time for an RFP and see what else there is.
[00:06:53] Ben: It's the time for employees to kind of refresh their LinkedIn and say, Hey, maybe I'll, maybe I'll send out a couple of feelers to people. Um, [00:07:00] And everybody, everybody in the business knows that, right. Everybody on who's a business broker is a buyer. So, um, so, you know, there ends up being some, um, you know, it's not, it's never as smooth as a transition as you can do as you, as you hope rather.
[00:07:16] Ben: But what we were happy about and what we did was every employee had a job and every client had a home. Nobody got the boot from anything. And that was really
[00:07:24] Steve: important for us. Yeah, that's super valuable. And, and yeah, what you kind of transcribe on paper of, you know, Uh, projected revenue team structure that transition is rocky at best, not because of bad blood typically, but just because like I said, it opens the door for, is this what I really want?
[00:07:42] Steve: Is there other things out? Are there other things out there that I can explore? So, um, and you're fully hands off now after.
[00:07:50] Ben: Yeah, every now and then I help on a couple of consulting projects. I'm on good terms of everybody, you know, obviously, but, um, yeah, what you're saying, though, one thing, one motto we used to have [00:08:00] when we were doing our agency was we like to say we play jazz of our work, which we don't always know what the song is going to be like, but we know our instruments.
[00:08:08] Ben: We know how to work with each other. We know how to get there. And so you figure it out as you go, because You know, it's, it's a mixed metaphors. It's like that Mike Tyson quote, which is everybody has a plan. It's like a punch you in the face and like, that's what always happens in any market. The jazz
[00:08:21] Steve: one better.
[00:08:22] Steve: It's a little more eloquent than, you know, Mike Tyson punching in the face. But yeah,
[00:08:25] Ben: I get it. So that's, that's what it comes down to with the transition too. Is you have to play jazz and say, okay, you're hiring good people. You're getting good connections and hopefully that'll be worth it. Um, for everybody involved.
[00:08:38] Steve: I love it. I mean, my, my experience was similar. We were at a decade and it was like, all right, I might, you know, ready to do something different. Um, are you able to share kind of what your trajectory was as far as like, you know, I get a lot of agencies that reach out to me and they're like, here's where I'm at.
[00:08:52] Steve: I want to sell. I'm going to be there in three to five years. What numbers do I need to be at as far as MMR, uh, MMR [00:09:00] and. Profitability and, you know, you know, team usability and things like that. Do you have those metrics that kind of come to mind that you might want to share?
[00:09:08] Ben: Yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't really share, um, you know, the numbers, but I will say, you know, people buy businesses for a lot of different reasons.
[00:09:17] Ben: Um, one of them is because they want to get more revenue and more profitability based off of their revenue. And they say, Hey, you know, we can consolidate back office and it's, you know, more efficiency, yada, yada. Uh, one of them is they want to develop a new capability because they say, Hey, if I do have social media on my team now, all of a sudden as a PR agency, I can go out and charge double cause I can have my PR retainer and I can have my social media retainer.
[00:09:41] Ben: That's one thing. Um, people might want a foothold into some version of what your clients are. If it's an industry, if it is a specific client, if it is a geographic area. Um, you know, if it's, if it's a type of, you know, relationship you have with people. Um, [00:10:00] and that, that was, that was appealing for one of our suitors in particular was to say, Hey, we had, we, we were kind of like a New York hometown team a little bit.
[00:10:08] Ben: We worked at Vial of New York and Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, and like all these really cool brands. Uh, and we had an agency out in California that was saying, Hey, we want to establish a New York office. We want to get a team here. We want to get a foothold. And that was really appealing to them.
[00:10:23] Ben: So because it's, you know, it's such, it's like, why does somebody get married? Right? Like, it's like, there's always a million different reasons. Um, and I think that's, that's ultimately what, um, you know, it has, it has to be that kind of like magic fit with somebody. It's not like you had a number and all of a sudden you've, you know, people are knocking down your door for stuff.
[00:10:45] Ben: It's. It is, it's a professional services business, right? There's not a lot of, you're not selling a, you know, patents and a warehouse and, and, uh, you know, a pizza oven or 10, 000 shirts in your, in your store or whatever, you're [00:11:00] selling like relationships and a brand and those types of things, it's everything you can do to build up the brand and build up that, that, uh, uh, build up those pieces that people might want.
[00:11:10] Ben: That's going to be
[00:11:11] Steve: helpful. Yeah. Did you guys have any specific IP that you had built known that was added value?
[00:11:17] Ben: Um, we, we had our, we had a relatively well known brand in our market and a couple of different niches for ourselves. Um, we did a lot of work in publishing and we did a lot of work in tourism.
[00:11:31] Ben: And so those, those areas. We had a pretty extensive network. People would know us and do stuff. We did have a few different side projects over the year. We did that, that didn't, that didn't transfer. It wasn't anything particularly worthwhile. Um, but we just said, okay, well, cause we, we went out twice. We said the first time we're going out selling, we're going to, you know, we hired a broker, went out pandemic.
[00:11:53] Ben: It's puts everything kind of on the back burner. Um, But we, because of the feedback we [00:12:00] got there, we said, okay, let's double down and say, let's focus, let's get some of the revenue numbers as high as we can in the next period, let's, you know, get, make sure our websites off, you know, looks all great, make sure that, you know, we have, um, more blog posts up, just all like do a bunch of the little things better than eventually it starts to add up into.
[00:12:18] Ben: A more attractive offer the second time we go out. Yeah,
[00:12:20] Steve: no, I love it. Uh, and so you're also professor at Baruch college teaching marketing, branding, digital marketing. Are you doing that while you were running the agency
[00:12:30] Ben: also? Yeah, that is one of my favorite things. So I teach as an adjunct in the marketing department at Baruch college, which is part of CUNY, the city university of New York.
[00:12:40] Ben: Um, my ninth semester, no, sorry, my, my 10th year, so my 19th semester. Starts, uh, in, as we're speaking in three days, so it's kind of crazy how fast that has gone. I love it. It is the best thing that I do. I call it my favorite hobby [00:13:00] because you don't get paid that much teaching at CUNY. But yes, I did that as, um, as, as a part time educator for a good chunk of the overlap.
[00:13:12] Ben: And I'll say for anybody, cause I know this, you know, we're talking to a lot of agency folks here. If you're ever thinking about doing it, go do it. It's, it's a really wonderful experience. Selflessly in terms of being able to teach and share this stuff with people. Um, and I, I learn a lot from them and it's been, uh, I know that's, that's a cliche thing to say, but I really do.
[00:13:35] Ben: Um, I, I really do like enjoy the relationships I've built with these students, especially as now it's been seven, eight, nine years for a lot of them. That they come back and they email me and they ask for advice. Or I, you know, I've all, I've been able to refer work to them. Some people have started agencies.
[00:13:54] Ben: That's been really great. Yeah. Um, and then it's also self, you know, um, [00:14:00] selfishly. Something that's beneficial too, because in an agency, a lot of times, especially if you're doing business development, it looks impressive. You know, you tell, you tell a client that, Hey, this is, I went over this subject in my class last night and people go, Oh, you're, you're the, you know, uh, and then it's something where you, you have this added resource of you tell the client, Oh, Hey, if you need an intern, send me a description and I'll share it with my students.
[00:14:27] Ben: It's a win win for everybody. Um, Plus, you know, I get access to all these like academic databases and great stuff, which, which help do better work. It helps researching my book. Um, and so I, I really enjoy it. I'm going to keep doing it until they, until they kick me out. Yeah,
[00:14:45] Steve: I, I have a few friends who also teach marketing, branding, design, packaging, et cetera.
[00:14:50] Steve: Uh, they definitely don't do it for the paycheck, but I've also, you know, it's been described. It's extremely fulfilling. Uh, you get to have an impact on the start of the [00:15:00] trajectory of these, you know, young creative minds and, and ambition, ambitious minds. Um, you get a, you know, first pick at the talent pool to help, you know, Hey, you're the best kid in the class.
[00:15:10] Steve: Can, can you come work for me? Kind of thing. Um, so yeah, I think there's a lot of value to it, but not for the paycheck. That's for sure. Oh yeah. Um, But you're in a pitch meeting. You're like, yeah, not only am I a professor, I also wrote the book on it. So what was the path that led up to putting a book together?
[00:15:27] Ben: Oh yeah. So I mentioned a little bit before that we did work in publishing and, uh, that, you know, especially when we're young and just kind of starting out, I mentioned we, we, we didn't have the optimal structure because of how we started. Uh, we, we fall into different specialties. We worked on. One book that did really, really well.
[00:15:47] Ben: And then that guy refers us and that publisher refers us and that agent refers us and all of a sudden about a third of our business was in publishing. And so because of that, um, I, I knew it was [00:16:00] accessible as a thing. It wasn't like a, it's real people write books, right? It's not like, it's not, you don't have to be.
[00:16:08] Ben: A genius God, you know, like, uh, uh, all knowing person to write a book. The people who write books are just people who are interested in a topic and want to spend a lot of time with it. Um, and, and are good at communicating and explaining it. Uh, and so, you know, you asked me like the actual, like mechanism of how I ended up doing, um, doing this project.
[00:16:31] Ben: That's part of it, right. Which is, I saw it was something that was doable and it was interesting and fulfilling. Um, but I mean, the reason I wrote the, like this book was because I saw in my professional life as a marketer and, and my other professional life as an educator, uh, and of course, in my personal life, that so many people, so many clients, so many groups have such a hard time communicating clearly.
[00:16:56] Ben: And so I wanted to ask, why is that? And that's the [00:17:00] genesis that led to Simply Put.
[00:17:02] Steve: Was the idea something that's been on the back burner while you were running the agency? Did it kind of come to you, you know, after you sold E? Like, what was the timeline there that you were like, this is something I've got to do?
[00:17:12] Steve: Or was it sitting there forever and it was like, finally I have the time to do it because I sold the agency?
[00:17:18] Ben: I had, it's a little bit of everything. It's a little bit of everything. Um, I had, Always, I've always wanted to do it. I've always, you know, from a personal, um, personal goal of mine, obviously. Um, I also think that the agency experience of like, you have clients and deadlines and scopes of work, it helps a lot with the physical act of writing the book, which is okay.
[00:17:45] Ben: I have to have this part done by this day and I have to get it to this person for approval. And I, you know, and, um. And so then I have to write a proposal for like all those things, uh, because of you've you've run an agency or not are not alien to you. Um, but [00:18:00] also, I think that from the subject matter was something that we always were really good at in our agency was the kind of 2 pieces internally with the, you know, with the clients and being able to communicate very clearly and kind of.
[00:18:13] Ben: Not have any jargon, be able to explain all the different things that we're doing, especially when you look back and we started, it was kind of like the beginning of social media marketing and be able to explain those types of things that iPhones knew. So being able to explain those things in layman's terms, our agency was called digital natives group.
[00:18:28] Ben: And so the idea was we would translate it as a digital native to someone who's a digital immigrant. You know, um, that was, that was an important piece of our, of our own. Offering value, but also in the work itself, if we were working on a website for somebody, you know, and I'm sitting there trying to, okay, well, what, you know, what do we have to say on it?
[00:18:49] Ben: And you're sitting in a meeting with 12 people from all sorts of different departments of this, of this client. And they, and, and they don't know, I mean, they don't know how to explain what they're, they're too close to it a [00:19:00] lot of times. And so. Being able to come in as an outsider and be able to say, okay, what you really want to do is x, right?
[00:19:05] Ben: Like what you really want to say is this and all of a sudden they go. Oh shit. Like that's that's actually I've been doing this for 30 years and I've never been able to explain it that clearly. Well, it's because you've been doing it for 30 years sometimes that you're not able to explain it that clearly.
[00:19:19] Ben: Um, and so, so yeah, so that subject matter of how do you, how do you get to that little sparkly magic point where you can explain something clearly? Um, That was definitely something I always wanted to explore more. Interesting.
[00:19:33] Steve: Alright, so it was something that's been on your mind. Uh, I've never written a book.
[00:19:37] Steve: I have friends that have. A couple coaches I know have. For you, was it painful? Was it, like, the most arduous thing? Did you wake up, couldn't wait to get pen to paper? Like, what was the process like for you?
[00:19:49] Ben: Uh, I really, I really enjoyed it. I, um, I have heard lots of things about people who are like, I hate this.
[00:19:55] Ben: This is the worst thing in my life. Uh, but I [00:20:00] think this type of book, a business book, um, you know, kind of, there's a lot of science in this book. So a lot of research, the research is tough because. Uh, one thing I ever think about a blog post about this, it's the internet is way worse today than it was like five or 10 years ago, where if I wanted to try to find the genesis of some little statistic that I found that I heard somewhere and I have to go, well, I need to make sure this is real.
[00:20:23] Ben: And so I Google it and I look at this website and look at their sources. I look at the Wikipedia page, look at what they're referencing. And it takes me, it would take me 90 minutes, two hours to verify one. Little fact that would become half a sentence in the book. And so that part was the most, like, strenuous, I guess, was, was making, because I, I didn't want to just put stuff out on paper and be like, Oh, it's personal.
[00:20:50] Ben: Nothing is this in this book is like personal opinion, right? It's all a lot. I, there's like a hundred different science, uh, scientific references in the book. There's, uh, Um, you know, there's [00:21:00] case studies from all over the history and different industries and stuff. So that was really important to me was like the level of if I was going to do it, I was only going to do it in a way that I would be confident about the ideas and the facts and the statistics.
[00:21:15] Ben: References that I was putting down on paper. Uh, and so there was a lot of things I had to like, cut because I was like, you know what, turns out this was just like an apocryphal story that somebody had. Um, but, the act of writing, I, I personally didn't have a hard time with it for for some of the, uh, reasons I said before, which was I've you know, written proposals on deadline and done a list of stuff a million times.
[00:21:38] Ben: Um, I also think this is a type of book that's a little bit easier. To, to write than what some other people I know that have done these, you know, like I look at like the Walter Isaacson books or some of those, like I was just reading the Ben Franklin one, every step book is a thousand pages and every single sentence has to have some sort of like, you know, long, arduous research process to back [00:22:00] up that one sentence and Robert Caro, the power broker, Linda, like all those things, those books are really, really hard to write.
[00:22:07] Ben: A book where you're saying, okay, here's, you know, here's some stuff that is about this business topic, about marketing topic, about whatever, um, that information is a lot more accessible in, in different databases and, and, uh, and through, and through different sources than having to like come through an archive somewhere to do, uh, so, uh, That's a long, long, not simple answer to, uh, I didn't particularly have a hard time with it, but, um, I, I understand, I understand that there are harder paths to take to do that.
[00:22:43] Ben: Yeah,
[00:22:43] Steve: no, it sounds like a great topic and something that you're obviously well, well learned about, uh, passionate about something that you've dedicated your career to. And so, uh, the link to, to grab your book will be. Uh, listed, you know, on this page or, you know, in the show notes or whatever. But, [00:23:00] um, you know, it certainly grabs simply put why clear messages when and how to design them.
[00:23:05] Steve: Um, Ben, I want to shift gears real quick. A couple of random rapid fire questions for you. Uh, what's, um, a book or a podcast or something that you're just. You know, binging can't get enough of digital or
[00:23:15] Ben: physical. Oh, man. Um, well, my book, obviously. Obviously, yeah. Uh, the, a podcast that just came to mind, because I listened to it last year, and I, um, uh, and it just popped up again, like, on my feed.
[00:23:32] Ben: Was shameless acquisition target. So we just talked about like buying, you know, business and those types of things. The, I forget the host name, but she started, she used to work for all these different podcast networks. And she started a podcast with the explicit idea of saying, this is a podcast about making money by having a podcast.
[00:23:49] Ben: And it was going through like the business of podcasting. And the goal was to try to sell the podcast at the end of it. Um, It ended about a year ago, but I still think about that show a lot. [00:24:00] So I'd recommend anybody listening would find that one interesting. Shameless Acquisition Target. I'll have to check it out.
[00:24:06] Steve: What is a new tool, physical, digital, personal, professional, that you've Recently integrated into your day to day or into your life that you're like, how did I live without this? whatever
[00:24:17] Ben: um well personally I just moved into a new apartment and i've been putting all this stuff up on the wall and I I bought a laser level which I highly recommend If you want something that's uh, I see in your background you have lots of things that are nice and level um, and so Uh, that was, you know, not going to be applicable to everybody, but that was great, uh, as a tool that more people in this audience would probably appreciate is I have been so enamored by Webflow over the past few years.
[00:24:46] Ben: I don't know if you have you had a chance to use Webflow at all? I've
[00:24:48] Steve: seen it in action with some clients. I've not tinkered
[00:24:51] Ben: under the hood at all. So basically it's this halfway point between like a Wix and like a WordPress, you know, custom code [00:25:00] website. It is very empowering for designers. My functional background is in design, uh, to be able to put up like landing pages and, and, you know, blogs and those types of websites.
[00:25:10] Ben: It's not the best for everybody. But the type of project where we, we never used it in our agency. It didn't quite mature to the point where it made sense for us. Um, but the type of project where we would have been just like medium scope, where we would have, you know, charged a big, you know, a big budget and taken several months to do and gone through all this process, you can collapse, you can, you can knock a couple decimal points off of both of those, um, uh, both of those attributes, time and budget.
[00:25:41] Steve: Yeah, I know a lot of shops that are like strictly Webflow shops. They won't touch WordPress anymore and they're, they're crushing it. Finally, what's an invaluable piece of business advice that you can share with our listeners?
[00:25:52] Ben: Oh man. Okay. Uh, my favorite piece of advice and it's part of its business, part of it.
[00:25:58] Ben: It's mostly personal, uh, [00:26:00] is that all advice is autobiographical. So, uh, any advice, this is a bit of meta advice. Anytime you hear somebody give you advice, Uh, they're giving advice to themselves in the past. And the more you can kind of put that lens on, the better you can make use of other advice by saying, okay, well, how does this, if this applied to them in the past, do I, what similarities are there in my situation to them?
[00:26:22] Ben: Um, and if there's not, you know, say thank you and move on. If there is a lot, then that might be something more applicable.
[00:26:28] Steve: Awesome. And thank you. Appreciate your time. Uh, again, we'll link to the book and, uh, hopefully it's, uh, definitely of interest to our audience. Uh, the topic sure is, so
[00:26:36] Ben: appreciate you sharing with us.
[00:26:38] Ben: Thanks so much, Steve. This has been great.
[00:26:43] Ben: Thanks again for tuning into bite-sized agency briefs. As always, if you found value in this episode, chances are someone else will too. So please share it with your network. Also, if you know someone with expert knowledge on a topic that agency owners would love, drop me an note. [00:27:00] Let's get them on. Finally, find someone to hug today.