$2M Agency Growth Strategy | Austin Schneider

Want to bank $200k/m as a videographer or agency?

I sat down with Austin Schneider, Founder of AgencyU. He was a video guy, lugging all the gear and pressing “record” for his clients. 

Now he’s completely systematized his business, scaled it up to $2m+ per year, and hired a CEO to run it for him.

He did that so he could spend his time coaching other business owners and duplicating his systems into their businesses.

Three things he’s obsessed with: nail your offer, install the right systems, and build for the long-term.

Hit play now and get the full scoop on the three pillars.

Follow Austin Schneider at:
https://www.instagram.com/theaustinschneider/
https://www.youtube.com/@AustinrSchneider
https://www.facebook.com/austinrobertschneider/
https://www.agencyu.co/
https://www.brandtegic.co/

Follow Ken Okazaki at:
https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw

Content Capitalists YouTube 

Transcript

Austin Schneider: Confidence is getting so good at something that becomes like boring, like you're not confident in something because you haven't done it enough times for you to be confident in it.

Ken Okazaki: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the content capitalist podcast. Today, we've got a guest and about two months ago, first heard of him, never heard of him before, found him on a YouTube video, and I've never watched a video that so clearly described the situation that was going on in my agency, 20x agency, I immediately reached out.

And right now we're at a situation where we're actually working together. And I convinced him to come on the show and share about his business, what he's doing, and most importantly about content marketing and how you can create that experience for your prospects and clients. Austin Schneider, welcome to the show.

Super pumped 

Austin Schneider: to be here. Excited to see if I can add some value and share some inspiration to some people. And, um, hopefully they, they leave pumped. Got Ken in the king 

Ken Okazaki: chair. This is the one thing about my setup, my office here that people keep commenting about. It's the chair. And this actually, what happened was my father, he was moving out and he was going to scrap this thing.

And I was like, that looks kind of unique. So I asked him if I could have it. He said, sure. And just for fun, I had a sitting here in my podcast and people kept commenting. I'm like, yeah, I guess everybody's either got like a gamer chair. or just like a regular office chair. So this is, this kind of looks different.

So why not? Let's make it fun. I dig it. Awesome. So Austin, we've been working together now for a bit and we've been building out a bunch of systems. I think the thing that first caught my eye was really the ability to connect with a very specific niche on a very deep level. And I've been through.

Multiple coaching programs I paid for online events, in person events, courses, et cetera, et cetera. But this was the first time that somebody said, Hey, if you've got a creative agency and you're facing A, B, C and D issues and you're looking for A, B, C and D results, then this is how you do it.

You shared a lot of how to's right there on YouTube. And I was really thinking to myself, this guy has nailed the message for the audience. And that's when I actually made a decision based on, not necessarily on results, I wasn't even going to look for reviews. I was just like, just the fact that he understands it so well tells me that I want to connect with him. That's what brought me here. And now we get to share some of that magic, that messaging and, uh, you know, your methodology behind it with the entire Content Capitalist, audience. Thanks for coming on. Of course. Yeah. I 

Austin Schneider: think the reason that it connected with you, because, we've been there. I've been there.

I've had the same pain points. So it's like we could market a message of guarantee you a hundred clients in 10 days, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We, we've walked in the shoes at a high level. So we understand the real pain that happens when you scale, just like what you're experiencing. So 

Ken Okazaki: before we jump a little further into it, could you give us a, an overview of what is it you do? you got your agency, you've got your coaching program. You're also a bit of a. freak athlete and do really intense things, physicality. Give us an overview of that.

Austin Schneider: So yeah, I started a marketing agency in 2018, um, which is still alive. It's called ic. Uh, hired a CEO, I would say about a year and a half or two years ago to operate that so I could pursue consulting, which is what I felt really passionate about.

So we kind of. I would say three years ago made the decision that Mark would take over as CEO. Then I could venture into something new, wasn't really sure what it was, and landed on consulting. so once that transition happened about a year and a half ago, I picked up consulting just so I could focus on one thing.

It's really hard to chase too many rabbits. And I've done that before, and you just do a lot of things not very good. So, yeah. Transition into consulting. So we've been at it for, I would say about a year or so. full time. yeah. And then outside of that, I'm a husband, not a wife. I'm a husband.

I have a beautiful bride who is, amazing. And then, yeah, very into endurance sports. So all things self inflicted pain through endurance sports. I enjoy. ultra marathons, triathlons, ironmans, long distance cycling, the type 2, we call it type 2 fun. I never 

Ken Okazaki: heard that term, type 

Austin Schneider: 2, where does that 

Ken Okazaki: come from?

Austin Schneider: Yeah, so basically it means, it sucks while you're doing it, but afterwards, it's fun. You look back on it and it's fun. 

Ken Okazaki: Kinda like the aftertaste after, you know like a bitter lemon or something, right? Yeah. Sucks while you're doing it, but afterwards you're like, oh, that was really fun. Got it, got it. I gotta look for some more type two activities.

Yeah, there you go. I guess going to the gym. No, I actually really enjoy the gym, so can't really say that. Well, I might have a few. I haven't really thought about it that way before. You should sign up for Oggi. Have you ever heard of a Oggi? It sounds 

Austin Schneider: Japanese and I feel like I should know, but I don't know what that is.

Okay, well, the Americas, like what they call it is you do like a, one time a year, you do like an event. So it's inspired by Jesse Itzler. And then another guy who wrote a book called, The Comfort Crisis. Can't remember his name off the top of my head. Basically they talk about Misogi. This is what inspired me to get into endurance sports, where basically once a year you do something hard that like makes you feel anxious before you do it, and then you do it.

And at the end of it, it like increases your capacity. Makes you feel more confident, blah blah blah. So my first Masogi was like the Grand Canyon. I'm going to go around the Grand Canyon, rim to rim to rim, 50 miles, bunch of elevation, whatever. And yeah, it kind of like sparked a lot of that stuff.

So Masogi, check 

Ken Okazaki: out 

Austin Schneider: Masogi. I did 

Ken Okazaki: hear that, uh, a guy named Sam Parr in a podcast, in my first million, he was talking about how he does that too. Now it's coming back to me. actually I do have one planned. I just haven't set a date. Maybe I should, which was, uh, the 12 hour walk. And that was a, yeah, 12 hour nonstop walk.

and what's the name of the book? There's the guy who walked from one end of Antarctica to the other across the ice without, yeah, and it took multiple days and he was, he was racing somebody else and he was dragging this sled, which was over a hundred pounds, you know, of all the food he's going to need for the trip, right? I was listening to his podcast of that journey and it sounds brutal, but then he wrote a book and he's just like, I think it was like 50 days or something that he did, but he said the, there's a state of flow that comes when you get yourself to walk for 12 hours straight. and I was thinking about that and I was like, that is, it sounds low intensity, but boy, I'm thinking like out of the eight hour mark, everything in my body and my brain is going to be telling me to just, Stop, you know, sit it's like, uh, Mr.

Beast, you know, he did that challenge where he challenged someone to lift a one pound weight until failure. And this guy was like a professional bodybuilder and, uh, he, I didn't watch it, but I just, the whole thing is just way too long. But then, you know, when the guy came down to his last reps, he was struggling and dying, you know, to lift one pound.

And it was, it was, uh, 

yeah, 

low intensity, just, but just going on until forever. so that's my Misogi. I'm going to call that a Misogi now. And, uh, I gotta figure out where that word came from. Sounds really cool. Going back, why did you start? in the first place, did someone say, Hey, you've got a good eye for video or something.

Like what was it? 

Austin Schneider: Yeah. Marketing just in general, like the agency before I the marketing agency, I was actually selling real estate and, um, that was like my first entrepreneurial journey out of like more corporate work, more like specifically sales. I was like really into the entrepreneurship, like.

was really curious about listening to a lot of Gary Vee, like bet on yourself, you got this, whatever. I was like 22 years old and I was like, Oh, I want to be a real estate agent and like sell houses cause it looks fun and people like dress fancy and it's cool and you can make a lot of money and whatever.

That was the appeal of it. So when I was in real estate, I was like, huh, okay. People are saying like go knock on doors, go send direct mail, like go do all this stuff. I'm like, I'm going to learn social media and get really freaking good at it because that's where I spend like 70 percent of my downtime.

And that's where all my friends are spending 70 percent of the downtime and it's only growing. At this time, like there weren't even like reels, like TikTok wasn't even like in existence. So like there was, None of that. Um, so I was like, cool, I'm just gonna get really good at social media. And I got really good at social media, started getting business from it.

And then people kept asking me for help. They're like, Hey, awesome. Like, how are you getting business on social media? How are you doing these cool videos? Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, huh, there might be a problem here that I can solve. And then like what you said, I had a mentor, his name was Jeff Rogers, specifically just at that phase of my life. And We would meet for coffee once a month, like religiously amused like spiritual mentor, just like a business mentor. He's in like Private Equity. So it was like really cold pick his brain. And then, yeah, he used to the person who said, I think you're onto something with, like this, like service, like creative stuff.

I'm not sure if like real estate could be your thing, but I think you could be on to something with this. And that sparked, like me heading beginning to offer it as a service while I was doing real estate. And then, finally made the transition from real estate into full blown marketing agency after like figuring out, like making all the mistakes, of course. but after I was able to replace the income and then just realizing like opportunity cost and the net positive of starting the agency. So that's 

Ken Okazaki: the, how it started. I'd imagine though that people who saw your work and got interested are probably in the same industry. So were you literally getting paid by your competitors to help them compete against? You like, is that, yeah. So how did that work in terms of like conflict of interest here? 

Austin Schneider: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, in the real estate industry, it's very much like a, who's who it's like a connectors kind of like industry where, like, the more people you know, like the more opportunities you get and like, there's already always networking events cause you need to be seen and blah, blah, blah, blah. so I, I would go to events and I would meet a lot of people and then like I was in real estate and then naturally it would be like this mortgage person or this title person or this home builder or this person. So, There was a lot of different like webs outside of real estate that were asking for help that I was able to assist.

And then eventually as I like finally burn the boats of being a real estate agent, then I was able to like help a lot more like brokerages and like agents and stuff like that. And once I was like not really associated with being a realtor and it was more like an agency owner. it became more normal when I like became licensed 

Ken Okazaki: and how old were you here?

You said when you started, you were like really early twenties. And then when you made that clean break probably like 24, 25, you're moving fast. 

Austin Schneider: Like Yeah, it was young. I have no idea. I was just doing, like, I was just like, cool. What can I do? What can I try? And did you have family at the time? Uh, so my dad lives in las Vegas, so I was living in Seattle all the time, so not really.

And then my mom like, I mean, like in terms of like, five hour drive, 

Ken Okazaki: did you have a wife? You were supporting 

Austin Schneider: at the time? Oh, um, I was dating Sabrina. 

Ken Okazaki: Okay. Like 

Austin Schneider: my great wife now. So it's not like 

Ken Okazaki: you're carrying a burden of wife and kids and, you know, so when you make these shifts, then so I, I always think about that because I didn't start entrepreneurship until I already had six kids.

And so every single move feels huge to me, you know? And I'm just like, yeah. But then sometimes I hear people's stories and how, how much they shifted. And I get, I got into this bad habit of comparing like how difficult it was for me to shift from to the next. And, but when I put that one factor in, like if they were supporting wife and six kids, would they have made the same choice?

And then I'm thinking, okay, that kind of levels the playing field here. And I don't feel too bad about moving this slowly on, on, uh, business moves and things like that. Oh my gosh. So talk me through when you started this, uh, you know, Agency, marketing, and, did you niche down into one particular industry, or did you just do the thing where you say, if you got money and, you got a business, then let's work 

Austin Schneider: together.

It's pretty much if you have a pulse and you're willing to pay me, I'll freaking figure it out. Cause like I was high, high operating and I could basically do just about everything. But. I would say I would start like I started. I would be like, Oh, I'm going to consult like the thing that I wanted to do is like consult people and because people were like, Hey, can you help me?

I didn't really like I didn't even know agency was a model when I was in real estate. Like I didn't even know that was even like a thing. I didn't even know people could pay for marketing services. Like I had zero clue. So, yeah, so when I first started, it was like people would ask me for help and then I'd be like, Oh, I'm going consult for you, and I'll just give you like the roadmap, we'll go through some presentations, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then problem with that was they wouldn't do anything I told them to do, and I realized they just want it done for them. So I was like, okay, I know how to work with your camera, I know how to post on social media, I know graphic design, I can just do it for them. So then I started doing it for them. So I remember like my first clients were like, in mortgage. and title. I had like a HVAC company.yeah, basically anybody who had a pulse, I would say yes to. And that worked up to a point. I would say like this season was overwhelmed, the season was like burnt out. broke up with my girlfriend, because I was, basically had a job.

I had like 10 different jobs essentially from the clients and it was not a fun place to be in. So in short, I did not niche down. 

Ken Okazaki: I see this a post you put up long ago, it says you don't need to be confident in yourself to start. You need to start to build confidence. Confidence comes from action. Talk to me about that.

Like, is this like built on this stage of your life where you were just like, you know, building confidence through action versus. The 

Austin Schneider: other way around. Or Mosey put this like a really good way is like confidence is getting so good at something that becomes like boring. Like I think that's maybe how he framed that maybe phrasing it differently, but like you're not confident in something because you haven't done itenough times for you to be confident in it. So in order to build confidence, you just have to do the thing a ton of times to the point where you're just like, cool, I can do that. I feel confident. And. Building a system I feel confident shooting this piece of content, right? It's like with anything. So how do you build confidence? Is you just take action like a ton and thenbe more confident in that thing the more you do it. 

Ken Okazaki: Now you're at the stage where you're a freelancer and you're doing agency work. And there was a next bump where you went, well, your agency did scale up, Brandtigic, right? And now you're, you stepped out into consulting again, but more pure consulting. Tell me the catalyst that got you, number one, like to start hiring team. to the point where you could trust a CEO to completely run it and then pivoted out of that again. what were the main drivers for that? 

Austin Schneider: I would say like initially it was very disorganized. and I think my first hire was like a graphic designer and like found him on Upwork. It was kind of messy.

I had like a videographer, like on like a very like weird contract. And then he eventually quit. And I was like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? So it was like a series of like failing and like doing a bunch of stuff. And then I actually hired a consultant. I hired somebody to help me out. And first thing that we did is we focused on simplifying the business and productizing essentially.

So it was like, he's like, what do you guys do? Like, what do you, like, you basically took us through what we take you through, which is like, who do you help? What are the outcomes? What's the offer? How do we productize this? How do we make this a thing? And then that kind of like allowed me to zoom out and be like, huh, okay.

I need to look at this completely differently than how I'm looking at it. Cause I thought it was like, dude, I'm grinding. I'm an entrepreneur. Like I was young. So I was like, I thought like entrepreneurship at the time when I was starting was like cool thing, essentially. Um, and I took a lot of pride in just like grinding and I didn't really look at it as a business. So. That was like the first step. It was like, I need to zoom out and like, look at this as a business and like be more disciplined with it. That came from hiring a mentor. I would say I also got really lucky by, having good people around me that I could hire. So one of this now CEO, he would like work with me part time and then he eventually came on full time like a year later.

As he quit his corporate job. So that was like the first, I guess, like round. And then I would say, like from there, like once we settled a little bit, I would say like the key pivotal things is like, giving up control, learning to delegate, being transparent, getting people bought in, like having a mission that people are excited about.

Like a team environment. Cause that's all businesses. It's I guess like a ship, which is headed in a direction and what you want to do is you want to get a lot of people on these ships, like bought into the direction that we're going. And, um, they need to know where they're going. They need to know like how the ship works.

They need to know the numbers of the ship and like, make sure it's like safe and all that sort of stuff. and then they need to feel like they have a sense of ownership as well in the mission. So that was something that we, like our culture, like was really big into, like, we're on this together. And then like with the leaders of Brandtugic, like very transparent,giving them power, delegating, giving up control.

And I'm leading through that. That was 

Ken Okazaki: kind of like the leadership style. That's a. you know, mindset shift, culture shifts, just like, it's pretty much just evolution, right? From when you started to where you felt like you could exit, what was that timeframe roughly? when I say started, let's say you came to grips with the realization that this is a must and that you understood, you know, the benefits.

Maybe it was your mentor that explained it to you in a certain way. To where you felt like, Okay. I think they've got it handled, just step out. 

Austin Schneider: Yeah. I think it was like, looking at the business from a business point of view. I mean, you can't see a forest when you're in the trees. So by looking at the business and saying, cool, like it wasn't a selfish reason that I wanted to like, what is best for Brantegic?

Probably Mark in the role as CEO for the company is probably going to be best. Like going forward, just given me given Mark's personality, all that sort of stuff. Cool. I need to be humble and look at the business and be like, huh, okay. Totally agree because of X, Y, Z this, this, this. So we, that was really the catapult of the transition of doing that.

Like when you scale, when you have 15, 20, 25 employees, like. Your job as a CEO is not building the business and grinding like what you love to do as a founder. It's human resources. 

Ken Okazaki: So did you mention rough time frame from like, from the realization to, exiting?

I think it was probably like two 

Austin Schneider: years. It wasn't like a light thing. Like it was something very thought out and methodical and took a lot of transition. to get somebody up to that level. 

Ken Okazaki: When you started, did you set out a roadmap? Like, here are, is the, you 200 step, you know, process to, you know, from where we are to me exiting the business or did it evolve?

And the time just kind of worked itself out. 

Austin Schneider: Wasn't really my ambition to even like do that when I was first starting. But when we did game plan it, a lot of it was getting a lot of my CEO responsibilities, like transferred over, which is like a lot of things. If you're not. Used to start, if you've never started a business or you never ran a business like accounting and like financials and understanding that and empowering to make decisions when that comes up.

So it was more of like that type of transition where it was like, I'm going to let you make this decision. here's how like we're going to arrive at this based off of this. But like, I'm going to let you make the decision and you actually execute the decision without me being the bottleneck, essentially.

So that way he could understand the process. And then also from the optics of the team, like he is seen as that, guy, and he has the authority to do that sort of stuff. So it was like a, Takes a long time to do that. You can't 

Ken Okazaki: do that in a month 

Austin Schneider: whatsoever. 

Ken Okazaki: So now you've got this going, mark is still running the business.

Has it grown since uh, he was CEO or is it pretty much cruising at a level of pace? 

Austin Schneider: I would say it's like, I would say so Mark is, he's CEO. Okay. So one thing that I'm not doing is I'm not trying to also be CEO. I'm not trying to make decisions. I'm not trying to. Like not let him be CEO. So I'm giving him a lot of freedom to like run with the vision.

Cause that like on the job description of CEO that we created for Mark. Is vision, like where we're going, managing the financials, all that sort of stuff. So he has a different vision where I think he's working on craft. He's still working on even like a year later, still working on crafting, like what is the vision?

Like what does he see so that he can then execute it and roll with it and make it his

Ken Okazaki: all the best to him. And uh, Yeah, that frees up a lot of your time. I wanna pivot into what's working right now, because what you're doing with consulting with my business and with a lot more. is helping people to use content. Uh, ads, organic email, et cetera, and using that to help real businesses. And the way I look at it is there's, when there's people online, you got a lot of influencers who are playing business owner, right? They got a big audience and then they try to give, you know, pithy business advice. And then you have real business owners who play influencer in order to extract more business or value from those social media channels.

And I believe that most of your, clients are helping the latter. Real business owners. who don't really get social media and helping them to play influencer. What are some tactics that are working better than most in terms of getting people who were not born with a, you know, a selfie, camera in their hand and don't want to do the dance moves, but maybe they've got a legitimate lawyer firm, doctor, architect, builder, whatever that's going to be.

and they want a piece of the action on social media. It's what I found in my experiences. Some of these people just feel so unnatural or they feel like it's not them or they don't want to do all the stuff. How do you make that? How do you help them, to actually become marketable on social media?

Austin Schneider: Well, first they have to realize that 80 percent of Americans are spending almost six hours a day on social media. And like, if they want to be seen in today's day and age, then that's how it's going to work. And. Like what you just said, like influencers trying to be business owners. Like the reason is, is because the best known beats the best all day, right?

If you're more known, then more people are likely to do business with you. So that's like, the first thing is like, we need to realize we're sitting on like a huge opportunity, from that. And secondly would be, Um, cool. We're hit with a bazillion ads every single day, right? I think the, I think we're coming to that phase where what's going to matter the most when doing business with someone is likeability and trust.

So how do we, like as businesses, especially like a service based business, which a lot of content agencies work with, it's like, how do we scale trust? as much as possible. It's not going to be a mailer. It's not going to be your billboard. It's going to be social media content and being seen in video and like your, aura, how your demeanor, how you're teaching, how you're convicted about a specific topic.

Um, because that's how consumers do business at the end of the day. It's who they like and who they trust. 

Ken Okazaki: So we've given them that mindset shift that, It's necessary. It needs to happen. But then what about the nuts and bolts of getting in front of a camera or what kind of content they should be creating in order to attract the right people? There's, a ton of courses, tactics, YouTube videos on this, but you specifically, let's, let's say there's someone who literally says, I don't want to be on camera, but we need to do social media. I've got this, let's just say, uh, birdhouse, you know, bespoke birdhouse building, you know, business at home.

Like, how are you going to help that person? 

Austin Schneider: Our methodology is heavy organic con decoration and then paid ads. And from the organic perspective, it's like what I just talked about, scaling trust. And then the ads is actually getting results. So that's what we're coaching a lot of people to offer to their clients and then like just do for their own business because that like one, two punches really well. Cause if you're just like, okay, I'm going to post five times a week on social media, unpredictably gonna, Do what they probably actually want, which is to get more business, but if we can control the business side, scale trust, like that's a killer combination from the perspective of what I would suggest that they do.

Like the paid ads thing, it's kind of like the predictability for a lot of businesses, like, yeah, maybe three, four or five years ago, whatever you like, you would have a lot more ammo with, just leveraging the organic. combining the two, I think is like a very winning strategy that a lot of content agencies, if content agencies are watching this, like should be learning is how they can leverage marketing with their content to provide their clients, better results.

Ken Okazaki: So circling back to what content agencies are doing, They could be doing better. You must have heard a hundred stories about, uh, and seen a lot of situations. What are the top few that, you know, probably like nine out of 10 chance, a new client comes on, they've got a content or creative agency, and you know, you're going to have to fix something.

What are the, top, most common things that you got to fix? 

Austin Schneider: Yeah. From which, which pillar offer or what, or just in general, the order that you would present it to them. Well, first things first is like offer. So like offer is generally, uh, very like output driven. So, quantity of deliverables, like, I'm gonna do a video for you, I'm gonna deliver a deliverable for you. Um, not outcome driven. So like, I think again, like what I just echoed, if you can have your offer be very outcome driven and predictably get an outcome, then you'll win. I think as content agencies, we have just a massive opportunity because we know a skillset that a lot of these PPC advertisers wish they had, which is content.

So that's like offer systems? Yeah. Like they're the bottleneck in their business and the business runs them. They don't run the business essentially, and they don't have any infrastructure. To run the business from. and it's very chaotic, disorganized. Like you wake up in the night and you're like, did I do this?

Or you're like, Oh, shoot. Like, did this person do this? You're unclear on due dates for your team, because you don't have infrastructure, you know, like the bones actually work with the foundation to To build from, um, from a sales perspective, kind of similar from a predictability perspective, whether we're relying on word of mouth and referral, or we don't have a predictable way to get new inbound clients that like we can rely on, that we can just turn up and down, whether it's ad spend or volume of XYZ that we're doing, so creating predictability around the sales.

So we're not in that feast and famine. And then going back to systems, like we want our leads to grow and then also our systems and operations to grow with it. So we're not the peace, famine, yo yo kind of vibe is what I call it. And then talent acquisition is just like fear of delegating, hiring incorrectly, not setting good expectations, not setting up the team for success, to actually do well, like an environment to thrive. Um, there's no bad teams, only bad leaders. That's a Jocko quote that like, I just like love when it comes to leadership. Um, so like our job, and I say this a ton, is like a CEO is not like a chief executive officer, in my opinion. It's chief expectation officer. So if you can set expectations with your team, and then also back that up with tools to get them to succeed.

Then you'll have a killer team that crushes and that's how you remove yourself as a bottleneck. So in each pillar, so those are, that was four is those are the biggest mistakes that we see a lot. 

Ken Okazaki: And you tackle them that order. Get the right offer in place and put the infrastructure in place and the systems.

Sometimes we'll flip the systems in sales depending on the size. Now which I've, as I've been going through your material and looking at the systems, sometimes, for me, this is not an issue, but some people might look and see that and feel like, hey, I'm a creative person. I'm not that kind of person who, you know, is all in the weeds with the numbers and stuff.

Do you ever get 

Austin Schneider: that kind of pushback? I would say there's A lot of people who like want to have the outcome of good systems meaning, an organization, all that sort of stuff tend to struggle with it likely because they're more creative, and it's kind of hard for them to actually grasp that. 

Ken Okazaki: And how does that issue turn out?

Like to these, are there certain personalities that are just not cut out to be building and running businesses and they should hire a manager type person or should they just, I guess there's two options here. They could stay in their comfort zone, right? And they might be perfectly happy at, you know, whatever income level and business level they're at.

They could learn the skill themselves. and upload themselves. Or they could partner with someone who has the skill set that they don't. Is that kind of how you look at it? Or is there another way to that we're not seeing? I 

Austin Schneider: don't think there's anything wrong with, like, if you're crushing it as, like, a freelancer and, like, that's what you want to do, and, like, you really enjoy the creative aspect of it, but, If it is, Hey, I want to build a team.

I want to hire a lot of people. I want to do all that sort of stuff. Um, then you kind of got to like buckle up and like, realize like what it takes to get to that level. a lot of people are like, wow, Ken, you're a really successful business. Like how do I do what you do? And then it's like, okay, Mr.

Creative agency I'm talking to do what I did, which is build systems, hire a team, took risks, like all that sort of stuff. So it's like, they kind of got to buckle up and realize like, that's what the they need and like having good mentors, like having people who can like copy and paste.

And I coach you on how to do this stuff is, and a lot of people don't talk about this, like on YouTube. Like, I think I'm one of the very few people who are like set expectations. This is how you build a team. This is Notion, a lot of da, da, da, da, because that's what actually gets you to scale. If that is your end goal is to, build and grow. yeah, you could hire, but like, I think that's, it's a very tough hire unless you can like, it's a lot of, a lot of people who come to me and like, dude, I wish I had somebody who could just like come in, had a partner ownership mindset. It's very challenging to find somebody with those skills because it's not really something you learn unless you've built it.

Right. Unless you've actually been in it and like done it where it's to a place where you can like copy and paste it and like teach on it and competently teach on it. Like some of the stuff we're teaching you and like, Natasha, it's like,we can competently teach on this cause we've done it a hundred different times. and we've done it in our business and there's no like YouTube or like school that we can go to, to like learn that sort of stuff. It's just action. So that's my hard, hard truth answer, I would say. 

Ken Okazaki: That's 100 percent true, that all the information is available in some way or another with, AI, Google, whatever.

But what people really pay for is number one, a structured approach that actually will follow, you know, what the structure for your specific situation is going to work best for you. And the second one is somebody to help you when you get stuck. And if you could put those two elements in place, then the information is out there, but you really only trust the person who's done it and knows which information applies. Talk to me a bit about, in terms of what's the relationship between your consulting work right now and the agency? Is there any relationship or are these two separate businesses that you look at divided? Two 

Austin Schneider: separate businesses completely divided. Mark is CEO of Merriam Teicheck. Like maybe we'll facetime him once a month.

Like no real structured like advisement going on. And then consulting is the main thing. Cause it's really challenging to like be into two things. And again I want Mark to be the CEO and he wants to be the CEO. So if I was. Any sense of control or had any direction, then it would kind of take away from that.

And then also on the flip side, my capacity can go towards one thing, so I can actually do it. Well, you 

Ken Okazaki: put out 

a great quote that spoke to me the other day. Um, you don't need more time in a day. You need more focus. That's what you're talking about here. Right. And well, I think that's, that's probably the biggest thing holding me back is having this creative mind that has too many ideas and trying to fix too many things at once and while creating something else at the same time. And. If I'm honest, I think I'd probably be a lot further along in the business I'm in, the main one that's actually paying the bills, if I had not tried so many other things. On the flip side, I don't think I would have ever gotten into this business if I wasn't willing to juggle balls while I was unhappy in my previous situation.

So, it's a little bit of an egg and, chicken thing for me because the best opportunities, a lot of times, they come about by starting as a side thing. And then realizing, Oh, this is the better thing. And then pivoting. Can you talk to me a bit about where you see things moving? I know,recently a lot of people call it the chat apocalypse, where, we're seeing a lot of movement from meta and clamping down on how you can use chats and automations and things like that to market your business. How are you navigating this? I think it 

Austin Schneider: goes back to what we talked about earlier with like, the lawyer, like the bird example, it's like trust. I think people see enough. I hit 50 K in my agency once, and I'm a coach all the time, and I'm going to help you get your next 10 sales, or if I'm a business owner, like ads all the time.

but what is from like a human nature perspective and from a marketing perspective, in my point of view, what is going to like really separate you as a businesses is you. like you being the niche, your client being the niche, can you the niche? I'm the niche, like, right? Like people connect with people.

And I think that's like one human nature, but two from a marketing perspective, how do we connect with people, but also incorporate that into like the sales and marketing aspect. How do we leverage that?so like for us, like we're not doing like an ad to a VSL, took like cold traffic and hoping that this 15 minute video will build enough trust for them to book a call.

Like, we're using marketing techniques to chat with them, like what you said, and like connect with them and really leveraging long form videos to build that trust so that people are like, Oh, he actually knows what he's talking about. And, Oh, it's actually resonating with the pain points because he's actually done it before.

And oh, he's not just like a guru, like posting an ad and like, whatever. LikeI'm a human and I've done stuff. And now I'm trying to teach other people how to do it from what I've learned. Like that's simply what it is, but.that's what we're trying to convey at Agency U is like, hey, like we have stuff and like we want you to trust us because we're in the age where, especially in our industry, a lot of people don't trust us for a lot of good reasons. 

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. There's a lot of, you know, turn and burn type of agencies out there. And, um, they come from a position of desperation andit's actually, I'm actually thankful for them. And the reason for that is number one, there's a lot of examples of what not to do. I, when I'm scrolling through my feed, sometimes I see something I'm like, well, there's, you know, on my do not do list, right?

Because, you know, it's just that gut reaction. You see, you feel when you see it, right? And the other thing is also, I think that it's becoming more and more clear to the, you know, more sophisticated buyer. You know, there's a line here. These, there are certain people who are value based. They lead with that.

And there's certain people who would say whatever it takes to make a sale. And there's been enough of this pattern where people don't fall for that stuff anymore. And you just, it's more polarized. So in that sense, I appreciate them. And, uh, it drives more people my way. A hundred percent. 

Austin Schneider: Totally.

Yeah, exactly. Like you can't tell you how many peoplelike you, for example, you've been in so many courses and coaches and consultants, and I'm sure you've seen. The worst of the worst. And you have a, like, you know, the best of the best. And, you have a good radar for that because you've experienced 

Ken Okazaki: both ends of that.

Let's talk about future.you put on, uh, YouTube multiple times, how you got your creative agency up to 200, 000 a month, which is impressive. That's, you know, over 2 million a year, and now you're not even in it. And presumably we're doing, some more within that range. What's the next level for you?

Where are you going? Is this consultancy gonna become a, I don't know, like a licensing thing? Is it gonna, what is the next level? It's a good question. You got, you 

Austin Schneider: got any ideas for us? 'cause, we'll, take it off.so I mean, in our, our eyes, like we want to like basically continue to open up our addressable market.

that's like step one is like, cool. Like we very much started with like creative agencies. Cool. Can we help agencies in general? Okay. That just like 10x star like addressable market from like a marketing perspective. Cool. Can we help like coaches and consultants eventually at some point? Probably.

So that's like what we're thinking, like we're trying to graduate to is to like, Open up the market and we want to make sure we have a good product before we do that and like good systems and can actually fulfill on promises before we do any of that, but that's like our thought process. It's kinda like expanding the market. in the next couple of years, and just serving more people. Continuing to stay true to our product. And like, we are pretty involved with everybody that we consult. So, um, it does take a lot of time. It does take a lot, like it's expensive for us as well to,hire coaches and have all the stuff that we have going on.

But, ultimately at the end of the day, it's what gets people results. So that's like the broad future for us. And then from a marketing perspective for that, like going really hard on YouTube, just from like a trust perspective and then Instagram, we're really looking at as. trust building, essentially.

A little bit of authority, a little bit of call to action, but mostly trust building. 

Ken Okazaki: Human. I think that, uh, two people who have done this really well, very visible, are Alex Hormozy. He started with just gyms. And then, because of his success there, he was able to expand into pretty much, right now, he's gone into just business in general, right?

Uh, and then there's, Dan Martell. I'm not sure if you've watched his stuff. He was just, started SAS Academy, coaching SAS agencies. And then, uh, now a lot of just business and success in general. So I think it's a pretty, you know, it's a good path, like it's proven and you gotta be willing to be on video a lot.

Oh my gosh. 

Austin Schneider: Yeah. 

Ken Okazaki: I mean, yeah. And when it comes to the quality of videos, for example, a lot of people are very into the lens, the camera, the lights, and then there's the messaging, which is, which really comes down to copywriting. How do you balance the amount of effort you put into these when you're really trying to create something that is gonna bring money in to the bank for your clients, for yourself?

I would say 

Austin Schneider: a year ago, like a really good editing was like very important and like cool and got people's attention and got people interested. Um, I would say what I'm seeing and what we're. Trying to do more of is like double down on extremely good copy, like probably the lowest leverage, like not talked about skill for a content agency is the ability to understand copywriting and influence with words and marketing for yourself, marketing for your clients, just in general is if you can understand copy, then I think that is like, oh my gosh, in upper hand, like completely, like massive, like I think that is the best thing that you can understand, which roots from your offer, your customer, all that sort of stuff.

So you have to have that sort of stuff figured out. But if you're a content agency and you want to take your content to the next level, understand copy. And I think a lot of people are really good technically, but not understanding the copywriting skills. Kind of going back to my point earlier, where it's like. We're really good at copy, or we're really good at like creating videos, but maybe not good at marketing. Maybe not good at copywriting. The actual stuff that can like hit your client's master results. Like those are the types of skills that I would like really be honing on. So I say, I'll just say copy is for 

Ken Okazaki: sure king.

Was there a time you made a post, whether it was copy or video or. A story or YouTube, and that one's just been performing extremely well in terms of bringing you the right kind of attention, which leads to, you know, leads and sales. Is there a standout piece of content that you can think of? 

Austin Schneider: Um, so we'll actually rapid test through ads.

And, um, so like, we'll, we spend a lot of money on ads and, we, there's always like some like keywords. So how we'll kind of dissect this is like from sales calls, like what they're saying. And oftentimes what they'll do is they'll repeat back, like what I've said in a video or like what I've said in an ad.

And that will be a clear indicator of like, okay, this message is really resonating. Like our message is like actually really unique, I think. but yeah, I would say. Like where we spend a lot of our time and like a lot of our video, like one, one, all of it, like all of our content, I would say in the last like six months where we actually finally like nailed it, should speak to our avatar.

but where we spend a lot of time is like our VSL, which is on our YouTube channel, where we'll really hit on it and like really speak to the pain and really speak to the outcome of. well I we're our ideal customers. I mean, you're a perfect example. Like you came in, you watched the videos and you probably were like, I watched one then I watched ten probably.

And were you like, wow, that's me, that's me. I feel like he understands me. Or was there one different than another? 

Ken Okazaki: I I don't bench 10 videos usually on one person for awhile. I, okay. The part that that really hooked me was, was, first of all, well, backstory for everybody listening, we were looking for a better project management platform because we outgrew what we're using at the time.

you. And right now some of our stuff is getting quite messy and we need to, you know, rethink everything. So I was looking at, you know, all of them and one that I'd never done before was Notion. So then I started, I Googled, you know, Notion, project management, creative agency, and your video was somewhere on H2 maybe.

Watched it, and what happened was, it was not about, like, I was thinking about the project management as a tool. And then five minutes in, I was like, wait, I could be optimizing so many other things in my business. So then, but the thing that actually got me was when you talked about how, when clients start haggling over, well, let's cut down the number of creatives in order to save money and how we're focusing on the wrong thing. That's when I was like, okay, this guy actually gets it at a deeper level because, you know, we've had that type of, uh, situation a couple of times. And then you talked about what's the next step, which is actually. getting appointments in the client's calendar, pretty much becoming an ad agency, which was the exact question that was going on through my mind.

Cause I were doing this for a couple of clients and I was wondering if maybe we need to actually start expanding that. And so this was the new area that I was exploring into expanding our services. And when you bundled it together like that to where, if you offer this to everyone, then you're selling the result, not the work and intuitively I'd already been talking about and thinking about this shift.

In our entire approach and then you crystallized that you're, you have a system to bind all this together and bring it together. And I was like, okay. Okay. So I think this is going to be a shortcut and it'll get us there faster and we'll have guidance if we get stuck in implementing it. And when I got on a call with your, with your sales rep,I already knew we're going to invest whatever it is.

I didn't really care what the price was. It was a non issue.Uh, I mean, I think if it crossed six figures, then I'd be like, you know, like take a beat, you know, but in my mind I had this number, which was like, okay, you know, up to 50 K I'd be okay, you know, I don't know what they're offering. Oh, I did.

and the price was very reasonable. I was like, okay, we're good. And I had to even talk to my, my team about it. I'm like, I think I'm going to invest whatever it's going to be. Just want to let you know before you get on the call, but don't, you know, you don't have to say anything until the end.

When I get into a sales conversation, it's kind of like going into what they say about gamblers, right? They say, go in with the number you're willing to spend as play money. And as soon as you, you know, if you hit that number, then you got to get out. So when, people go into sales conversations with me, I have a number.

I feel like the value is X. And then when they make their offer, the decision is instant for me. Unless there's new information I didn't know that they offered me on the call. Good to know. We'll up our prices. But most people, I don't think they budget before they go into a sales conversation. 

Austin Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, yeah, totally. You're a savvy, you're a savvy buyer. 

Ken Okazaki: yeah, but yeah, I felt like 50 would have been high, but worth it. That was on my mind. Well, hopefully we can continue to provide that level of value for you. I, you know what, in the same way, I think we're, well, I got ideas and we'll, uh, we'll continue talking.

We'll make this their call. And I'm so pissed that the question I had that I, I think it was good. It's still, uh, it's still good to me. It's still in there somewhere. Oh, I got it. I remember. You, you briefly offhandedly just mentioned we rapid test the content with ads. Can you walk us through that process?

Austin Schneider: Yeah, so, we have a media buyer and, um, Is full time in house or? Say like 70%, but not an employee, but a contractor. Um, but kind of operates as one, like part of the team, like we consider him part of the team. He's a cool guy. He's done a lot of ads for a lot of coaches out there, so, But what we'll do is we'll like do like seven day periods of, testing different angles and testing different like messages.

So I think like a lot of people will do it the flip side of like, Oh, we're going to test on organic, but organic is very top of the funnel. And the message is like very different, I would say not the, and it's harder to reach a lot more people that you need in order to actually get data to receive that sort of information.

So say that I'll just say like. this, is the title of the program. So there's two ways you can put it together.we kind of have like the offer, the sales, the systems, and the hiring, like, those are the pillars of what we know, what we can follow through on.

Like if we get a client and they come for offer systems issues, for sales issues, for hiring issues, like we can fulfill on that sort of promise. So we were trying to do is we would just basically test different angles with those different pillars that we can actually fulfill on, until we landed on the right one.

And what I'm talking about is like specific, like words. bottleneck, or like, uh, remove yourself from the agency or, like if you're doing everything yourself, like all these different like keywords and terms, and then trying to see what actually respond. Styles of formats. So like right now we're doing like a lot of like tweets, and then we'll also do like just like random b roll with like, I made an Instagram essentially, and like that's the ad.longer form ads like carousels. So a lot of different. Angles to test, but specifically like who is giving the best response to the ads from a qualified perspective. Like what message is resonating most with, with those people. And then we're able to track which ad is actually a winner or not.

And the formatting, of course, so. 

Ken Okazaki: So you use the success of the ads to inform your organic content, like What topics to cover? 100%. 

Austin Schneider: We do it backwards. Like, I think like Gary V's like head of content is always on TikTok. Like, Oh, like post the organic and then run that as an ad.

But it's like. how do you know, and if you don't have enough data, organic data is 

Ken Okazaki: affected by so many 

Austin Schneider: externalities, 

Ken Okazaki: you know, time of day, the, you know, random influencer happens to, you know, like, and share it, like, I'll 

Austin Schneider: give you another example is like, we used to say creative agency. Like a lot in our ads.

Like creative, if you're a creative agency, if you're creative agency. And when we were targeting like video agencies and people who were like, I thought a creative agency was, I shoot for my clients and then I like post and I, I do all that sort of stuff. But what we started to attract was graphic designers and like branding people and like all that sort of stuff.

Just because we said creative. So then we started saying video and there was a lot of freelancers and then we started saying content and that opened up the market a little bit more. And then it was. More people within the sphere of who we could actually help. So that's an example of like testing to see who's actually bringing in or who's bringing in the right like agency.

If would you, would you say agency is an insurance agency? Is it a travel agency? Is it a marketing, like that sort of stuff? 

Ken Okazaki: Central little agency. 

Austin Schneider: Yeah, exactly. I get the CIA up in here. We'll help you build system. 

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. So, And when you do this, do you do them sequentially or do you put them all like in a ad set and just see which one performs best?

Kind of been 

Austin Schneider: like an evolution, I would say. like we'll think about angles. Like right now we're really lucky that we kind of have like the, the boundaries of the messaging for the most part, and we can kind of work angles within that boundary. But I would say like, we kind of, we'll test, we'll like look at the test and then the next week or the week after we'll.

And you can also evaluate what's working well, based off of the results. And the way we're running ads is like a DM ad. So it's like direct messages. It's really tricky to track, like qualified to booking. We have an appointment setter, so like we're very involved. and then based off of what's working from qualified leads to appointments, then we'll evolve from there and then we'll test, we'll use that message in a different format.

So it's kind of just like, like you're stacking essentially. I'm like, you're getting a really good message. Over time that speaks really nicely to them in different ways, in different angles, stuff like that.

Ken Okazaki: I feel like you have pretty high level skills in multiple disciplines of business.

But if you were to look at like ranking from strongest to weakest, uh, from number one, being a marketer, number two, the operations slash systems and then you have sales, right? And then you have the actual fulfillment, which is like the creative side and actually producing the stuff. I see those as like kind of the four main drivers and skill drivers in business.

Where do you see yourself? Like where's your biggest superpower? 

Austin Schneider: I love systems and operations. For sure. And then probably on the bottom would be sales just cause I'm not in it as much anymore, but I like systems operations just because I know how powerful it is and it is a very powerful tool and that's pretty much your businesses should be your systems.

Like that should be your business. It shouldn't be you. It shouldn't be your team. It should be the system cause that's what runs your business. So that's what I love. And then I'm so I'm like pretty out of sales right now. So I haven't sharpened my axe. I think if I jumped, I've jumped on a couple of sales calls in the last couple of months, actually.

which have been fun. but definitely not like a closer. 

Ken Okazaki: Your team is doing a pretty good job. Like I got on the call and it was super chill. Loved it. Gilbert Doe is a good guy. Or Gilbert Doe, 

Austin Schneider: our co founder of agency, like he's really good at sales. Like his company is complete opposite of mine. Not good at operations, but really good at sales.

Ken Okazaki: Okay. I want to wrap this up real soon. And before I do, two things, let us know where people can get in touch with you the best way to, you know, what's the best first impression they should get of you. Send us that link. I'll put it into the, show notes below. But before you give us that, would like to ask,what would you say to somebody who's got an agency?

They're doing video or you know, some kind of agency work and they're struggling to get past, let's say they're trying to get to a million dollars a year, like 83,000 a month, but they just keep hitting a barrier. And I know that there could be a million reasons, but from your experience, what would you say to that person they should be focusing on?

Austin Schneider: Yeah, I would go through all of those four different pillars, right? I would say. I would ask myself, is my offer productized and does it provide an outcome to a customer? So productized means it's scalable, repeatable, and delegatable. Okay. That's pretty self explanatory. And does it provide an outcome?

Cause that will make it more scalable. And then from a system perspective, do I have infrastructure that if I step away for two days, like everything should flow really nicely because the system's going to run my business and people will run the systems, especially if you're at like a million dollars a year.

Like, you should have that. Is that doable? And then, uh, sales. Do I have a predictable way to get new clients? Like, that I could turn on and off, turn the faucet up, turn the faucet down, depending on the season. And then lastly, talent. Do I have a hiring system? Do I have a way to not only bring people in, but build them up and replace you so that you can free up your time and not have to have your hand in every single thing?

Like, the layers of leadership. It's just like a process of multiplying yourself in every single task that you're doing. So those are the four questions I would ask regarding each pillar. So I think that's what, one of those, it's probably one of those pillars, to be honest. 

Ken Okazaki: And what questions should they be asking themselves in order to know which one to hit focus on?

Austin Schneider: I think it's where the pain is. Like, do clients keep leaving? Is my churn really high? K, your offer is probably not good. Is it a feast or famine? K, your sales probably isn't that great. do I feel like I have to have control over everything? We were telling acquisition probably sucks. do I feel like I'm, it's chaotic and I'm disorganized and I'm cleaning up a lot of people's mess.

Cool, your systems are probably not good. So those are the questions that are probably what they're feeling in 

Ken Okazaki: regards to each pillar. Gone way back to, I remember toward the beginning of when I started business, I really, really got focused on if you ask the right questions, you get better results. Ask better questions to get better results.

Now that AI has come in, it has, like, I've turned that up, like, you know, to 200 because it's all about the questions. It's all about the prompts. And, and then I realized, no, it's not just AI, it's everything. and the more specific I am with my question, with AI, I use that same process in asking the questions to myself and my team now.

And get better answers. So the parallels are, uncanny. Yeah, the better you are at prompt engineering, just take those prompts and put it into like human language form and then take that to your team and you'd be amazed. so the last question, how do people find out about you? What's the best first place to go?

Austin Schneider: Uh, probably Instagram, the Austin Schneider. It's probably where I'm most active and what content is relevant. And then we have our YouTube channel if you want to learn some things. posted a lot on there. 

Ken Okazaki: All right, thanks Austin for sharing. Uh, and for everybody else listening, thanks for sticking around all the way to the very end.

And I will put the links down there to Austin's Instagram and his other social media places. Austen, thank you so much. I appreciated this. And I think that you shared a lot of tactical stuff as well as your story. And those are the two things I found on podcast people tend to engage with the most is when there's specific actionable advice and when there's a story attached to it.

So you delivered 10 on both. I appreciate you coming on the show. All right. And for everybody else, I'll see you next week.

No hassle, worship here, we're a different breed. Action is what we got if action is what you need. Us content capitalists, we're breaking the flow. Cuz the old ways stay, new stories to be told. So content capitalists, get to the press.