Advice Interactive's Bernadette Coleman Offers Tips For Growing An Agency

Key Takeaways

[Music] Hi, I'm John Rmpton with Bernardet Coleman from Advice Interactive Group. So, uh, today we're going to be talking about an agency and how you grow your agency. Bernardet has taken her agency from a small little boutique firm, I guess you could say, uh, to an extremely large firm and one that most agencies would want to become. So, can you tell us a little bit about when you started? uh kind of a little bit of the history and yeah. Yep. I'd love to. Um as a matter of fact, we started a Vice Interactive Group in 2010. Um I I ran it as a consulting firm before that. So it was my own little consulting firm. I did it on the side, but in 2010 we got our first client as a corporation and that was a $750 website. Oh, so it's quite exciting to go back and see um where we started and where we at are at now. Um this year we are an inc 500 company for the second time in a row. So, that's pretty exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. We're very proud of that. But, um, the the best advice I can give is just deliver what you promise. If you deliver what you promise, you get referrals. If the clients love you, they tell other people about you. So, that's been our strongest point is making sure that our clients got what they were told they were going to get. Once they got what they were told they were going to get and they were happy with the performance, the referrals just kept coming in. And then you just build and build on that. But, it's important to do what you say you're going to do. I mean, that's really my secret. Okay. Even if it cost me additional money, even if I lose money on a a campaign, if I told my client that he was going to get something for it, be fulfilled. And and that's that's the secret to our success, I think. Yeah, you do have to really deliver what you promised the clients. So, what are some pain points that you've experienced along the way? I know uh myself I've been in the agency world for a while and growing past a certain person count you know that two three guys once you get to that level and then you get stuck and then all of a sudden I swear you go from three people to like 10 people overnight. Yeah. And that's really what happened to us. Um we started growing so quickly and getting more and more referrals and then being invited to different conferences. So before we knew it, we were um you know from a few accounts to 50 accounts, then 100 accounts and fulfillment on those many accounts can be very trying. So keeping um uh good staff up to speed um making sure that not only they doing the work, but they're staying on ahead of the uh technology and offering cutting edge services. So that's been a little bit of a trial. I mean we've gone through quite a few people. Yeah. Um I think now we have a very good core group that does the work. I mean I think best of class. Of course I am a little bit biased, you know. I think best of class, but it was it was very tough putting that team together. So um what you don't want to do and and this is what I always tell my team is you don't want to drown in your own success. Yeah. And that can happen very easily. Yes, it can. Um so uh next question for you would be um what and not naming a specific person but what role what hire or role or position was a pivot for you that took you from the small agency to a large agency? What was that person like and what was their position that really helped push you up? Um that's easy. Uh recently we hired a new president of the company and his name is John Kaufman and um John came with um a lot of resources and um a lot of um you know connections in the business. Uh he was able to take a look at what we had and and just kind of push us over to the next level. Yeah. So we went from concentrating on smaller um small business accounts into the enterprise account um area and it's just been phenomenal and I have to say I learned some lessons from it. you know, it's you probably do as much work for a large brand as you do for a small brand, except that you're able to um earn more for the work. A lot more. Yeah. So, um yeah, the the push from small to enterprise has been very exciting for us and and we're very um excited about the new clients that we've brought on recently and the opportunities that that we have. So, excellent. Well, thank you very much for your time. Again, John Rmpton with Bernardet Coleman from the Advice Interactive Group. Thanks. [Music]