Learning From Other Agency Owners

Sei-Wook Kim (00:07.201) On today's episode, we're talking about why learning from other agency owners can accelerate growth and sharpen your perspective. We'll share how surrounding yourself with peers often helps you see patterns and avoid blind spots. It's not about copying what works for others. It's about understanding why it works and how it fits in your own context. Peter Kang (00:29.326) Honestly, this is a topic that's near and dear to our hearts. It takes me back when we thought about this as a topic. Back in the day, especially when we were starting out, the first few years, we very much kept ourselves — we just didn't want any input, we just wanted to do exactly what we wanted to do. But of course, that was a little bit of youthful foolishness. Over time, we realized, hey, maybe we should get some more mentorship, maybe we should get an idea of what other people who are further along in their careers or with their business are doing. So we took the other track, which was we started to just reach out to random agency folks, agency owners, whoever we'd look up or read about on a blog or come across in the magazines. We'd look them up and start emailing — I think we would just email like info at whatever the company was — and just try to get a meeting with them. Obviously it was easy in New York City, but then we also made it a part of our travel. If we were visiting LA, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, wherever we were going, we'd just look up some of these people. And some were actually heroes — we'd follow them on their blogs and be like, wow, one day we could build an agency like theirs. And that was the start of this learning from other agency folks. Sei-Wook Kim (01:55.019) Yeah, the surprising thing was early on, when it's a couple of guys and maybe a few other people, we would reach out to these people we look up to — peers — and the fact that they would, number one, respond, but also set aside time, in some cases several hours, to just sit down with us and talk to us about their business and be super transparent. Very grateful for people opening up the door for us. Peter Kang (02:24.526) Yeah, 100%. A lot of what we do today — hopefully providing value, sharing a lot of stuff — is probably because of the positive experience we had and others being so generous with their time and knowledge and information. We want to pay that forward as much as possible. A lot of this initially was done through these one-to-one meetings that we would try to do, but eventually we came across some communities and that really accelerated things even further, where you could get in a room with many other agency owners and learn from them. We should talk about some of these communities. But first, maybe take a step back — why is joining a community a positive thing? Sei-Wook Kim (03:16.941) Yeah. Expanding on that one-to-one relationship of talking to one agency owner, a community opens you up to so many people. And communities can be in the same industry and type of business that you're in, or adjacent, where they might be another professional services organization — not in design or marketing or technology per se — but they have a similar perspective and story that you can learn from. Honestly, it's just about getting perspective from other people. There's no playbook exactly on how to do these things, and you want to learn about how everyone got into what they're doing, how they've navigated similar challenges that you might be having, and hopefully through all of that just spur new ideas for how you approach your business. Peter Kang (04:16.365) Yeah, definitely. We could talk about a few specific communities that have really helped us along the way. We've been long-time members of the Bureau of Digital. I remember joining — even before it was officially the Bureau of Digital, it was a series of events called Owner Camps. Those were really cool. I remember going to one of the early ones over a decade ago. You just go away with 20, 25 other agency owners to a remote location, spend time with them, hang out, and there are these sessions with a lot of different themed knowledge shares. That was just incredible. At the time I was just ignorant of so many things, and there were all these different moments of, wow, this is how business can be done, this is what people know. It was really stimulating to say the least. There are some folks I met 10-plus years ago who I've remained friends with to this day. Something like that has been really instrumental to our growth. Sei-Wook Kim (05:33.012) Yeah, definitely. Another one that comes to mind is a group called SODA, the Society of Digital Agencies. That one is a lot of leaders in the digital creative technology space. We were invited to that organization about 10 years ago by another agency owner who had found a lot of benefit from it. When we first joined, it was a much smaller group — maybe 30, 40 agencies. Now it's grown; they've added five agencies a year for the past few years and it's probably over 100 people now. When we started out, it was a very small, close-knit group of people. They do an annual global member meeting in different locations — I remember one in Barcelona, that was probably the first one we went to — and you're in this amazing location, talking to all these agency owners, many of whom are much further along in the journey. The biggest thing that was enlightening was how transparent everyone was about everything, from finances — how much did they make, what kind of profit — to how they handled their team and their processes. It was mind-blowing how open everyone was, and everyone had an abundance mindset where nothing here is a secret sauce that needs to be hidden behind closed doors, let's share it with you, there's more than enough business to go around for everybody. That was a wonderful experience. They do that global member meeting every year, but being in New York, there's a big concentration of agencies and they also did local events where they brought in external corporate sponsors to do talks. It was a great way to just meet more people, more agency peers — and it's hard to do that when it's just one-to-one. You might be hesitant to reach out to the founder or leader of a many-hundred-person agency, but through something like SODA that door opens. It's been a great group to be part of. Peter Kang (07:54.741) Yeah, and the other thing about SODA is that you get exposure not just to agencies in the US, but also internationally. You get a different perspective and flavor from folks in Europe, Asia, Australia — what are they seeing in their markets and how are they interacting with the North American market? I always found that fascinating. You get a totally different perspective than just the domestic agencies. Sei-Wook Kim (08:18.077) Yeah, definitely. Peter Kang (08:19.871) And then one more I want to throw in there — I was just at their annual event, they call it the reunion — is Collective 54. This one is a little different in that it's not just agency-focused, but professional services overall. The founder, Greg Alexander, had a successful exit with his professional services firm and wrote a book called The Boutique, which I came across on the recommendation of an agency friend and ended up liking a lot. Then I realized Greg had started this community called Collective 54, so we joined it. It's been really inspiring. A lot of it is about scaling the business and then getting to an eventual exit, so you learn a lot — they do a lot of programming to help you think about scaling. Even at the reunion, where members get together once a year in person, they put on really great sessions around how certain members achieved very successful exits, what that process was like, what it took to get there, and how it was structured and who was involved in helping to get the deal across the finish line. For us, especially as we're engaging in a lot of the M&A work on the Barrel Holdings side, it's been very instructional and inspirational. We continue to get a lot of value from these communities. Sei-Wook Kim (09:45.249) Yeah, Collective 54 is an interesting one because it's very structured in how they organize. They put you in a group of about 10 other agencies and you meet on a monthly cadence where you go through different topics. It's hopefully agencies in the same phase of their journey — whether they're scaling, growing, or ready to exit — but all different industries. It doesn't have to be just marketing; it could be all kinds of professional services groups. Then they do a weekly podcast where they interview different agency owners, and that becomes a topic where people can dial in and have a conversation with the person who recorded the podcast. There are a lot of layers they've structured in to really allow you to have exposure to different people. Peter Kang (10:44.489) Yeah, and just to clarify — agencies do make up a big part of that membership, but there are others like accounting firms, IT, law firms, investment banks. It's a professional services group. More recently, there have been subgroups that formed where just the agencies found each other and formed a group as well, on top of the mixed groups. It's been an interesting development in how they're structuring it. They are, in some ways, very prescriptive about certain ways to achieve the successful outcome modeled on the founder. These groups, which they call leadership boards, are very much representative of some of these other communities that exist out there — EO, YPO, iHampton is another one where a lot of different entrepreneurs or founders come together and form these groups, sometimes called forums, where maybe a handful of people get together every month for large swaths of time. Vistage is another one — getting together to talk about both personal and professional challenges and helping each other navigate those things through knowledge share. Sei-Wook Kim (12:10.024) Yeah, definitely. We've covered agency-specific communities but also Collective 54 and more cross-industry networks. It's interesting because we started out very much on the let's-go-find-peers-doing-exactly-what-we-do track and learn from that. That really helps you think about your specific craft, your agency, how you can run things operationally better, or change how you do pricing — it's a very specific and almost tactical way to look at it. And then the cross-industry stuff is like, wow, you get a whole different perspective from businesses you've never seen before but that are related enough that you can take learnings from a law firm and ask how you apply those to a marketing agency. That cross-sharing is really cool to see. Peter Kang (13:04.082) Yeah, and the deeper you get in understanding your own business model and how your business runs, you realize that good ideas can come from anywhere and you can apply those things — it's just more fuel, more ideas. Going beyond just your agency-specific community can be really helpful for that broader perspective. Let's talk about, once you pick a community to join, what are some ways that as a new member you can get the most out of it? Because sometimes people just join communities but maybe they're too busy or whatever it is. If you're going to invest dollars and commit to a community, there's actually a way to show up that's going to get you the most value. Sei-Wook Kim (13:55.035) Yeah. Starting with your mindset — coming in with a curious mindset of how do I learn as much as possible, versus having some ego and wanting to tell everyone how it's done, because you just want an open mind on how others are doing things. Coming with that curiosity mindset is the starting point. But then, that being said, try to contribute and be an active participant as much as you can. As much as you're absorbing what other people are sharing, share your own lessons, because maybe there's something you've experienced that others can benefit from. Also, the more that people hear from you and hear your story, it builds your reputation and awareness, and people can trust what you're saying the more you're out there. Peter Kang (14:53.927) Yeah, and one of the important lessons — I remember when I was in EO briefly, there are some things they train you on as part of the onboarding. One of the things you should avoid is giving prescriptions for other people, telling people, hey, you shouldn't do this, you should do that — just telling people what to do. Instead, flipping that to be like, hey, in that situation, this is what I did, or when that happened to me, this is how I would have handled it, or this is how I handled that situation in the past. That way it's less of a "I know better than you, I'm telling you what to do" and more of "hey, this is one way in which that problem was solved." That just provides for much better flow of conversation and open-mindedness on all sides. Sei-Wook Kim (15:52.24) Yeah, definitely. The other thing is, when you're hearing people's stories and experiences, really understand what the thought process was behind them. It's easy to say, all right, this successful agency did this — they got rid of time tracking, whatever it is — without really understanding why they did it, all the things that led up to it, all the downstream impacts. You latch onto the surface-level tactics because if you're in a room with a lot of people throwing around ideas and experiences, it's easy to jump onto things. So that's something to be mindful of when you're listening. Peter Kang (16:38.319) Yeah, and we're going to dive into that very thing. But maybe one more point on getting the most out of a community first: you're here to build real relationships. You get out what you put in, and a lot of it is you have to put in the time and effort to get to know other people and really develop a connection. Obviously, if the community is a few hundred people, it's really hard to get to know everybody well, but inevitably you're going to find a handful of people that you click with. It's really important to continue to follow up with them, stay in touch, maybe have one-on-ones after meeting at any of these events or community group meetings or Slack channels. That starts to build a real relationship that can last a long time. The true value of all these communities, for us, are the personal relationships we have with folks many years down the line. We continue to still help each other, check in with each other, and at times when things get tough, support each other in different ways. That's really key. Sei-Wook Kim (17:58.447) Yeah, definitely. Peter Kang (18:00.58) So maybe we should come back to the main topic. I want to throw out a term that maybe you can define for our listeners: cargo cult mentality. In the context of joining a community and talking to other agency owners, why is this such an important concept to understand and to avoid? Sei-Wook Kim (18:28.089) Yeah, cargo cult mentality is about copying what other people are doing without understanding why it works or the background behind it. The origin of the term comes from World War II, where islanders ended up building runways and radio towers on their islands after the war, believing that these were the things that brought supply planes — food and supplies — to their island. So they thought, if we just build more runways and more towers, more planes will come, without really understanding the background behind it. In the same way, in the agency world, if you just copy someone's pricing model or how they do their org chart or how they run their internal processes — just because it looks successful and it worked for another person — without really understanding why it worked and all the underlying decisions and reasons why it worked for them in particular, you're going to run into this cargo cult thing where you'll be building things without any results from it. Peter Kang (19:43.365) Yeah, I can tell you from personal experience of falling into this very trap. I remember, maybe 12-plus years ago, going to one of the first Owner Camps. I was impressionable, still in my late 20s, one of the younger folks there. I remember just listening to all these super experienced folks talk about all these things — they seemed so much more knowledgeable. I came back to the office bringing a couple dozen ideas: oh my God, we're not doing this, we need to do this, we're not doing that, we need to do that. I remember just overwhelming the team with all the things we weren't doing and needed to do. It was even a pattern because we'd attend subsequent Owner Camps and the team would groan — God, Peter went to another one of these things, there's going to be another slew of ideas. Some of those things maybe worked out and were actually positive. But many of them, without the fundamental understanding of why this is good for us and what it is beyond just copying what someone successful is doing, would fall apart or just wouldn't make sense after you tried to implement them without any grounded principles. Over time, obviously, we wised up and realized: there's no right way to do things, everyone can solve problems in their own way, context matters — your particular situation, the people, all those factors are particular to you and you have to solve it in your particular way. You can learn from how others have approached the problems, but you can't blindly copy and expect the same solution. Sei-Wook Kim (21:47.594) Yeah, I remember those days. Over time we learned how to activate all the learnings we got from these conferences and from peers. The way we evolved was thinking about these ideas as hypotheses — how do we try something out, not just take it to copy, but ask, can this element work in our organization? Start small, maybe with a smaller group of people, try it out, see if there's something we can measure to enact some bigger change. Test, do something small, roll it out. But ultimately it comes back to really understanding what are the underlying first principles of the business for your own systems — what is your team, what is your culture, what do you ultimately try to achieve? If you understand that at a baseline level, all these ideas are layers that you can really think about in terms of how they can impact and work within your own structure. Peter Kang (23:01.101) Yeah, totally. This is why it's a powerful lesson, and I'm glad we've internalized it a bit, because even today we come across a lot of different agencies in our conversations for Barrel Holdings and some are really impressive and doing really cool stuff. We've built the muscle where we're not automatically thinking, all right, we need to do that in our agencies — we're more like, how and why does this work for them, and what aspects of it are actually applicable to any of our agencies, if at all? And going back to what you said, what are the small tests we can run to see if these things are valid for our agencies? We've built that little framework to avoid the cargo cult mentality. Sei-Wook Kim (23:50.69) Yeah, definitely. Overall, despite all the mistakes we may have made, all of the external learnings and just meeting with people has really helped us gain perspective on our own business. If you're just in your own world, you're siloed and that's all you see — it's hard to have perspective. Being able to go out, reflect, and get some external knowledge just helps overall, even for your well-being, in reflecting on your own business. Peter Kang (24:26.242) Yeah, definitely. All right, great. I think that's a good place to end it. Remember, great agencies aren't built in isolation. Seek out those who you can learn from and it will totally accelerate your growth and learning. All right, catch you next time. Sei-Wook Kim (24:43.682) Thanks.