Company: Brand Viva Media
Owners: Mark Labriola II
Year Started: 2007
Employees: 1 – 10
“An Agency Story” is the podcast for agency owners and aspiring entrepreneurs seeking authentic stories of growth, resilience, and ingenuity. In this riveting episode, we meet Mark Labriola II, founder of Brand Viva Media, a podcast and video content agency. Mark’s journey from childhood upheaval and a dream of being a musician to building a thriving agency is one of grit, reinvention, and relentless optimism.
Mark takes us back to his unconventional early years—marked by a harrowing six-year stint on the run with his mother and formative moments that sparked his passion for music. A career in music followed, where he lived his dream of recording albums, touring, and even reaching the Hollywood rounds of American Idol. But when those dreams came to an end, Mark’s entrepreneurial spirit ignited, leading him to rediscover himself as a creative professional.
The episode delves deep into Mark’s transition from side hustling as a photographer and videographer to founding Brand Viva Media. He shares raw insights on overcoming the fear of failure, the importance of cultivating relationships, and the mindset shifts that sustained him during tough times. Listeners will hear about pivotal moments, like a layoff that pushed him to take the leap into entrepreneurship and his serendipitous foray into podcasting as a core agency offering.
Mark’s story is peppered with wisdom, humor, and inspiring takeaways. From his perspective on making “boring” content beautiful to his reflections on how setbacks often pave the way for success, Mark’s journey is both relatable and motivating. You’ll laugh at his anecdotes of forgetting to hit the record button and be inspired by his mantra of living with expectancy and finding joy in the present.
Don’t miss this episode—it’s a testament to the power of resilience and adaptability. Whether you’re contemplating your next big leap or refining your agency’s vision, Mark’s story will leave you thinking, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Tune in to hear how one man turned every challenge into an opportunity to grow, evolve, and inspire others.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, I’m your host Russel. In this episode we’re joined by Mark Labriola, the second, the founder of Brand Viva Media based in Centennial, Colorado. Mark shares his journey from touring as a musician to building a podcast and video content agency known for turning boring and too beautiful. Not to mention he made it to the top 50 on American Idol way back in the day. And this episode, we talk a lot about the importance of a positive mindset within the business, especially in the face of adversity and difficult times. This is definitely evident in Mark’s story. Starting out with a very traumatic childhood situation, all the way to how a pivotal layoff pushed Mark to transform his side hustle into a full-time venture and more. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, I have Mark Labriola II with Brand Viva Media with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Mark.
Mark:
Hey, thank you. My pleasure. So glad to be here.
Russel:
Another podcast pro, glad to have you on here. Let’s get straight to the point. What does Brand Viva do and who do you do it for?
Mark:
We are a podcast and video content agency. We help people create the content that they use for marketing. A top of mind is first in line when it comes to business. If you can create content on a consistent basis, you can constantly be in front of your, uh, perspective audience.
Russel:
Perfectly well put. To the T, wonderful elevator pitch. Obviously we’re on a podcast, so I want to learn a lot more about what that looks like in terms of your service and how you got to where you’re at today. But before we get to all things agency today, let’s get back in the DeLorean and back to the future as they say, what was young Mark wanting to do with his life?
Mark:
I kind of lived a crazy, uh, childhood. This is a wild story, um, and when people Google me, I actually, uh, made it to, uh, Hollywood on American Idol back in season nine. Part of my story is that my mom kidnapped me when I was four years old and we were on the run for six years. It’s crazy because it’s hard to start any conversation with like, hey, like, what, what was your elementary school? It’s like, well, we hopped around from, you know, state to state and lived in Hawaii and Alaska. I was in and out of school, um, but during that time I was very much formed as a young person. My mom, who was just a pretty eccentric woman, free spirited kind of person was into music. I would go to bars with her and strip clubs and she would perform and sing in like a top 40 kind of band and I would see that. At a very young age I had a, um, a talent for singing and I was kind of self aware about it. Fast forward, when I was 10 years old, my dad found me and they ran the sting operation and missing children got involved and I, and they pulled me here to Colorado. Then I was here in Colorado with my dad and really got involved in, uh, church and singing and choir and, um, youth organizations and things like that. At a very young age, I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be a singer. I dreamed about being on the radio and performing for thousands of people and all that kind of stuff. That was kind of the dream.
Russel:
That was the dream.
Mark:
Yeah, that was the dream. That’s kind of where my life always took me. When I was a sophomore in high school, I met some guys, uh, in a youth group and, uh, we formed a band, uh, called Foolish Things. We started playing music, bowling alleys and, uh, youth retreats and summer camps and doing all that. We ended up winning this national band competition. Our freshman, sophomore year of college that summer, we entered this gospel music association, national band competition and we won first place. At that point, we got to record in Gaither Studio in Indiana and really just started pursuing music as a career. I did that for most of my twenties and we ended up getting signed and I got to live my dream for a living. We’re on the radio. We had a top 25 single on Christian radio and our record was sold all over the world. We did radio tours and festivals and got to open for big bands and play for thousands of people. My life was complete. Everything I dreamed about doing I was doing.
Russel:
I’m going to pause there because I want to stop at that young Mark and I’m picturing Will Ferrell in, in the Wedding Crashers. Just, I’m living the dream. This thing that you’ve clearly devoted yourself to and made the focus of your efforts, right? That’s obviously a hard business to, to have any kind of success in and you were able to achieve that. I do want to go back for a second. There’s probably a billion ways to look at it. I can’t even imagine it to understand the experience that you went through. But it’s interesting, I was having a conversation the other day when someone was talking about being entrepreneurial and I guess there’s some tests out there, I need to do more research about this called ACEs. The premise of it is, is basically measures some aspects of, I don’t know if it’s necessarily childhood trauma, but just formation of childhood and basically people that score or entrepreneurs I should say, tend to score higher on this test because and I don’t know, we got into all very kind of deep, but I don’t know. When you look at that experience, does that, does that fit in the realm of trauma traumatic for you?
Mark:
Oh, yeah, 100%. We lived in some very, uh, impoverished situations. We were just poor and you’re it’s fight or flight. You’re constantly trying to figure out how you can survive each and every day. And then you just can have some of the worst moments of your life, you know, in this, in this time. I think why that makes sense to me is because no matter how bad things are, I’ve experienced worse. No matter how poor I am, I’ve been poor. I think there’s an element of when you have been at the very bottom and have experienced the worst, everything slightly above, that’s better.
Russel:
Your tolerance is just higher. It makes me think of Navy SEALs, right? They put them through the worst possible training so that when you’re actually in a fight or battle scenario that it’s like, eh we, I’ve been through worse, and you know, so I’m not gonna get flustered.
Mark:
Exactly. I think too, for me, it’s almost like, oh, I, I know that no matter how bad things get, they get better. There’s that, that pattern too, of knowing like, okay, this is hard, but I remember when it was hard before and then it got easier. So I’m just going to keep going.
Russel:
There you go. You alluded to that the dream did come to an end. I wanna come back to that. Obviously a big part of your early young adult life was doing music and, and performing and doing all these sorts of things. Where to next? How did that agency get formed?
Mark:
When the band was breaking up, I was pretty devastated. But then I had this opportunity American Idol was coming to Denver. They’re playing at Mile High Stadium or, or setting up at Mile High Stadium. My dad was like, hey, you should go try out to be on American Idol. At that point, I was a little bit bitter and jaded towards the music industry. I felt like, I think I’m done with this. I’ve just spent the past, decade of my life, like grinding and pursuing this. I think I’m ready to move on. But he pushed and said, listen, he was living in Texas at the time. He’s like, I’ll drive up, from Dallas and I’ll wait with you in line. I think you should just go, you know, try this out. I’d been married for a few years at this time, I had a two year old. I was ready just to move on to the next chapter of my life. But went ahead and, and went down to Mile High Stadium and waited in line with 12, 000 people. I just kept making it past like each round. There’s several rounds that you don’t even see on TV. You have to go in front of producers. Even before you make it into the celebrity rounds, you’re going through all these other rounds to make it through and when I got to the celebrity rounds and I’m there with Simon and Randy and, and our celebrity judge in Denver here was Victoria Beckham. It was like, oh wow. This is what my life is for.
Russel:
What’s her Spice name? I can’t think of it now. What’s her Spice name? Victoria Beckham.
Mark:
I don’t remember. I’m trying to think, it wasn’t Sporty Spice.
Russel:
No, definitely not. I gotta Google this real quick. You continue with your story and then I’ll interrupt with her Spice name.
Mark:
You tell us which Spice Girl she was. I kept making it past all these rounds and then it was like, oh my gosh. This is what I was, I’m supposed to do. This is what I’m made for. All this experience with the band and performing in front of people, this has led me to this moment. I got a golden ticket to Hollywood. I was there for a few weeks and I made it past a few rounds in Hollywood. Then I got axed in the group rounds where they have you sing and dance and do all this silly stuff that just wasn’t in my vein. I got axed and I was devastated. I was completely heartbroken.
Russel:
How many people are you down to at this point?
Mark:
I was in a group less than 50. You have the top 24 that make it to the weekly TV show. But that season out of 120, 000 people I made it into that group. I was lost and feeling pretty depressed and down and not sure what I was going to do with my life. Up until that moment, I’d only made subs and pizzas for a living. I didn’t go to college and I had no formal training around anything. But I had this kid and a wife and, and mortgage and I was like, crap, I need to figure something out. I got a job at the Apple store. It was when Apple retail was new, up and coming. I got a job at Apple because I was like, well, I like Mac computers and I could talk about Macs all day and I know I can sell them. I started selling computers and then I had a friend who’s a photographer and I picked up a camera and just started taking photos of my kids and helping out my friend from time to time. He was like, hey, I need some video for this thing. Do you think you could learn video? I’d go to the library. Dewey Decibel System back then. We didn’t really have like YouTube and stuff so I had to, you know, find books on video editing and filming and all this kind of stuff. Just started teaching myself this skill of creativity. I think being in a band and being a musician, you’re around a lot of art. A lot of creative people, fashion, all this stuff. I think I kind of gravitate towards video and photography because I had an eye for it. I knew what looked good. I knew what was high quality. I was able to reproduce some of that stuff earlier on in that. Then I just had a side hustle, like nights and weekends. I was doing photos and videos. Then during the day I was working a day job.
Russel:
Wow. I just know how much work that actually is to do a, to build a side hustle, do a day job, be a parent, be a husband all those things. It just goes back to what you’re sharing in the beginning, what your threshold was used to, I’m sure is what a part of able to get you through that.
Mark:
And that’s the thing is, I think I walked into everything with so much joy and passion that, uh, people just kind of took notice of me. I worked for Apple for about three years in the mall, you know, I was tired of smelling like Cinnabon.
Russel:
I mean, that’s not the worst smell.
Mark:
No, it’s not the worst smell, but you know, when you don’t get holidays off and you’re working at 4am on the day after Thanksgiving, and it was like, I was tired of the mall. With my computer expertise, Apple had sent me to Cupertino, California to get certified as a hardware and software technician. I found a corporate job at the RE/MAX world headquarters. It’s stationed here in Colorado. I got this very entry level help desk, IT position. I’d get in the elevators on a Monday and I just be happy because I’m thinking like, wow, you only have to work five days. You get off every day at the same time and you get holidays. If the weather is bad, they let you work from home. I was like, this is amazing. Every time you get in the elevator on a Monday, it’s like, people are like, oh, it’s Monday. I’m like, yeah, it’s the beginning of the week. It’s so much possibility. You never know what’s going to happen. Or it’d be like, oh, it’s so cold outside. I’m like, yeah, but did you wear sweaters and they’re thinning. Maybe I’ll make some soup tonight and it’ll be a great. I was always positive about everything that was going on and people just kind of took note of that. I quickly just started to be promoted. Everywhere I went, it was like, yeah, I can do that and, and be positive and work hard. I just kept having success like everywhere I went. I quickly rose in as a technology trainer at the RE/MAX world headquarters. I was training brokers on RE/MAX’s tech, and I had this show called the download where I was talking to agents about technology. I was doing that and still doing my night hustle. Side hustle nights and weekends. My wife could stay home with the kids. I was just burning the candle at both ends. But I was happy. I was, uh, excited every day to, to do the things that I was doing.
Russel:
You’ve gone this path, a very common path of side hustle turned full hustle or not a side hustle anymore. Did that same energy carry into when you made that transition or was it like oh crap, the stakes got higher and, and changed your mindset or not?
Mark:
No, I, sometimes in life you get thrown curve balls and you are maybe discouraged and you’re put down, but if you can just remind yourself that things are going to get better, that it’s not always going to be like this I think that you can push through. Usually on the other side of that push there’s success. I had left RE/MAX and I was the director of creative media at this real estate tech startup here in town. I was there for a few years and still do my side hustle. I think it was like the fall of 2015 I was like I think I’m going to try to go all in on my side hustle and do this, but I want the security. I’m going to save some money. I’m going to make sure I have a nice little buffer and then I’ll make the leap. Well, uh, the first week of January of 2016 the company had some huge funding not come in and they had to lay off half the company. I was a part of that layoff, no severance, no savings. It was just, hey, sorry, we gotta let you go. At that point I was like, all right, I could go find another director job somewhere, or I could go all in on my side hustle and see what comes of that. One of those moments where you look back and you’re like, man, why did I do that? That was stupid. But I would say that kind of throughout my whole life, it had always been like, well, what’s the worst that could happen? Even American Idol, right? It was like, well, the worst that could happen is they just say no and I’ve just wasted some time. But you I can always look back and say, oh, I tried and I failed, it didn’t work. You know in Napoleon Dynamite, there’s that Uncle Rico where he’s always like, you know, I could have thrown a football over the mountains. He’s always living in regret. If the coach would have just put him in, then he could have had the success and been famous and all this stuff? I think I approached everything in my life like that, where it’s like, well, the worst thing that could happen is I could fail, and then I could just move on to something else and not have to worry about, well, what if? With American Idol, it’s like you sing in the shower and you’re like, oh, you know, I, I’m a pretty good singer. I bet I could do that. A lot of people think that. They think like, oh, I could do that. Or they’re very critical about other people’s things or other people’s businesses. It’s like, well, why don’t you just go out and try it? And then if it, if it doesn’t work out and you fail, well, then at least you’ve proved yourself that it doesn’t work, and then you can try something else. I think there was an element of that too, where it’s like, all right, Let me go all in on my side hustle. If it fails, I go get another director job somewhere and know that like, all right, there’s not a need for that. I did it, I didn’t like it or I suck at it and it didn’t work out and then I can just move on and not, not think about like, well, what if?
Russel:
That’s just such a great question to always ask yourself when you’re, maybe facing something. I think I had a previous guest on the show that talked about, hey, whenever you’re uncertain about certain, something, write down your fears. Write down what you’re afraid of, and then just go through that process, mentally or on paper of, what’s the worst that can happen? What am I really looking at here? What am I really afraid of here? Not the first person that a layoff has been the jumping off point into starting an agency. It’s an unfortunately very common one. But we just need that slight unsettling to just get us over there and where it’s like, well, you know, I’m already here, so might as well walk in the front door. But I love how you kind of talk through that of just, you know, really, really answering that question for yourself and what’s the worst that can happen?
Mark:
And it wasn’t always easy. Especially in the beginning, you know, there was times I didn’t know how I was going to pay my mortgage. I didn’t know how I was going to put food on the table for the, you know, the family and it was stressful. I have a lot of anxiety and worry and doubts. But I just kept showing up every day. I kept grinding and hustling and not giving up and working hard. I wasn’t trying to just watch Netflix and hang out and work for a couple hours. It was like, no, I’m going to get up. I’m going to work. Going to work till 2am if I have to, get these edits done. I’m going to meet people. It came to where I would have this stress or worry or anxiety. This is where my faith comes into play, where I, I’d be worried. And then, in two weeks someone would call and be like, hey, we have a job for 7, 000 bucks. Can you do it? I’d be like, oh yeah, you know, I can. It became one of those things where that kind of stuff started happening enough. I started thinking like, well, what if I started living my life with expectancy? Because if two weeks earlier I knew that in two weeks, someone was going to call me, I’d be more present with my family. I wouldn’t be stressed and I wouldn’t be worried. I started thinking like, all right, let me try to live in the present and expect the blessing, expect God’s blessing in my life. Really just started focusing on that mantra of like, being present. Don’t worry about tomorrow and expect God’s blessing. Every day would just try to, and it wasn’t always easy. After eight and a half years of doing this, there’s, every day I have to focus on those things and, and not worry about how things are gonna work out, but know that they’re gonna work out. Not letting that crush my spirits or discourage me, but just to keep moving forward. It seems to always, always work out.
Russel:
I think I appreciate all the more now, one in just working with a lot of folks, but even in my own self. When I think back at different times and running an agency that I didn’t appreciate how much importance of mindset was. All the things that kind of go into your saying, and I definitely appreciate it now. That is our engine. If we were a race car driver, that’s our race car. We’ve just got to keep that thing fine tuned and in the right place.
Mark:
In the Bible, you know, it says as a man thinketh so is he. So what are you thinking about and who, and who are you putting your trust in in this world or are you putting it in something beyond yourself? That brings a lot of comfort, too, during difficult times because now it’s like, all right, I’m not a hundred percent in control of this and I can be at peace with wherever this thing goes.
Russel:
We’re kind of still, you know, kind of in the depths of your, your early stage, but that, that applies whether you’re eight and a half years into it, 25 years into it, starting tomorrow whatever the case might be. I do want to switch gears for a minute. Wonderful, inspiring message out there for everyone listening that you’ve already shared. It sounds like you’ve been in the same vein as far as your product or service, since the early days, but I imagine just some of your mindset, it sounds like maybe shift in terms of how you’re delivering it and ultimately what you’re trying to build here. If you don’t mind kind of just going into the depths of your product evolution, as you look at it through the lens of your agency?
Mark:
In the beginning, it was kind of like, be all things to everyone because I just need to do whatever I can to make a buck. It’s like learning graphic design and doing business cards and doing branding and commercials and photos and doing all this stuff. No matter what someone had, I would say, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do it. A lot of times it’s just me trying to figure things out, figuring out how to do things. I think being curious and being able to learn and learn quickly is very beneficial. As I started to grow from a one man band to then like hiring some contractors, I started thinking, all right, like, what do we, like, what do I really like doing? What are some things that I’m really good at and things that we’ve done really well? Over the years, it’s been evolving into saying no to the things that we’re not experts in, whether that’s SEO or PPC or like full brand developments. In the very beginning it was, we were helping solopreneurs create personal brands and, and I think we do that really well. But then sometimes it would come to like these really in depth branding projects for companies where it’s like, you need to have all sorts of avatars and just these really deep kind of work that, I actually hate it. Even doing like full blown commercials, uh, where we had to hire tons of crew and have all, and it’s like, man, I really don’t like doing that kind of stuff, you know? It’s been really just trying to like hone in on the things that I feel like bring life to what we do and that we really enjoy and not just trying to be all things to all people. Podcasting is one of those things where, I always loved podcasting. I was a big fan of radio as a young kid. I always pretended to be a radio DJ. My buddy and I would sit underneath his bunk bed and we had one of those dicta phones. Remember the ones that had like the microphone attached to it and you could put your little tape in there, hit record. We’d like record songs off the radio and then we would, you know, talk on the mic like, you know, well, the weather is really great out there, Jim. Look at the traffic on I-25. I always loved the radio and the idea of being a DJ. In 2005, I remember we were in Nashville recording, uh, our second record. There was this popular science magazine and it had this, all this information about RSS feeds and how you can create this feed on the internet, upload MP3s and then iPods would be able to connect through iTunes and suck down a, you know, this MP3 file. I was like, wow, this is so cool. This is like having your own internet radio show. I started a podcast, um, and just as a hobby for fun. Throughout the years I would always come back to doing it as something that I enjoyed and that allowed me to meet interesting people and be curious, you know, probably similar to what you do here. I just did that as for fun as I was doing Brand Viva and, and doing all this. And this is the other thing I want to share with everyone: so many people are chomping at the bit to do their own thing and start their own business and, and move their side hustle to a full time, you know, gig. But I would just say, be content with where you’re at and look for ways to provide value to other people within your sphere. Because I will say that I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for all the jobs that I worked and all the people that I met and all the relationships that I built over the years. I wouldn’t be where I’m at if it wasn’t for me being present in the job that I was working. I can almost look back at every client we’ve worked with and pinpoint it back all the way to like a job I worked where I met somebody who then, when I went off and did my own thing, they introduced me to somebody or got me an opportunity. I just wanna encourage people’cause I, I know that I, I remember where it’s like, man, I wanna start my own thing. You’re always daydreaming and thinking about what’s next and how you can make that leap and you’re never really present in what you’re doing. Just think that the thing that you’re currently doing could be the stepping stone to where you wanna be. How can you do what you’re doing right now with excellence?
Russel:
It really speaks to, and I do talk to a lot of folks and look, the amount of risk and sweat and energy that we have to put into this thing. It’s a tremendous amount of effort. It is not worth it at the day if it’s just paying bills per se. There’s gotta be more to it than that. How important it is, just goes back to that mindset piece of you’ve got to love what you do. Not to say that you don’t have to do things you don’t want to do so you can get to do things you love to do, but we’ve got to engineer this thing so that we’re doing what we love. It sounds like that’s been a great part of your journey and your evolution is, is continuing to recalibrate, reevaluate. Hey, am I doing what I want to do? How does that look in the fabric of the business?
Mark:
Yeah, totally. I started to say no to the things that we didn’t like doing and that we weren’t great at, but it was like, I just need to make a buck and sort of saying yes to the things that we did like doing and that things that we were really excellent in. Podcasting was one of those things because I had had my own podcast and I, I knew a lot about it and I had been doing it for several years. I had a lot of skill around it. I just started seeing how it could be used to build authority, build relationship, create content, and present yourself as a thought leader in different spaces. Funny enough, so I had my show, How’d You Get Here? Because I worked at RE/MAX, I had known someone who had worked their way up from the bottom all the way to the CEO of the company. I reached out to that person and said, hey, I’d love for you to come on to my show and just chat about your journey. I had him on and we just started talking and then he went back to his team and said, hey, we need to do a podcast. This is really great. That was my foray into like doing podcasts as one of the main things as our agency. Once we started doing it there, it was kind of like, we had a few other clients that were interested in it. Then it became one of those things where it’s just natural to use it as more of a tool to build your business instead of trying to become the next Joe Rogan or Mystery Science Theater, whatever it might be, where it’s like, it’s not really about getting millions and millions of downloads. It’s really about creating content on a consistent basis, presenting yourself as a thought leader and getting access to people that normally you wouldn’t be able to get access to. When I changed the mind mindset around that, then it really just started to take off and be something where it was like, okay this is how we do this thing here at Brand Viva and how we offer it and how it can benefit, you know, our users or our clients. That’s the one, one pillar of what we do is podcasting. The next is video content. Really that’s tutorial videos, educational content, how to videos. We do commercials and brand type stuff, but I always say like the boring stuff is what we really excel at. The things that, that kind of take like a crappy webinar or a bad slideshow or a bad online course and turn it into something like beautiful. That’s where we focus. Then we do headshots. We do corporate headshots. You need to refresh your company’s LinkedIn profiles or your sales team’s profiles or just have great images on your website, we do that too. Those are like the three main things that we do. As an agency, we’re always just trying to solve problems for our clients. Whether that’s, they need new branding materials or they want to refresh their brand or they need a new website. All those are ancillary things. We can support in, but, but as far as our foot forward, it’s like we create the content that used for marketing.
Russel:
I hope you use that as a tagline. We make boring, beautiful, or we’re good at boring stuff. Maybe that would work.
Mark:
I’ll have to like, listen back and be like, all right, what did I say here? So we can use that as a slogan.
Russel:
One of the things I know you’d mentioned before is some of the challenges behind an agency business is we got to sweat for every dollar we earn in some capacity. If we get really good, those dollars that we sweat for are more than the dollars we used to sweat for. Sometimes that presents scalable challenges. It sounds like you’re working in that direction of just, how do you make this model that you have more scalable beyond a dollar or sweat for every dollar?
Mark:
In the early years it was just a lifestyle business, right? I woke up every day, it was just me. Then as I started growing, hiring W2 employees and doing all this stuff. It’s a lifestyle business, but I’m also providing for the lifestyle of my employees and other contractors and stuff like that. But then over the years I’ve really started to think like, all right, what’s next? You have to have a self awareness of, I think especially in this industry, and this might offend some people, but in the creative industry, it really is a young man’s game. It’s one of those things where you have to have this vigor and this passion and excitement about it. You have to be constantly learning new things and new strategies and what Google algorithm changed. There’s just a lot to learn. Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of people who just try to hang on too long and they either don’t evolve with the industry and so everything that they do is a little bit outdated and, boring, or they just aren’t providing any value back to their audience. In that case, their business isn’t going to grow. But for me, it was it’s been more now over the past year, I’ve been thinking, all right, how do I get out of this? In the beginning I was doing all the things and so now I’ve worked myself out of all the doing and I focus more on business development and growth. But then now I’m at this place where it’s like, okay, the business really depends on me, right? My relationships, me going out and networking, the, that the content that I put online, that’s building the brand. The next phase really is, is how do I take this to, um, either completely remove myself and have this kind of machine running by itself with sales and marketing and all these other kinds of things, or how do I build something that is easily sold? How do I make something that I can sell? To do that, you have to have a great system, a great process, a great lead source. Those are the kind of those three things that I’m thinking about over the next like three to five years of like, okay, how do I build something that is not dependent on necessarily a, a service that we’re providing? Because, and I don’t know, you might know this better than me. You interview a ton of people and you have a lot of knowledge. I’d be curious to hear to your thoughts on that because to me, it seems like every business that’s really successful at that have some sort of widget, right? That it’s okay, if I can sell this widget and reach enough people to buy my widget, then I have a business that’s creating this passive income or this income that’s being generated by digital advertising or SEO or whatever that might be. What are your thoughts on that? Cause I’m sure you hear that a lot of people trying to figure out, okay. What’s the next phase? How do I get out of this business?
Russel:
The agency industry was born of just, right? Time for money, time for money, time for money. I think in the last, I don’t know, five, 10 years, maybe let’s say for specifically five years, we’re realizing that this is painful. This whole notion of productizing your agency is certainly coming about. I think we can create, create this with service. It doesn’t have to be a widget, a package of standard thing. We can still have some of this bespoke, this creativity, this strategy. We just have to find all the pieces that, that we can just find ways to scale down their effort. It can be just small parts. Leveraging lower cost talent to do very simple parts of the process and leave our more strategic talent to do the bigger stuff. That’s still some time for money but, but we’re lowering our cost of goods sold, if you will, for some of the output we’re doing. It’s kind of almost an 80/20 rule. What is the 20 percent of effort that’s producing 80 percent of the results and spend more time on that and whittling out the opposite effect of what’s the 80 percent of our effort that’s only producing 20 percent of our results?
Mark:
That’s really hard. I think too, as far as in a creative space, at least. There’s an element of you have an eye or you don’t have an eye. You’re creative or you’re not creative. I think it’s been difficult to outsource some of that creativity. I tried to work with some of these outsourcing companies where it’s like, oh, they’re in Brazil or the Philippines or something like that. Just the level of quality that we’ve built our brand on and the things that we do isn’t there in those spaces. Either you have to keep looking at, cause I’m sure there’s extremely talented people in other countries that, work for a more affordable wage than what we have here in America. Some of the designers and motion graph, I mean, it’s expensive. Hundreds of dollars an hour to do stuff. I’m an agency. How can I mark up that, those fees in order to make it profitable for us as well? I think that’s just one of the difficult things, but I do see that it’s like, man, if you could figure that piece out on the creative side of things, then I think you could definitely, you know, scale and be a lot more profitable.
Russel:
If you can do that, cause to the point, that, that type of talent is, is more rare. It’s the 80/20 rule again, that’s 20 percent of the marketplace, generally speaking. But I, I still think it’s, it’s more of how do we get that talent? We all know we do things that are admin work or just how can we take a much of that away so that most of their time is focused on the high value creative work? It’s a whittling process, not a, not a cut and dry aspect of it. Man, this has been a wonderful conversation. You’ve shared so many wonderful thoughts so far. I would love to make this a two hour podcast episode, let me just ask the big kind of final question for folks is, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Mark:
Oh, that is a great question. I want to say it’s a little bit of both. Because I think that anyone can learn the work ethic and they can learn the grit and they can develop that way. But then there’s also, I think there’s this thing that’s just broken in our brains where we’re just not afraid. I think I’m just messed up and when everyone else is afraid, I’m just running towards the, you know, the fire.
Russel:
That’s probably the best one I’ve heard right now. We’re a little bit crazy. We’re a little bit broken. We’ve endured some, know, trauma in life. That’s some good pre early days of someone in a, you know, giving a business loan or something like that. Hey, how much childhood trauma have you had? How crazy are you? That’s going to make a determination of whether they’re actually going to give you this loan or not. That’s a great thought. If people want to know more about Brand Viva Media, where can they go my man?
Mark:
Just BrandVivaMedia.com. BrandViva.com. All lead to the same place. You can hit me up on LinkedIn. Love to answer questions or talk to anybody who’s curious. I love helping people out who are further down the rungs than I am so I can, you know, give them guidance and just enrich their lives however possible.
Russel:
You have another podcast as well, or a renamed podcast, The Friday Habits. Check that as well. You’ve got a lot of great content out there that’s very applicable to the agency space.
Mark:
That’s right.
Russel:
Thank you again for taking the time outta your day to share these wonderful insights and all the places you’ve been and come and explored and learned. Appreciate you taking the time to share that with everyone today
Mark:
My pleasure man. Be present. Don’t worry about tomorrow and expect a blessing.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Mark:
One of the hardest things, especially when you’re first learning out is all the pressures and stress that you have. Especially with video production. If you’ve ever done video production or have been behind a camera and you’ve been, you know, stressed and you’re thinking about all the things. Is the audio working, is the video working? The biggest thing is like hitting that record button. There’s been so many times where I’ve like looked at the camera and been like, yeah, everything looks good. Then I tell the person to go ahead and it’s like, wait, I didn’t hit the record button. That is just the worst. You feel sick to your stomach and you’re like, I’m an idiot. I didn’t hit record.
Russel:
I’ve done it one time on the podcast. I forgot to hit record, did a whole episode.
Mark:
Where it’s like, crap. It happens. You’ve got so much stuff going on your brain. That’s why as soon as you can outsource the better. Have somebody else focused on hitting the record button.
Russel:
There you go. That’s by the scalability. You just hire one person. All they do is show up and they hit record and, and then you don’t, yeah, you take all that stress so someone can be more creative. There we go. We solved the world’s problems.
Mark:
That’s right.
