Company: Engenius
Owners: Chris Manley
Year Started: 2008
Employees: 11 – 25
Welcome to “An Agency Story,” a podcast series dedicated to exploring the journeys, challenges, and triumphs of agency owners from around the world. In this compelling episode, we dive into the fascinating narrative of Chris Manley, CEO of Engenius. Join us as we explore how Chris’s unique experiences and unwavering passion for helping others have shaped Engenius into a thriving agency dedicated to empowering small businesses.
In this episode, Chris Manley shares his extraordinary path from a history major with no clear career direction to a successful entrepreneur who co-founded Engenius, a company specializing in web design, strategy, and digital marketing for small businesses. Chris’s journey is marked by significant transitions, from spearheading hurricane relief efforts to establishing a nonprofit and eventually co-founding Engenius. His story is a testament to the power of perseverance, adaptability, and a genuine desire to make a difference.
A significant theme throughout the episode is Engenius’s commitment to putting people first—both employees and clients. Chris discusses the agency’s unique culture, which focuses on creating a supportive and growth-oriented environment for everyone involved.
Chris offers a wealth of insights into the agency world, drawing from his diverse experiences. He discusses the importance of aligning business practices with personal values and creating a company culture that fosters long-term relationships with clients and employees. One particularly engaging story involves a client using an outdated computer, which led to humorous misunderstandings about web design feedback. This anecdote underscores the unpredictable nature of client interactions and the importance of staying adaptable. Chris’s perspective on imposter syndrome is both refreshing and empowering. He encourages listeners to embrace their expertise and experience, emphasizing that their knowledge and insights are valuable and worthy of sharing.
Chris Manley’s journey is a compelling testament to the impact of passion, resilience, and a people-first approach in the agency world. Tune in to this episode of “An Agency Story” to hear more about Chris’s inspiring path, the unique challenges he has overcome, and the valuable lessons he has learned along the way. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration. Don’t miss it!
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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 Chris Manley, the inspiring CEO of ingenious based in Greenville, South Carolina. Chris shares his compelling journey from a history major to the innovative leader of a digital marketing agency. Discover how his experiences and hurricane relief work and starting a nonprofit shaped Engenius’s unique approach to business, which prioritizes small business and a people first culture. There are some insightful discussions in this episode from open-book management to building effective relationships with your business partner, and even a walk down memory lane, lamenting the old internet Explorer. Tune in to explore how Chris’s commitment to resilience and creativity has driven Engenius to success in the digital marketing world. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Chris Manley with Engenius with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show, Chris.
Chris:
Russel, thank you for having me.
Russel:
I’m excited, known you for a little while and can’t wait to hear more about your story today. If you don’t mind, start us off. What does Engenius do and who do you do it for?
Chris:
Engenius is really passionate about small businesses. We found our expertise in websites, web design, getting into some, really productized, digital marketing options in SEO ads, things like that, for our clients. We love trying to bring some things to our clients that may ordinarily be inaccessible to them.
Russel:
I know there’s a lot more than what you shared so I certainly want to get to all that, but let’s go back in Chris’s origin story. We share a very similar origin in the major we chose for college. What did you major in and what were you thinking you were going to do as far as a career was concerned?
Chris:
What I started majoring in and what I ended up majoring in are two very different stories. I had a number of different majors. I think I changed my major about every semester, but I ended up in history. That’s where my focus was. I really had no idea what I was going to do with it. It’s just, I loved going down this pathway of learning about, different episodes in human history and understanding more okay, why did this happen? And, the choices along the way. It was very fascinating, just understanding different people, different cultures, how people communicate and, just how the world works.
Russel:
I’m a big believer in history. I very much appreciate my history roots, but it did not feel like the smartest major path when I was in college, especially getting out of college. I don’t know if you ever ended up feeling the same way.
Chris:
Yeah, I’ve never seen too many job openings for professional historian.
Russel:
No, no, you don’t. Yeah. They basically have like historian or teacher and there’s not a lot of other options out there. Did you or did you not finish school? It sounds like you started a pretty cool thing somewhere right around college time.
Chris:
I was getting into I guess my senior, before I started my senior year of college, I got really involved in doing hurricane relief work and volunteerism. Actually worked in that for a summer. Spent a year, as a volunteer, building and co leading trips down to the Gulf coast following Hurricane Katrina. At the end of that, actually postponed school for a little bit to start a nonprofit and really continue the effort that we’d started. That nonprofit started getting legs underneath it and getting off the ground and, becoming successful, so I never actually made it back to school to finish up things, which, kind of look back on it’s do I have regrets there? I really don’t. Would it have been fun to finish? Sure. But something came along that, passion just drew me towards and where my story went.
Russel:
That’s fascinating. No small feat either. Just jumping straight out of college and starting a nonprofit, what was that like? I’m just very curious. It’s such a relatively young age taking on such a huge endeavor.
Chris:
Looking back on it, I questioned my sanity a little bit. It really was pretty crazy. I was learning, I was drinking out of a fire hose. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t have management classes or business classes, anything like that in college, so I really was having to piece things together and figure out how to make different pieces happen. I was also working in an industry that is inherently unknown. Everybody that’s in, that’s been in that sector will tell you no, no two disasters are alike. You’ve got to figure out the nuances of it. I’m learning all of that at the same time. But it was an incredibly beneficial learning experience for how to start something in an adverse situation. I’m a 21 year old kid asking people to donate money. It wasn’t too different as a 23 year old kid asking people to buy a website. There’s a learning curve that I developed in that really helped me from a business standpoint. But I think it also helped me help the organization thrive because we had to figure some stuff out on our own and do some problem solving in the moment. That I think a lot of traditional organizations would have struggled with because they had a process and they had a system for things. We started the organization and like two, three years later, we were in the middle of the great recession, donations ground to a halt. You got to respond to that.
Russel:
Yeah, organized chaos sounds like a perfect parlay into, starting an agency. Where did the transition occur? As you said, how did that all begin?
Chris:
I was about a year and a half into the nonprofit and a buddy of mine that we had met through the, the nonprofit activities started having a conversation with each other, realized we had very similar goals in just this kind of dream and desire that a company can exist that, it really puts its people first, really cares about its people, desires to create a great place for them to work. Really values its clients, in this almost this old school kind of way, where we just take care of each other. It’s not profits. It’s, hey, can we create something that really is a great thing for everybody, including the community around it? We were a little bit jaded. We grew up in the age of Enron, where there are a bunch of execs wanting golden parachutes and then everybody else gets screwed in the end. That was something that was just very deep within both of us. He had a computer science background. I began developing websites in the late nineties, when I was in high school for local businesses and things. It was just a natural fit to go into, into website building, digital marketing. Of course, it’s a much different industry today than it was in 2008. But we got started. We really ran it almost part time for the first two years or so. Just as we began developing a client base, we had our first client, thankfully within a, within two weeks of actually opening our doors. That happened pretty quickly, but it took us a little bit to develop momentum. Eventually we got to a point where the nonprofit was going through some kind of fundamental changes in, in switching from disaster relief to really a local, human services organization. It really helped the organization for me to, to only require a part time, compensation level. I switched to part time with a nonprofit, went to full time with Engenius. That was the next decade of both organizations, really pouring into both really building both, probably spending way more than part time with the nonprofit. But, for me it was fun. It was energizing. It was a constant, constant effort, constant problem solving, constant, okay, we’ve doubled in size in two years. What do we do now scenario? That continued up until, summer of 2022
Russel:
You’re saying the nonprofit did?
Chris:
Me having a role in both organizations, I was essentially CEO of both organizations. Leading both, along that, from their start to then. In 2022, I had the opportunity to, really, I was getting to a point where my skillset really wasn’t what we needed in that leader role in the nonprofit. I was able to guide our board and the organization through, hiring the first non-founder leader, uh, of the organization and really transitioning away from that role. I’m still involved over there. I still do a few things to help out here and there. But yeah, just being able to lead one organization right now is it’s a different feeling.
Russel:
What do you do with all that spare time that you freed up with yourself? Just having to lead one organization, Chris?
Chris:
Traveling and playing with kids and spending time with my wife.
Russel:
Those are good life activities.
Chris:
That is exactly how I feel.
Russel:
One, you started a business with your partner and one of the interesting things that you said there is just this instant focus on people and culture and having a great environment, which I feel like is not a natural thing that comes to. Maybe a lot of folks learn that some more quickly than others once they get into the business, because we are in a very people business here in the agency world. Why do you think that was just so natural to you, when you came to the business at, like you said, such a young age?
Chris:
I’ve had a lot of jobs. I started working, I probably shouldn’t say this on a public, podcast, but, I started working at, I think it was age 11. Later went into, a little bit more full time work at age 13, but it was in a family business. As I’ve been told, when you’re, when your dad owns the restaurant, labor laws don’t apply anymore.
Russel:
Oh yeah, for sure.
Chris:
60 hour weeks as a kid, don’t need anything anymore. I saw a lot of different organizations. I think I had about, I don’t know, it was close to 20 different jobs by the time I started the nonprofit, at different places. I saw different work environments. I saw different people that, some who love their work environment, some who they were just counting the days until I can go find something else to do. I think that just shaped a lot of my view of business, of the work world, of realizing, hey, every one of these businesses has a choice on where they, what they prioritize and how they make that a priority. I want to have an organization and really show that it can be done at a small level. That you can prioritize your people and still be profitable, be successful, grow. That’s something that was, I don’t know, just very, very motivating for me. I think the other thing that really drove us in the early days, and it continues to today, is we saw all these other agencies growing. We weren’t the first marketing agency out there. This was 2008, the Internet was already here. We already had the dot com bubble and burst. It came after that. It’s this notion that all these other agencies, and I’m not saying this is bad. I’m just saying we looked at this happening and said, is this a good thing for everybody involved? Where the agency starts, they’re working with small businesses, but then they’re always looking for that bigger client. They’re always looking for that bigger project. Three years goes by and the small, family business, that was a great fit for them in the beginning, three years from now is no longer a good fit. Now they’re having to send that person elsewhere. The other thing we saw was a lot of the employees at these agencies, and again, some of them were very small where it’s just two or three people in the beginning that were all owners, but we saw that what was happening is a, not just a natural churn of talent and employees in that organization, but also a churn in a little bit less glamorous of a way, in that they quickly outgrew the skill set of the people that they had in the business. You look at the longevity of employees and other than the owner or partners in the business, you’re looking at, I don’t know, two, three years max, as longevity of people because they’re constantly having to almost like trade up the talent level that they have in house. We looked at that and we just said, hey, that’s a model. That’s a way to do it. And I’m not saying it’s bad, but we want to create a place that clients can be clients for as long as they want to. Employees can be here as long as they keep pushing, as long as you’re keeping up with stuff, you can grow with us and we’re going to, we’re going to grow at a pace that you can do that and spend your whole career with us. This sounds crazy to think about when you’re in your twenties, but it’s the thought of hey, I could be a boss one day that’s having to go find a golden watch to buy for an employee who’s retiring. I don’t even know what that’s like yet. I’ve still not hit 40 yet. That was a concept that really stuck with us as part of this kind of, being a great place for people. It’s being a great place for people where yes, some of them will come and go, and that’s good for them. We’ve had so many people work with us that really discerned their future vocation while working with us. Others have come to work with us that love what they do here, and we want to empower them to keep doing that as long as they possibly can. We’ve had clients that have been with us for over a decade and we haven’t outgrown them, nor do we have plans to outgrow. Now, once upon a time, they were one of 30 clients. Now they’re one of almost 200 clients. We serve them just as well as we did back with 30 clients.
Russel:
I love the takeaway there in the sense of, a lot of times outgrowing and growth is just focused on who you’re working with as a business, but how important that is on the team side. To the double edged sword of a lot of times owners are driven by someone that is just naturally wants to do new things, bigger things, creative things. It’s just how they’re wired. But then sometimes they might start to ask, why is the team not able to keep up with me? And then they’re just pushing the business at a pace that, as you’re saying, that they weren’t hired for that per se. You’ve got to really take a hard look at one, your activities, this is what you want to be doing, but how that fits relative to your team. I love how you shared that. You had a partner in the business or I say had, because I know how that eventually ends up. Sounds like it was a great construct, just eventually ran its own course and separated ways. What was that like and how did you navigate the exit of the business with your partner?
Chris:
My business partner was a really good friend of mine. Continues to be a really good friend of mine. We didn’t have necessarily any disagreement. We got to a point where I remember we had this conversation and I just, I just opened up to him and said, I feel like you’re frustrated with what you’re doing. I’ve sensed that for a little bit. I was waiting for the right time to really talk about it. He was very vulnerable and opened up that, his passion all along, and I’d noticed this, was he really wanted work on projects at a longer pace, developing software that really was, long term beneficial to folks. I think at some point, in the business, we realized that really didn’t have a spot in our business. We weren’t going to have a proprietary piece of software that we can maintain as a small enterprise. We built our own CMS, starting back in 2008 because we didn’t really have a, there wasn’t a great one from a user experience standpoint. We wanted a WYSIWYG editor, and things like that. There wasn’t a whole lot of that around in 2008, 2009. WordPress was still simply a blog platform. We created our own. Not to make money on it, just to have something for our clients. Obviously things like WordPress really came a lot further along, then we were able to develop things with one in house developer. We realized it was really just going to be very repetitive from a design dev standpoint of, we’re building small business websites day in and day out, all day, every day. He wanted to do something very different than that. He really wanted to oversee a piece of technology that could evolve and be pushed forward. We had that conversation. It really was a, we both respect each other a lot and I think that’s something that is vital for anybody going into business with each other. But we decided the best thing was for him to go pursue that. I was super flexible on terms and how long he needed to stay with us. As someone else who started a job right out of school, he hadn’t had a whole lot of experience in in the job market. And so he needed some time to figure that out, and we weren’t in any hurry to push him out the door or anything. We continued until he found something that he was really comfortable with. It was probably the smoothest that I can imagine. I’ve heard some horror stories from other owners with different experiences. I think it goes back to our original mission. I cared about him as a person more than I cared about the business. I wanted, him to be successful, for his own sake, for his family’s sake, and really to be able to pursue what he wants to pursue. He’s one of the first people that have come through our doors that were, that was like that. But I look back at so many of our former employees and many of them are not doing anything in digital marketing, working with small businesses, anything like that anymore. They had their time here and it really helped them figure out what their true passion point was.
Russel:
That’s awesome, the core of the foundation of how you started and how you operate today. As you were describing that, it took me back in time to just, I hadn’t heard the term WYSIWYG just because it’s standard practice to have, a smart editor in any sort of web format these days, but that wasn’t the case back then. I remember the days too, everybody was trying to build their own CMS before WordPress had really solidified itself. That was an interesting time period unto itself. But one of the things that really stood out there. One, how important it is, and I wish I’d have done this more in my own partnership journey, of checking in on your business partner. Having those moments where you can just ask yourself, hey, we started a thing for a certain reason and belief system. Is that still working for us? Are we still doing the things that make our passion? If not, where can we go? All the questions that might come out of that, but just not assuming that, that everyone’s A-okay and in it for the long haul and that it makes sense with their personal and professional lives. Really key aspect to make sure that yeah, you’re checking in on your partner.
Chris:
We’re both very intentional people, and I think that’s what led us to have not just a friendship, but one of those deep friendships where you really tell it, tell each other kind of your deepest, your deepest desires in life and what you really want to accomplish. I have several leader, leadership employees in our agency right now that I feel like I have very similar relationships that I did to my business partner. I want them to, if this is a great fit to fulfill their personal goals in life, great. If it’s not, let’s figure out what that looks like, because I don’t want you feeling like you have this obligation to be here, when your own, your own goals are different than what this is helping you to accomplish. I’m a fan of Jimmy Buffett. I grew up listening to him. My dad always had it on in the car and I, I listening to a lot of his songs, it’s all about, we have to go do the grueling nine to five but then we’re living for the weekend. In fact, I think it’s actually, that’s actually a line from one of the songs. I’m like, no. Sure, that’s how it is for some people. That doesn’t have to be it. We can live for all days of the week and be fulfilled in our work and also have fun stuff to do outside of the work too. It’s a both/and.
Russel:
I got the song, Working for the Weekend, it’s stuck in my head now. All I can think of, also, when I hear that song is the Chippendales, Chris Farley, and Patrick Swayze scene. I think that’s the song they play, in that scene. That’s a good visual. It reminds me of as well, every now and then, when working with folks, we will survey their team and there’s, in some cases, at least in a decent sized agency, 15 or so plus people. There’s someone that’s unhappy and it’s one, we do this anonymously, so I don’t know who they are, but, let’s throw out a broadcast and say, who are you? And if you’re this unhappy, come talk to us and let’s go find success elsewhere, because there is no reason for you to be here if this is how you feel. We even had these kinds of instances in our own journey. There’s that, that one person we’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know you existed. How can I help you? It sounds like you carried a similar belief. One of the other things, and not unlike a lot of agencies, you said it took you a few years to become profitable. Was there a light bulb moment? What changed from, making ends meet to actually getting in the black, as they like to say?
Chris:
I’m going to go back to the story of Enron. That’s not the only company that was around that was doing kind of some shady stuff that was just solely focused on profits, not as much about, people or ethics. Profits to me, when I was, as I was in my formative years, it almost became this dirty word. And it probably still is today to a degree. There are a lot of talking heads on TV talk about corporate profits and all this kind of stuff. But I think there’s a, there’s a part of that you’ve got to look, you’ve got to understand profits are necessary in every business. Even whether the business uses those profits to take care of their people, uses them to line the pockets of executives, use them to line pockets of investors. That’s up to the business to determine. It can do any of those things. It has a choice there, regardless of what they’re doing that, you have to have profits. If you don’t have profits you go out of business. It took me a number of years in business really to get past that stigma of profits being this dirty word. Like oh, if we’re too profitable my people just think that i’m just doing this for my own personal gain to put a bunch of money in my pocket. Business owners should have a profit in their business. They put a lot of risk into it. They need to have reward for that risk. It needs to pay off. It doesn’t have to be this dirty word. And really it shouldn’t be. There doesn’t need to be a stigma around it. Businesses need to be healthy, simply in order to take care of their people. Up until that point, we really had just, I mean, it was almost like this back and forth. What is that old game on the Atari? Pong. It’s just like a back and forth. One year we’re profitable. The next we lost all the profit we had the previous year, and the next year we made some money, then we gave it all back. We got overconfident in investing in the business. We weren’t looking at numbers as often as we probably should have. After that 2014 moment was really when we started to double down and get the whole team engaged in being profitable, in understanding why we need to be profitable. We adapted a version of open book management so that everybody had a stake in that outcome. We’re gonna have some prizes and some rewards for if we are profitable and stay consistently profitable. That are more than just our ownership, but everybody gets to share in these. That actually helped push us across that line to being consistently profitable. The year after we were profitable, we open up the books again. It’s oh, we made money again. This is cool. I didn’t realize the business could do this. Since then it’s happened every year and it’s good. It allows us to take care of our people. It allows us to have a better environment and we get to choose what we do with those profits, as owners of the business.
Russel:
I love it. I liken it to think of profit as value fuel. One, it’s a sign that you are actually creating value, in a meaningful way. And then as you like to say, what it’s, what you do with the value thereafter, where are you reinvesting that value, lining pockets? Are you investing in your team and finding more ways to provide value or grow to provide more value to more people? Certainly, a dark side and a good side. You mentioned there, open book management and I think this is, it’s a fascinating concept, at large. One, I guess for the folks that maybe aren’t even familiar with the term, can you describe what that is and what was the process like to actually implement that in your business?
Chris:
Open book management is basically when you literally open the books of your business. You educate your people on what are the numbers behind the business. That’s not just a, oh, like this is how much money we brought in. This is how much money we spent. This is our profit margin. That’s a great, very collapsed P&L, but it’s helping them understand more of how does this come to be? How are the decisions made that lead to that P&L looking like that? What are the different decisions that are made in the business? It creates that challenge point for, hey, I feel like it would be great to have another employee around to do some more of this stuff so that I don’t have to do it as much. Well, that employee costs money and there’s not necessarily more revenue coming to that employee, but there is more expense. So if that jeopardizes our ability to hit our numbers for the year and jeopardizes your year end bonus, you think about it differently. It creates more of a sense of, that shared ownership in the company. Of course, we’re way too small to consider being an ESOP or something like that, but it, it starts to get everybody engaged in what those numbers look like. One of the things that I’ve always tried to do is really connect the dots for them on how their daily decisions working in the business impact that bottom line. But it’s educating them about what that looks like and even down to, I, I’ve heard from a lot of business owners that are hesitant to do OBM, open book management because they’re like, I don’t want my people to know how much money I take home. First of all, most companies that do open book management aren’t sharing individual salaries, including the owners. When you have that net profit number at the end of the day, it doesn’t just go in your pocket. We had to educate our people, like, we’ve got taxes. We’ve got debt service. We’ve got, you know, reinvestment into the company. R&D to really push our company forward. We’re putting part of that aside just in a rainy day fund for the company so that we can, you know, feel a little bit more insulated about making some strategic decisions without worrying about,you know, oh, do we have enough revenue coming in for next month? Yeah, we still need to focus on that, but let’s not worry about it all the time. It’s been a great journey. I actually learned about it for the first time, I didn’t know what it was and I was going through this profit journey and come to find out I’m sitting next to this older guy and he’s been like, just giving me a little, nuggets of wisdom the whole time we’ve been at this conference. Finally that night over drinks, somebody else said. Do you know who you were sitting next to all day? And I said, his name’s Jack. I don’t know a whole lot about him. He’s from Missouri. They’re like, he’s like the father of open book management. I was like, seriously? Yeah. This is Jack Stack. I’d been sitting next to him all day and I’m like, I didn’t even know who he was. But I’m just learning all this stuff from him, and really getting some inspiration about oh, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. I learned a lot from, the person who apparently, came up with a lot of the concepts behind this, which was fun.
Russel:
Oh, is this The Great Game of Business?
Chris:
Yeah.
Russel:
Could have gotten an autograph opportunity, Chris. But great book out there for the folks at home. Great Game of Business talks about a lot of these aspects that I think a lot of owners want of getting employees involved in the business, caring more about the business, caring about profit and how to make decisions, solutions, et cetera, that, all end up going to the bottom line. Obviously a big theme here for you is, focus on your employees. Creating value for them, creating a place where they can thrive and if it can’t be there, just making sure people thrive. When you look at the future of Engenius, how do you view growth and success? What does the future hold for you guys?
Chris:
I think the biggest thing that’s on our radar is from a growth standpoint is, obviously we’re trying to grow. Part of that is we believe very strongly that having replication of roles in our organization is important for the health of our people. When you’re the only person in the organization that does a certain job it gets both lonely, but also you don’t have anybody to, iron sharpens iron. You don’t have anybody that’s challenging you to make you better at something or, help you improve. You also don’t have anybody to rely on. You’re feeling that stress of oh no, I always have to do this because I’m the only person that can do it. We are trying to grow, but we’re also looking at that through the lens of how can we grow in a way that’s not just building value for our ownership? Which is me, but also growing in a way that really does support our people, and doing that in a responsible way. We’ve been exploring a lot of different avenues for that. We’ve been growing at a pretty healthy pace on our own, just by, investing more in sales and marketing and really looking at our strategy there. We’ve also been, exploring acquisitions, of other agencies. The biggest thing there is, there’s got to be that culture fit, and it’s got to make sense for our people, and their people. Because if we acquire somebody, their people become our people, and now we’re all together. We want to make sure it’s a good, it’s a good fit, and there’s a similar goal attached to it, but it also strengthens both of our teams. That’s really where we’re looking from a growth standpoint, but I will say, we’re not in any kind of hurry. We’re in a really healthy spot right now. We continue to grow every year and we’re going to accomplish the stuff we set out for us. It may happen quickly. It may take us a little bit longer, but we want to do it at a pace that really does support our people. That includes me and the rest of the leadership too. It can’t be an environment where we’re just, we’re working 80 hour weeks to make sure that our employees only work 40 hour weeks. No, no, no, no. Everybody’s going to work a 40 hour week, and if you do more than that, you’re actually in trouble and you’re going to have to come see the principal.
Russel:
One other thing before we wrap up here that I just want to get to that I was very inspired by because so often owners talk about imposter syndrome. I think it’s just a natural thing to this crazy world we live in and trying to be so many things and do so much. We’re gonna question ourselves from time to time, but you had a pretty unique take on how you look at the idea of imposter syndrome, if you don’t mind sharing?
Chris:
Imposter syndrome, it’s a real thing. It’s something that our team has always struggled with. I think part of that’s our age, and I think that’s common along among a lot of digital marketers because they’re people who came up with the internet. We might be the 32 year old in the room with a bunch of people who are almost twice our age. It’s like, how do we have more experience of this than somebody else? But one thing that I found over time is just this constant reassurance, and I try to pass this on to my teammates as well, that what we know is incredibly valuable. What we know has so much insight into how businesses are working. I present workshops all the time and every time I’m always questioning myself before I get up on the stage behind the mic of who am I to tell these people something, about this. I’m not trying to like brag or toot my own horn or whatever, but I’ve been doing this since 2010 and the ratings that we get from these workshops are off the charts. They’re almost perfect time and time again. I think that’s because we do know what we’re talking about. We’re not getting up there to pat ourselves on the back or to, be the center of attention. We’re getting up there to help. We’re getting up there to inspire, to get people to ask questions that they may have been scared to ask. For me, it’s remembering why you’re doing it that helps frame that imposter syndrome. We can get nervous about it, and we’re probably always going to get nervous to a degree. When you’re sitting in front of a well respected community leader and you’re telling them that, their marketing strategy that they’ve been using is wrong. It takes a lot of guts to do that, but you’re not doing it to prove that you’re better than some other agency or that something that makes you greater, you’re doing it because you authentically want to help their business succeed. That’s something I think we’ve all got to keep in mind is we do have a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of information. We have a wealth of experience behind that, that other people just don’t have. They do their thing, we do our thing. Let’s not be ashamed to bring that to the table, as long as our desire there is really to help. We’re trying to help them do better at what they’re doing. If that’s where our passion is, let’s put ourselves out there.
Russel:
Go all in. I want to ask so many more questions, but I suppose this has to end sometime. My last last big question for you, Chris, then, is are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Chris:
Oh gosh. I don’t think there’s a single entrepreneur in the world who’s simply born that way. I think there are experiences we have early in life that definitely, define us. I think one of the common traits I see among most entrepreneurs is we’ve all gone through various pieces of adversity. But I think entrepreneurship is far more of, the personality traits that we develop, and the level of persistence that we innately, gear ourselves to have. I think back to what are my two strong suits? They are persistence and curiosity. I think both of those have made me a great entrepreneur, but those aren’t things that I was inherently born with. I had a lot of experiences, but I had to make a choice at some point. Am I just going to keep relentlessly pushing forward on something that I know may very well fail? Or am I gonna sit by and just let something else happen and not really push anything forward? That was a choice I had to make. Everybody has a lot of choices in life. There are a lot of people that can be entrepreneurs, but you got to step up to the plate and you got to push things forward and you got to have some persistence in what you do.
Russel:
Love that. Maybe it was those 11 year old 60 hours a week, was the formation of Chris the entrepreneur. So parents at home, get your kids working in your business. Everything becomes easier after that. It’s like the uphill, both ways, 40 miles to school kind of bit. If people want to know more about Engenius, Chris, where can they go?
Chris:
Engeniusweb.com, is a great place to start.
Russel:
There we go. All right, folks, visit the website. Thank you so much for your time today, Chris. Thank you for walking through all the different parts of your journey, intentional and unintentional, but obviously some clear takeaways in the importance of people and caring about future and success and value. Appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.
Chris:
Thank you, Russel, for having me. Thank you for having this podcast to share the stories of agencies. This is fantastic.
Russel:
My pleasure. I appreciate that.
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.
Chris:
One of my favorite moments of working with any of our clients, every one of our clients has quirks. Every one of them has, different things. This was one in, in, they kept calling us and saying, I got the copy of the homepage. I pulled it up. It just looks funky. They start describing it and we’re just like, no, that’s not what we’re seeing in front of us. The client was about an hour away. Eventually someone just hopped in the car and went out there. It turns out somehow they still got a copy of Windows 95. And a really old school Internet Explorer on some archaic computer that they’re pulling this thing up on. Of course it’s not showing up very well because the monitor is super small. It comes down to, just every client is somewhat unpredictable. It’s funny sometimes to see the things that’s we’re saying one thing, they’re saying one thing. Oh, it’s literally just, you’re using a really old computer. Then one of the other office pulled it up on a newer computer and they’re like, oh yeah, this looks fantastic. It’s yeah, you might want to upgrade your computer there.
Russel:
I forgot how much IE just was a pain in every developer’s world or not just IE, the versions of IE how problematic that was. Whew. May it rest in peace.
Chris:
May it rest in peace forever and ever.
Russel:
Amen.
