Company: Wide Foc.us Social Media
Owners: Eric Elkins
Year Started: 2007
Employees: 11 – 25
The podcast series An Agency Story shines a spotlight on the unique journeys of agency owners, their challenges, and the triumphs that define their paths to where they are at today. In this episode, host Russel interviews Eric Elkins, founder of Wide Focus Social Media, uncovering a narrative filled with reinvention, resilience, and impactful leadership lessons.
Eric shares his unlikely transition from a background in biochemistry, restaurant kitchens, and elementary school classrooms to becoming a pioneer in social media strategy since 2007. A standout insight is Eric’s transformation into a leader who prioritizes coaching and nurturing talent, a change inspired by pivotal conversations with his sisters. This shift has been instrumental in building a team that thrives and retains talent for years—a rare feat in the ever-changing agency landscape.
Listeners will also enjoy Eric’s reflections on the dynamic world of social media. From early blogging and user-generated content to today’s fast-paced, video-centric platforms, Eric breaks down how Wide Focus has consistently adapted to the shifting tides. He also offers thought-provoking predictions on the role of AI and the cyclical nature of trends in the industry.
The episode is peppered with humor and warmth, including a heartwarming tale of Wide Focus’s 15-year anniversary celebration that brought the remote team together in person. Eric’s honest account of navigating the tough economic climate of recent years adds depth to the conversation, offering both inspiration and relatability for agency owners.
Don’t miss this captivating episode that underscores the value of adaptability, curiosity, and human connection in building a lasting agency legacy. Tune in to hear Eric’s unique story and walk away with practical wisdom and a renewed appreciation for the transformative power of leadership.
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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 Eric Elkins, that dynamic founder of Wide Focus, a social media agency based in Denver, Colorado. Eric’s journey is anything but conventional spanning from biochemistry labs to restaurant kitchens. And eventually to becoming an early adopter in the world of social media strategy. Learn how his decision to focus exclusively on social media back in 2007, transformed wide focus into a trusted partner for businesses. Eric shares candid insights about the leadership lessons that have shaped his agency’s team centric culture, especially an in-depth conversation about the critical role of being a teacher in your business. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Eric Elkins with WideFoc.us Social Media with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Eric.
Eric:
I’m excited to be here. Looking forward to it, Russel.
Russel:
I am looking forward to it as well. If you don’t mind, start us off. Tell us what WideFoc.us does and who do you do it for?
Eric:
We are what is called a social media agency, but the way I like to describe it is we help companies grow by managing their social media channels to increase their visibility and reach and drive more business. I started the company back in 2007 and all we do is social, just both paid and organic to really help help our clients just improve revenue and increase thought leadership and just drive more visibility for their business.
Russel:
Beautifully put. Sounds like you’ve been doing it since 2007, the way you speak to that. Want to hear a lot more about all the great work you do. I think there’s some really interesting aspects to your journey and how you approach the business. But before we get to all that, tell us about young Eric, where was he headed with his life and we’ll see how closely he ended up or didn’t.
Eric:
I’ve had a long and checkered past. There’s a through line through it, I think, but it’s definitely, if you looked at where I started and where I am it’s a big shift. I finished college with a bachelor’s in biochemistry and molecular biology. Lasted a very short time working in a lab in pediatric hematology. Ended up cooking in restaurants cause that’s the way I paid my way through college. Did that for a few years. Went back to school to become a teacher and spent a few years as an elementary school teacher, which was really amazing. Wrote a book for teachers and part of that book, and I got my master’s at that time. Part of that book was about using newspapers in the classroom as a teaching method, which led to me being able to move on to become, to work at the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News as their youth content editor. I had a staff of kids between the ages of eight and 12. I had a hundred kids rotating through each year and created some really good content. It was sort of like the early days of user generated content cause I had the kids do all the writing. It was just this amazing experience that led to me having the chance to start what was really a social network before there were social networks. It was owned by media news and Scripps Howard, massive media companies. They were trying to figure out how to get young adults back into the newspaper. We were like, They’re not ever going to read the newspaper again. You need something else. That led to me being VP of marketing at a startup a mobile payment startup, which led to me when that, when things started to go sideways there, doing my own thing. I started out applying for jobs but I was also getting some cool little freelance work, whether it was helping a company with their marketing collateral or writing news releases and just copywriting and helping out here and there. One day, as I was sitting at my computer out on a coffee shop patio on a beautiful August day in Colorado, I just went. Shit. I just want to do this. I don’t want to work for anybody else anymore. I want to sit in front of my laptop at coffee shops and work instead. I was lucky enough to have some friends who were entrepreneurs and they said, that’s what you should do. Let’s help you figure out what that looks like. I ended up starting this company, really thinking I’d be doing marketing consulting. I was fortunate enough to have the vendor from the startup digital strategy agency, the owner called me and said, we have a big pitch next week and they want social media to be part of that. Can you come pitch that? If we get the job, we’ll just farm that part of the work out to you. We went in, I talked about using social media to help this company grow. Mind you, this was 2007. It was, like, user generated content, blog posts, understanding conversational media. They loved it. They hired the digital agency and that agency started giving me more work. It was never white labeled, which was nice, but they would say, hey, Horizon Organics is trying to figure out the social media thing. Can you come do some consulting?
Russel:
I heard you say social media there from almost the get go. Was that your focus right out of the bat? That seems pretty unique, especially going back to 2007 for having such focus positioning from the get go.
Eric:
I’m going to try to consolidate the story, but I was lucky enough to have coffee with one of the VCs from the startup. He wanted to debrief about what had happened. Towards the end of that conversation, he said, Eric, pull up your website for a second. I want to show you something. I pull up my laptop. I opened this website that I had built on the Typepad blogging platform, cause I had a blog about being a single dad there. I knew how it worked and it said WideFoc.us and Idea Shop. He said, okay, see where you offer your services. You say marketing, consulting, PR, sponsorship sales, copywriting, and you have social media way down at the bottom. I was like, yeah. He said, just get rid of all that other stuff, put social media at the top and you’re going to be busier than you can imagine. I was like, this is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I’m going to take his advice. I did that. Literally the next networking event I went to, someone said, what do you do? I said, social media. She’s like, oh my God, we need your, I need your card. We need help with that so much. That’s how it all worked out.
Russel:
All right. You really do have a varied past. I think that’s not uncommon per se, but it is a, it was very interesting. I was just trying to keep track, biology, cook, teacher, newspaper, marketing, and here you are having your own agency. I can see where a lot of that experience was so helpful. When you think about the entirety of that experience, what would be the most unique one that you feel like you pull from when you’re doing what you do today?
Eric:
It’s something, Russel, that, um, I didn’t pull from soon enough when I started my company, which is that consultative, like teaching educational background. Helping people come to their own conclusions. Teaching people how to learn, but also how to do more, get better, improve. There are these methods that you use in teaching to get the best out of people and out of your students. There’s that caring piece. There’s really listening and understanding, but there’s also just coaching and letting them work themselves out of their problems or helping them find the resources to answer the questions on their own. Helping them become stronger and more self sufficient. One of my key values for the company has always been, how do I nurture and cultivate talent and help them become better versions of themselves? But I haven’t always been really successful at that, especially early on when I was learning how to be a boss and a business owner. I think it was my, one of my sisters saying, you were a teacher, like, why aren’t you acting like a teacher? It was a big eye opener for me of, oh, I should be a coach. Not just the, you know, the taskmaster.
Russel:
I love what you said there. I just want to go in and deep dive into that because I think that is such an important element for agency owners. All the skills, talents and experience you have that you have to be a teacher in this business. You said a conversation with your sister, was there an actual moment that generated that conversation? Where you hit, I don’t want to say rock bottom, but hit a wall or had an issue? How did that even come about to begin with?
Eric:
I was losing talent, um, talented people from the team. Part of it was my leadership style. Part of it was the work itself. I always feel like if I lose, if someone quits because they’re unhappy, that’s definitely my fault. Or big chunk of that is my fault. I was having trouble just figuring out how to provide people with feedback and improvement. But I was doing it in more of a negative way. It’s like, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. I would get frustrated and that frustration could show either in the tone of my edits or the way I would respond to an email. My sister was like, you’re going to keep losing talent until you learn to, to, to cultivate trust and to build goodwill there. She’s like, you got to start with compliments and give them a reason to trust you and to show you. You need to show that you understand what their strengths are before you start know, criticizing and you need to couch that feedback around their strengths. It was like one of those duh moments, right? But she did it wrong. Yes and you need to boost her up a little bit before you bring that in and then make sure that you’re sharing the the outcomes and the consequences of the mistakes like that. She understands why it’s important and you need to give her more help in how she can improve in a positive way. When I realized that people would quit because at least the way they said it was, I just can’t, I can’t take this feedback like this. I had to learn how to provide feedback in a better way.
Russel:
I love that. I think there’s even a book out there, I can’t remember the exact title but it’s basically to the effect why feedback doesn’t work. It sounds like it speaks to a lot of what you’re saying, especially if we don’t maybe deliver that in the best way possible, that being fast and loose, we’re going to prick some people’s emotions in certain ways, depending on their background and experiences. It’s just going to be a crap shoot, it seems like, on how they’re going to interpret that. Sounds like more of your process is yes, give feedback, but then you gotta come back with the love and you gotta come back with the actual, more specifically, how do you overcome this feedback? Not just, hey, you heard the feedback and go do it. Was that a hard habit to break or just because you had that experience was it easy thing for you to go back and just, okay, I’ve had the aha. Now it’s just like riding a bike in terms of actually approaching that in the business?
Eric:
It’s always a process. I had to learn what worked and what didn’t. I got better. At least I knew what I was doing wrong so I was able to move faster and improving that, but I still slip even now, all these years later. In a moment of annoyance or frustration of going straight for the negative rather than taking a deep breath and talking to, in terms that are more holistic and caring and civil. It’s more natural now for me to be more coachy about it and less frustrated, it’s always going to be a process to be a better communicator. It’s better for sure. A lot better, but I still slip.
Russel:
Have you read the book, The Coaching Habit, by chance? It’s a really great book that just it basically says, shut up to manage your boss, et cetera, and ask questions and effectively coach. Get people to, to listen. Process their, how they’re doing things and what they can do to improve.
Eric:
I was just gonna say, my two sisters are both, like, powerhouses and they both advise me in different ways. One is about people’s strengths and building on those. She’s a strengths finder person. She helps us figure out how to best communicate and put people in the right positions. My youngest sister is an HR specialist. She’s an HR consultant and she’s been my, my HR consultant for 17 years. She’s the one who will be like, shut up and listen. She most recently, when I was having some questions about something that had happened, she said you needed to approach it with a sense of curiosity. Instead of saying, you did this wrong, it’s, hey, I’m curious about your thinking here when this happened, tell me more about what the decision was so we can make sure that we both understand each other. She really pushes me to go to that listening piece, into that shut up and listen. Instead of coming in hot and saying, why did this happen? To be like, hey, so I noticed this. Let’s talk about it. I’m really curious, authentically curious about what the thought process was there. We can make sure we understand each other and it’s a, it’s great to have two sisters, two younger sisters who are like, not afraid to tell me and put me in my place and tell me when I’m screwing up, but also know, to provide wisdom and help me be a better boss, but also help my team together better as well.
Russel:
Great shout out to your sisters there. It definitely sounds like, probably lean on them a lot, but what great advice and counsel and what a great nugget to share, too, in terms of just how to really approach this. In case people at home aren’t picking up on it, I, absolutely a big believer in this. I think this is a great concept and I’m just very excited to have a real great use case test, case study of someone that’s been effective with that and used that. Once you started to do that how did you see things change for you in, in, within the agency?
Eric:
I think the long term effect is I have people on my team who have been around for five, seven, eight years now. That would have been unheard of. People tend to stay which is really great. It’s given us a chance to nurture people into becoming even more talented and more useful and, and increase both their areas of expertise but the responsibilities. I always say that if you’re working with us, you’re going to come away with a really strong piece of resume work, and you’re going to become a stronger writer and a stronger strategist. I always say, I would love for you to stay forever, but if there comes a point when you’re ready to move on, you’re going to have really good experience that’s going to help you be successful wherever you go. The good news is because we nurture that talent and I do a better job of that than I used to, people tend to stay for a long time, which is, it’s great. It’s great for institutional knowledge. It makes our clients happy cause they like to stay for a long time and they don’t have to, worry too often about a new community manager or a new person in charge of their account. That continuity just helps us be, get better and better at what we do.
Russel:
If we’re just trying to make a business case there, I think we can, you can sit at home and do the math and we’re, we gotta be talking tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars there. I think we sold, I don’t know. What do you think, Eric? You think we sold the concept?
Eric:
I hope so. Keep your people happy and your clients are going to be happy and you’re going to make more money.
Russel:
Yes, there we go. All right. I could keep going down that path, but we’ll come back to the agency. Being unique, starting out focusing on social media from the beginning, I know clearly social media has changed. How has just your delivery and approach to it as a service changed from the early days to where you’re at today as a business?
Eric:
It’s always been a process. I’m gonna start with the foundation and what stayed the same, which is, I, from the beginning, when social media started to emerge, I realized that the two areas that it was fundamentally changing were in content and conversation. Content sharing became much more immediate and easy. My mom used to, like, write, cut magazine articles out and mail them to me with highlights and post-it notes. Now she can share a link or just throw it on social and tag me. And then conversations really changed as well in the way that both people could interact with each other and the media, but also with brands. For us, for any time we’re figuring out whether it’s an emerging platform or a new platform or something that’s starting to get more visibility. We look at that content and conversation play. How has the content shared there and what are the best types and most resonant or engaging types of content, and where are the conversations and how can we encourage those? That stayed the same. We always ask about target audience and business goals. Who are you trying to reach and what do you want them to do? Our approach consistently continues to be figuring out the channels, the content the frequency and the audiences and creating plans out of that rather than just saying you need to be on Facebook for whatever reason. That’s what’s, like, stayed the same and consistent. What’s changed is certainly the types of content that are resonating. It used to be, you could put up an image and a good caption or some really strong writing and that would be enough to get really good engagement. There was an art to it still, whether it was really good writing, questions or interesting takes. Now it’s come full circle. User generated content was what got things started and it’s this UGC style video that’s the most popular right now. It’s because of TikTok and Instagram Reels and now Facebook reels. It’s that, quick hitting, fun, interesting, short bits, bursts of video content. Might have some words on there. It might have some or some copyright on the video. It’ll have music or sound effects. It’ll have funny gifs. It’ll have interesting talking heads versus and maybe some still photos, but all of that has fundamentally changed the kinds of content that are, that resonate. For us, it’s, again, what’s the content that’s going to be most resonant? The biggest change I’ve seen, at least in the past several years, has been this move to more of that quick hit, fun, lighthearted, or just interesting, compelling snippets of video that fit in that TikTok style.
Russel:
You’ve gone past and to present. Just for funsies here, drop a future prediction on the future world of social media.
Eric:
Someone just asked me that and the obvious answer is AI. AI is changing everything just in the way that content is going to be produced and shared and the information and the metrics and the data we’re going to get because of AI. It’s going to really fundamentally change how content is created and shared. Honestly, like, for us looking into how we can use AI in a supportive way. We don’t believe it’s going to replace what we do because we have the chops, we have 17 years of experience. We have the expertise and the strategic piece. We’re looking at AI as ways to enhance what we do or improve our productivity. But that’s the obvious one. I think everybody’s thinking about that. We’re thinking about it a lot. I think the less obvious one is, everything comes, goes in cycles, especially on social. For a long time, copy, good, clear copy was the thing that got the most resonance and then images and words on images and then, long form video and short term video and then long form video again. I think we’re going to continue to see that things change. This UGC style video that’s so popular right now, it’s starting to create a lot of noise. I think we’re going to start to see emerge more people going back to a sort of quieter form of marketing, whether it’s really good carousels or something that’s a little more chill or good still images and gifs. I think things will start to calm down again and then there’ll be a different kind of, uh, content that emerges as the resonant one or the most resonant. What that tells us is you need to be, you should always have differentiated content. You need that content diversity in the type and the format, um, in the messaging and what you’re saying. It’s more than just hedging your bets. It’s also breaking up the noise because you’re popping in with something that’s very different from everything else that’s out there.
Russel:
What a world. Probably of all the digital mediums out there social media’s certainly changed the most over the I’m sure everybody would make an argument how much everyone’s all of them changed, but going to make the stamp and say it’s social media that’s changed the most. I’m just curious even to, like, how you’ve priced what you do. I think you even spoke to that. It’s certainly gotten more complicated, more nuanced, more intricate in terms of takes to create good content. How has your pricing changed over the years methodology or even specifically?
Eric:
It’s been a long process for us to figure that out. In the early days, it would be a combination of me figuring out how much time we’re going to need, making a rough estimate and then aligning that with what I thought someone was going to be willing to pay. It was very subjective. Sometimes I did it well and sometimes I underpriced us in which case the team was like, how are we supposed to get all this work done in this amount of time? I rarely overpriced us, but if I did, like, overestimate, then we are more likely to not get that client. It was all gut and I think a lot of small business owners start that way,
Russel:
Flick the finger, stick it in the air. I totally know that form of pricing.
Eric:
Right? Like, oh, I know what we do here. But what we realized and with some, um, external consulting help was that we also have years and years of data about how long things take to do. We use Harvest as our task, or I guess our, our time. collector that really helps us figure out how much time we’re spending on task per client. That gave us a little more science and a little more data about how much time things actually take to do. We created and it’s actually my operations director who did the heavy lifting here. We created a pricing guide. It’s a spreadsheet. It has all the math in there. After I talk to a client and kind of get an idea of what they need and what their goals are and, and honestly, are they going to be hands on, which means we’re going to need more time? Versus someone who’s like, yeah, run with this. I put all that data, all those numbers, into the spreadsheet and it kicks out a number. That’s the number that we work with. When a client does say, or potential client says, can you do this for less? I can either show that to them or say, let me run some numbers. We can do less for less. Here’s the minimum of what we need to make sure that you’re successful. Instead of making it feel very subjective, we can say, this is all math. We know, historically, how much time it’s going to take to do these things, and this is why we charge what we do. It’s really helped us both on a sense of we’re not bumping up against ours as often because the, we’ve done that math in advance. Instead of me saying how much time you get, it’s more, how much time do we really need and let’s charge for that. It helps our when we’re building proposals, when we’re, negotiating those fees, we can talk about it and have some real credibility behind it rather than it sounding like we’re just randomly adding or discounting or whatever that is. It helps us a lot when we have members of the team who might, like, start inching over hours on something and be able to say, all right, where’s this happening? We can either go back to the client and say, we didn’t estimate enough hours or figure out, economies internally to make sure that we’re hitting the mark. It’s taken quite a bit of the guesswork out. There’s still big surprises. Someone ends up being, very, active with us. Constantly asking for changes, constantly making new requests. That ends up being a conversation that I have with the client about it. But we also have this kind of trust that we, we know our process. If there’s a lot of that at first, we also know that if we can keep hitting the mark and show them that we’re learning and that we know what we’re doing, eventually they built, we build that trust with them. That, constant sort of micro communication starts to level off and then we can make up for that lost time in the streamlining of the process.
Russel:
I love your scientist experiment or experience there leaned into, having a foundation like you’re saying. A really data-driven really scientific approach to how you’re looking at this, which is much better, I’m sure as you were attesting to, than the finger in the air or the roll the dice or ask the magic eight ball what the pricing should be approaching it systematically like that. Clearly team means a lot to you and your culture and your environment. I really just loved your story about what I guess was your recent 15, 15 year anniversary and just a little ode to the origins. If you don’t mind sharing about that?
Eric:
August we celebrated 17 years, but two years ago at our 15th anniversary, we had gone a hundred percent remote when COVID happened. We ended up being able to hire people from other parts of the country and it really deepened the talent pool and allowed us to, find some very talented people from all over, but we never got to see them in person. I honestly have always missed just that chance to gather and spend time together. For our 15th anniversary, we had a big party here in Denver and we flew out the, team to come join us. We had a party with clients and friends and the whole team and strategic partners and anybody who wanted to come. It was a great party and it was our, for a lot of us, first time to meet some of the members of the team in person. The next morning not too early because it was a great party, we met up at the Starbucks where I had essentially worked the first several years of the business before we had an office and where we would meet as a team. We all met at that Starbucks and grabbed coffees for everybody and just worked from there for a couple hours collaborating. Someone would go sit by someone else and say, what do you think of this? It was things that we haven’t been able to do since 2020. It was, for me, really fun to be back in this old space where I had done so much work. It’s this cavernous Starbucks in the, in an REI store here. Then we moved from there to my house, which isn’t far from there, ordered in lunch. My middle sister, Sarah Elkins, who I mentioned earlier, ran a StrengthsFinder session with us. We had already taken the assessment and she sat, worked with us for a couple of hours. I gotta say Russel, it was a magical thing to not only be around the table with all these people that, um, had helped the company grow and were a part of this cohesive team and to see them and hug them for the first time. But to get real insights about what motivates us, what our strengths are where we could use some help. Where as a team, we had, real strengths and where as a team, there are only a few people who had the strengths we needed that were not there in the leadership. It was mind blowing. She ran it in such a fun and interesting way. It just became, like, for me, a real touchstone because it gave us all this opportunity to engage as humans and, um, to have that more visceral interaction, to share food together to have some drinks and to, to celebrate. That buzz lasted a long time after everybody went their separate ways, and you could feel it even in our zoom calls of that really cool chemistry that had been, that had coalesced in that chance to be together. We’ve talked about, we wanted to do it every year, and it just hasn’t been able to happen, but it is still very front and center on my mind of bringing the team back together and doing something like that before too long.
Russel:
Very cool. Just a little nod to your roots and creating a lot of connection as you’re alluding to, and how powerful that sounds like that has been within your team and your culture. What a great story. Thank you for sharing that. That’s awesome. As we start to wind things down here, I’m just curious, what are your future goals for WideFoc.us? Tell us what the future looks like.
Eric:
In full transparency, we had a pretty tough, pretty rough 2024. A lot of what we’re working on now is just getting back to where we need to be on the revenue side and just improving. I know a lot of agencies had a pretty rough last 18 months or so as the economy was up and down and unstable and marketing budgets were all over the place. We see some light on the horizon. The first order of business is really just digging out and getting more clients and really improving our processes as we continue to grow. In the longterm, like, just keep that growth trajectory moving forward. I have a really strong leadership team. I’m getting on in the years so thinking about succession and how the company can help our next layer of team members grow and become leaders themselves. Extend our reach strategic partnerships with agencies that don’t do social. We stay in our lane so it’s always wonderful when an SEO company or a digital strategy agency or a PR agency or branding agency says, let’s team up on this project because, we stay in our lane. Looking at more of those partnerships.Just finding ways eventually in the next, I don’t know, 10 years for me to turn the keys over to my team or to slowly step back and continue to build this legacy.
Russel:
Wonderful. I can’t wait to hear all the things that come about that. Someone that’s taken the approach to business from a coaching perspective and clearly cares about their team and culture, I’m sure that’s all things you said will come very true for you. My last question for you, Eric of so many wonderful answers you’ve given so far, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Eric:
I have two stories I think that are related and I’ll try to make it quick. The first is, my father, uh, who passed away 10 years ago. When I was younger, he just, like, I just felt like he would get into these jobs and then he’d work himself out of them. A lot of it was he was just so good at creating efficiencies that eventually they didn’t meet him. Other times it was, he had strong opinions and that kind of didn’t work out. He did try to be an entrepreneur as a consultant, and it lasted through one client who said, okay, this is really great what you’re doing. Why don’t you just come on board? I wonder what would have happened with him and his, just, mentality and the way he was thinking about things. If he had said, no, I’m a consultant and he’d gone on to get other clients rather than come into this company and eventually, you know, again, get things so efficient that they didn’t need them anymore. Of course he had, you know, three kids and a house and everything else. There was a lot more at stake. But I often wonder, was it that he was just going for the safe route or was entrepreneurism and being an entrepreneur so stressful and it’s really stressful and difficult. It’s a question that I ask myself sometimes, but literally yesterday, and I asked because I wonder if he would have been happier, um, and if, how our life might’ve been different, if he hadn’t taken that job and really, like, dug into continuing to be a consultant. Who knows? 17 years later, I, like, after this last year, there are days when I just wake up wondering what, you know, what I have wrought on myself in the world. But literally yesterday I had lunch with a friend, a colleague who, um, actually sold his company several years ago. He’s mostly happy about it, but there are definitely days when being the employee rather than the CEO really grates on him. He said, there are two types of people. There are the spectators and then there are the players. The spectators, you know, you’re watching your favorite team from the stands, and when they lose, you go, ah, damn! And then you walk away, you know, and you wait for the next game. Whereas if you’re playing and you lose, it has a real effect on your life. When you win, you get all the highs of that. He said the risks are so much higher and the ups and downs are so much deeper or so much more pronounced, but no matter what, if you’re on that field, you’re, there’s something to be said for that. I don’t know if we know if entrepreneur are, born or made, but I think what emerges from those opportunities is, do you, are you happier as a player? Are you happier as a spectator? I don’t even think necessarily a great entrepreneur always wants to be an entrepreneur, right? And a great worker always just wants to be in that comfortable, you know, consistent space. In full transparency, there have been days in the last 18 months, I’ve woken up and been like, man, if I just had a day job right now, I would be so much less stressed. As you and I mentioned, I just went on vacation for two weeks. For the most part, when I take vacations, which is pretty rare, I usually can, decompress to a pretty significant degree. My team knows not to reach out unless they absolutely need anything. This last one, it was, there’s just a lot going on. I was working a lot more than I wanted to. My girlfriend just put on her out of office when we left and didn’t know what was waiting for her when she got back. I was a little jealous.
Russel:
What a world. What a great twist on the question a little bit, right? Who’s to say whether they’re born or made? There are those that have played and there’s a joy in playing. I think sometimes even having that courage to say, no, I’m better off as a spectator and that’s a perfectly okay route to do as well. To your point, the last two years have definitely been hard in the agency space for sure. I’m sure maybe others, but maybe especially hard in the agency space the last couple of years. A wonderful answer. If people want to know more about WideFoc.us, where can they go?
Eric:
They can go to our web, our website, which is literally WideFoc.us. So it’s W I D E F O C dot U S. Or you just look up WideFoc.us social media. We’re all over the social channels as well. You can find us on LinkedIn. We’re our own client in that way. Personally, you can email me at Eric@WideFoc.us. I also have a fun side project called Denverlicious.com, which is a blog about gems in and around Denver.
Russel:
All right. I will have to remember that the next time I pass through Denver get all the scoop on the great food there. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing all that. Thank you for sharing your story today and thank you for being a great coach and sharing some inspiring wisdom and tips and tricks on how to do that. Thank you for taking the time to share your story with us today.
Eric:
Thank you, Russel. This has been really fun. It’s given me a lot to think about for sure.
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.
Eric:
When we had our office here in LoHi in Denver, we had a big garage door that we would put up on, um, on sunny days, of which there are quite a few in this town. The street that we were on had some neat restaurants and coffee shops. One of my favorite things that would happen is that dogs would just come in. They’d be walking with their owners and maybe they’d be off leash or on a long leash and suddenly we would have a dog, you know, I’d have a dog at my feet looking up at me. Or I’d be sitting on the couch, um, that we had, and suddenly there’d be a dog sitting on the couch next to me. And then the owners would be embarrassed and be like, oh no, so sorry, but it was, it was like this really fun, special thing that just allowed a lightness and, um, allowed us to feel like we were part of that community because people would just walk by and nod, or you know, stop in for a beer from our fridge.
Russel:
That’s hilarious.
Eric:
But the dogs, that was the best part. Random dogs coming into the office to say hello.
Russel:
That’s amazing. I’m sure that’s like a, that’s like a heaven work environment for a lot of animal lovers out there.
