Leveraging Fractional Support to Scale Your Agency with Sydney Mulligan & Lauren Aquilino | Ep #788

Leveraging Fractional Support to Scale Your Agency with Sydney Mulligan & Lauren Aquilino | Ep #788 Speaker 3: I want you to stop working for free. If you're tired of getting ghosted on proposals, the endless follow-ups and We'll think about it as a response. There's a better way. The top agencies aren't sending proposals. They're getting paid to pitch and close bigger deals way faster. I want you to grab this free resource I just put together at agencymastery360.com slash strategy. That's agencymastery360.com slash strategy and you'll learn how to flip the script if you want to get paid for your expertise instead of giving it away for free. Hi, ladies. Welcome to the show. Speaker 1: Hi. Hey. Speaker 3: How are you doing? Speaker 2: Another day in paradise. Speaker 3: Awesome. So, well, welcome to the show. Tell us who you guys are and what you guys do. Speaker 2: I'm Sydney Mulligan. I am the CEO and co-founder of Emmie Collective. Speaker 1: And I am Lauren Aquilino. I am CEO and co-founder of Emmie Collective. And Sydney typically gives our pitch, so I'll let her do that. Speaker 3: Before we dive into that, how'd you guys get started? Like, why'd you guys create an agency? Speaker 1: Great question. Speaker 2: Oh, what a great question. Well, it was born like most good things out of trauma. So Lauren and I know each other because we actually used to be competitors. We both worked at different agencies that competed with each other. And we were part of a customer champion program for the software that we both worked in. It's called Marketo. We were Marketo champions together, just some little nerds out there rocking in the world. And we kind of knew of each other. We really had like a mutual friend that we both knew quite well. And we each went our separate ways, both left the agencies we were at. I went back in-house for a bit. And then I had my second child. And while I was on maternity leave, I got laid off. And at that time, Lauren, what were you doing? Speaker 1: Lauren Aquilino Yeah. So while Sydney was in-house, I was freelancing. I thought that I would be quitting the agency and taking a summer off. And I think it was exactly two weeks before a friend was like, hey, I have a little bit of work. Would you want to do it? Like, yeah, sure. Speaker 2: No problem. Speaker 1: So I signed up for 10 hours a week freelancing and then pretty quickly they were like, Oh, actually we want 20 hours. And I was like, this is not what I signed up for. And that's really how like baby Emmie was born because I started outsourcing work that I couldn't take on or didn't want to take on. So I slowly grew to, I think we had three We're with four clients on the way and maybe like four consultants that were all moonlighting doing Salesforce and Marketo consulting primarily. And then Sydney got laid off and posted a desperate post on LinkedIn. Not desperate in like bad way, desperate and like panicked almost. Speaker 3: I would be too if I was on the derby leaving and get laid off. So you could say that. Speaker 1: So I really did not have on my mind to grow Emmie into a bigger company. Like it definitely was a lifestyle business at the time. I probably was still billing like 25 hours a week as a consultant alongside the other consultants. But when I saw her post this update on LinkedIn, I thought to myself like, wow, that If I were to grow this business, it would be Sydney that I did it with. So I slid into her Instagram DMs and was like, Hey, saw your LinkedIn post. Wouldn't it be funny if we like We started a business together. Oh, by the way, like I'm Lauren. Speaker 2: I think we've met maybe once or twice. Speaker 3: Really? Wow. Speaker 2: Yeah, that was pretty much it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And you know, as you can imagine, I was not in a good place. And I, this was early 2022. I had a six-week-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old and I was just like, I have to figure out, I have to get a job. It was before the job market really tanked. So there were decent job prospects out there. I took a bunch of interviews and I was also having this side chat with Lauren on Instagram, where she would just periodically send me a question that was like, Where do you want to travel? What are your hopes and dreams? What do you want to do with your life? What brings you joy? What gives you energy? Speaker 3: Lauren are you the visionary? I presume? Speaker 2: It didn't take long. It didn't take long to figure that out. So I am doing all these job interviews and Lauren and I are still talking and I was like, you know, if we are actually going to think about doing something, we should meet in person perhaps and I'll come to Ohio and I'll just like bring my newborn with me and we'll talk. And she was like, no, Ohio sucks. It's February. It's really cold here. Let's go somewhere better. Let's go to Florida. So we took what we now refer to as co-founder speed dating, a co-founder speed dating vacation. And we went to Siesta Key and we rented a mermaid themed Airbnb and I brought my then four month old And we just talked for like three days. We went to the beach. We got some post-it notes from the drugstore and wrote down all of our ideas. There was a bachelorette party happening in the Airbnb. It was like a duplex. It was like the other side of the house. And they saw that we had a baby and were like, Oh my gosh, we're so sorry. We're so loud and brought us cocktails with purple penis straws in them. And that is how Emmie was born. I remember leaving that trip and I told Lauren, I had a job offer going into that, that I was very sure I was going to take. In fact, I was so sure that I felt like maybe I needed to cancel the trip because I didn't want Lauren, I think I was just trying to scam her out of a vacation to Florida. But when I left, I was like, well, I'm going to think about it and I'll, I'll let you know by, I don't know, like a week later. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. You're like, you're like, give me 30 days. Speaker 2: I think my plane had not even landed before I texted her. I was like, fuck it. Let's just do it. Speaker 3: What was the biggest surprise in the first year? Speaker 2: Because you guys, people wanted to work with us. Speaker 3: How are you guys getting clients? Was it on word of mouth and referrals? Speaker 2: Lauren Aquilino Yeah, it was really almost exclusively referral based. Lauren and I met because we were both in the champion program. So we had both kind of built up a... We're like big fish in a very small pond. We have like a reputation amongst a very small niche group of people. So we had enough network and reputation to carry into a strong referral-based business. I think I was the most surprised by how easy it was to find consultants that wanted to work with us. I had brought client work into my old agency before. That was something I felt pretty confident doing, but I I had never been a freelancer before. In fact, I never wanted to be a freelancer and I was so sure there would not be a huge amount of really amazing freelancers out there. Speaker 1: We spent a long time talking about that on our speed dating too because I felt pretty strongly that I wanted to at least to start staff primarily with freelancers or contractors because that's how I had always been staffed with the agency that I work for. And I knew that there's a certain pressure to working with an agency where you're required to do a number of billables while you're on salary. That's just like hard as a human to kind of deal with. And when you're a freelancer or contractor, you're setting how many hours you can work and you're billing, you know, for those hours. And so I knew that if the consultants could kind of make their own schedules, pick their own projects, that they would be automatically happier, that they'd be happy to come to work and that they would do really good work. But I do remember Sydney was like, no, like everyone's going to need benefits. Speaker 2: So we'll see where this goes. Speaker 3: Hi there, agency owners. Let me ask you, are you ready to scale your agency without increasing your overhead costs? If yes, then you need to know about E2M Solutions. Now, E2M is the number one most reliable white-label partner for agencies. They specialize in web design, WordPress development, e-commerce, SEO, and content writing. They basically do all the heavy lifting, which frees you up to focus on growing your agency. Now, here's the best part. E2M is just not another vendor. With over 10 years of experience, their team of over 300 experts has a track record of delivering for more than 300 agencies. They're your strategic partner. They deliver on time every time so you can focus on what you do best. Now, E2M's mission is simple, to help 500 agencies increase their revenue and profit margins with white label services that actually work. And to help you get started, they're offering a special deal, 10% off for the first three months. But act fast because it's only a limited time offer. So head over to e2msolutions.com slash smartagency to check out their transparent and their flexible pricing. Trust me, if you're ready to grow without burning out, e2m is the partner you've been looking for. That's e2msolutions.com slash smartagency. Go check them out and tell them Jason Swenk sent you. What's been the biggest challenge that you guys overcame? You know, you guys are now a multi-million dollar business, so congrats. What was the biggest challenge that you guys overcame in the first couple of years? Speaker 1: Well, we're still in the first couple of years, so it's going to be a new challenge every day. Speaker 2: I think the last year, probably our biggest challenge was hitting the limit of what Lauren and I could carry on our own. We got about a little over halfway through the year, and I was more stressed than I'd ever been in my life. And there was just a lot going on. We had new clients coming in, new consultants coming in, like all good things. I was handling all the sales calls. We were also investing in marketing for the first time. So we were doing a lot of events that I was traveling for. We were both traveling for. Lauren handles the bulk of the like, you know, preparation and planning and all the marketing work for that, but we're still going. Yeah, there's just a lot going on. I remember Lauren reached out to me in like mid-July. I was like, Hey, I feel like for the first time, I don't even know how many clients we have. Are you okay? Speaker 1: Right. You were like, can you review this contract? And I was like, I can't. There's this point where you can mentally keep everything straight. And there was a point where it's like, oh, you need to review your CRM to keep everything straight. And so when I realized I could not mentally keep everything straight where I was like, Sydney's got to be drowning. Speaker 3: And Lauren are you the one that does primarily sales? Speaker 1: No, Sydney does our sales. And most of our front-end consultant work and I'm primarily back at the house. Speaker 3: Oh, okay. So Sydney's trying to break you then. Because sales always tries to break operations. That's how I always look at it. Speaker 2: No, no. Sydney's breaking herself. Lauren has the like business, business operations and I'm doing the like staffing the projects, consultant management, client management, sales. And last year we brought on fractional account management. So we have someone else that's kind of taking care of our clients alongside our consultants, of course, but making sure everyone's happy, that sort of thing. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember getting to a certain point. I think we were right around where you guys were. So we were, we were a nice sized business and I just wanted to quit because I was like that. I couldn't, I couldn't wrap my head around everything. And then what I realized was I needed to bring in the right people that I needed to first figure out where we're going and communicate that to the right people I had on the team and then really kind of delegate the outcome I wanted and where we're going and let them make the decisions to get there. That took a lot of pressure off me because when you're building a business, especially in the beginning, You know, you can get to a million, get to a couple million, and then you're like, man, this is stressful. And this is a lot of work. And then you think about all your options. You go, I can go back to when it's fun. And it's just me, but it's not scalable. And then you can think about, well, maybe I should just sell it, but it's really not worth anything yet because you're too, I was too ingrained in the business. And then you're like, crap, I'm just bringing the right people and tell them where I need to go. And then I work less, not at first, but eventually. Then it was like, I would go into meetings and they'd be like, I'd go into a creative meeting. Like, Hey, you guys need some help? No, I'm good. Go to a marketing meeting. You need help? No, I'm good. I was like, shit, you fuckers don't need me. Speaker 1: My children have grown up. We're definitely like mentally, it's a mental game. First and foremost, I think for us, because we're like, you know, we grew the business on the back of our networks essentially. And so we're like, we are the faces of our business. At what point is that still a selling point or? We step away so much that people are like, oh, we're not even engaging with them. Speaker 3: Well, you got to think about, obviously, you know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, right? Do you think he talks to any of his clients? Do you think he manages any of his clients? Speaker 1: I was previously a VaynerMedia client, and I can tell you with 100% certainty, he's not involved whatsoever. I was working at GE at the time, like you did not give a what about that. Speaker 3: No, no, not at all. But but you probably could agree his team follows the same principles that he believes in. And then they they've mapped out. Right. And that's that's what I tell all the agencies coming to our mastermind that we actually help is, look, you need to bring them in and they need to believe in what you believe in. But then you kind of set up your team and going, look, like, especially with me, I'm ADD, dyslexia, I'm all screwed up, but I can talk to people and people want to work with us. And then I'm like, especially when we were building a website or email campaign or whatever it was, I'd be like, look, you don't want me to manage your process. I was like, I will be like squirrel, cow, all over the place. I won't get back to you. But my team, they're the experts and I just set them up and they're going to follow the process. If you like all the goofy videos that we put out, you like our methodology, look, you'll love working with us. Like that's how we would do it. And that's what gave me freedom. And then the thing is, in a little while, I'm doing this ProfitLeak webinar, talking about all the profit leaks in agencies, where they can put more, add more money into the bottom line. You know what the number one profit leak is? You. And me, I would come into the business and I'd totally screw up the process, especially when I'm talking to a client. A client would ask me for something, of course, we can do it. Speaker 2: We'll break the process. Speaker 3: And then scope creep happens, underbilling happens, all these different things that I'd screwed up. So I always tell everybody, get the hell out of the business. Speaker 1: I also think financially scaling ourselves, it's not a challenge for us. It's just another mental game because we are bootstrapped. And so it's like, should we take on some sort of funding in order to. Speaker 2: grow or are we cool? Speaker 1: You have to make those kinds of decisions. Speaker 3: I know of people that have taken on funding for their agency and done fantastic. It's like everything. Like it just depends. I've always been the mentality of Maybe this is just how I've grown up is I don't want any debt other than my house. Like if you got a mortgage at 3%, why the hell would you ever pay that off? That's the only debt I've ever had. If I wanted to buy something, I'm going to make sure I have the cash for it. Now, there is a flip side. Some people have grown quicker than we have. But one thing I do tell people is once you start raising money, you're always raising money. And then you're working for someone else. Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's why we've avoided it at this point because we don't want bosses. We still want it to be our own boss. We have bosses. I have three kids. She's got two. They boss us enough. Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. It's amazing. My family always makes fun of me. You'll walk into a meeting and people are like, oh, you know, they'll listen to you, right? But then you come home. And they're like, take out the garbage. Yeah, they don't brush your teeth, whatever it is, right? They just dog you all day long. So it's good though. It humbles you, right? Speaker 1: They've got to humble you, yeah. Speaker 2: Somebody's got to. Somebody's got to. Speaker 3: Yeah, I got an 18 and a 15-year-old right now. So they definitely humbled me. Well, this has all been fantastic and a lot of fun. Is there anything I didn't ask you guys that you think would benefit some of the agency owners listening in? Speaker 2: You know, one thing we've never done is hired someone full time. There's a lot of reasons for it, but part of it is what we're selling is fractional support for specialized skills. And we really believe that one of the best ways for companies to access senior specialized skills is through fractional support, through engaging with an agency like ours. So when we need specialized help, when it's stuff that we hate or are bad at, like everything related to our finances or making people pay us or Staying in touch with all of our clients, rather than hiring someone and taking the risk of having to pay someone's salary and having to manage a full-time employee, we We lean on agencies or independent fractional support to get us what we need in a much more flexible way. It's easier for them to scale with us. Our account manager was out of the office for two weeks of December unexpectedly because she had a family emergency, but she's not our sole point of failure there. She's from an agency and it's the agency's job to give us a backup when she's gone. So we didn't suffer for that. I think that a lot of people don't realize How many different types of fractional support there are out there? Hiring does not have to be your first choice. Speaker 3: Jason Swenk Yeah. And if you guys need more help, reach out. Go to agencymastery.io, click that little scale button, and we'll jump on a call. And you can see how our process works and how we can help your agency be more profitable, stop wasting time, fix a lot of those profit leaks. And until next time, have a Swenk day.