Duncan Alney made the decision to focus his agency on social media back in the late 2000s when MySpace was still a thing. Now he’s running a 7-figure agency and is has niched it down even further. As founder and CEO of Firebelly, Duncan juggles the roles of catalyst, program overseer, problem solver, and strategist within the organization. Today he joins us to talk about how he accelerated his social media agency, the benefits of letting go of your fears, and why you have to let go of your ego to reach the next level.

3 Golden Nuggets

1. Letting go of your fear. When Duncan made the decision to focus his agency on social media, he started rejecting other types of work. It was a scary moment, but he had a “burn the boat” mentality. They would succeed in this new space or they would go down trying. In the end, they committed to following their own compass. Shortly after, they started winning awards by having a clear point of view and claiming their spot in the industry.
2. The phases of running an agency. If you look at running an agency in stages, the first stage will be building. After that’s done, the next phase is all about direction, in terms of the values that you will set up for your business and will guide you in the decisions you make in the future. Once you established your direction, you will need to put some systems in place. Many people like to skip this part, and they will regret it. The combination of the direction and the systems is what will help you scale and get to the next phase of delegating.
3. Get past your ego. A lot of agency owners want to be needed, and that can be a problem. Remember that your clients go to you to solve a problem. They are not necessarily reaching out to you because they like you or feel you’re the only one that could solve that problem. Learn to delegate. A sustainable business has to be able to run without you. Even Apple was able to continue its mission and vision without Steve Jobs.

Sponsors and Resources

Agency Dad: Today’s episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit/ to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency’s financial needs and how he can help you.

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Getting Past Your Ego and Put Clients in the Middle

Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, what’s up everybody? Jason Swenk here, and I am excited to bring to you an amazing agency owner who’s going to talk about how he accelerated his social media marketing agency. He’s in the mastermind. He’s always a bundle of joy and always makes me laugh when I chat with him. So welcome, Duncan. So, for the people that have not experienced the Duncan effect, tell us a little bit about who you are and what do you do.

Duncan: [00:00:28] I am Duncan. Much like Prince or Madonna or, you know, with this Duncan nothing else is needed. I’m the founder of Firebelly, and, um, we were a social media marketing agency. I’m also a dad and a husband/partner and a son. And yeah, I have a lot of joy in my life, so I try to bring it to everyone else around me.

Jason: [00:00:51] Awesome. And so talk about how did you get started with your, uh, social media agency?

Duncan: [00:00:57] So we started doing social media marketing in the late 2000s, really like 2007, because we were a branding agency and there wasn’t any real differentiation. And I already had noticed at that point that SEO was moving very quickly. You know, websites were becoming more and more technical and I really wanted Firebelly to own a space.

And so we decided, hey, this social media thing is new, let’s, let’s jump into it. So that’s how we got into it initially and then over the years, you know, my business has, has really gone from being a lifestyle with some employees to being a real business in the last really two to three years has been, you know, with profit incentives and a social impact and thinking about ourselves seriously as a business, as opposed to, hey, get some people in here to do some work.

Jason: [00:01:50] So let’s kind of dive into that a little bit. So what were you going through at the time when you said, hey, I want to make a switch? And then what did you do?

Duncan: [00:01:59] At the time, the company was sort of an extension of myself. You know, I had been like a lot of people a solo player with a bunch of freelancers and contractors. And what I was really good at at the time was actually doing the work.

And so I did some exceptional work for brands. You know, whether it was tactics or strategy, well, probably mostly tactics, but you know, if someone wanted PR done for a launch or a trade show, or they needed a video made or email marketing campaign or a website like I was the guy I brought the right people to the table.

But what I realized is, with all of that there’s a reliability issue when you’re working with freelancers and contractors. I mean, I don’t care who they are. They’re not your employees. So I was looking at employees mainly because I also wanted to start sleeping. Cause I was working with the development team in India and I didn’t know how to say no.

And so there were no boundaries and really, like, getting started in social media was sort of like saying, okay, we just kind of picked something, actually. It was in the MySpace days and we did a launch for a restaurant and I did the PR launch with the local media. And my colleague who we’ve been working together for 14 years, Chad, said let’s use My Space and we’ll geotarget the people that are within a 10-mile radius. So those people, you know, 10 miles is not far to drive to a pub for a good shepherd’s pie and some, and some Guinness and the PR got on all the TV stations, but the social media created, and I’m not kidding a line of 300 people when they opened.

And so we thought, hmm, I remember sitting in our tiny conference room and I, and I said to Chad, I said, we should just do this all the time. He looked at me like I was nuts. Like, he looks at me like that a lot. And that was it. That’s the story. We… at the time there was no category, right. Nobody was really doing social.

So we couldn’t get anybody to talk to us. So the first few years, you know, if we wanted work, we bought the work. I mean, meaning, like we said, we’ll do it. You know, cover some expenses and we’ll just do it. Cause we were trying to build case studies and build, I guess, experience and expertise in the space.

And so we did that and, uh, we were humble about it. You know, we, we acted like we knew what we were doing, but that we were figuring a lot of things out, which was kind of the situation in social at the time.

Jason: [00:04:24] That’s how we all are in everything.

Duncan: [00:04:28] And then, uh, you know, then we found that, I mean, that we got a, you know it was a slow news day in Indianapolis and I got on the cover of the business section and Tony Dungy, who was the coach of the Colts at the time, had a photo on there that was one fifth, the size of mine. And it talked about, you know, us doing social and a couple of alums from my college called me and one thing led to another. We were doing crazy good work for a little restaurant chain and they hired us to do work for Qdoba.

And next thing you know, we went from one brand to another and we were working for the blue chip nonprofits. And I think at the end of the day, those days of social media have come and gone. There was a lot more hype in those days and we probably got caught up with some of the hype as well, but these days it’s, you know, it’s definitely very different.

It’s all moving the needle, you know, and actually creating some outcomes. But there were years where we had, you know, what a lot of agencies do that say they’re social media marketing agencies. They can’t really make a goal for that social media marketing, because either they don’t have the focus or the expertise or they, they can’t make the commitment, right?

And so they fund all that work with some behind-the-scenes email, or they’re doing websites or they’re doing other stuff, but they’re hanging their hat on social. We decided it was probably like five or six years, six years ago, like, you know, screw it. We don’t care if we go broke, which we nearly did go broke. We’re only going to do social. We’re going to turn any other work away.

That was a major, a major transformation. So that was like, what eight years in? And we decided, you know, we basically, I should have put a referral agency in place or talk to Chris Dryer about an incubator agency or something like that, and, you know, send all. We just gave up most of the work and, uh, we started off and, um, I think the experience and the expertise was definitely tested because now you got to do it all the time. And that’s all we did. We focused in and we started doing ads and extended into influencers.

We were ahead with a lot of that stuff. Actually, we were doing influencer work in 2012, and we’ve done it the hard way. You know, we’ve built frameworks and we build winning relationships for brands and their audiences and the influencer. And so I think that that kind of like commitment and focus isn’t easy, but that’s what it takes to win.

Jason: [00:06:51] Yeah. What are some things that you attribute to the growth? That looking back you’re like, that was a pivotal point for really kind of catapulting us to where we are now and where we’re going.

Duncan: [00:07:05] That’s a great question, Jason and I, and I think that there are a few things that come to mind. I think the pivotal moment, if there, if there was a pivotal moment was losing the fear and saying, okay, we’re… I think there’s a quote about burn the boat, so you can’t leave. It’s like basically, we said, okay, we’re either going to succeed or we’re going to go down trying.

And so I think losing the fear in terms of doing other work and also losing the fear of taking all business. You know, understanding that all businesses not good business, those things were critical. And I also think like we switched from doing, we’ve never, I’ve never been good… our company has never been good at following, you know, blind best practices.

So we’ve always just followed our own compass and like saying we’re not going to be afraid of doing what we want to do, and we’re going to follow our compass on what we think the right way to do it has been. And it’s a learning experience. The learning has not stopped.

Even today we’re constantly learning new things, but I think that embracing fear… as we’re going to be afraid but we’re not going to be afraid to do it.

Jason: [00:08:15] I love it. There’s so many agencies that they’re so crippled by what they don’t know that they can’t push through and make that next step that’s so needed.

And I love that quote, I think that was from Tony Robbins about, you know, if you want to take the island then burn the boats, because then there’s only one path forward. Because if you have a backup plan, well, you’re not going to go at a hundred percent and then you’re actually going at it as kind of half ass of going well, I succeed, I succeed if I don’t that’s okay. Like it’s like, no, you live or die by succeeding.

Duncan: [00:08:49] And I think part of it has been, at least we have a small team. Even now with massive growth we still have a small team. And I think part of that has been to lead from the front and not only lead from the front, but you know, this is where our stories start converging.

Where when I first met you, you know, we read you a playbook, we read your book and we thought core values? Hmm. You know, we have a vision to be very good at what we do, and what are our core values? And so having core values really changed the way we saw the world and the way the world saw us. Suddenly, like. we had a framework for employees, well for colleagues, for partners, you know, for clients.

And I’ve been several occasions where we have said no to clients based on our values. So… I lost the original question, so you’ll have to remind me.

Jason: [00:09:40] Oh, I lost it too. I love hearing your answers. No, we were, we were talking about what was the thing that really kind of catapulted you to the next, the next level.

Duncan: [00:09:51] So I think that looking at the values and looking at where we wanted to be was really great. I think also like finding a community of agency owners has changed the game for me. So, you know, I wasn’t going to the best HR person. I was going to the best HR person for agencies, I was going to the best finance person for agencies.

I was talking to agencies that had gone from 300,000 to 600,000, you know, or from 600,000 to a million. And I was surrounded by people that had walked my path before. And, you know, I think that community of, from a leadership standpoint, for me, that was a huge change.

I think for the company seeing me confident about the future and seeing me say that there is no question about whether we’re going to succeed. We’re going to succeed or we’re going to go down trying. I think that made a big difference.

But then I think also a place where people started to find out about our successes. I think we won an award. In late 2018, uh, we won Sprout, which is sort of the defacto social media management system, in my opinion. And, uh, we want to Sprout award and suddenly like people were looking at us differently and we were applying for awards and winning them, and we won so many awards and then getting ranked by so many different organizations as being a serious contender.

I think those were all moments when suddenly we went from toiling and basically in an invisible place to being very visible and, and, you know, that has given us a voice. And I think using the voice has been really important, like, you know, to help other agencies to help people that are looking I’m very active in Sprout channels and I think, you know, teaming up with other agencies, talking to them about the role of social and helping them and them helping us.

Those are the things. So I think maybe it’s like claiming knowing our point of view, knowing where we want to be and where we are then claiming our space in the world have been sort of like, I think critical components of like all of that, but I think the key piece was saying, okay, I don’t care what we’re doing. I can’t give people as a leader. I can’t give people a dependable, safe place to work if I don’t operate from a value standpoint and protect them and enable them to do a great job with definition and clarity, but also running a profitable enterprise.

Because at the end of the day, and maybe crass to say that, but we have to balance people’s lives and people giving people the environment they need to succeed with making money.

Jason: [00:12:29] Yeah. I mean, I love that you said that when you had more confidence your team, and especially, I noticed that over the years of building the first agency is whenever I would come in negative or whenever I would come in worried that would portray through the whole company.

But when I would come in excited, vibrant, like this is what we’re going to do, like just, you know, anxious, it would inspire everybody and then it would take the emotions or add the right emotions to the company. And when I look at running an agency or building an agency, I look at it in kind of four phases.

I look at it as the first phase is really kind of building. So let’s say we’re building a race team, right? We got to build the car, but the only way to build that car and get to being able to drive it is you have to know what kind of car do I want? I have to have that direction. And you talked about that a little bit of like once I had that direction and like the direction of these are the values that I want to surround people with, this is what I actually want.

Then you started catapulting you to the next level, which is kind of driving the car. And then I look at kind of driving the car is the only way to get to the next level is through systems. And putting the right systems in place for your team. So now you can take that car and go to the racetrack.

A lot of people try to skip levels and I’ve raced against them and they wound up very on fire or hurt. And they’ve just tried to jump to the racing level too quick and they don’t have the right systems in place or they don’t have the right crew members in place. Then, the only way to get to the next one is through delegation.

And over the past couple of years I’ve seen how you’ve progressed through the levels of building, setting that direction, setting up those systems, learning how to delegate. That’s hard for a lot of agency owners or any, any entrepreneur, honestly, to delegate something that you’re like, ah, let me just do it. And then once you have all that, you have alignment, your team’s winning races and you’re onto the next level.

Duncan: [00:14:38] I subscribe to that thinking. Or did you call them phases?

Jason: [00:14:41] Phases.

Duncan: [00:14:42] Yeah, I mean, I think that how I interpret that for our world is you live dominantly in one phase, but it’s very good for you to be in all the other three phases at the same time. So, you know, in our case where I’m looking for new service areas. And in that situation, you know, going back to one, and then when you have a new service area going into two, and then the agency as a whole, you know, we’re going through a ton of systems work and I’m beginning the delegation work, you know?

So there’s lots of things I don’t know, which is a win. And for example, like going from 12 one-on-one meetings to three one-on-one meetings, you know, things like that. And also, like, I think people want to be challenged. They want clarity and metrics, but they also want a challenge and say, hey, can you do this? I, I believe you can, but can you?

And I think that that has been, you know, I mean, it’s interesting. I know it’s a tough economy and you know, everyone’s getting a lot of applications, but we’ve had jobs that are requiring five and six and eight years of work experience and literally, we’re getting 500 applicants and just going through the freaking applicants, is heavy lift.

But I candidly like losing a lot of the rules, like, oh, you know, we have to have an office. Well, do we? We have to have employees in one place. No, with the pandemic we just threw that rule book out that playbook out. And now we have employees in Miami and Tampa and New York and Michigan and LA, you know, with more to come.

And I think that people see that and they see like, hey, I can be a part of this. Not that people are everything, but they are a major component. Right? I mean, people need processes and protocols, and infrastructure. So, but I think that that’s what has attracted people.

And going back to the phases, I definitely think we’re in phase three. I hope we’re going to get through phase three soon.

Jason: [00:16:46] As an agency owner, it’s hard to know when you have to make those big decisions. I remember needing advice for thinking like hiring or firing or reinvesting. And when can I take distributions without hurting the agency? You know, we’re excellent marketers, but when it comes to agency finances like bookkeeping, forecasting, or really organizing our financial data, most of us are really kind of a little lost.

And that’s why my friend Nate created Agency Dad, specifically to solve these exact problems. You know, at Agency Dad, they help agency owners handle the financial part of their agency so they can focus on what they’re really good at. Nate has spent years learning the ins and outs of agency business. He understands everything from how to structure your books, to improving the billing process and really managing your financial efficiencies.

Agency Dad will show you how to use your financial data to make the key decisions from making your agency more successful and most importantly, more profitable. If you want to know how your agency finances stack up to the rest of the industry, Agency Dad can tell you how to do that. A lot of my listeners have already gotten their free audit from Agency Dad.

And if you haven’t yet, go to agencydad.money/freeaudit before August 30th and get your free financial metrics audit. Also just for smart agency listeners, find out how to get your first month of bookkeeping or dashboarding and consulting for free. It’s time to clean up your agency finances and listen to dad. Go to agencydad.money/freeaudit.

Jason: [00:18:31] Oh yeah, you definitely will. And then the only thing that I feel that keeps the successful companies and the winning stage is alignment. Everything has to be aligned. But like you were saying, you’re constantly, always resetting on different things. Like I tried it this weekend. So, this weekend I played a game, one of the strategy games, Clash of Clans or whatever, some strategy game.

And I was telling my son that I used to play this game, Age of Empires. Clash of Clans it’s just too many damn options. Like I was like, I can’t, I’m frustrated. I’m not playing anymore. Let’s go play football or basketball, but they did empires. It was pretty basic. And it was just like, get more wood gold and food.

And as you get more, you progress from the Stone Age to the next stage, the next phase, the next phase, right? I was like, that’s just simple. And that’s kind of how I look at as you progress up. That’s why I always tell everybody, look, when you get the agency playbook, you gotta keep going through it every year, because you’re going to have to, self-assess where you’re at.

And there’s going to be different areas that you might be like, oh, I’m good there now. But next year you have to kind of go back and go pull that lever in order to really kind of scale.

Duncan: [00:19:43] Agreed. Agreed. I mean, it’s interesting. I’m about to start reading it again and I’m looking forward to that. Um, it’s also interesting to see one of the things that I think a lot of people think is that bullshit get rich quick gospel that’s out there.

You can read that gospel and it will take you wherever you are qualified to go. It is not a silver bullet. It is not any system that those get rich quick people. You know, those epistles are not sincere and authentic. And I think that there’s a lot of people that think, yeah, you know, anybody can start a social media agency. Sure, anybody can do anything.

I mean, I think, I mean, we live in America and it’s the land of second opportunities and you can have a second opportunity for the 60th time and you can post a picture with your beachfront property with a boat, and then you can like ask everyone in the community for help and you can’t spell words properly, and you’re basically, you have no model.

And so I think that that thinking is out there. But I think that the thinking that wins is when you have a community around you, of people that are going to tell you when you’re wrong and tell you when you’re right. And you know, you need to have processes and protocols and alignment and mean you need to have a plan, you know?

So I think that, starting a social media agency. Anybody can start a social media agency, but I think being a player in any space comes with time and experience and expertise. And in fact, even we are now saying, even if someone’s a great lead for us, you know, I got a meeting set up with the defense contractor and that’s not good business for us.

You know, we are now wanting to work with food and beverage brands and beauty brands. Do we have a drawer of miscellaneous clients we’re passionate about? Certainly. But for the most part… so that’s another step forward, you know, which, you know, part of my journey.

That’s a very difficult step to make, you know, saying, okay, I’m only going to do this, but it also comes with. No, it does liberate you because suddenly you’re on a, I’m on a call. You know, I still handle all the business development and I’ll be on a call and I’m like… learning the space is going to be so challenging. We’re not going to make any money for one year. You know, whereas if we work with the CPG food brand or a wine brand, it’s like, we’re going to kill it in month two.

And so that I think is another piece about like accelerating your agency. It’s like our common friend, Jonathan Jacobs. He is the undisputed king of thoughtful social for authors and for books, you know, and for kind of like literary things. That’s a very specific niche. And he does some other things, but that’s what he’s known for.

So I think that that is almost like the next step, right? It’s you can’t dominate unless you know what it is you’re going to dominate on.

Jason: [00:22:39] Yeah, I must, I must break it up into kind of three things or actually three major things. And then each major thing has three things.

So if you want to get to a point where you can exit the business from the day-to-day operations or exit from selling it, right? That’s usually what I see a lot of agencies that they chat with me about, or they joined the mastermind for. And if you look at it as kind of three things, how am I attracting people to my agency? And then out of those three things, it’s kind of like, do we have a specialization?

Are we building authority? And do we have a lead generation system coming to us from outside of, you know, word of mouth? And then I look at, you know, on the other side, you have to have kind of convert. Do you have a sales team? That’s the next thing we’re going to work for you, Duncan, right? So you’re not doing all the sales.

Are we having a high converting quick offer, right? That we talk about with the foot in the door and then are we selling on value? Right? Like you do an amazing job at selling on value. That’s why you’re so profitable. And then on the other side, the scale part. Because there’s so many agencies that can actually attract, like, do amazing job at marketing and sell, but then they really drop the ball at the delivery one.

Like, can they set up, you know, is the agency running without them? You know, are they profitable? Are they growing accounts? And so when you get those nine things all working together, that’s really where you get to the point where you have that freedom, that predictability you’re making the money that you actually want.

And a lot of times people just have to do a self-assessment and go, okay, well, let’s just work on this one part. Then it kind of stems to the next part, the next part. And then you just move up stages.

Duncan: [00:24:29] I really do think, I mean, I think you can live in different parts, but if you’re trying to get to a place where you have, I was having this conversation with someone a couple of days ago and they were talking about that business and I said, hey, isn’t it just, you?

And she said, yeah, I said, I didn’t say this to her, but I talked to myself, well, it’s not really a business. It’s like a job you do at home, right? And so if you want to get to a place where you grow your business and your vision is basically capable of working without you, I think that’s, that’s one of the first signs that you really got something that works.

You know, whether it’s you leave for two weeks and no one needs you or whether it runs all year without you with limited input. I think that that is a difficult place to get to, and it is really, you have to get past your ego. And a lot of us agency owners have an ego where we want to be needed. You know, we want to think that we’re the only one that can solve this problem.

Well, they’re not going to talk to you, they want me. And it’s like, it’s not true. They just want the problem solved and they want the outcomes. And at the end of the day, they may like you, but if they don’t like you they’re going to work with someone else anyway. So I think so I think there is letting go and, and saying like, what is, and it doesn’t matter if you’re at the agency world or any world, right.

It’s like a sustainable business has to be able to run without you. Like, look at Apple. So many people thought, even with Apple’s scale, that Apple could never continue without Steve jobs. Tim cook didn’t have the vision. Tim cook didn’t have the operations handle. And obviously, that’s not true. Again, how, it’s been almost 10 years since Steve jobs died a little bit less, I guess.

But I think that that’s the piece that you advise people really well on. And that’s what people need to do to accelerate is you have to actually decelerate as an agency owner for the agency to accelerate.

Jason: [00:26:30] Yeah, you have to decentralize like you cannot be this, you’re not the center of everybody’s universe.

You kind of have to kind of step outside and put your clients in the middle. And if you could put your clients in the middle and then build everything around them that’s when you can truly create something amazing. And even if you’re listening and you’re a one-man person, and that’s what you want and you’re happy with it. Perfect.

Don’t let us lead you down a path of hiring a team and all that kind of stuff. But, but if you’re at a place where you have team members and you feel like you’re at a place where you’re kind of just stuck and you’re like, oh, I can never add double the employees because there’d be double the headaches.

That’s the incorrect interpretation of what’s going to go. Because if you hire the right people, it can actually give you that freedom that you’ve always wanted. And I love what you pointed out, Duncan, about the ego, right? Like I’m actually going through this right now. I’m about to hire a salesperson and a lot of times when I get on a call, people are kind of sometimes surprised that I’m on the call and they’re like, well, I don’t want to be like those other people, but like, you just literally made me think going, man, I got a big ego.

Literally, it’s like, no, like you said it, they want their problem solved. They want to be able to scale their agency faster, regardless if I’m on the call or not. And I think if that resonates with everybody, like, that’s a huge takeaway. If you guys are listening.

Duncan: [00:28:00] I mean, and I, and I think it’s fine for the ones that don’t want to do that.

They either don’t have the vision to see the path ahead of them, or they don’t want to be on that path. And I think that’s fine. I think that you have to be realistic about where you are and whether or not that’s what you want to be or not. And so if you want to be the practitioner that works on it every day, and you know, you’re the copywriter who runs the business and it’s like you’re also the main copywriter, that’s totally fine.

But I think it’s also a risky place to be, because if something happened to you, you know, what happens to all your employees? What happens to those people? Those are all lives that are reliant on you as a leader, and also what happens to your clients? And I don’t want to seem like old thinking, but I mean, it’s like you have like a responsibility and you have a, like a responsibility to those people and those groups, and also to your own legacy, like, you don’t want to leave people in the lurch.

So those are not easy things to think about. Just like writing a will isn’t an easy thing to do, but it’s like, almost like you have to say, what’s my obituary for myself going to be? And what’s my obituary for my business going to be? Like, if Firebelly died today, what will people write about?

Thinking about that though, I will say, does raise some uncomfortable questions. It’s like what you set out to do? And if not, what are you going to do about it? Right?

Jason: [00:29:19] I mean, it goes back to like what, also too, what regrets would you have for not taking action quick enough? Well, great insight, man. Duncan, is there anything I didn’t ask you that you think would benefit the audience listening in to really help them scale faster?

Duncan: [00:29:35] You know, I recently launched my Firebelly podcast.

Jason: [00:29:43] Yes, finally! I should find the applause button on this software.

Duncan: [00:29:47] Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because, you know, we had what I thought was a very clever name and I told you the name and you said to me, I don’t know what that means. It was so nice and I was like, what do you mean?

He goes, you said, I think it’s a shit name. You know, you need to communicate who you are. And so we said, well, we are Firebelly and we’re social media. So maybe we’ll just call it the Firebelly Social Show. And it’s focused on mission-driven brands in the food and beverage space. But I think that if anyone has an idea on a great… my son is here to say hello.

Jason: [00:30:24] I know, hello! I saw him peeking in.

Duncan: [00:30:29] That’s the famous Jason Swenk that I always talk about. If I say Jason, he’ll actually say Jason Swenk? So, who are you?

I think that, you know, as we’re trying to make our way in this world of like being a leader, one thing that you have to do as a leader, whether you’re a, uh, one-person show or whether you’re an 80-person show. I think that people want to hear from you when it comes to stories. You know, the leader. Um, honey, it’s a podcast.

Jason: [00:30:58] Gotta love the pandemic.

Duncan: [00:31:05] On stories, and I think the reason you got to keep going on the stories is when you stop telling the stories, it’s like, you don’t exist anymore. And so regardless of your scale, you know, you gotta be somewhere present in those stories. So I think that’s, that’s a piece that I’ve been talking about a lot. Where do we stand?

Whether you’re Francisco Serrano running a nine-figure agency or you’re someone else running, you know, a six-figure agency. It doesn’t matter. It’s like as a leader, you have to really tell the stories.

Jason: [00:31:37] Yeah. I love it. Well, what’s the website people can go and check that agency out? And then also tell us where we can check out the podcast as well.

Duncan: [00:31:44] So the Firebelly Social Show is everywhere. It’s on YouTube, it’s on Spotify and Stickler and Google Play and everything like the Apple music. So the Firebelly Social Show, if you have some ideas of who should be on the show, I’d love to hear them. And then we are firebellymarketing.com and DuncanAlney.com is soon to be launched.

Jason: [00:32:06] Awesome. Well, so exciting for you on that, and thanks so much for coming on. And if you guys enjoyed this episode, which I know I did, and you want to be surrounded by other amazing people like Duncan. And Duncan is always usually the first one to greet every mastermind member that comes in. So I appreciate you so much for doing that.

And you want to be in a mastermind where people really have a lot of fun. They care about your success. They want to share the wins, you know, share the lessons that we have because it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. We’d love to have you fill out an application because we want to make sure it’s right for you and you’re right for the group.

So go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.

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