AL EP 52 - Adam Elbendary - Hustle Culture Leads to a Shorter & Sadder Life

I , hey everybody .

This is Jesse de Gilmore agency , transformation coach and founder of Niche and Control , creator of Leverage for Growth .

And I'm Lucas James , founder of twi dot IO , which scaled from 0 to $200,000 a month with my own agency .

We are the hosts of Leverage for Growth podcast , agency leverage episodes .

We know that in order to scale your agency successfully , there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets , skill sets and leadership styles .

We are on a mission to interview marketing and pr agency owners on their journey to 67 and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time , energy and money in order for you to get your agency to the next level .

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You are now listening to Leverage for growth .

Hey , everybody .

This is Jessie P .

Gilmore , founder of Niche in control and creator of leverage for growth .

Welcome to the agency leverage edition today .

I am here with Adam Alban , founder of Clever at INC a tech intensive digital marketing agency focused on driving sales , qualified leads and appointments for service and SAS small to mid size businesses .

Thanks for coming to our show today .

Adam , thanks for having me .

Excellent .

Have you um uh Could you tell us a little bit about the history and the background of your agency ?

Yeah , for sure .

So I started my first agency with a business partner .

Uh As soon as I finished college in 2016 , like a lot of agencies , we were kind of figuring out our service offerings over the first few years .

And in finally gaining that clarity , my partner and I decided to split so he could focus on content marketing and I could focus on paid mediums of advertising .

So I started Clever Inc in July 2019 , brought over all of my contractors and clients and we spent a few more years really figuring out what we wanted to specialize in .

Uh We were doing influencer marketing , e-commerce advertising , lead generation , some larger wordpress builds to keep the lights on .

Uh until I decided to finally buckle down around 2 to 3 years ago and automate Clever Inc front to back to exclusively uh focus on lead generation for professional service and software businesses .

Um Awesome .

So , Adam , let me , let me ask you what led you towards becoming uh either an entrepreneur or an agency owner .

Um I always wanted to kind of march to the beat of my own drum doing something , sorry for the corny reference there .

But I actually started a marketing agency because I had been making uh hip hop and R and B music since I was 16 .

Uh I met with all these labels around 2014 while I was still in college and I quickly realized during these label meetings , that one , I didn't really trust their marketing .

Um and two , because I was a smaller artist who was still in school .

Uh I wouldn't be a priority to them .

So uh after the same experience , every time I decided to start marketing agency as soon as I graduated college , so I'd have the knowledge , the expertise , resources , the team and general wherewithal to not only ensure my music succeeded in the marketplace , but to start almost any business I wanted uh at any time , that's , that's the goal .

So that's , that's kind of the way it went .

Awesome .

Uh I love hearing the back story and um and there's always either like an aha moment or something that kind of just uh sets up uh everything for you to start it .

So that's awesome to hear his story .

You talked about uh having multiple agencies .

Can you talk a little bit about uh the previous agency work that led towards government ?

Uh Yeah , for sure .

Uh We , I think one of our first clients when uh I started the other agency that , that I was working at um was a lead generation client and I realized that we did it pretty well and I always had a knack for automation .

So um you kind of need automation when you're doing lead generation uh to take the burden of like automated S MS sequences and uh lead info being transferred to the client , CRM , et cetera , take all that manual labor off of the client .

Um And like I said , we were doing a ton of other stuff like influencer marketing , ecom , advertising , um web development .

But I found that we did lead generation .

We , we did everything very well , but I , I found that lead generation was something that we could do better than most agencies because of the knack for automation that I have not to take all the credit .

I have a , I have amazing people on my team .

But um yeah , that's , that's where I , I realized that um we could really shine for sure .

Mhm .

Absolutely .

And it's good that you found a niche both uh based around the type of person that you're working with and also kind of like that product market fit based around competence .

Haven't niched down as much as many agencies .

Uh Usually do if , if we did and we , we really want that , that quote unquote niche route that most agencies go down .

I would have said we only did lead generation for solar or we only did lead generation for dentists .

But um , yeah , no , I focused on automating the company front to back so that we had this framework that would work for all professional service and all uh software businesses .

Uh I guess you could say I'm , I'm uh I'm a little bit greedy in that sense .

Yeah , for sure .

Over the last uh 2.5 years or so , uh with this agency kind of narrowing the focus , uh what have you learned ?

That's kind of like that helped you along the journey that maybe you wish you would have known uh in the past uh two things I would say .

And they're , they're kind of cliche .

Well , the first one is a little cliche .

So one balance is really important , I think , to anyone listening , uh especially those who are on the younger side , they may think that abiding by American hustle culture or , or typical American hustle culture and that they could quote unquote sleep when they're dead , so to speak .

But it's not .

And if you go , go , go all the time , you'll just live a short or less mean .

And unfortunately , sadder life .

Uh that's just , that's just the reality of it .

And that's what I've learned .

Uh the second uh thing and it's a counter to that uh really find the balance and the imbalance there will be , these periods of time could be a month or a quarter or six months where you'll have to be working a good amount more and that's perfectly ok .

But make sure you're still eating well , sleeping 7 to 8 hours a night , touching grass and , and exercising for sure .

Mhm .

Everything kind of comes in different seasons .

Sometimes it's like big waves and then , uh , going back and forth , but making sure you're sustainable is kind of what you're saying for sure .

Like , like what Bruce Lee said , do you like water 100% ?

You fluid like water ?

Well , that , that's awesome , man .

Um So now you've given a lot of kind of like tidbits on uh different ways of either saving time , energy or money for agency owners .

Um What's kind of like something that you're working on right now ?

Like , what are you excited about ?

And maybe in the next 1 to 3 years or so .

Uh we're actively .

So I finally finished automating the business .

Uh September 2022 .

Uh We're scaling now , which is fun .

It comes with its challenges for sure .

Um So I would say that I'm , I'm in one of those seasons where activity is a little higher .

Uh And I would , it's almost like it's almost binary .

I don't know , it's , it's like uh grow and not grow like it's a very basic goal that I have , I guess for the next 1 to 3 years and it's just grow , grow the agency big time .

Mhm Awesome .

Very cool .

And uh do you have any offers for anybody that can take advantage of or uh what's the best way for people to get in touch with you ?

Yeah , for sure .

So anybody listening can go to Clever inc.com fill out our lead volume and RO I calculator and then book an intake call with us on the subsequent page after they get their result .

Uh We do things a little differently than most agencies .

We actually take prospects through an intake call , review and record their service or solution offerings , target audiences , ideal client profiles a few other things and then take 7 to 10 days to conduct some thorough keyword and competitive research and lead volume and profitability projections to ensure their potential campaigns with us are actually viable .

And if our findings point to a successful legion campaign or successful legion campaigns , then we produce a proposal including our findings .

If our research findings don't point to successful campaigns , then we only send our findings and explain why an investment into paid new generation would be unwise .

I love the transparency uh that you have with that and for anybody that's listening right now , uh you can get the the links in the show notes for Adam and cover .

And I just want to thank you very much for being on the show , Adam .

Thank you very much for having me , Justin .

I appreciate that agency owners if you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement , where you can stop working in the business .

And switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time , delegate effectively , get paid what you're worth and have your team run the day to day .

Go to niche incontrol.com/casestudy .

Now , to learn more about leverage for growth , you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems , understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year to live the life of entrepreneurship that you've always dreamed about .

Go to niche incontrol.com/casestudy that is niche incontrol.com/case study .

Now .