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- [Brent] Hello and welcome.
My name is Brent Weaver and this is the Digital Agency Show.
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Alright, let's introduce today's guest.
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Hey what's up podcast listeners, Digital Agency owners.
I'm your host, Brent Weaver
and we are here for another great episode
of the Digital Agency Show.
Today, we have one of my good friends and a bootcamp mentor,
Marama Carmichael of eSense Web design
who is based in Australia and she runs a virtual agency
that works with several different industries.
She's got over 20 years experience as a mentor
as an entrepreneur and she's been mentoring women
in the business accelerator group in Australia,
as well as she's taken over 100 people
through our UGURUS bootcamp.
Which obviously, we think is really awesome.
And she's sold millions of dollars of web projects.
Has hundreds of clients and manages to do all of this
while spending a good chunk of her time traveling
to the other side of the planet for a couple months a year.
So if you guys are thinking about how to run a virtual
agency, how to travel a lot and still have
your business run without you being present,
or even checked in, then this is
definitely an episode for you.
Welcome to the program Marama.
- [Marama] Thanks friend, thank you for having me.
Always a pleasure.
- [Brent] So, what was the defining moment where you decided
that creating a web agency was the right
move for you as an entrepreneur.
- [Marama] So for me, there was really dramatic moment
that was one of those pivotal catalyst points of your time.
So it was back in 2009, middle of winter.
I'm gonna set the scene for you.
I, at that point in time had been running
a natural therapy center for a good 10 years.
And my son was nine or 10
and I was on my way home from work
to pick him up from taekwondo practice.
It was cold, it was raining, it was dark, it was winter.
And I get a call on my mobile from the fire department,
asking me if anyone was in the house,
because my house was on fire.
So that was kind of dramatic.
To be honest, didn't believe them at first.
Because they had asked me if anyone was home
and I was like, who are you asking me if someone's at home?
So actually called the emergency line
to make sure it was actually a real person,
that it was actually the fire department, and it was.
And so, I remember getting to my place
and obviously I called my husband, picked my son up
and I remember standing outside our house
watching everything that we owned literally go up in smoke.
Uan, my son was in his taekwondo uniform,
he was shivering with cold,
so my husband had this like big coat from
an old World War II jacket so we were all three of us
huddled up under my husband's coat in the rain
with my dog on the fireman's leash, just like watching
the rain and the fire hoses and the house in flames.
It was insane and I remember thinking
at that point in time that, what am I doing?
Literally, what am I doing with my life?
Why am I picking my son up in the dark
in the cold every single night?
Why have I,
made myself this job for a really
horrible boss that makes me work long hours
and pick my son up in the dark, in the cold at night?
And so, that was the catalyst for me
changing everything.
So, I closed down the practice and I basically
a couple months later started the web agency.
And haven't looked back and I was very deliberate
at that point in time that I wouldn't have
a premises, I wouldn't have an office.
That i was basically making myself be
a nine to five or nine to six employee again.
I wanted that freedom, I wanted to be home for my son
when he came from school, I wanted to be able to travel
and live my life and have my business support my life
instead of my life support my business.
So yeah, it was a real, it was a challenging time
and a really dramatic experience
but to be honest, it was probably
the best thing that ever happened to me.
It really changed everything.
So looking back where we were then and where I am now.
Wow, totally different places.
- [Brent] I can tell, you have a slight optimistic
bent to your mindset that your house burning down
was the best thing that ever happened to you.
(laughter)
It's so crazy how
it takes something
that massive sometimes
for people to wake up or to shift.
And for you to go through something so traumatic
to realize that something that you were doing
you didn't probably even realize you were doing,
but you were unhappy with something in your life
and this thing happens and forces you
to think about life in a very deep way.
And you kind of reprioritized
and said, okay well this is what's important to me,
my family's important to me.
I'm gonna reset this and how will I make that more.
Be present or not be picking up your kiddo in the rain.
That's an incredible story Marama.
- [Marama] Well, it's one of those things, it changed
it really, when you're watching all your stuff
go up in smoke and you're taking stock of what you have.
And you realize you've got the two people that you love
most on the planet and your beloved dog
on a fireman's belt and the rabbit was okay
and it's like okay, all the living things are okay.
Everything else is just stuff.
And, stuff is easy
to get back,
really.
It's not easy but all the important stuff
isn't that (mumbles) stuff.
You can't get your time back.
You can't get those hours back.
And I do have a belief system and a mindset
that everything happens for a reason
and thoughts become things and you can always,
you put your own interpretation
on any action that comes to you.
Anything that happens to you,
it's your choice how you react to that.
We were in shock, it's like we said,
yay, your house has burnt down.
(laughter)
- [Brent] Now we can laugh about this a little bit now,
cause it seems like no one was hurt.
- [Marama] Yeah, it was a long time ago.
No one was hurt.
Yeah, but it makes you count your blessings.
And we were officially homeless for three days,
but we had, looking back on it
and I think possibly being in shock,
I was kind of having an out of body experience.
Like I swear, I could see the three of us
and it was like a scene from a movie.
I could see us all huddled up under Nick's jacket
dripping wet and freezing cold and shivering.
And I could almost see it from an aerial view,
long shot, panned out, pivotal scene in a movie.
And in shock you just deal with what's in front of you.
And it's like okay, everybody's here.
Everybody's fine, what's next?
Next thing we need to do is find
somewhere to sleep, then et cetera.
So, I think I was in shock for a little while.
And possibly made some snap decisions while I was in shock.
But the decisions I made at that point in time were alright.
They, I trusted my gut, which is something I'm very
into as well as I trust in your own
sort of innate wisdom and intuition.
And so, I took some fairly dramatic
action in a month or so afterwards.
And changed my life for the better.
Well it didn't happen all at once.
It happened sort of over a three month's period.
But within a month, I closed the center down
and I moved my private practice,
my natural's therapy practice home.
And then I realized that I was bored.
I'm a mentor by night, sure I think.
But one of the things I really
liked about the other business
I ran was actually helping practitioners grow
and develop their business when they came in.
And so I looked for something that would do that
and that's what really started the web agency.
- [Brent] My next question was gonna be
out of all the businesses in the universe,
you could have started, going from this
naturopathy business to web (laughter) design.
Oh yeah, that's logical, that makes sense.
I get that, I don't.
(laughter)
- [Marama] So I was the typical DIY web person
and DIY marketer person so when I had my agency
I made our own website for the agency
and I'm a natural mentor
and I have a background in business,
so before I started, I've been around for awhile.
Before I started the natural therapies practice,
I was a salesperson and was in corporate for a few years
so I have a background in business, not in web.
So I was looking for something I could do remotely.
Something that I didn't need to have an office for.
Something that would be flexible and I could travel
and I could be home for my kid when he came home from school
and all that kind of stuff.
So it started off just me helping the practitioners
who I made business homeless,
because I closed the center down with 30 days notice.
It's like, everybody you need to find a new place to work.
And so I was helping them with their online presence
and that's how it started.
So that was in 2009, and oh my God,
the sites I was making, embarrassing.
(laughter)
I was 500 on the website girl.
So, we've come a long, long way.
But yeah, it started from there and just slightly over time.
Over the I think probably about three years of getting
the basis together before I kind of really felt like
I started to know what I was talking about.
- [Brent] So let's fast forward to today.
What does eSense look like?
What is your setup?
Typical client, how many clients do you guys have?
And how many people on your team, that kind of thing?
- [Marama] So today we've got a team of
four full time equivalents
and varies outsourcers and freelancers
that we use as we need to.
We are all virtual by choice, as I said.
Because A, it keeps our heads down,
your margins are much higher if
you're not having to pay for office space.
And B, it gives me the flexibility to be able to travel
and have my home office and all that kind of stuff
so I can prioritize what I'm doing
and have more funds to do the things that I want to do.
We typically have got about six clients
on the go at any one point in time
as far as project work goes, like a big project.
And we've got about 100 clients
on various sorts of retainer things.
And yeah, that's kind of it.
We've got our teams all over the world.
We've got people in Europe, in India, in the Philippines.
Our core team, our client facing team are all local,
but even the local team are remote.
So, you know we do our leadership meetings via Zoom.
We have our, we utilize technology to have that
constant communication and stuff,
but even our project managers and client facing people
are all Australian people so they have the
local for us accent when they're talking to clients.
- [Brent] Doesn't sound like 'us' American,
John Wayne type folks.
(laughter)
- [Marama] No, no unfortunately.
I love the American accent.
But yeah, so we can just have that local.
We did try a project manager from off shore
and it didn't work for us, so we keep some of those local
and yeah it's great.
It gives me the lifestyle that I want.
From to go full circle, from losing everything
in the house that we were renting.
Now three or four years ago, we bought our own place
that the company, the bank decided
that we were good for money enough to buy
a house from the company's income.
So that was kind of cool.
That was a bit of a, what's the word I'm looking for?
A milestone.
- [Brent] Yeah, cause I know how that goes.
They kind of put you through this other process,
that employed people, which I guess there's
an assumption there that self-employed people
are riskier or something like that.
- [Marama] Uh huh, absolutely.
(laughter)
You don't know, you don't know so yeah.
We bought a house and we're renovating it at the moment.
And as you know, I travel quite a bit
and we're off to Japan in a couple of weeks
with the family for a couple weeks holiday.
So it's the main thing for me.
I've always regret, after we often have a gap here.
I don't know if you guys have gappies.
In between high school and going into further education.
- [Brent] Americans don't take
anytime off at all for anything.
- [Marama] In Australia, oftentimes people take a year off
and you go backpacking around Europe or something.
I never did that, and the first time
I traveled was actually three years ago.
It's the first time I've been overseas.
And you know how much I travel now.
I'm overseas like three...
Last year was like four overseas trips in a year.
And that's all because of the way I've set up the company.
Like strategically, very logically.
It's profitable, it's remote, it's virtual.
And that's so I can get around and travel like I want to.
- [Brent] I want to talk about checking out of the business
and traveling and all that kind of stuff in a second.
But let's just kind of, pop the hood on this
whole virtual agency set up that you have,
because I feel like there is,
it's pretty common for agencies to go this direction.
I've met with big and small that have gone this direction.
But I'm always interested in terms of
how you make your team culture work.
You mentioned Zoom earlier.
I think people always sacrifice a little bit,
or could sacrifice a little bit
of culture when they go remote.
How do you guys make that work?
It sounds like not only have you been remote,
but your intention is to stay remote
and to always be remote and virtual.
And so what are those things that you've kind
of learned over the years that have worked
for you to kind of bring that team together.
- [Marama] So, I think the biggest thing is
to actually just be aware and respectful
and understanding that there are differences.
There are cultural differences.
There are time zone differences.
If you've got anyone who speaks another language
it goes really, really long way to actually
pay attention to their holidays.
And wish them happy holiday in their own language,
even if every other time they're all speaking English.
I know that my main designer is in Romania
and their Easter falls at a different time.
And it's feliz something or another
and I literally Google it,
Happy Easter in Romanian and posting that greeting
in our instant messenger thing, made his year.
It doesn't take much to actually make people
feel welcomed and cared for.
So we have all of the similar things
that you'd have in an office.
I always just think about how can I make that virtual.
So we have daily standups,
but the way we do that is via we use Teamwork,
but it's very similar to Slack,
it's like an instant messaging thing.
So when you start work on your day,
you do the same kind of thing that
you would do in the daily huddle.
So we do a segue, this is best, personal best.
What you were here on today.
What you did yesterday and if you're stuck anywhere.
And that's when you start your day.
So everyone does it a different times of day.
Our design team and development
team pretty much work overnight for us.
So we make sure that the project managers
have gotten any information they might
need by close of business our time.
So designers can have it their time.
And we make sure that there's an overlap,
so our designer is a night owl, so he's usually
up between about nine and 11 am our time.
And so we'll be talking via Slack or Zoom, et cetera
or we'll get up early and we have face to face meetings
with them every week and all that kind of stuff.
And doing silly things like birthdays.
We make fun, stupid YouTube videos for everyone on their
birthday and put it in the general team chat thing.
About once a month, we call it drinks after work.
And again, it's during chat where everyone turns up
and we talk about, last time it was a little politics.
(laughter)
Interesting.
We just talk about everything,
like you would get drinks after work.
And that's kind of the intention is to if there's
a team building exercise that people do in person,
it's how can we do the next best thing in the remote way.
And I think that intention makes huge difference,
because it's appreciated.
I think a lot of businesses who are using an offshore team
I kind of think that they're robots
and our designer actually is gonna
say, that we laugh it in full
cause we're actually pushing him for deadlines.
He's come back as, I'm another robot.
But I think that sometimes you do kind
of expect offshore teams to not...
I've seen a lot of businesses not
treat them like they're people.
They're just a tool and I think they're just treating
people like people goes a long way for building culture.
- [Brent] Yeah, I think that's a common pitfall
to think that just because you're maybe interfacing
with somebody mostly through Slack
or that human connection does kind of deteriorate
or can deteriorate, if you're not conscious of it.
- [Marama] Yeah absolutely, so I remember when one of
our designers, once again one of the Romanian girls.
She was sent photos that had their Romanian National Day
and she sent these wonderful pictures on,
I'll call it Slack for the sake of it,
because that's what's well known by people.
But on the chat channel with her in national costume.
And national food and all that kind of stuff
and we just talked rubbish,
we just chit chatted about it for a bit.
I think sometimes too when you're working remote,
you feel like every interaction needs to be work related
and I think that's a pitfall too.
Because if you're in the office,
you do have those passing in the hall water cooler chats.
So actually allowing a virtual space to have that kind
of non-business related chit chat,
rather than, well you're on the clock you should be working.
Why aren't we talking about business?
Actually leads to a stronger culture.
So, our main graphic designer,
he's been with me since 2009.
So when I started off as nobody,
like with no business, it was just me,
kind of being a hack web developer,
I got him off Elance and asked him to make me
a simple web banner and he's been with me ever since.
So you can have really loyal teams
and really loyal culture if you find the right people.
It's like everything though, it's hit and miss.
I'm sure that hiring people locally,
they're not always a success.
The way we try to work virtually is to make it
as close to not virtual as possible.
- [Brent] That's a really good takeaway for people
that have virtual teams or I've even seen people
that have more brick and mortar places,
maybe they are starting to have,
maybe some contract help or some people that are
maybe working part time for them and maybe they're not used
to have like an in-person brick and mortar culture.
And it makes for people that are remote feels kind of
isolated and alone and not a part of that culture.
Which that probably doesn't take
very long to kind of break down.
And we've gone 100% remote this year
and we were pretty much 100% remote last year.
And now we have so we're trying to make,
you know bring some of these things
into the business or enhance them.
Do you guys ever meet in person?
Obviously, I heard Romania
or Philippines (mumbles) and stuff.
Are you ever even meeting in person
with your Aussie based team?
- [Marama] Yeah we met in person,
so it's weird like my Australian project manager.
She live 15 minutes away, but she's still remote.
We've met in person,
we've actually gone to client meetings together.
Her and I have gone to some strategy sessions
and stuff like that together which is
actually handy having it remote but close,
but the project manager before her was in Brisbane.
We're in New South Wales, so in a different state,
so didn't meet.
My husband is actually part of my team now.
So we meet, fairly often.
(laughter)
But yeah, I met all of the Australian team
and none of the other overseas team.
- [Brent] Let's talk about this travel topic,
'cause you brought this up
a couple of times that your business really allows
or affords you the lifestyle to travel a bit.
While I'd love to turn this into a travel podcast
and talk about all the amazing places you've visited
and the fun things you've done.
- [Marama] Denver, Denver, Denver.
(laughter)
- [Brent] You've been to Denver a few times,
yeah hanging out with UGURUS team and all that good stuff.
But what I'm actually more interested in
is kind of what you've done in your
business that's made that possible.
'Cause for some other people, maybe it's not travel.
Maybe it's
taking
extended staycations.
Or leave from business or maybe working on other businesses
or just doing something where.
Someone that's not running the day to day business, right?
So for you it's travel.
For other people, it could be other things.
So what types of things have you put in place
that have allowed you to check out of the business
not be so hands-on when you decide you want to go to Japan.
Or you want to go to, come back to Denver.
- [Marama] Basically, it's getting the right people
in the right seats and then getting out of their way.
And putting myself in a seat
I can schedule and take time off for.
So at the moment, I'm in obviously the leadership role
and I do the main strategy and discovery in sales.
But the nature of that is that I can kind of
batch things up and say, okay I'm off for two weeks
or I'm off for a month and we're working on a big client
at the moment and they signed on last week
and so we're kind of getting that initial onboarding
strategy stuff done before I go away.
And it's actually quite handy as having
an artificial deadline too for your clients,
because they know I'm going away.
So they know we need to get this done so then
I can hand it over to the production team
and I can put them in our
project manager's very capable hands
and have them deal with it while I'm gone.
So, I guess that's kind of it in a nutshell.
It's not being responsible for everything in the business.
Actually have other people who are doing...
I talk about brains-work and hands-work
and at the moment, I do the brains-work
and other people do all of the hands-work.
And there's a lot of hands-work in what we do,
so that means that a lot of the day to day running
isn't stuff that I need to be directly involved with.
- [Brent] So being, I heard one thing that you said,
which is essentially communicate this stuff with your
clients if you're gonna be taking time off.
Don't try to keep it a secret from them.
That you're still running your business,
but you're doing it from vacation
and then you're on your phone
or you're emailing all the time.
And I know I've done that, I've just haven't brought
it up to people then I've kind of felt like,
I don't want to tell them I'm on vacation, not working.
Then they're gonna think that I'm not working on
their project hard enough or something like that.
Which obviously, people take vacations, right?
So, setting those, communicating that with your clients
and then also setting that,
so setting that expectation with your team.
Setting that expectation with yourself
those milestones and things like that.
And also having other people in the business.
Did you hire other people?
My bucket for anybody else that's in your business?
Did you hire them when you first
kind of restarted this business?
Or was that something you eventually
learned how to do and
now do a lot of?
- [Marama] I hired Claude, my designer first at the business
because I can't use Photoshop.
I literally can not design anything.
So he was my very first hire as a freelancer.
And then I just hired bit by bit as it's needed.
Another thing about being virtual,
is it allows you more flexibility
about who you can hire, as well.
So a lot of our
people, to put them in a bucket aren't full time.
In fact, very few of them are.
Because they're not needed full time.
So, being remote does allow that flexibility
where you can get, for instance moms who's got small
kids who can't get a normal job in quotes.
Because they can't work full time.
They can't work nine to five.
Their kid might be sick, they might need to work from home
one day and they've been out of the workforce for five years
so they're kind of a bit unemployable
by the general standard of employment.
And so we being remote and being virtual,
we can have two or three people sitting in a full time role,
instead of do job share remotely
which gives us more flexibility
and more stability in that as well.
So I hire for seats as soon as a role becomes available
without it having to need to be a full time role.
And I think that's allowed for a lot of flexibility.
So our project manager for instance,
she works 10 hours a week.
That's all she needs to do.
'Cause how we set the systems up,
we've only got six projects going at any one point and time.
10 hours a week is all she needs
to do to keep everything running.
We're looking at hiring another one for sort
of the same amount in the next quarter.
That's just, that's all she needs to be.
We don't need a full time employee for that.
- [Brent] And I think that's huge as a takeaway
for people to think like your first hire
or maybe even your next hire doesn't
have to be a 40 hour a week,
W2, benefits type of person.
So you don't have that kind of demands yet.
You don't have to wait to start bringing in help.
You can find people that maybe are happy with part time.
Is there quote on quote full time,
they don't have any intent on working 40 hours a week.
They can come in, drop in on your project.
I know we've got a few different contractors in our business
that are working as little as five hours
or even three hours a week,
because that's the amount of time they have
right to be working within your business.
So I think that's a really cool takeaway.
- [Marama] Well it's the amount of time the role provides.
That the role requires as well.
And it's just, I think that flexibility
and transparency is really important.
So one thing you were talking about communicating
with your clients when you're traveling.
One of our core thing of ours is to be transparent.
We make no secret about the fact
that our designers are in Romania.
We in fact, have that as a selling point.
If we get, and again artificial deadlines almost.
If we get this by close of business today,
you might have something magical tomorrow,
because our designer's in another time zone.
And he works over our night, so we can wake up to his work.
Which actually can make things more efficient.
You're almost working on a 24 hour cycle without
anyone working outside of their normal business hours.
And so, to go back to the earlier point,
when I am traveling,
I'll let clients know that I'm traveling
because I'll be in a different time zone.
So that means that, we need to schedule.
If I am doing any work over which i do sometimes,
we just need to schedule meetings
that are in a relevant time zone.
They know I'm not as available
and I'm not gonna be as responsive as usual,
but they know that I've thought about it
and that the team can handle it.
And to direct all things through the appropriate channels.
And I think that's better than,
just hoping that they don't notice
and thinking that you're working
at two o'clock in the morning
because you're sending an email at that time of day.
(laughter)
- [Brent] I like to send my emails at 3am.
Right, that's a good time.
- [Marama] Yeah, that's pretty normal.
That's pretty standard.
- [Brent] I want to talk real quick,
'cause I think that this has been something that
with your bootcamp groups,
I've kind of hyped up about you a little bit.
Is that being able to travel.
Being able to run the virtual business
and I think you've helped a lot of people
in our program accomplish something very similar to that.
Where you've been able to kind
of bring that experience forward.
I mentioned this in your intro.
You've coached and led over 100 bootcamp
graduates through our program.
What do you think are some of those challenges
that you see in week one with people that have
maybe small or budding virtual agencies
where they were kind of you back when,
right after your house burned down.
Maybe you're not with the huge tragedy,
but what are some of those things that you are seeing
with people that want to build what you have,
but are just starting out.
What are those things?
- [Marama] I think oftentimes, its people get too
hung up upon what other people think.
And this was something that was a big issue for me.
That sort of this, there's still this kind of perception,
that unless you have an agency with a physical table
and basketball hoops and beer in the fridge,
that you're not a legit agency.
And I think there is a little bit
of that perception out there.
So I think for a lot of bootcampers,
they feel like they're just me.
It's just little old me,
how can I ever compete with those big agencies?
And for me, one of the joys of being an entrepreneur
and setting up your own company is
that you can set it up however you want to do.
Whatever works for you can work.
There is so many different business models out there.
And as long as you keep your eye on the basics,
as far as you keep your margins in control
and you make sure that your income
is more than your expenditure.
And you do sales and marketing
and fulfillment, like it really doesn't matter
how you choose to do that.
So oftentimes, people I think that have a mindset
that this is the way it's done.
This is the way it has to be.
If I'm going to hire someone,
they need to be full time.
I don't have any, I can't hire anyone yet,
because I don't have a full time role.
And then they end up creating themselves
at this tiny little bottleneck
where they are the barrier in their business.
Because that's what they're trying to do everything.
The other thing I think is, oftentimes entrepreneurs
are control freaks, to not put too fine a point on it.
So actually letting go of the control of the business
and actually trusting someone else to do something
in a way that may not be exactly the way you would do
something and arguably not as good as you would do it.
That I would say, that is absolutely arguably.
Like I said, I can't design to save my life
and I'm a hack as a developer, but I do know business.
And so being self aware of what you're actually good at
and focusing on those skills and building up.
Getting people who are better than you are
at the other things around you
and supporting you in whatever capacity that is.
I think it's the way
to develop
whatever kind of business or agency you want to develop.
- [Brent] And I think that's big, right?
I mean, putting the intention out there of saying,
here's the business that I want.
It's funny.
So we had Phil Lockwood on our episode
that just went live last week.
And it's funny, 'cause he had the brick and mortar agency.
That was 70 people.
Then he left that and basically went all virtual.
Went all in on that for several years
and kind of created this highly profitable,
much more lifestyle focused business
and then he got this ambitious bug and
he's now going after,
he said in the episode,
he signed an LOI for 7,200 square feet
and he wants to have a 100 million dollar
agency over the next five years.
And he's shifting back over into that.
And so I think it's been interesting
for me, I think in my experience,
we had a very brick and mortar agency
and now UGURUS is very much virtual
and I think a lot of it does depend on
what you want out of your business.
And the funny thing is when we started our agency,
we didn't actually ever sit down and have that conversation.
Which I think is really important,
because at the time, we were like
well, what are we supposed to do?
Well, we think that people aren't taking us seriously
because we're officing out of our house,
which wasn't true.
We had many five figure plus contracts.
Many people didn't care.
One guy did and they got stuck in my head for some reason
so I kind of just did what I thought you were supposed
to do which was go get cool office space downtown.
And that caused lot of
strife.
Because it's expensive and then people show up
and they're expensive.
They're all local, versus leveraging.
I think at the time, we were running virtual.
We had a couple guys in Poland
and the purchasing power and the yeah,
there were some issues with the communication
and sometimes I just go dark on us
and all that kind of stuff
but they were like literally a 10th of the cost
of U.S. based
people
but I think that was a key maybe
takeaway for everybody listening is to
spend some time, beginning of the year.
Good time as any is now.
But to really think about that.
Spend an hour with a blank sheet of paper
and say, like what do I want out of my business.
It's not what does my business look like,
what do I want out of it?
And then work backwards to okay
now what does my business need to
look like to get me these outcomes?
- [Marama] Exactly and I think like
I said at the start of the podcast.
It's a difference between having your business
support your life or your life support your business.
What life do you want?
What lifestyle do you want?
What do you want your business to look like?
And then how can you get from where you are to that?
And it's different for everyone.
And there's no right or wrong answer.
If you want to be a well paid self employed freelancer,
then yay, good for you like there's nothing wrong with that.
You can still utilize all the tools that you teach UGURUS
and get paid very, very handsomely as a solopreneur.
And stay that way, if that's what you want to be.
If you never want to handle team or anything
and that's how you want to be,
you can still do that.
Or you can do what I've done
or you can be a multi-gazillion dollar agency
with hundreds of staff and the big office.
None of those are wrong answers.
It all just depends on what you want to create
and how you want everything to look.
And I think as humans, we care too much
about what other people think, as a society.
And we don't spend as much time as we possibly should really
looking and contemplating for one for a better word,
what we actually want.
We just kind of go through the motions and end up somewhere.
That old saying, if you don't know where
you're going to go, you'll get there.
(laughter)
We're just kind of mosey along and say,
oh look, look what happened,
rather than being intentional about things.
And I'm a big one for being intentional.
Sitting in intention of whatever that's gonna be
and then making it happen.
- [Brent] That's awesome.
I love the topics that we discussed today.
The virtual team, how to run a good remote culture.
How to make travel work in your business.
Communicating this to your clients.
I think we've covered some important parts
of setting that intention for your business
and really thinking about that.
So, Marama thank you for that
and if you're ready, I've got some
lightening round questions for you.
- [Marama] Let's do it.
- [Brent] Alright.
What is the best advice you've ever received?
- [Marama] You can do anything you put your mind to.
- [Brent] That's nice and short and sweet.
- [Marama] That's it.
- [Brent] Which of your personal habits
has contributed most to your success?
- [Marama] I think, well it's kind of a jewel thing.
My tenacity which comes from,
you can do anything you put your mind to.
If I put my mind to something, it happens.
And then coupled with my,
it's hard to put into words,
but I guess my openness
to A, my own intuition
and B, to being told, like getting feedback.
I actually, if I'm doing something wrong
or if I'm speaking rubbish and people close to me say,
Marama, we're talking about that in (mumbles)
me calling him on his bullshit.
I'm open to people doing that to me.
If I'm telling myself stories that aren't true
and someone says, hey Marama, that's not true,
I'm very open to that and to adjusting accordingly.
If that makes sense.
- [Brent] I remember during summit,
I think you became, just from we had a couple of talks.
(laughter)
You became the official bs caller.
That was--
- [Marama] But that's so, it's so not what I do.
(laughter)
But when I do it I do it with so much love.
It made me feel, that call was being mean, which I wasn't.
But anyway, yes.
(laughter)
- [Brent] I think everybody took it the right way.
Right, but can you share an internet resource
or tool that is really important to your business
and personal success?
- [Marama] So I've got two.
None of them are particularly inspiring.
One of them is Teamwork, which is my project management
and my chat function and my support desk, it's fantastic
and the other is Google Apps.
So, I don't think any of them are shattering new, unknown.
But those are the two I couldn't run the business without.
- [Brent] It's good, I live by Google Apps.
I'm right there with you.
I think Phil last week said,
the book was his favorite tool.
So there are no rules with lightening round.
(laughter)
What book would you recommend and why?
- [Marama] So there's so many.
It read a lot.
I know a lot of the books that I've read,
I've already heard and I probably heard from you.
So I wouldn't tell you any of those,
but one that I just read over the
Christmas break was Drive by Daniel Pink.
Have you read that one?
- [Brent] I have not, I am a fan of Daniel Pink.
But I have not read his book Drive.
- [Marama] So it's all about motivation.
And it talks about the different stages of motivation,
so motivation 1.0 is food, clothing, shelter.
Do you have those things?
Motivation 2.0 is like sort of traditional corporate type
carrot and stick sort of stuff
and motivation 3.0 is what drive is about
which is about intrinsic motivation as opposed to extrinsic.
So motivation from within instead of without.
And so it talks about the core motivations that all
humans have which is the need for autonomy,
to have some kind of control over their life.
And the need to mastery to get better at things
and the need to have a purpose.
And it talks about how to integrate that into your company
to intrinsically motivate you and your staff
as opposed to having carrots and sticks and time tracking
and spying and all that kind of stuff.
So I found that really interesting.
It just kind of solidified a lot of stuff
that I've been doing naturally
and it was really cool to see someone write a book about it.
- [Brent] Awesome, we'll link to that in the show notes.
How can our audience find out more about you?
- [Marama] They can hit me up.
I have got a fairly unusual name,
so if you Google me, I will come up.
My website is eSense web design
and I also have a new site which is medihealthstrategies,
both .com or you can shoot me an
email at marama@eSensewebdesign.com
- [Brent] Awesome and if you guys
are driving, you're on the road,
go to our website ugurus.com.
Check out our podcast page, look for the show notes
and you'll find links to all those things.
The book recommendations as well as any tools
or topics that we mentioned during the program.
So make sure you guys check that out.
Marama, that you so much for stopping by the program today.
We really enjoyed this chat.
- [Marama] My pleasure, always a pleasure to chat.
- [Brent] Alright guys, that is your episode
of you Digital Agency Show this week.
Stay tuned for more great content
coming to you from ugurus.com.
Until then, I'm Brent Weaver.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Thanks again for tuning in to the Digital Agency Show.
Before we close out, I wanted to check in
on your answer to my question from
the beginning of the episode.
Are you stressed out?
Cash crunched?
Fed up with your business?
Now, if you feel this way,
you might think you have a lead generation problem.
Maybe that it's the area you live in
or this market has gotten too competitive.
Maybe you think that your business can't be turned around.
And I want you to think again.
In my many years of experience,
I can tell you now it's something much deeper
than you're likely not even aware of yet.
It's like a client who says they need a website,
Facebook ads or mobile app
when they don't even realize, it's a deeper challenge
that's blocking them from success.
Now, if you'd like to find out what your deeper challenge is
then I want to invite you to apply to a strategy call.
Where we're gonna dig into those
underlying issues in your business
and get you moving forward like never before.
The aha moments that you're gonna have
will shift the way you think forever
and you'll finally get the answers
as to why your business hasn't taken off.
The number one most important decision
to rapidly grow your business starts by booking
your UGURUS strategy call today.
Go to ugurus.com/apply to start
the application process for this free call.
Once again, go to ugurus.com/apply to get started.
Thanks again for tuning in.
Join us next week for another episode
of the Digital Agency Show.
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