Three Toxic Things About Agency Life (And How To Avoid Them)

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with The Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

Alright, today we are getting personal and talking about some toxic elements that have pushed us out of agency life, and what employees and agency leaders can do to help avoid that toxicity and keep their teams together. With me today to share his own journey through the agency world is Max Traylor, service designer and seasoned agency pro who ultimately left the agency world to focus on his own consultancy for productizing agency services.

Max, thanks for being here today, man. 

Max Traylor: Greetings. 

Galen Low:  Let's dive in. I just wanted to get your take on your career in agency life and what brought you in and what ultimately made you make the decision to leave and do your own thing. How did it all begin? How did you find your way into agency life and what was it about the agency world that kind of drew you in? 

Max Traylor: Yeah, when I was five, I'd walk into my dad's office, his home office. He worked from home before it was cool. So I'd walk into his office. I'd say, Dad, where do you make the money? Turns out I thought he was printing money in the printer and I was like looking at the printer.

He's oh, yeah. No, you can't do that Max. That's illegal. But I have a digital scalable residual business model that like that DSR thing. He would always say that I didn't know what it meant. I was five. And then he'd say I do something once and I get paid forever. And he's a residual income, so that was what I grew up with. And then through college, I really liked marketing. I liked humorous advertisements, and I got into acting and directing in high school. So the advertisement was was a cool thing. I was like, great, I'll start a marketing agency and do ads. Then I was introduced to the concept of professional services.

Trading time for dollars. It was the opposite of what my dad had always talked about. So I'm running an agency and I get a call one day from a software company and they say, Hey, we've got all these people that are going to cancel the software. Do you want to talk to them? And 40 at one time, we couldn't create content for them.

We didn't have the staff. We couldn't fix their websites. They already have the software, so we can't sell them that. What's the only thing that we can do? We can write a plan on how to use that content and their people and their software that they've already invested in to get the results that they're not getting, which is the reason they're going to cancel.

All they needed was a plan and we did it 40 times. And the first time it took 10 hours and then eight hours and then six hours. And we got it down to a four hour process, I think. We were charging 2,500 bucks. That was pretty cool. Then we said we're really specialists in higher education, which, by the way, I hate now.

I'll never work in higher education again. We had a lot of clients and in higher education. And so I remember doing control, find the word client in the templates that we had created. And I replaced it with perspective student. And we charged 25,000 multiplied the price by 10. I was like, whoa, positioning is powerful, focus is powerful.

So even though higher education was the wrong space for me, it taught me the value of focus. 90% of the value of focusing comes from focus itself. Not choosing the right thing. Probably not going to choose the right thing first. It's like relationships, first one, probably ain't gonna work out for you on the longterm.

And then that company said, Hey, that was remarkable. Can you teach other agencies how to do that? And my business partner was like, Oh, yeah, we'll just license it to them. And every time they get paid 25 grand by their client, we'll take five. And it was PayPal that we were getting the commissions from for these people that we had licensed this process.

And we had this one agency in Australia that would wake me up in the middle of the night because it's like opposite time. So I put a jingle on my email. I said, any time rule, anytime I get an email from PayPal, it goes to 'ching!' and so it'd be like three in the morning and wake me up. And I just I was driving into the agency one day and I was just like, what am I doing?

Why am I driving into this stupid office when I could be getting more to Chingy booze from all around the world. So I learned two things in my professional service experience, and that is that strategy planning the knowledge plays by a completely different set of rules. People treat you like a big boy.

I wanted to be treated like a big boy instead of a marginalized 23 year old vendor. And you can monetize the intellectual property itself, you can monetize the process, you can get actually get paid for that. You don't have to do the thing. So I left and now that's, I said, I will just productize strategic work.

So that's both things, right? Productizing is how do you monetize the knowledge? And then I'm only interested in the strategic stuff because it plays by a completely different set of rules and people respect you more. That's how my career and my independent practice came to be. 

Galen Low: I think that's fascinating because what I think I know about you is that, you've held some pretty senior leadership roles at an agency at definitely your agency and still, you're like... 

Max Traylor: I mean, let's be honest. We had 10 people. We're a little over a million in MRR. I wouldn't call that senior. I'd call that flying by the seat of my pants and figuring it out as we go. I'd call it school of hard knocks. It is not wearing a suit sitting in boardrooms. So I needed that knowledge. I didn't have it. And so I spent nine years interviewing those roles about their opportunities, their challenges, their existing initiatives. My "Beers with Max" podcast, I wrote books about it.

So you either have the direct experience in those roles or you're 23 years old and you have no other choice, but to spend the next 10 years talking to people that do have the knowledge so that you come in as the young guy and you can say, look, don't listen to me. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I did spend the past nine years talking to 500 people.

And I can tell you that more than half of those people have this challenge and that challenge. And so I think I can hold my own in conversation. I think I understand you. Those are your only two options. Be the most curious, dedicated to understanding your ideal client and collaborating with them to create pieces of content like books and podcasts that allow you to transfer that credibility and most people just aren't doing that.

Galen Low: I like that.

Max Traylor: Because you asked in our last interview, am I being paid for that? The answer is no. That is a long term game. That is an investment in your personal brand. 

Galen Low: Yeah, that's what I was going to say as like a long play because even what you said there, probably broke a lot of brains in the sense that I think you see work, right?

I think you see professional life as two different layers. There's like the rat race that you're told is how the game is played. And then there's this other layer of like you can just change the conversation if you look at it a different way. And what I appreciate is that focus to say, okay, I'm young.

I don't have this experience. I've got two options. I could do all the work and work my way up the ladder so I have all that experience, or I can talk to a bunch of people and develop that knowledge by asking them, listening to them and mobilize it not as my knowledge, but as I've talked to these people, I've got some credibility here. In a way, it's like a career hack. I know a lot of people are doing it these days, right? Try and have their own podcast and, are writing on LinkedIn. 

Ooh, Max's Agency Survival Guide. 

Max Traylor: Yeah, Agency Survival Guide. So it's 100 pages. Lots of drawings. So 10,000 words. And look, I opened to a random page, there's an interview with Karl Sakas.

Galen Low: Yeah, he was just on the podcast. 

Max Traylor: Yeah, you know, Karl Sakas, much more credible than me. I'm climbing in that direction, but certainly when I interviewed him. And so, who wants to listen to little 'ol Max? Maybe my mom. But in reality, the credibility of me and this book is multiplied by 10, because there's 10 interviews with people that are more credible than me in this book.

Galen Low: Talk to me about that process. Were you like, hey, I'm gonna write a book, I better interview 10 people, or was it the reverse? I'm talking to 10 people, I may as well bottle this up. Make one thing and get paid forever. 

Max Traylor: The whole story was when I went out on my own, I knew that I needed 20 conversations to get 10 opportunities to get five proposals to get one deal.

Cause I was selling at the agency and I taught myself pipeline addition, subtraction. I was like, okay I need an email that I would open no matter what, that's not like your mother's in trouble. And so the answer was, would you like to have a beer? If that was the subject line, like if anyone's trying to get in contact with me, that's how you do it.

Would you like to have a beer? I would open that no matter what. So I started a podcast called Beers with Max and literally the message in LinkedIn or email was, would you like to have a beer? No, seriously, I do this like show and I'm trying to help people monetize their expertise to put their personal life first and build a business around their personal life.

I think you'd be a good fit for, the thing. Fast forward four years and I've done hundreds of interviews and met some pretty smart people that were way more credible and followed than me. But, all along the way, my grandfather had always said, you got to write this down.

That's the power is people that can read and write. And so I promised him before he died, I'd write a book. So where did all that material come from? I'm not a writer. I don't like writing. I was like, shit. So I just looked at all the interviews and I was like I got all these transcripts here and I good at talking.

So I just sort of, I looked at like my LinkedIn posts and all the episodes and I picked out the most interesting topics, like the ones that were most liked or whatever. And I just put them into the book. 

Galen Low: That's awesome. 

I want to circle back actually in a moment, but I like that sort of idea that it's started with young Max trying to figure out how to get knowledge, ended up with you creating a book and having interviewed some, very interesting, incredible people.

And then having this asset, right? Creating this like content asset that is fundamentally a product, right? That you are sharing with the world to add value to the world. And yes, also because you get to create one thing and get paid forever. 

Max Traylor: Yeah. And by the way, credibility wise, everyone should just write a book. It's a cheat code. 

Galen Low: I noticed that about a lot of professionals, right? They're just like, yeah, I'm writing a book. I'm like, Why? But yeah, I get it. Best selling author is something we all... 

Max Traylor: But once you meet somebody with a book, you're like, immediately wow, that person must be smart. 

Galen Low: Right. There you go everyone. Everyone go out there and write a book. 

Max Traylor: Didn't even open the book. No idea what's in there. You just make an automatic judgment that because they put paper in between two thicker pieces of paper, that person is smarter. 

Galen Low: It's true. There is definitely this sort of ethos of an author in the professional world, for sure.

Max Traylor: Yeah. And by the way, if the book is expensive, like 30 or 40 bucks, people assume that it's better. 

Galen Low: There you go. Can I ask, cause I'm curious, what did your dad do? 

Max Traylor: He helped companies comply with the do not call laws. And he wrote more articles about the do not call laws than anybody than it is more and dressed up like Superman and did a bunch of YouTube videos about the do not call laws.

By the time I was done with him, he would just listen to everything I would say. And he's man, he's like super. So for like months, he was just writing and creating videos. And so he took over, like he was like one or ranked one or two on these, on the key searches, he ended up taking over like the first two pages.

Galen Low: Wow. Okay. With all of his content. 

Max Traylor: Yeah. So these companies that were like, Oh, I don't want to be sued. They would call him. And then he would be like, yeah, let me introduce you to the software vendor you need or the data vendor you need. And he had deals with all of them. They were like 20 percent and perpetuity forever.

And so he's still getting paid for deals that he did 15 years ago. 

Galen Low: That's amazing. 

I started this all with the kind of I wonder if Max is going to tell me some stories about how agency life is like toxic and too much work. But fundamentally, I think it's different. I think fundamentally, you came in with this understanding that getting paid for one hour of your time, just, you'll hit a limit based on how many hours you have in your life that you want to spend working versus how can we think about this in a different way where it's not just getting paid for an hour of work.

And it's actually something that can scale up. And now you're doing that for agencies, but fundamentally you had to leave agency life to do that because agencies aren't built that way. They're built as service for dollars. 

Max Traylor: Some are. 

Galen Low: Talk to me about that. Yeah. Tell me more. Tell me more. 

Max Traylor: I'd say most agencies over the past 10 years were really just copy houses, they just wrote stuff and they were constantly price chopped because the gig networks, the upworks and the fibers, they were increasing supply.

And so price went down and then now finally AI was like, okay, we'll drive the cost to zero. And now they're all like, oh, they've been telling me to do more strategic stuff for 10 years. I should have read Max's book. But I have a deep respect for agencies. I think if you get the business model right and you charge, and you do strategic work and you develop relationships at a high level and, maintain your price premium, then I think you can really be happy in that world. 

But I think people that aren't at the principal level, I think people that work for an agency, their problem is that they make it their entire identity. I work for this agency. No, you have an exclusive contract with a company that can let you go at any time. It behooves you to invest in your personal brand, to take on side gigs, to start bringing in deals into that company and getting a kickback of percentage of revenue. You are on your own and the comfort you get from that paycheck is an illusion.

That's what I think. 

Galen Low: Honestly, I mean, you're absolutely not wrong. And I think we're seeing that more and more. And, I don't think in our last conversation, we were talking about if you're expecting to get a gold pen after, 50 years of service for one company, then I mean, you probably aren't paying much attention to the world of work right now.

Max Traylor: I mean, in the past, it was actually beneficial because you'd keep getting paid. That doesn't happen anymore. And now you don't even get now the economy is so weird. Your 401k could disappear. The entire thing that you worked for, the entire reason you were at that company, not even continuing to get paid, just like the money that was there, poof, gone.

So, that was the system that kept people working at a company for 15 years, or for 50 years. And it was their entire identity, and they were making a sacrifice for the gold at the end of the rainbow. T's not raining. There's no rainbow. 

Galen Low: Yeah. Now it's just a carrot dangle, right? It's yes.

Max Traylor: It's a carrot, and people are like, I've seen this before. 

Galen Low: Promise we won't let you go right before your retirement thing matures, and yet. 

Max Traylor: I've seen this play out. So yeah, if you're working at an agency, you should be applying to other agencies. 

Galen Low: That's really interesting. 

Max Traylor: And the second you get that next job, you should be applying to other agencies. You are an independent consultant because you are the only person that cares about you. I guarantee it. You and your family, your employer doesn't care about you. They care about making you happy so you don't unexpectedly leave. That is the extent of their care. So you have to be on the lookout for another organization that could pay you more.

I don't know why you wouldn't do that. And now all of a sudden you're behaving as like an independent, as a consultant, somebody that takes their pipeline into their own hands. Your business model is you work with one client at a time and you change every two years. That's fine. That's a personal choice, but... 

Galen Low: But they are not your identity.

Max Traylor: Yeah, the identity is no longer like I work for this company. The identity is this is the value I bring. And I will bring it to the company that either values me the most or pays me the most. And generally, they're one and the same. 

Galen Low: It's funny because I'm, in my head I'm like, it's bleak, but it's also not wrong.

But also in accepting that, then I think that kind of frees you up, right? You're not like, in terms of changing your perspective on your work life. It's no, a) I don't need to stay in agency life at all. B) I don't need to stay at one agency and make it sort of my identity. I can deliver value elsewhere.

And c) yeah, like you have to make your own security, right? Financial security, job security, are you going to be able to retire? What can you rely upon? 

Max Traylor: And security only comes from your ability to generate money. And if you can't control your current employer, they can fire you at any time, then your ability to generate money relies on your ability to build new relationships. We're all in sales. 

Just like we were talking about before. And more specifically, business development. Not even the closing sexy part. Like the grind. I don't know this person, but I'm gonna get on a call with them. I'm gonna listen to them because I know that I need to develop relationships. That is a core life skill. And yeah the, they don't care about you saying, I mean, you got a lot, a lot of nice people. 

And the reason I was, I think originally attracted to the agency space or stayed in it for as long as I did is the quality of the people, like probably the nicest business owners out there. But go ahead, ask the person that pays you, Hey, would you go into personal debt to keep me out of personal debt?

Don't ask that. It's a rhetorical question. It's going to sound like an asshole but you know the answer. And so that is the extent of their care. Now you ask your parents. Depending on your relationship with your parents, but if I asked my mom, Hey, would you go into personal debt to keep me out of personal debt? She'll go, what do you think I've been doing for 35 years? Like wake up and realize there's nobody like you got to take care of yourself.

Galen Low: It's sobering, but it's a really interesting freeing perspective in a way. 

Max Traylor: Yeah, we're a family, we're cultured, take care of each other. When was the last time you actually took care of somebody? 

Galen Low: It's interesting. 

So in fairness, you also work with a bunch of agencies as your clients. You're 

Max Traylor: hundreds over the years, hundreds. Yeah. 

Galen Low: And you're helping them to be more strategic to not be that, a race to the bottom services model that's now getting replaced by AI. You're helping them be more strategic, which means they need more strategic people. 

And yet probably the most strategic innovative people, probably like yourself, are probably the first ones who are going to leave based on what you're saying, right? It's okay, I understand this game. I can do this game. I can take care of myself. And also I don't need to stay with you. 

What can an agency, what can your clients be doing to retain someone like yourself? Someone who is thinking about; a) themselves? 

Max Traylor: Embrace this narrative that we're talking about, that you don't work for me, I work for you. As an agency owner, you work for them. What's most beneficial for your employees, their personal brand, their ability to generate relationships. You got to get on the same page that what you're providing is funding for them to develop themselves as an asset that can never be fired or replaced. Nobody can fire me from MaxTraylor.com. 

Nobody can take my personal brand. Nobody can take my reputation from me. I can get cancelled if I say the wrong thing, but that's a separate issue. So that's what it's about. If I wanted to go back and retain the best people I had, that's what I would do. I'd say, look, we are here to grow your personal brand and to accelerate your career path. 

Let's sit down and talk about your career path that has nothing to do with me and be clear that I'm not trying to keep you here forever. This concept of like, how do they retain their people? You don't. You get the most mutually beneficial relationship while it lasts.

And by the way, you plan for their exit. How long do you see yourself here? No, really? Okay. So if you're here for two years, what's going to happen next? I haven't thought about that. It's my job to help you think about that as a mentor, as a human, as somebody that has gotten past you in their career path, whatever it is. I am here to help you plan for your future, prepare for it and develop the personal brand equity that is required to take that next step.

Be a human. You are a consultant to them. 

Galen Low: A lot of mileage out of the consultant mindset. 

What about the flip side? I mean, if folks listening are, an employee working at an agency, and maybe at the start of this conversation, they're like, yeah, I'm just gonna work here forever. And now they're like, uh-oh. What do you recommend to them to just get started down that road of having a personal brand or being in control of their own sort of financial and career security?

Max Traylor: Ask for a raise, like a big one, like double.

Galen Low: No, I'm serious. 

Max Traylor: That's the start because the answer will be no, but that is the start of your plan. The problem is you're not talking about, hey, how can I get paid? So you're going to say, hey, instead of paying me 100,000, can you pay me 200? And they're going to go, and, yeah, I had a feeling you say that.

Can we talk about why? And can we talk about what I would need to do or what would need to happen at this organization to be able to pay me 200? Because whatever that plan is, whatever that path is, if you can facilitate that path, that is the next step in your career path. 

Galen Low: I like that. I also like the shock value of it. Go and ask for double your salary. 

Max Traylor: It's something I did, right? Like I was like, Hey, how do I get paid like double what I'm getting paid now? And they're like I guess you take away the entire cost structure of our organization and you charge more for strategy. I was like, sweet, I'm going to do that.

And I left my agency. I was like, Oh, so you mean all these other employees and the rent money that we're paying and all the licenses we got to do, that's actually the problem? Okay. So what if I just get rid of that? Cause I'm the one doing the selling. I'm the one bringing in the relationships. I'm the one coordinating the work.

I can just coordinate other people to do the work. And that's what I did. I didn't leave them hanging. I said, I'll still do the strategy. I'll sell the strategy. I'll do the strategy. I'll charge the 25 grand for that. Then I'll give you the account to do the work. And I want 10 percent in perpetuity for the remainder of that account.

And they go, we can't afford 10%. I go I know you're charging 10 grand a month right now. So, I'm going to sell it for 12 grand a month. And so it's not going to eat into your margins at all. And why can I do that? Because the person that has the relationships has the power. That's really what I learned from my dad.

Galen Low: I love that. 

Max Traylor: Go build your relationships. 

Galen Low: That's incredible. Maybe a good place to leave it. 

Max Traylor: Yeah. And then stick their faces in a book. 

Galen Low: Yeah. Yeah. Key takeaways; ask to double your salary, write a book, build relationships. People who own the relationships have the power. 

Max Traylor: Don't write a book, have your relationships write the book for you.

Galen Low: Love it. Genius. Genius. 

Max Traylor: A lot easier for those of you that suck at writing. 

Galen Low: Yeah. Don't go to ChatGPT right now and say, please produce a book with my name on it. Talk to people. 

Max Traylor: Yeah, and if you even think about a ghostwriter, you haven't been listening to every word I've been saying. 

Galen Low: Yeah, there you go. Awesome. 

Max, thanks so much for sharing your story, sharing your experiences and just spending time with me today. This is just, yeah, loads of fun.

Max Traylor: I have enjoyed it. I have. 

Galen Low: I'll put a link in the show notes to the book because now I'm gonna read it. And also let me put a link to Beers with Max as well because that sounds fun. Do you actually drink beer on the podcast? 

Max Traylor: Badoo. Amazing. 

Galen Low: That sounds incredible. 

Max Traylor: But yeah, LinkedIn is the best for me. If you want to see just free copies of my books on my LinkedIn profile, I'm always doing clips from Beers with Max. Opinionated opinions. So yeah, just LinkedIn Max Traylor. It'll work out. 

Galen Low: Love it. Love it. Awesome. Thanks again. 

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