Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: When something goes wrong, I tell team that, okay, come up with the three things which we could have done better from our end in order to not get into this situation, right? So we are literally changing mindset of our entire leadership team to think more positive and optimistic and constantly learning.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by Manish. Dude, Haragia. Hope I got that right. Founder and CEO of E Two M Solutions. E two M helps digital agencies solve bandwidth and capacity problems with white label services and are an exclusive sponsor of the agency Hour. So it only made sense to have Manish join us this week as our 100th episode, which is amazing. In this episode, we explore why leadership needs to own failures and pass the credit, which is much easier said than done. We define the fundamentals of creating processes that actually help you solve the problems that your agency experiences every day. And we discuss problems with working outside of scope and how to avoid it, as well as the challenges of keeping your team on track and consistently delivering high quality services as your team grows. All that and much more. I'm Johnny Flash. Stay with us.
Manish, it's so great to see you. How you doing, Johnny?
[00:01:35] Speaker A: I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for having me on the show again. I'm excited to speak with you again.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Oh, man, it was so great to have you and some of your team come out to Mavcon here outside of Washington, DC. Man, it was just last month and I just really enjoyed getting to hang out with you, your team, all the fun that we had. It was just really.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: You know, it was absolutely a very unique experience.
I know we sponsored last year Melcon in San Diego, but I wasn't there. Kevin from our team who actually lives in San Diego, he was there. But this the first time we in person attended the US Melcon. Obviously we were in Australia a few months back in Gold coast, but yeah, so it was absolutely very unique experience the moment we got into Fairfax and then kind of like reached to the hotel. From there we came to your house and yeah, thank you for inviting us, hosting us at your house. It was fun to play the game. So the beginning of Melcon started very casually. It didn't feel like we are at conference. It feels like it's a get together of a community member. So that was a very altogether different feeling. And yeah, it was so much fun to have be at your house.
And I think the highlighter of the entire event is like the actual event happened at the church. Right.
Which was very different experience, right.
Where the venue was very unconventional. And two of my colleagues came to the States for the first time and did Mavcon for the first time. And they also had a fantastic experience. So it was absolutely great experience.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Oh, that's so great to hear for our listeners that are listening in that maybe don't know all the details. So Mavcon is a three time a year event that we have kind of rotated around the world so that everybody can have the opportunity to come. But it's for our mavericks and some special guests where we basically just have an in person, two three day conference.
And like you said, I think it's really more like a gathering of kind of like minded, sharing ideas, learning things very, just sort of practical and kind of where the rubber meets the road. And we've got a number of amazing sponsors. Manish, who is one of them, with E two M. And we had an event before the conference started that I hosted at my house.
And we had this guy come who has these amazing laser tag kind of gun things and all the things, and I have a big yard. And so we had all these obstacles and different things and made teams, and we were playing outside in the fall weather here in the United States, and it was so much fun. And then we went out to eat and all the different things. But it was great to host both our kind of mavericks and our sponsors for that event. That was before the conference started at my house. And then, yeah, we kind of did it unconventional. Usually we're in a hotel conference room and everything like that. And I had messaged the team way long time ago, and I said, hey, I know this is crazy and not what we normally do, but my church just opened this $24 million building that's brand new. It has all this amazing space and AV and all these things. And I was like, what if we had it at my church? I know that's totally weird, and it's not. Mavcon is not a church thing or anything like that. But our church has just been so great about making space available for the community and for different organizations. We just had our local fire department's graduation ceremony in our main auditorium for like 1000 people and all these fire department graduates. And obviously, that's not a church thing or whatever, right? But we have a lot of amazing spaces at the church that can be used by the community. And so the church was on board. I got Troy and Emily on board with it, and so it was really cool. And then I guess the big surprise was that we were able to do a concert.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: I was about to say that.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead, you can share.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I totally agree.
When actually we were at your house and playing that laser shooting game, and that's the time I got to know that the event is actually happening at church tomorrow. And then I had an image of church, like, okay, are we seriously going to have an event at church?
[00:06:30] Speaker B: We purposely didn't announce that part.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: I thought. So I'm like, this is a huge surprise. But then I was discussing with my colleagues and they actually pulled up images of a church on Google and we were like, no, it's not that kind of church.
It looks like an event venue. And I feel like the space was perfect for the audience, the number of people we had. It was absolutely comfortable. Perfect.
Small, cozy place. Perfect. We had a great place outside for hangout, tea, coffee, lunch, and I think the concert. Yeah. So that was a huge surprise. It was on the last day when they had planned the surprise and it was kind of like evening at four, and we were told to go into an auditorium. We had no idea what's going to happen, right? And we were sitting in the auditorium and Troy and Adam Silverman, he was know playing the drums and there was someone also, and it was Johnny's son as know. There were four people on the stage and they absolutely rocked the stage. It was like an amazing experience.
It was absolutely completely unexpected. But we truly enjoyed. And that was kind of like the moment, the time when we felt like, okay.
Could not think of better way to end the conference and the event. Right. And Troy truly performed like the rock star.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Troy came out, right?
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Rockstar came. We saw absolutely a different version of Troy on the stage.
In the first half, we saw a different version. In the second half, in auditorium, we saw a different version. And Adam Silverman, it was hard to recognize.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: And then after the concert, I actually told him that, why are you in this industry?
Why are you not in an industry where you should be a full time drummer? Yeah, it was like, absolutely. They rocked the stage and they performed like rock stars.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Oh, that's so great. Yeah. It was probably only like maybe six weeks before MaVCon and I messaged and I was like, hey. And we had kind of joked about like, hey, we should do some songs. But I knew if it just was like joking about it, it wouldn't actually happen. So I was like, hey, guys, do we want to put a band together? And I knew Adam Silverman, who lives in Nashville, who's recorded on all these albums as a studio drummer, like, he is a professional drummer disguised as a web agency owner. And I know Troy had done a lot of concerts and guitar and singing and stuff, and I played bass guitar, and my son is a very talented keyboardist.
He's only 15, and he's so good.
And so I was like, we just really need, like, maybe an electric guitar player that I could probably recruit from one of my friends in town. And so we put a band together. We were emailing and slack messaging different song ideas and keys that we would do them in and which version of a recording we would do, and then everybody pretty much practiced on their own, and then we came together and we rehearsed just for one evening before that. And I had programmed lights and video content and all the different haze and all the things.
And so it was a pretty big production for our small group of folks that were there. But it was a lot of fun.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: What you have described and what actually happened, it was way more fun than what you described.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Oh, good. Yes. Sorry.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: I think if idea is that if someone have recorded that on their phone, I'm sure Max would have recorded that. We should actually put a video on select community and agency Maverick's Facebook page so members or anyone who haven't attended the event, they can see what they actually missed.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It was so much fun. It was so great. And the content of the conference was so know. I think hearing from the other coaches know different. Like Thomas, one of our coaches, talked about, I was just so inspired by the processes that he put in place. He got his whole team around it. I think we have one of our previous episodes has gone into this in a lot more detail when I was talking with him, but just the way that he got his team around and kind of sharing some of that behind the scenes stuff was so great.
Jen talking about goals and kind of where you want to go 510 years from now, which most agency owners can't think five or ten days from now, five or ten minutes from now, but to think further out of why am I running this business and what am I trying to do and where do I want to go and what's the purpose behind all this? And then kind of backing that all down to the here and now and just so many great sessions and stuff that were just really impactful. Troy always delivers amazing keynotes and stuff with talking about AI and all kind of how that can be used and just kind of to grow your agency was incredible.
So I wondered that if we could, while you were here. I know last time you were on the agency hour, we talked about team and you have an amazing team at E two M. What is it, like 9000 team members? Some crazy number of team members. Right?
[00:12:19] Speaker A: It's 180 people.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: 180 people. Oh, my goodness. It grew since the last time I talked to Manish and it's just amazing. And I wanted to.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: If.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: I know we talked about team and hiring and you gave some great. I don't know if I've told you this, Manish, but when we were on the agency hours, probably like maybe a year ago or it was a while ago, we were talking about the team and you had just taken your team to, I think it was Bali or somewhere where you were doing this amazing trip and you had a video and I was just blown away.
And it was just so inspired, which was amazing. But you had said something on that which I've used in a number of talks and I've done my best to give you the credit, but you said something like, leadership needs to, I can't remember, own the failures and pass the credit or something like that.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: And that just really stuck with me. And I've used it in a number of different talks that I've given because I just feel like that is where the rubber meets the road.
And I had a recent test of how much I really was holding to that or not recently because I had been at an all day leadership thing off site with a bunch of business leaders. And I came back to the office at the very end of the day and my phone and everything's blowing up from a client who we had just built their website. They've been a client for a long time. We just built a new website for them and we had launched it over top of their wrong website. Like, they had two different websites and we built a new one for one and we replaced the other one by mistake. And of course I had been out of the office, other people were doing all the things, whatever, and I didn't have any answers. I didn't know how we had made that mistake. I didn't know how quickly we were going to be able to get it back. I had just been gone and I didn't know.
And I realized I just needed to call the client and say it was my fault, basically own the failure.
And it was the most hardest thing that I've had to do in a while. But the client was so appreciative that I just called him as the owner that I took the ownership that I said, I'm going to give you an update every. I don't know if I said 15 or 30 minutes. I'm going to send you a note every 15 or 30 minutes till this is resolved and let you know the status. And I mean, we got it up, I think, pretty quickly, within an hour, hour and a half, whatever. We had restored everything back and got it to the right place. But it was one of those things I was like, oh, man. Manish said, leadership needs to own the failures. And here I was having to deal with that. Not really wanting to.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: No, I think it's very important. Similar thing happened recently with one of our clients as well, where the scope was not clear and kind of like we quoted without looking at the actual design, and then the plugin was suggested by the team without actually looking at the design. And then later we realized that the plugin has its own limitations, so we will not be able to meet the 100% design in the final output. And literally, we decided to go on a call and same way, a client really appreciated, client is actually from Australia and he really appreciated that.
Literally, after that, we emailed him that, how can we make sure that we don't get into the same situation again? And we understand that we should not have quoted this project without having 100% clarity.
Long story short, I want to add one more thing that what we started doing at E two M as well. When something goes wrong, I tell team that, okay, come up with the three things which we could have done better from our end in order to not get into this situation, right? So we are literally changing mindset of our entire leadership team to think more positive and optimistic and learning from, constantly learning from every single mistake. Right? So I want to bring a quote. I mean, unfortunately, we all know, like, Charlie Munger passed away yesterday. I personally have learned a lot from his wisdom, right? And his favorite quote is like, the life is kind of like, it's all about learn, right? So I think that life properly lived is just learn, learn all the time. Right? So I always let our team know that when something goes wrong, let's not play a blame game, right? Let's first own the failure and see, like, hey, what we could have done better in order to avoid this situation. So I think that adds up to like, it requires a mindset that, yeah, first you own the failure, and then only you can learn from that. Otherwise you cannot learn from that.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: And I think when you demonstrate that as a leader, that you're willing to own a failure even though you didn't push the wrong thing or you didn't whatever. And in this case, I hadn't done anything with that. And we had documentation in place and there was a number of things that got overlooked that resulted in the mistake. But I think it then is easier for your team to take the ownership when they fail because this team member was very on my team was very much like, I just totally messed this up. And this is why I thought it was supposed to be this one. It's not like he just was not paying attention. He had a reason why he thought it was supposed to be the way that it was, but he owned it in the end.
And then I think also by letting your team fail and not permanent fail, like fire them, then it allows them to experiment and get better and stuff. Because if everybody's afraid of, like, oh, if I make a big mistake, I'm out, then no one's going to take any risks, no one's going to take any ownership, no one's going to want to do the things because they know if they make a big mistake, they're gone. But instead, if it's like you said, like a culture of learning and how can we get better at this and stuff, then everybody just kind of rises up. I feel like, yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Every time we have discussions going on around our leadership team and entire team, we always tell them that it's okay to fail, it's okay to make mistakes as long as you are not making the same mistake again.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: And as long as you are learning from that, I think it's super important that every mistake you make, you think like, you paid a price to learn something new while making that mistake. Right. So that is super important. You are absolutely right that otherwise they wouldn't learn. And otherwise, as a leader, you will not free up your time because you will be always afraid to pass on the responsibility while thinking that, what if team might make a mistake, right. And that vicious circle you gets into and that never lets you free up your time.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And this ties perfectly into what I wanted to ask you about on this episode because I was so excited to get to come on with you again, especially after we had just spent time together in person. And I wanted to ask you about this because I feel like even though my team and I were trying to, we're just a team of 20 or whatever, and you're a team of 180 and all that, but still, we're trying to figure out processes because just like you, we have a lot of people doing the same thing. Different designers designing different projects, different managers managing different projects, different all the things. And you guys have some amazing white label services that you offer to agencies with development and design and copywriting and all the different things that you guys are doing. I wanted to just ask you about how you basically keep the quality high with so many different people doing so many different things. And I kind of know the answer. So I'm kind of trying to give you a softball pitch here, but I would love to just hear things that you've learned about processes and kind of getting people all to do the same job in a similar manner and that kind of thing.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
I think people think that running this kind of organization, big team, and being in the position of, as a leader, as a CEO of running this kind of organization is fun. It's not fun, actually.
You need a high pain tolerance.
You know what happens with this kind of big team? We have a structure. There is a senior leadership team.
There's a second level leadership team, right. And most of the times, actually, it happens that you don't get to work on the problem which you want to work on, but you actually have to work on the problem which company is going through. Right. Because think like that. At my position, I pretty much get all the problems filtered, which have not been solved. So on my table, there are only worst problems because they have already figured out and they already solved the problems which they were able to do it. But if something is coming to me which means they were not able to figure it out, obviously there is a bunch of worse problems. Right. And when you get into this situation, as a leader, you always think like, okay, I really want to work on things which are working really well.
So we can ten X on that. I don't want to work on things which are not working well. Right.
But however, as a leader, what you really have to do is, although you don't like it, but you literally have to stop working on doing things which are really working well. Instead, you have to shift your focus on making things right, which are not actually going really well in the organization. Right. So I think one of the first steps about creating the process is making sure that there are clear roles and responsibilities defined at your organization. Right. So one rule we have in our organization, that there are no two people should not be doing the same thing. So there should not be overlapping of roles and responsibilities. Otherwise, there will be always possibility of getting into a situation where there is a conflict. Right.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: And you don't necessarily mean two people not doing the same thing. You mean kind of two people. I think what you're saying is two people not responsible for one thing. Right. Because then nobody knows who owns it. Right?
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Yes. In that case, it's very hard to find who is going to take the full Accountability. Right?
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: So that is the very first thing. Second thing, when you run into any problem which you are seeing commonly coming up again and again and again across the different departments of your company, that's the number one priority.
You should create a process around that. Right.
And then I think, we always think like, okay, we need to have a process for everything. But I would say if you want to have the processes and start building the processes, make sure you start building processes around your top level problems which your organization is currently going through or which might go through when you scale. Because if you are going through a certain problems and when you grow, the problems is going to go even bigger. Right. So you want to fix the problem right now while making sure, define the processes, while defining processes. There are two things, right? You want to have the key stakeholders while defining the processes.
And I love to be a part of that as well. So we have a couple of people, we sit brainstorm that. Okay, let's put everything what we know. We record a Zoom meeting. When we start discussing the. Okay, this is the process we need to define. We start a Zoom recording. We start like AI summary and then we put that transcript into AI tool that uses the process.
And then someone goes through that to make sure that the process outlines everything what we discussed.
Because you really want to make sure that the stakeholders, the people who are going to follow the process are part of creating the process because they are the people who are going to use the process. It's not me. It's not like you as a leader who is actually going to work on the ground, right? So in that case, they are on the same page and they can think of everything they can think of. And that is something makes them also excited to follow the process because they are on the same page. Right. So one of the common mistakes I see a lot of leaders make at a large scale organization, they are growing. They want to Define the process for the problem they want to solve, not the problem organization has, right. They want to just create the process for the sake of making their organization look like more organized. But you might sometimes do not need tons and tons of processes. So it's super important to know that you only have the processes which solve your day to day problems, right. And which kind of helps you automize things and kind of make sure that you can avoid any sort of situations which put projects into escalation or there is a conflict of interest or there is like accountability issue. Right. So it's kind of like you want to have the process of something which you are using on a daily basis. You don't want to have a process which is sitting there, but it is not being used on daily basis. Right. Which is super important. So I think these are the things we make sure while creating process. And also one of the most important things is like that process has to be constantly evolved and updated based on your experiences. You cannot have the same process forever. Right.
It's kind of like the process you have for 100 people company would not work for 200 people company. Right. And same goes on. So it's super important that we kind of like at least update that every quarter. And right now also, we are in the process of creating a lot of new processes to facilitate our future growth.
But yeah, I think that's what my thoughts are for. The processes where make sure that you have a clear roles and responsibility. There is no overlapping of responsibility. You add it to two different people.
People are involved in creating the process who are actually going to follow the processes and processes you need to have only for the things which are your biggest problem and which you can foresee and which solve your day to day problem and which can be actually used on a day to day basis. And then processes need to be constantly evolved.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Yeah. It's so good. So much gold right there. If you heard my keyboard clicking, I was taking notes on your advice because it was just so good.
One more thing. I want to ask you about this while we're on this, and we can go to something else, but I know a lot of agency owners, and I honestly find myself struggle with this sometimes too, where we try to define, and this is kind of more with support plans and some of the different plans that I'm sure you guys offer, and that we offer, you try to define for me if it's a care plan or an SEO plan or a social media marketing plan. Whatever the plan is, we try to define. Like this is what's included with the plan, right. And it might be a certain number of time, it might be certain types of tasks, it might be certain deliverables, whatever the things are. And then inevitably there's somebody that wants something that's just a little bit outside. And I think the temptation of it is that we could probably do the thing, right. It's not that we don't know how to do the request, or we don't have the ability or the technical know how or whatever, but it's kind of outside this box that we've defined. And if it was just one client asking for one thing outside of the box, and that's all that it ever was, it wouldn't be a big deal, right? You would just help one client, it'd be done. But when you have hundreds or thousands of clients, and even if you only have 20 or 30 or 40 clients and you're a smaller agency or freelancer, and you're just kind of starting out, pretty soon, what you find is that like, oh, well, we did this one exception for this person, we did this exception for this person and all these different things where it just starts to feel like, well, the box is supposed to be here, but now we're solving all these other things that take extra time and maybe we don't have as well defined, or not all the team knows how to do that extra thing or whatever. And so I would just love to hear from you as you all have crafted plans and boundaries and what's in and out. What have you found?
I don't want to say hold the line, but how do you hold the line?
Or where do you.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: ABsolutely, I see exactly what you say. And we have faced this situation when we were kind of like small in the size team used to facilitate just to make clients experience really great. But then we started realizing that we have to draw a boundary, we have to draw a line, right?
That's where the process comes into picture, right. I think it's a great client experience, but then you see that it is not sustainable.
One of the problems happens with that when you do it once, your client will always expect it in the future. Then you cannot stop, right? So instead, if you just draw a line from the very, at least I would say that two things. If you are doing it for your existing clients, make sure you make the price change and include that and at least stop doing it for all your new clients. So at least you are not setting the wrong expectation from that, right. And start incorporating that thing in your package and increase your pricing accordingly. And even if they are coming up with something outside of that, you have to say no, you have to say, I wish we could do it, but that's something out of the plan. If you would like to do it, we'll be happy to provide you an additional quote, or we can create your package accordingly where we'll include that as well, because that way client will also appreciate. But you have to absolutely draw a line. So the best way to solve this problem is communicate very clearly to your client if you are doing, because you cannot say, we won't do it from next month onwards. And they were like, you guys were doing so till date and what happened now? So you want to communicate very softly that, hey, we have been doing this. It was not a part of that. We would continue like to do it, but in order to do so, we are increasing our price. And at least for new clients, you want to absolutely set a process that this is the boundary you really want to set.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: That's good. So, yeah, I think there can be a tendency of the freelancer, the agency, right, to just say, like, oh, we'll just keep doing it, or we'll just add that in or we kind of make that sacrifice. But I like your approach of saying like, hey, we can't do that, but if it's something that you really want done, we can charge us additional fee or put you on this higher plan or whatever, right. So that there's compensation. Because we both know what happens, right, when you do that.
Nine out of ten of them are like, really didn't need that thing and I don't want to pay the extra money and I don't want it that badly. Right. Every once in a while they'll be like, I really want it badly and I'll pay the money. But if you put that line up, you're not quite saying no because you're giving them the option to get it, but because it's costing them more, then they're going to think twice or three times about it before they do it. Right.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: And sometimes what happens that I have experienced, that team actually went like above and beyond. They went extra mile. They did something additional at without cost and something wrong goes and then client fires back and the team's intense and really good. They actually went extra mile, but that backfired. And that's where team realized that, oh, we were trying to do it going above and beyond and that kind of backfired. Right. And that's where the process is very important. And that's where then we have to chime in. Our customer service team will chime in and let clients know, hey, a team actually went extra mile and did it for you. So you really want to make sure that if you are doing something which you are going extra above and beyond, you want to let your client know that, hey, this is not included, but I would be happy to do it one time. Right, but will not be able to read next time, something like that. Right?
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Depending on your relationship with client. But you have to communicate if you are doing something extra.
And the psychology of people, and obviously client is like, if you do it once, they would expect it a second time as well. So I think the communication is super important in these kind of situations.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: ThAt's so good. And that's why you have so many team members and clients, because you've done a good job at this. Manish, this is Episode 100. I can't believe it.
Episode 100 of the Agency Hour. You guys have been a longtime sponsor of the agency hour, which we so appreciate you just supporting this and helping agencies and freelancers grow through all the content that we're putting out here.
Thank you. I mean, that's just incredible. That's amazing.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: No, absolutely. It is absolutely a special episode, the 100th episode. Congratulations to Agency Mavericks. You and Troy and Emily for running this community and for this podcast where people learn a lot. This is absolutely special. And it's kind of like, I feel like it's a coincidence. It's privileged to be 100th episode as a guest, so it's absolutely privileged. And like, I was talking to you earlier as well.
We feel like we belong to this community. This community has given us so much love and we have made so many valuable connections. We have met incredible people in this community. So we absolutely feel grateful to support this community, support this podcast, and it feels like we are giving back to the community because we love agency ecosystem and this way we kind of feel like giving back to the.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: It's. We just so appreciate it. I know. I can say on behalf of the whole team, we are just thrilled to have you as a partner and your support and just, I know for Troy and for me and for agency Mavericks and everything, just your support has been unwavering and it just means a lot to us. Take us back, if you would. You probably know the story better than me. How did this come about?
Tell us the story.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's actually interesting.
I think we still underestimate the power of cold email. Right?
So it was like one and a half year ago, I was randomly browsing late night, and I actually came across agency Mavericks. I saw the website, I did a good amount of research, probably for an hour or so around the same time when Troy stepped down as a CEO and Emily took it over around the same time and I saw about the community. I kind of read more about Troy, and I really liked the entire community.
And I'm like, I think I want to connect with Troy. I want to learn more about community, what these people are.
You know, it was like very late night, and I did a cold email for some time. I did, like, cold email to Troy that, hey, I love what you guys doing, and I would love to see if there are any collaboration or opportunities, how we can support your community, because I think we saw the same audience but at different capacity. So I actually wrote this thing to Troy that I feel like what we do is an extension of what you guys do at Agency Mavericks. Like, you help agencies to grow and scale their operations. And when they scale and grow, the first problem they run into is bandwidth and capacity, and that's what the problem we solve. Right.
And it wasn't very open. I had no any idea what kind of collaboration it will look like.
Right? And then Troy replied to me on the very next day, and I would love to have a conversation with you. And that's why our association started with, like, I recorded a podcast with him, so that was the first thing we did. And then we got to know more about that. And then we talked about, like, okay, we are doing this Milkcon. And we did the first MilkCon sponsorship last year in San Diego. And then that was really great. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend that, and one of our team members attended, and we really liked the community and the vibe learning.
And then Troy and I had a discussion. We decided that, okay, we want to be an exclusive sponsor of all MelCon events for entire 2023. So we were the sponsor for virtual happened in February, Gold coast happened in May, and this MelCon in Virginia in October as well. So, yeah, that's how we got connected. And since we met a couple of times in person, we kind of got to know each other a lot. I think Troy and I have a lot of similar thought process in a lot of different ways, which is great. I like how you guys run the community.
We truly believe in what agency Maverick does, mission and vision and everything. So that's how the collaboration started, getting more and more started collaborating more and more things. And so a few months back, we discussed that, okay, we want to be an exclusive sponsor of the podcast. And that's how we became a podcast sponsor.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say you and your team and the service that you guys provide is such an invaluable service for our whole community because there's so many people that they need some support, but they don't need a full team member, or they don't want to try to figure out how to manage this, teach this person, or make sure they're doing the right thing. And so to just have someone like you all that can just come in and deliver a high quality service, get up to speed very quickly. Right. Obviously, like, just hit the gate running and everything is just so invaluable, I think, for our audience. And so I'm just thrilled to have you guys and be partnered with you guys. Now, I have to ask you, Manish, you don't seem like the cold email type of person. Do you send a lot of cold emails or was this sort of an out of the blue type of thing, like an unusual thing for you?
[00:41:48] Speaker A: It was absolutely unusual.
It's just like, I don't send tons of cold emails. I truly do some research and I only do cold email when I feel like, okay, this is something I want to get involved into. Right. And I think when your reasons are aligned, I think our reason is very much aligned. What reason we have at E two M and what reason agency Maverick says, like, helping agencies grow and scale. Right.
Which is the same reason we have. Then you feel like, okay, you want to work with these kind of people who have the similar reason. And I truly believe you are absolutely lucky if you get to work with people who have a similar thought process and similar vision, and then your journey becomes so much fun and your work doesn't feel like work.
It feels like magic to someone else. But for you, it's just the fun, riGht?
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: It was very unusual.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I'm sure you like me. I get a ton of cold email.
It's very spammy. And like, hey, we can improve the SEO on your website. I'm like, we do the SEO on our website and you haven't looked at it and you're just sending me some spam email or whatever the thing is. Right. And I'm sure you get a ton of those as well. So that's why I just think it's really cool that, one, it's not the normal thing that you do, and two, that Troy responded. You guys connected so quickly and stuff. It was just really think, and I think, like, you, you know, having the similar passion and values, know, we're serving the same community, but we're obviously offering different services and ways to help that community. And so I just think there's so many things that align really well and, yeah, it's just a joy to get to work with you guys.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Exactly. If that's the right word you picked up. It's so much when we support this Malcon events, when we see that agency owners are meeting each other, learning from each other, and we feel so great and it's so much joy to see people learning from each other. Right? And then people take away those learnings and implement on their agency business and seeing them helping their agency grow. And you feel like, okay, by supporting this kind of events, you feel like you are contributing towards their agency success, which is a great feeling.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it is great. And I personally love helping anyone. If I can help someone shortcut, do something that I learned the hard way and help them do it faster or better, easier. It's just such a great feeling to be able to help others. And I know you feel the same way.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: So, Manish, thank you so much. Wow, this is just such a treat to get to hang out with you. I feel honored to get to host the hundredth episode with you.
And I can't wait for us to get to hang out, hopefully again real soon in person. And I already told you, pre call what my next outing is going to be when you're back in the States. So we're going to have an amazing time. Max, who's our producer, got to go ATV four wheel riding with us, and so I'm going to get you when you're back here and we're going to do. It's going to be awesome.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: No, I'm excited. And thank you for having me on this special hundredth episode. I'm grateful for the connections, grateful to be part of this agency Mavericks community, and I'm super excited to see you next time in person.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Thanks a lot, Manish. I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks for listening to the agency Hour podcast and a massive thanks to Manish for joining us. I always enjoy catching up with him and I'm so appreciative of everything that he and his team does at E two M to support the agency Mavericks community. Okay, folks, don't forget to smash that subscribe button. And please share this with anyone who you think needs to hear it. I'm Johnny Flash. Let's get to work.
