0:00

But I do feel like just in life in general, like whether you're an agency owner or a business owner or whatever, or developing a new program to really have that alignment and that passion because you will get to the finish line so much faster, faster than if you're just trying to put in the motion and the journey becomes so easy. Right, Amy? Totally. Welcome to Virtual Assistance, the Agency Growth Machine podcast. Take your digital marketing agency to the next level as we share secrets, strategies, and clients success stories. Step back from the day to day of your agency and activate massive growth using Virtual Assistance. And now your host, Azar Saddiqi. Thanks a lot for joining us, guys. My amazing guest today is Amy Dicks. Amy has a fabulous resume. My notepad is filled up over here taking notes, and it's a pleasure having Amy here. But before we get into talking to Amy, I just want to give you guys a little bit of a background. I believe two times international bestselling author. Amy. That's just one of the things she's done. Co founder and founder of multiple businesses. She set up businesses, sold businesses, and right now she's running a digital marketing agency or an agency which is focused on authority speaking gigs. And you guys build a personal brand. And people who want to become authority figures inside their niches, Amy and her company Choose Happiness is helping these people out, gain that perspective, and become the authority figures in their niches. So, Amy, thanks a lot for coming to our show. I think this is going to be packed with lots of fun and adventure today. Always fun and adventure. Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome. You're welcome. Amy, let's start out with a little bit about who Amy Dex is. How did you get started? What are some of these amazing things? Like what gets a person like you to write two books and sell multiple businesses? And what's the story? I want to find out. Yeah. I mean, I think the most interesting story. There's lots of stories in there, of course. Right. But we only have a short period of time here. But I think for your listeners, what really I think where we can start and where it makes the most sense is I had worked in, if you want to call it corporate America, I actually hate that term, but whatever you want to call it. I was working in distribution and ended up leaving that industry and started I had actually already started my marketing agency before I left that company, but it was already kind of rolling. So when I left, I was really able to just kind of keep rolling with my company. That company is called High Rise Promotions. But what I realized very quickly is that we kind of needed to differentiate ourselves from a marketing perspective. Like, how do we connect with our clients that's different from every other marketing agency out there, right? Yeah. And so that's what actually led me to write my first book, which is called Brand New you you're must have Guide to an influential Kickass Brand. And so that book really kind of catapulted that business. And we got a lot into the psychology of branding and the psychology of really connecting with your customers so that we could help our clients and differentiate themselves when they went to market. So that's really where it all started. I mean, the second book is different. It has nothing to do with business. It's all about positive psychology and happiness. And it's told through the story of my mom's life and death that is so different than where it all started. And so as I speak, I speak under the choose happy brand. But that really led then to the agency that we run now, which is called Authority Speakers Agency. And that is on booking dream stages for speakers and finding those experts and thought leaders for events and event planners. So there's a long, winding trail somewhere in the middle of that. But that's kind of the short version of how we got to the agency that we're now running today. So you've had agency experience. You started out with the corporate world. A lot of people have done it. I've had a job at not at the corporate, but a big box store with Best Buy for seven years, then 14 years running my generalist digital marketing agencies. So everybody goes through that route. Yours is very unique and different. Usually we don't end up writing books and things like that, even though I am working on something like that. So my question to you is that with the Authority Speakers Agency, you are helping people like would be a guy like me who's running an agency and we have like 175 people and we're targeting our niches digital marketing agency owners. So how would that work out? What type of clients are you working with with this particular agency right now? Yeah, mostly our clients are authors, not that that's a prerequisite by any means for our speakers. It just kind of happened that way because of my background. And my partner in the business happens to also be my publisher. So it just kind of happened that way. But yeah, they're experts and thought leaders in their industry. It's anywhere from somebody who is trying to get momentum to get those speaking gigs and to start that speaking business to a past VP of Starbucks. So we represent like, as far as topics, it really kind of runs the gamut. But essentially what we're trying to do is I believe that everyone has a very positive message to share and a message that needs to be on stage in order to either inspire or impact. Right. And I know most people think, oh, that's me. That's me. Well, that probably is you. If you think that's me, I want to be on that stage. I probably do for you, for example, or other agency owners. We talk a lot when I was in the agency world about one of the best ways to grow your business is to go to the associations and speak on those stages. That sounds great. And sometimes agency owners may or may not know where to start or where do you go kind of like outside of that one association. Right. So like, for example, we had a niche agency at one point called Vet Marketing Experts, and this was for Veterinarians. And so that's great. So now there was three, maybe four, but really three main associations that we could be a part of. Now I get involved with those associations, and I speak with those three associations. Now where do I go? Right. We would help folks kind of find those stages so they can grow their business so they can get their positive message on the stage and more importantly, so that they can just create the momentum that they need for their business. Yeah. And that's huge. And that's really amazing that you talk about that, because the people that I hang out with and we work with all these agency owners, a lot of us are trying to do that, and some of us are shy people. We don't necessarily want to be talking, but it's the nature of the beast. And you have to. And having a company like yours backing us up or backing up and identifying the roadmap, hey, these are the key events that you should be speaking at. And we're going to make sure that you guys get on the keynotes and things like that. Right. This is kind of how it flows, right, Amy? Yes, that's exactly right. You might be shy sometimes. I think that people who say that it's like, yes, and you also deserve if you want, you also deserve to be on stage. Right. That's the best part about our businesses. I think that's also what you just mentioned, the passion part of what you're doing. And that is unique on every guest that I've seen over here, somehow what they've done in the past, through their experiences, they've identified their passion. Like, you are a firm believer in being happy at whatever you're doing. And you try to link those things, and you've done it so beautifully over here with the type of people that you're working with, type of things that you're doing. And if you don't have passion behind and you're not feeling it, what's the point? Right.

Like, I get spring out of bed at 06: 9:24

00 A.m. In the morning because I'm loving what I'm doing right now. Yeah. There's something to be said about being aligned with what you do. And I'll just share another little story with you. We went down the path of when I had my general agency of really finding that niche, and some were okay, we ended up selling one of them but we had a couple of misses there. I would encourage agency owners, too, to ask themselves, like, why am I not able to connect in the niche that I chose? Like, is there a reason why? For me, I can look back and I could give a million excuses of why it didn't work. But in reality, if you just look in words, that's all I had to do was just take a moment, look in words and understand there wasn't the passion there. I didn't really, truly care about XYZ industry, and I was never really aligned. Could we have grown a business and been successful? Yeah, maybe to a certain extent. But it's going to flatten out at some point if

you aren't excited to get up at 06: 10:32

00 P.m. To go do your thing, even if you're not a morning person. I suppose I do feel like just in life in general, like, whether you're an agency owner or business owner or whatever, or developing a new program to really have that alignment and that passion because you will get to the finish line so much faster than if you're just trying to put in the motion and the journey becomes so easy. Right, Amy? Totally. It's like even when you're having a bad day, you're not having a bad day or you're rewarding it. You're saying that this is the journey. I'm learning something. Let's not do this from tomorrow and let's move on. It's just like, I think one thing again, we talk about on our show is the importance of identifying a niche. I think we've got beaten that horse already. Yeah. The perspective that you bring on top of that is the alignment with the niche that you're going to be picking and the type of people you're going to be working with. We have some clients who are working with dentists. We have other clients who are working with truckers. Right. So those are two different type of people that you're going to have to work with. And where your passion lies in working with these people is so much important. And you just pointed that out. We don't even think about that. Right. As entrepreneurs, we're just GungHo. Who cares about the feelings, right? Yeah. Where's the money? It goes to show you a person like, you coming into this type of niche. I think it's beautiful. Like what you just said. I think we got our snippet for our podcast already, guys. No, just kidding. It did take a journey to get there, though. And so I guess, like, not giving up and just really finding, digging in and figuring out what and how you want to do every day. And it is it's an everyday thing. And as an owner, I think everyone who listens to this show, that is an owner, which sounds like most of the crew here, I think they know that you don't always get to turn it off. There is like no off button and so if there's not going to be an off button, then I want to be loving what I'm doing at all times doesn't mean there's not going to be stressful moments. Of course it's going to be stressful. And I can get like, when you're talking about it, I haven't really thought about this, but over the last year, year and a half, my wife and I, we've been living out of our suitcases because the reps tax has been going. And I had to be ten months in Pakistan, three months in Philadelphia. I'm back in Calgary right now, and our stuff is like, there's a container in Calgary, there's some in Philly, some in Pakistan. Kudos to my wife. She kind of believes in the vision that we have, and she went along with me on the journey. And if both of us weren't gelling together like this and she didn't believe in the vision I had, this would have been very different story. Right? I wouldn't have been able to focus on at home, and this maybe would have been a different story. But because of the anchoring and because of we had fun while we were doing this, I was able to channel that even through some of these tough times, which like working nights for ten months straight, setting up, growing a team from zero to 175. These were some major things that I got done. But had I not had that mindset that you're talking about, Amy, it would have been extremely difficult. And had I not picked the right niche for myself. Well, yeah, you just hit on two pillars that I write about in my second book on happiness. So I say that there's three pillars to happiness, your character, your connections and your community. And you just sit on two really big ones, one being your character when you mentioned mindset, another being connections when you were talking about the support of your wife. And look, connections is like the reason for the pursuit of happiness. And when I look at some of the research that I've done, it really comes back to connections at its core. And so you can go in, I think, with the right mindset. And I'm not talking about, like, romantic relationships necessarily, although it happened to be the one that you mentioned, but just having the right connections to help you through whether they're related to your business or not, because times are going to get stressful, and it's really the connections that will keep you rolling in your pursuit of happiness. No matter how strong your mindset and your character might be, you really have to have that connection. And then, of course, there's community. I love it. Yeah, I love it. Thanks for that insight, Amy. Let's jump into some of the workings of your agency. You've picked out a niche, which is very like it's thought out seems like. And that's because you've gone through some of these experiences in the past and you wanted to connect over here. So now we want to quickly dive into how you're marketing yourself, how you're marketing Authority Speakers Agency, and then what your sales process quickly looks like. And then how are you retaining these clients, hopefully for the long term? Yeah. Well, there was a lot of questions in there. Let's start with the marketing. Okay. How do we market ourselves? I tell you what, there's a million ways to market a business. And when we first started organically, it happened this way. It was not my intention, but it just kind of happened, which was through a podcast. I had started a podcast, which I still have today called Unlocking Happiness. And through that, and I'll give you the tie here to Authority Speakers Agency. So it might sound disconnected, but it's not. So through that, I started that really just to start the conversation of happiness and people who have written books on self growth and just really functioning at a very high level in life. And what I realized after, I don't know, maybe like six months of interviews, doing probably five to eight interviews a month, is that what these people they're on the podcast for a reason. They want to share their message. They want to get their message out and kind of like they want more stages. And so from there, I just kind of started putting all the pieces together. I've spoken professionally now for almost ten years. And so I started putting the pieces together. And I had already done some trainings before with my publisher and his clients on how to get speaking engagement. So finally we decided to team up and do the darn thing. And so we really didn't even market, if you will, it really organically started from guests on the podcast and then saying, hey, we can do this for you. Do you want us to do this for you? And that's where it really started. Now, today, as we stand, our biggest lead generator comes from Facebook ads. And I know everyone wants to complain right now that Facebook doesn't generate the right conversions and all that. And I know that that's like the big discussion within agency owners. But the reality is right now, insanely, insanely. We are running ads, getting applications and getting people on the phone for $8 an application, $8 a conversion. Nice. In my mind, I still don't even know how it's happening, but that is where we stand. And so that's where we are at like$25 right now on one of our conversions. That's fantastic itself. Yeah. But $8 is I'm sure a lot of our friends listening to us, they'll be like, what is Amy doing there? Do you have like, a dedicated person running this ads? Do you have a team for this? So we have one person who set up the ads and everything for us. And here's the thing, though, that I want to say I don't think that there was any magic that he did in running ads. You know, he didn't find some secret in Facebook algorithm to run the ads. We found a market that needs this, that wants this, that's kind of I think part of it as well. Right now we have more applications than truly than what we can handle. We started with one salesperson and now we've got like two and a half. Well, we added two more and then almost like another half person just for the scheduling of all the level where you now need a coordinator for the sales Department. That's my partner's job. But no, you're absolutely right. He runs that side of it. But yeah, I think when you get to that point, you do need somebody to kind of run that and manage that because to let three, four sales people just run at it on their own people. Are they closing the deals for you as well, or how is that? Yeah, they're taking from application to close. Oh, nice. That's the best part of agency where when you go into your day and you see a Ding, a sales order comes through and you've already had those processes set up. Is there a sales manager, Amy? And are they reporting to you or your partner? How is that structure set up? They report to my partner. So that kind of all rolls up under him. So he's really on the front end of the business. I'm really in the weeds of the business. So once the speakers come on board, it's really myself and then Misao a rep sack. She's just a gym. And I could talk about her forever on the show. So it's myself and her that kind of take it. Once the speakers come within the agency and we get them set up and get them rolling on their personal branding, if they need help with their website, writing all their copy, not writing their speeches, but writing their copy in the description for their talk. And then once we kind of have all that organized, then it really goes to the next phase, which is really miss out in getting their stages booked for them. Okay. But that's how it's set up. And is this like a long term contract or how big does it? Because most of our digital marketing agency friend, they get them on SEO or a paid ad campaign for $2,500 a month, and we tend to for them to continue forever. How does your contracts run out? Yes. So our initial agreements are a 90 day agreement, and then from there and we guarantee certain deliverables. And then from there, once that 90 days or the deliverables have been met, then we have a discussion for them to stay on with the agency on a monthly basis. So then that becomes more of a long term play for those who want to continue to get booked on stages. Okay. And what are the price ranges like Amy for a company like maybe repstag who want to come to you and have you guys set up our roadshow or something like that for us? Yeah, roadshow. Yeah, we did one, actually. That's where we met your associate Misal in Karachi when I was in Pakistan back in October, we did our first year anniversary rep stack, and we called it Reptile Roadshow because we went through three different cities. That's where all our employees are based out of one day after. It sounded like a great plan when we were planning it out, but at the end of it, we were beat like deadbeat. But did you run the event yourself or you were at other events? No. What we did was we just kind of went out and did one activity and a dinner with our teams in each one of the areas. So with me. So we went out to a firing range and fire some guns and stuff. It was a lot of fun, but three days straight of that and traveling on, taking a plane from one city to the next and then to the third one, that got a little out of hand next time we'll plan it better or maybe have somebody like you guys. Yeah, that can be exhausting. My professional speaking career, I had 97 speaking engagements in an 18 month period at one point. So I was on a plane a lot and got a lot of points and all the fun stuff that comes with travel. But people would say often to me like, oh, this sounds like so much fun and whatever. Yes. And I used to say as well, it's not a sustainable lifestyle, so it's not going to last forever. And of course it didn't. But yes, that can certainly be exhausting. But to get back to your question, it's a high ticket offer. So our programs range anywhere from six thousand dollars to fifteen thousand dollars and beyond. So it just kind of depends on what the solution is. And so that's a little different, too. I think when I was running the agencies, it was putting together these packages and the mistake that I made. And this may resonate with some of the folks listening. The mistake that I made in the general agency was just really running like $100, $200, $500 solutions, even though they were on a monthly basis and really just kind of taking anything that I could get and then really through meeting Josh Nelson and understanding how to package these things into bigger packages that you're essentially doing, it felt like the same amount of work, but it was a little bit more sustainable. But our agency now is a little different than a digital marketing agency, although we do have some components of the marketing world with the website and the copy and that kind of stuff. But so it's set up a little bit differently. Yeah, that's great. And then on the pricing part, I think I was able to see the value right away. Right. Because myself, including and then a lot of our clients and a lot of our partners clients, they're in a very similar situation. They're becoming first time authors. And for us, Rep Stack Q three and Q Four, our envision is to be on the road at different events and things like that. So I think the value that you bring to the table at the price tag is so important. And I've seen actually the higher the price point sometimes, as long as you can back it up, I think the better it is that there are some people in our groups who charge like $30 to $60,000 for the yearly contracts. Right. They don't do anything less than that. And that's huge. If you price it out right. Properly. And if it's fair, I think that helps you stand out. Right. The first thing person is like, I'll give you the example of Rep Stack, $14 an hour and full time only. They're like, who are you, man, in the VA world, right? Yeah. And then from there, you tell them that you work with digital marketing agencies, they shake their again, and we only place these three roles. We don't even do anything else Besides that. So the more niche and targeted and focused pricing, that pricing justifies it itself. Right. If you can, of course, deliver that value. Yeah. It's the solution. Right. It's like the understanding that you understand what I need and that is worth something. Yeah. Can someone maybe go to a general VA? Sure. But do they really understand what you need them to understand? And like, that's the value in response to like, Rep Stack. Same with digital marketing agencies. I could go and hire someone to run my Facebook ads as a plumber or let's just use that as an example. But, oh, I'm going to hire this company because they understand what it is that I need. And there is so much value in that. And there is a price tag for that. There is. And agency owners need to be charging for that value. No, that's so true. That was such a great value on the pricing side. And coming from you, Amy, beautiful. Even though you're not the regular agency, you have sort of a different pricing model. Same thing for us. Right. Like, people point out different things. We were not exactly an agency, but we're doing a lot of the same things that we're doing on our side. Higher price point and price points that we can justify with the value that we bring to the table. My last question on this point, second last is one more after that. But the second last question is about retention, Amy, how are you making sure that these clients come and stay with you guys for as long as possible? Oh, that's so good because there's some growing pains here, I think, that we've experienced. And so when we first started with our first bunch of speakers, we kind of had to find our way. In certain sense. We had the success, but we just needed to kind of find how authority speakers agency fits in the event planning role because we're not a Speaker's Bureau. So in finding our way for the company, I think we lost our way with the speakers. We were still providing the service for them, but not at the high level that we wanted to be. Right. So while the agency was growing and we were fulfilling on our commitments, we were doing so kind of at a lack of attention to the speakers. They were getting what they promised, but we just weren't the love maybe wasn't as much there. That's actually one of the things that we're working on right now in trying to really understand and fit somebody in to oversee and really own those accounts, like really own those speakers. And so that they do feel the love and that if they don't hear from us, they know that we're still working on their behalf because they are going to hear from us by having somebody really concentrated just on them with their needs and their stages, while we still have somebody else kind of growing the agency and filling in those stages for those speakers as well. Yeah. It looks like you're going the route of probably an account manager in the future somewhere where these people are just taking care of your clients on an ongoing basis, and you just hit the nail on the head by saying that when sometimes we're not communicating, even the work is happening in the background. Our good friend Josh Nelson says this all the time, that usually clients leave because of perceived indifference. Even though you guys are doing everything that you promised, they just don't know about it, and they're not given that visual. And I think an account manager inside an agency usually does a good job. If you find the right person again. Right. Like who's really excited and pumped up about this stuff, then they can come in and they can hold clients hands, like you said, walk them through the process, take care of them, make them feel special, which I'd like to feel special, too. So especially if, like, we in Reptac, for example. And I know a lot of my clients are planning similar schedules over the next one year and stuff where we're planning on going to seven different cities and during these events over the next one event, a month or something like that we recently did at World and spend a ton of money on that. Right? Yeah, we've identified a few. But having a team like yours on the back end, I think would be a game changer. Right. So we will talk about that a little bit right after this. My last question, Amy, is I think you touched upon that when we first started out about making sure that you're really having fun, but I'd like to maybe just touch upon it one last time. That what's the why behind all of this, right? Why did you move from your corporate world to different agencies and then different niches and now doing this particular thing? What's the why that gets you going every single day? Oh, wow. Okay. Well, the way you asked, it made me pause a little bit because if you say what's the why behind what you're doing with authority speakers agency to me, in my heart of hearts, I can just tell you that the why behind that is kind of what I was saying earlier is like we've got good people in this world. Those people are the ones that need to be showcasing their message and we've got positive messages in the world and it doesn't have to be like a motivational talk like kind of like what I give it can be a business talk too. But you are changing lives, right, agency owners? You are changing lives. You are helping businesses grow. You essentially are helping them live a more fulfilling life, maybe less stressful, et cetera. So you have that positive message to be on stage and so the why behind that is so simple for me and it's that is that there are good people in this world with positive messages, with programs and companies that can do better for the world in a lot of different senses. And so let's get those messages on stages. And so that's the why really behind that? If you would have asked me why did I start high rise promotions or vet marketing agency or whatever, I probably could have given you some sort of canned response, but I don't know that I would have felt it right. Maybe that's something to think about as agency owners too is like just ask yourself the question that I just got asked and say, can I really answer that question that comes from a really deep place from within and if it does, you know you're on the right path. Yeah. Amazing. Well, Amy, what we're going to do is that this podcast is going to go up on all our channels. We're going to link to your books and your website authority speaker agency as well. And thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time and it was a pleasure. Thank you. This has been the virtual assistant the Agency Growth Machine podcast by Azar Sadiqi, Co founder at Repstack. If you liked today's episode, you can find more and subscribe at Repstack co. Thank you for listening.