📧🧲 Adam Kitchen

Content Army™ 🪖

Scaling thought leadership for B2B entrepreneurs by helping them create, systemise and distribute world-class content in less than 1 hour per month.

Co-Founder

Magnet Monster

We help eCommerce brands to scale profitably with bespoke email marketing strategy and world-class design.

TML Creative Media Ltd

Designing and implementing marketing strategies for a large variety of businesses, specializing in e-commerce and B2C models.

Marketing Manager

OrganicAthleteLifestyle.com

Director Of Ecommerce

Valuelink Corporation

Head of brand development and marketing for Valuelink Corperations health & sports supplements brands across Amazon. Responsible for driving sales / growth as well as implementing and managing brand strategy.

Brand Manager

BodyActive

eCommerce and social media manager for one of the UK's largest sports supplement retailers.

- Started in customer service at 17 years old, answering dozens of queries every day on training & nutrition. 
- Moved into email marketing development, crafting a weekly Newsletter responsible for driving the highest sales day each week in the company.
- Managed all social media accounts, responsible for organic reach and content distribution
- Authored over 100 articles on training, nutrition and supplementation
- Build one of the UK's busiest discussion forums for all things training, nutrition and fitness related

I left BodyActive to pursue my dream as a kindergarten teacher in Hong Kong.

Ecommerce Marketing Manager

Co-founder at Content Army 🪖 Helping B2B leaders scale thought leadership, creating world-class content engines in less than 1 hour per month to predictably grow sales | Klaviyo Elite Partner & D2C Agency Owner

I built an eCommerce email & SMS marketing agency into the top 0.2% in the world (Klaviyo Elite Partner) exclusively through founder-led content on LinkedIn & Twitter. Now, I want to teach SaaS & agency founders to scale their businesses using the same systems with just a 1-hour time commitment per month.

Most founders know that creating content improves pipeline growth, lowers CAC and reduces sales friction. The problem?

*They think creating content takes too much time
*They don't know what content to create
*They don't have the systems to scale production
*They fear "putting themselves out there" will attract criticism (crazy! They're super intelligent entrepreneurs)
*They think creating content is low ROI


All of this is not true. You can generate leads very quickly with strong content if you know what to say and where to distribute it.

Content doesn't just generate new sales though; it also helped me achieve the following results at my email agency:


1. Launched a successful course that sold over $75k in one month with zero paid ads
2. 80% hiring success rate with candidates staying for at least 1 year (the best talent comes directly to your door)
3. Had the best SaaS and agencies desperate to partner up with me
4. Incredible friendships with fellow entrepreneurs

Content is the ultimate form of leverage in the modern creator economy.

Our team will help you unlock the compounding benefits of content marketing with less than an hour's time commitment per month (yes, 1 hour) while retaining your authentic brand voice and amplifying your thought leadership at scale.

So stop procrastinating on creating content and let Content Army do the heavy lifting for you with our seamless fully managed service to scale production.

Schedule a quick call with me to learn more about our systems: https://calendly.com/adamkitchen

Magnet Monster has generated over $3 million in revenue exclusively through content marketing, but I NEVER expected these other 5 powerful benefits it’s also afforded to us 👇


1: Attracting Top Talent 🧲

Hiring is one of the most time-consuming and frustrating processes for many founders.

You’re not only rolling the dice when you bring on new talent but also spending a HUGE amount of time and resources trying to source the best candidates.

Content can dramatically reduce the time spent hiring by bringing the best talent directly to your door.

See my post yesterday for our full hiring process and how content is critical to it.

2: Better Partnerships 🤝

Partnerships are the lifeblood of many service providers.

Creating effective partnerships is a tiring yet imperative part of running an agency.

Thought leadership will reduce your need for outreach and make the best agencies and SaaS companies come directly to YOUR DOOR.

And it’s not just measly revenue share or expecting you to shill their products that these partners are after.

They want to collaborate with you on a deeper level  through co-marketing, events and strategy.

Your audience is massive leverage to creating deeper, more effective partnerships that enhance pipeline velocity.

3: Keynote Speaking 📢

Before creating content, I’d never had the opportunity to speak at an event in my life.

I’ve now helped host a DTCX event in Miami with Gorgias, ran a panel discussion in Klaviyo’s offices in London with their whole team and last month spoke with industry leaders in Dublin at a sold-out event.

The amount of people who have also approached me directly at these events to say how impactful my content has been as well has genuinely blown me away.

Not to mention the countless podcasts I’ve been invited to due to posting consistently.

It’s had a massive impact on brand awareness and our pipeline growth.

4: Selling Digital Assets 🛒

Last year, I released my long-awaited email marketing course.

It did over $75,000 in the first month with zero paid ads.

While it’s still passively generating income each month with a few sales, it’s opened my eyes to the MASSIVE upside digital assets can have for your business.

It’s also created a powerful flywheel effect where people keep talking about me on social.

Content has been the master key to opening this revenue stream and without it, this wouldn’t have scaled.

5: Amazing Friendships 🫂

Saving the best until last: 

Some of my best friends were made off the back of people who reached out to me on LinkedIn.

I’m truly grateful and blessed to have these people in my life.

Would they have discovered me without posting? Not a chance.


_______



That was lesson #4 of 29 in turning Magnet Monster into a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies behind growing my second agency with sales, marketing & systems.


#digitalagency #contentmarketing

Adam Kitchen 🪖

I built an eCommerce email & SMS marketing agency into the top 0.2% in the world (Klaviyo Elite Partner) exclusively through organic content marketing on LinkedIn & Twitter. Now, I want to teach other agency leaders and SaaS founders to scale their businesses using the same systems with just a 1-hour time commitment per month.

Most founders know that creating content improves pipeline growth, lowers CAC and reduces sales friction. The problem?

*They think creating content takes too much time
*They don't know what content to create
*They don't have the systems to scale production
*They fear "putting themselves out there" will attract criticism (crazy! They're super intelligent entrepreneurs)
*They think creating content is low ROI


All of this is not true. You can generate leads very quickly with strong content if you know what to say and where to distribute it.

Content doesn't just generate new sales though; it also helped me achieve the following results at my email agency:


1. Launched a successful course that sold over $75k in one month with zero paid ads
2. 80% hiring success rate with candidates staying for at least 1 year (the best talent comes directly to your door)
3. Had the best SaaS and agencies desperate to partner up with me
4. Incredible friendships with fellow entrepreneurs

Content is the ultimate form of leverage in the modern creator economy.

Our team will help you unlock the compounding benefits of content marketing with less than an hour's time commitment per month (yes, 1 hour) while retaining your authentic brand voice and amplifying your thought leadership at scale.

So stop procrastinating on creating content and let Content Army do the heavy lifting for you with our seamless fully managed service to scale production.

Schedule a quick call with me to learn more about our systems: https://calendly.com/adamkitchen

Today, I'm handing over the keys to the most prized asset I've developed at Magnet Monster to Wiehan Britz & Karthik Subramanian: our Newsletter.

I believe every agency or B2B founder should start a newsletter, and these are the reasons why:

1. Intimate relationship with subscribers

Contrary to belief, you don't need a huge audience to make running a newsletter worthwhile.

We've got less than 4,000 subscribers (I've always been frustrated by the growth) over the last 2 years, but the amount of messages I receive from people who eagerly await each weekly edition tells me that the intent of content consumption is unparalleled.

2. Monetizable asset

Yesterday I shared how we generated over $70,000 from our audience in 1 month when we released our course.

The lion's share of that revenue came from a small, dedicated audience over email and continues to do so to this day.

I've never sold out to SaaS companies or plastered affiliate links in the newsletter. Nothing against those who do but it never felt natural to me. How I treat our subscribers is paramount.

However, if you're building your own newsletter, this is another lucrative avenue you can leverage to increase income for your business.

3. Leverage over partnerships

SaaS companies are constantly banging down the door to be included in our newsletter.

Want to know what I expect in return for featuring them? It's not paid placements, it's leads for our agency and highly contextual content for our subscribers that will make them better email marketers.

We intend to keep it this way with the new team running the show.


I won't lie, this is a nervous moment for me. I deeply value everybody who's subscribed and I know I had an army of fans who loved my content.

But they won't be let down by Wiehan & Karthik. In fact, both of these gents are more than well equipped to INCREASE the value to our subscribers, as they're on the cusp of the technology disrupting our industry every day.

So if you haven't yet subscribed, now is your time to do so as the volume of educational content we're putting our for email marketers is frightening.


_____________


That was lesson #20 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency.

Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #emailmarketing

I built an eCommerce email & SMS marketing agency into the top 0.2% in the world (Klaviyo Elite Partner) exclusively through organic content marketing on LinkedIn & Twitter. Now, I want to teach SaaS & agency founders to scale their businesses using the same systems with just a 1-hour time commitment per month.

Most founders know that creating content improves pipeline growth, lowers CAC and reduces sales friction. The problem?

*They think creating content takes too much time
*They don't know what content to create
*They don't have the systems to scale production
*They fear "putting themselves out there" will attract criticism (crazy! They're super intelligent entrepreneurs)
*They think creating content is low ROI


All of this is not true. You can generate leads very quickly with strong content if you know what to say and where to distribute it.

Content doesn't just generate new sales though; it also helped me achieve the following results at my email agency:


1. Launched a successful course that sold over $75k in one month with zero paid ads
2. 80% hiring success rate with candidates staying for at least 1 year (the best talent comes directly to your door)
3. Had the best SaaS and agencies desperate to partner up with me
4. Incredible friendships with fellow entrepreneurs

Content is the ultimate form of leverage in the modern creator economy.

Our team will help you unlock the compounding benefits of content marketing with less than an hour's time commitment per month (yes, 1 hour) while retaining your authentic brand voice and amplifying your thought leadership at scale.

So stop procrastinating on creating content and let Content Army do the heavy lifting for you with our seamless fully managed service to scale production.

Schedule a quick call with me to learn more about our systems: https://calendly.com/adamkitchen

“Drop bad clients quickly” is some of the worst advice I consistently see posted on LinkedIn - here’s why I think this is B/S and why you need to WORK THROUGH challenging situations.


First of all, I see many people quantify “bad clients” the wrong way.

What most agencies and freelancers mean by a bad client is somebody who doesn’t give them easy money.

They don’t like the expectations the client has or the uncomfortable questions they ask after agreeing to the work.

Here’s the harsh truth: there is no blue ocean of “easy clients” out there.

ALL clients are hard work and bring their own unique challenges.

If there was a huge pool of easy money out there, we’d all be rich.

Running a business is a tough, highly emotive experience where tension runs high and nobody is affected more by this than the founder themselves.

If you’re not able to service these businesses, you’re never going to scale your agency or personal income.

Because the overwhelming majority of businesses are fighting hard to be profitable, uphold a strong brand image and convey their messaging to a high standard, and if you’re being paid to service these businesses, that expectation is going to fall upon you to deliver.

What most agencies mean when they say “bad clients”, therefore, is an inability on their behalf to carry out the hard work expected of them by the founders.

So if you’re constantly looking to cull bad clients, you’re never going to develop the problem-solving capabilities needed to drive true growth and build the resilience needed to create a great business.

And the better your problem-solving skills and resilience, the more value you deliver to future businesses and the more money you can charge.

So think about this next time you label somebody a “bad client” - maybe you just aren’t capable of delivering the hard work you signed up for?

If that’s the case, you either need to recruit better talent to deliver the service or you don’t have the margin to deliver what you promised and it’s frustrating you.

Both of these are your problems, NOT the clients.


P.S - all of this is VERY different to clients who pay invoices late/don’t pay at all, have toxic communication patterns or are woefully disorganised. These are definitely BAD clients you should cull immediately.

___

That was lesson #2 of 29 in turning Magnet Monster into a 7-figure agency.  Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies behind growing my second agency with sales, marketing & systems.


#emailmarketing #digitalagency

Hiring & retaining staff is a source of misery for most agencies but at Magnet Monster, we have over an 80% success rate with new hires who go on to stay at the company for at least a year - here are the 2 primary reasons why 👇


1: Thought-leadership content 📢

I am constantly flooded with hot talent in my LinkedIn & Twitter DMs who want to work at our company because they personally follow me and can't stop ingesting my content.

This has saved our agency a massive amount of time, mental energy and money as the best candidates present themselves to us before we even create a job post.

It also attracts people with the right kind of attitude that we KNOW are chomping at the bit to work with us.

If you solely equate content creation with inbound lead generation, you're missing out on the COLOSSAL advantage this gives you when hiring in the job market.

2: Bulletproof hiring process 📝

It's almost embarrassing to say this now but previously, I would hop on a call with somebody and do a vibe check and if I liked them, would hire them and hope for the best.

I realised this wasn't scaleable or sensible in the long term, so Wiehan Britz set out to create a failproof system that would drastically reduce underperformers coming into the agency.

Here's a high-level overview of that process:

Step 1: Application form submission connected to our internal hiring pipeline system (via ClickUp)
Step 2: Screening exercise
Step 3: Pre-recorded video screening interview (via Hireflix)
Step 4: Shortlist candidates
Step 5: Short introduction interview call
Step 6: Paid test
Step 7: Job offer with probationary period

We now have a dense repository to pull from every time we need to fill a position and Hireflix has been great for testing somebody's ability to think on the spot.

-------


However, as good as this system has been, I have learnt that sometimes you just do not know how somebody will perform until they start the role. 3 critical pieces of advice here (I've F***d up big time on these in the past):

1. Throw EVERYTHING at ensuring they have a great onboarding experience and ease them in *relatively* slowly (especially in the agency world)
2. That feeling in your gut that they're not a good fit? It will NOT go away (remove fast if it's evident there is a personality trait that won't mesh well with your culture)
3. Make sure there is a probationary period - some people will make a great first impression and then for whatever reason their performance will dip dramatically over 90 days.


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That was lesson #3 of 29 in turning Magnet Monster into a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies behind growing my second agency with sales, marketing & systems each day.

#emailmarketing #digitalagency

Replacing weekly meetings with Loom recordings will increase your level of client churn - it's a TERRIBLE idea and this is why 👇


First of all, most clients DO NOT watch the Loom recordings you send to them.

Trust me on this and check the stats. Most of them will watch around 25% of the video at 2 X speed, missing lots of context in the process.

It's a false economy that you're saving time as well - because they don't have the full context (as they don't watch the recordings), you're inadvertently increasing your workload as they chase you for things down the line you've already explained.

A weekly meeting is mandatory for me for many reasons.

1. You build personal relationships much more effectively
2. It's a two-way conversation, not 1-way, leading to better alignment
3. It creates accountability for BOTH parties: you have to demonstrate value, and the client has to show their commitment to the process and prove real-time feedback


The key to making weekly meetings effective is to get straight to the damn points and not waste time talking about the weather.

I like the following format for weekly meetings for performance-based marketing agencies:

1. Here's what we've been working on in the past week and what we learned
2. Here's what we're working on this week
3. Here's what we need from you to ensure we keep making progress

Allocate 5 minutes to each section maximum and go deeper if questions arise.

Make them 15 minutes instead of 30 as well and trust me, you'll start to see the value in these and client happiness will go up significantly.

Agree or disagree with me on this one?


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That was lesson #10 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

Hiring the right person for the job is 100 times more important than having SOPs in place.


Before we hired Wiehan Britz as our Head of Operations at Magnet Monster, embarrassingly, most of the company was managed in mine and 🪖 Andrew Langhorn's head.

We then embarked on creating what many people who have worked for us described as THE most rigorous and detailed SOPs they've ever seen in their lives.

It's arguable at times we've even overinvested in creating SOPs to the point where it's overwhelmed people new to the company.

But while I strongly believe in the importance of a stellar onboarding experience for new hires, it's becoming more difficult to make the case for investing heavily in SOPs due to the sheer pace of change from technology disrupting digital marketing.

Around 80% of what was a month long project for me just over 2 years ago for new strategists, is now obsolete.

While the fundamental principles of how to approach managing brands strategically may remain the same, the actual "how-to's" are largely outdated and archaic due to technology changes or simply now an inefficient way of doing things.

That's why I firmly believe that hiring for a "can-do" attitude is 1million times more important than having SOPs in place.

I love people who love Google and getting their hands dirty rather than moaning about how an SOP wasn't available so they couldn't do the task.

It's difficult to gauge this type of personality trait during the hiring process until somebody actually starts. But you'll quickly see if they possess it in the first few weeks of their employment.

And if they don't, I'd advise you to cut your losses as it's going to cost you a lot of time and energy down the line, depending on the position that they hold.

_______


That was lesson #6 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency


SaaS & agency relationships are fundamentally broken at their core -- here's how agency owners can take control and gain more leverage when working with SaaS companies.

Over the last 5 years, I can count on one hand (maybe two fingers...) the amount of partner managers who have added genuine value to Magnet Monster.

And that's because most SaaS companies view agencies solely as a source of leads.

Truth be told, I bet a lot of them also resent paying us that measly rev share as well as it erodes their profit margins to deliver to their customers.

But there's one weapon in your arsenal that can completely flip the script on its head and have them chasing YOU.

It's having a ready-made audience and personal brand that they want to tap into.

Trust me when I say this: if you have a moat around your business through thought leadership content, the best SaaS companies will go out of their way to build relationships with you.

This includes sending you leads and investing in other co-marketing opportunities as well.

And if you really want to use your audience as a form of leverage, bring collaborative content ideas to your next meeting and put pressure on the tech partner to share audiences and commit to adding value to the ecosystem with you.

There are a lot of strategies that work well for building better relationships with tech partners (I have a vid coming out soon on my YT channel going deep on this) but I can't think of a better strategic move than already having an audience across social and your owned channels that they want to tap into.


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That was lesson #8 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

Before hiring another person to fill a vacant role, first ask yourself: "Is there somebody who could already do this job in my company?"

This has been a power move for Magnet Monster over the years that has been unparalleled for our culture.

I believe there are several advantages to promoting from within as opposed to hiring externally.

Firstly, hiring is mentally intensive and there is no guarantee of success. You're essentially rolling the dice no matter how strong your process is to mitigate the risk of a bad hire.

Secondly, promoting from within will give the rewarded individual a MASSIVE morale boost and light a fire under them to prove themselves.

When I recently stepped down as the CEO of Magnet Monster, one of the problems we had would be who would replace Wiehan Britz's day-to-day operational management of the client success portion of the business.

"Hannerie Burden" was Wiehan's instant response.

I knew Hannerie was crushing the account management side of her role over the past year but Wiehan had the foresight she could step up and take over some of his key responsibilities.

That then left me with strategic tech partnerships, something I know is critical for the future of our industry but I'd been doing a bad job of.

It was evident that one of our strategists, Bogdan Birtom was on fire since the start of the year and desperate to take the next step up. He's now our Head of Strategy Innovation: a dedicated role we created to be on the cusp of the technology currently disrupting our industry.

Seeing how both have them have relished the increased responsibility immediately, combined with the admiration their teammates have for them, has reaffirmed my belief that you should always first look within before bringing somebody on externally.

Think about that before you make your next hire!

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That was lesson #5 of 29 in turning Magnet Monster into a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies behind growing my second agency with sales, marketing & systems.

#emailmarketing #ecommerce

Ask this 1 question during dedicated 1:1 check-ins with your team: "If you could change one thing in the company tomorrow to make it a better place to work, what would it be?"

At Magnet Monster last year, we completely changed the trajectory of our company by swiftly acting upon feedback from our team that the sheer velocity and last-minute changes to email campaigns were leading to other critical work being deprioritised for clients.

This was causing an overwhelming backlog of important work that was affecting our relationships with clients.

Wiehan Britz once again came to the rescue by working with the team to develop a brilliant system whereby we now have dedicated service owners for flows & campaigns.

The backlog instantly started to clear, clients became happier, and staff had lazer-like focus and ownership of key areas.

I write this because as an agency owner, it can sometimes feel like you have no space to breathe when you're putting out fires for clients every single day.

It's easy to fall into a "business as usual" "this is just the way the agency world is" mindset when you can't see light at the end of the tunnel.

But what if things well and truly could be better? And that you're just procrastinating on changing the system because you're so used to the status quo?

This is why I believe it's imperative you create dedicated time to check in with individuals on your team away from the day-to-day grind to get critical feedback on what could run more efficiently within your organisation.

The truth is often going to hurt but that is the best type of feedback you can receive as it will lead to the most significant changes.

IF you act upon the feedback.

After all, if something is fundamentally broken, it's your job to fix it. Claiming it's just meant to be a sh*tty experience for all involved is a business heading in the wrong direction, both for its clients and the team implementing the work each day.

_____________


That was lesson #7 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #emailmarketing

Doing everything to please a client will lead to burnout, an unprofitable relationship and ultimately, churn.

This is something that I've wrestled with dramatically over the years with Magnet Monster and I think deeply affects a lot of agency owners as well.

You WANT to go the extra mile to please clients. And you should - within reason.

But far too often I've seen this stray too far, and before you know it you're sat on Slack at midnight being a sounding board for their problems with their business or misplaced anger at their own deficiencies.

Don't be that person.

Instead, set VERY CLEAR BOUNDARIES from the beginning on what the following looks like:


*Communication: when you're available and how frequently you'll be checking in
*Revisions: what the process looks like and how many you get before a surcharge kicks in (no, you don't get 47 revisions for free)
*Scope of the project: if you're signed up to do email marketing, don't start auditing their ads account as a favour. It's unfair and not what you're being paid for


Of course, we all want our clients to win -- but you also need your own business to win as well.

If you're being pulled around like a puppet on strings, you're doing to end up resenting the client and looking to replace them.

That's bad for both parties so nip it in the bud at the beginning of the relationship before it becomes a problem.

Intelligent business owners don't like working with those they can push around and not challenge them.


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That was lesson #11 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

Around 50% of clients churn because they don't see enough value in your service - this "weekly win" update tactic is a mandatory, 10-minute task we share every Monday to help retain clients at Magnet Monster.

It's as simple as this:

1. Track your work
2. Analyse the results
3. Share it with the client and summarize your findings in a Slack channel each Monday


It sounds too simple to be considered good advice but I've found it critical and something I constantly reiterate to our strategists.

Firstly, so much of agency work is constant firefighting, especially if you're in eCommerce.

It's very easy to become entrenched in busy work rather than focusing on purposeful tasks that move the needle (which is what the client signs up for).

Even if you are getting great results, you'll be surprised how bad of a job agencies do at conveying their value to clients and how unaware they are of what's going on.

Secondly, pausing to reflect upon your own work is critical for self-development.

You can't purposefully improve if you don't analyse your strategy and iterate upon your learnings.

Sharing wins is also a great morale booster for the team and time for reflection.

So this task is a win-win for both parties.

Doing it first thing on a Monday is a great way to build momentum and set the tone for the week ahead.

Trust me, it's very hard to cut services with somebody who is constantly trying to learn and be better on your account.

Make it run like clockwork for your agency and thank me later.


______



That was lesson #12 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

"Training is the boss' job and the highest leverage activity a manager can do to increase the output of an organisation."

I live and die by this quote from Andy Gove, former CEO of Intel when managing my agencies.

In his book High Output Management, Gove gives the example how if a manager spends 12 hours preparing training for 10 team members that increases their output by 1% on average, the result is 200 hours of increased output from the 10 employees (each works about 2000 hours a year).

Given agencies live and die by their utilization rate, I couldn't think of a more impactful activity than increasing your team's skill to deliver high-quality work for the clientele under your roster.

One thing Wiehan Britz has done a fantastic job at Magnet Monster with is empowering "product owners" who conduct regular training and show-and-tell sessions.

We treat these like product owners in SaaS, whereby we have campaign owners, flow owners, design owners, etc, each responsible for conducting training & workshops frequently with the team.

Not only has the quality of our output improved dramatically over the last year, but the team morale and culture is sky-high.

If you aren't yet investing heavily in training, what's holding you back? It's the ultimate form of leverage for your service-based business.


____________


That was lesson #21 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency.

Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!



#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

The quality of your onboarding will determine the length of your relationship with a client - here's how to nail it every single time.

At Magnet Monster, I've seen every possible scenario over the years - The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.

One commonality between the clients we've retained the longest is that we've ALWAYS absolutely crushed the onboarding process.

1 brand owner we've been working with for 18 months now told me: "I knew it was going to be epic based on the very first discovery session we had and how much you had researched our brand already".

He wasn't kidding; it was 2 full days of intensive research, deep diving into every customer review, Shopify metric and GA report.

But we've also gotten onboarding horribly wrong over the years as well. And even when myself, 🪖 Andrew Langhorn & Wiehan Britz jumped in to salvage the relationship, it usually didn't help as impressions had already been formed and churn was just a matter of time.

Here are our core principles for crushing the onboarding experience:


1. Gather as much historical data as possible and let it guide your questions: you need to understand the macro metrics that determine the health of your client's business to ensure you're able to put together a coherent strategy aligned with their interests.

2. Get all assets upfront: nothing kills onboarding momentum more than having to chase a client down the line for brand assets needed to create mock-ups and creative ideation.

3. Execute fast: speed and time to value will win you back an enormous amount of respect and patience down the line should anything ever break.

4. Ask as many questions as humanely possible: DO NOT GUESS - brands hate it when you put forward a strategy or design that is completely misaligned to their expectations. It's a wasted effort for you and also time for them. ASK UPFRONT to make sure there's no ambiguity that you're on the right track.

5. Set clear boundaries: you need to set a consistent pattern of communication and what's acceptable early on. This includes revisions, messaging times and check-ins. Respect is a two-way street.


We'll be releasing our FULL ONBOARDING system in time at Magnet Monster for other agencies to learn from. Make sure you're subscribed to our Newsletter as it'll be some time next month.



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That was lesson #9 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency. Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!

#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

If you run an agency delivering a specialised service (i.e. email marketing), excessively worrying about churn will kill your company.

This is coming from somebody who was/is OBSESSED with client fulfilment, to the detriment of my own company's health at times.

One of the reasons I decided to step down as the CEO of Magnet Monster was in fact that I believe my obsession over the past 2 years to relentlessly optimise around our existing clientele put the company in a vulnerable position on many occasions.

Here's an example from one previous end-of-year review where we lost 4 clients heading into the New Year:


*Client 1 decided to move things in-house as it was more cost-effective for their business model
*Client 2 just had a terrible year and slashed marketing costs (including us)
*Client 3 decided to migrate to another agency
*Client 4 went through a restructuring that didn't involve us in their plans


In all scenarios, I considered us to have excellent relationships with the aforementioned clients and delivered stellar work.

It didn't matter as the churn was outside of my control.

Yes, we could have cut our pricing to possibly retain them, but that's only going to undermine our service and lead to resentment.

Want to know what put all of this churn into perspective and helped me sleep better at night?

Sitting down with Wiehan Britz & 🪖 Andrew Langhorn and hearing them say the words: "we need to focus more seriously on lead generation and be more pragmatic about churn."

I knew this was true but I'd just gotten too comfortable with the level we were operating at and had unrealistic dreams about running an agency where we could work with the same core group of clients indefinitely.

Reshifting our focus to serious lead generation and sales has seen us get back to making some serious profits again in the last 6 months.

And here's something even more interesting: we've never seen an influx in new sales correlate to increased churn.

In fact, it helps us deliver even more efficient, specialised knowledge to our existing clients, as the quality and breadth of our experience increases.

I put this down to the discovery of and fluency of new technology as well as interacting with other skilled operators and discovering new business models which has a net benefit to our existing roster of clients.

"Sales cures all" is a bit of a tired mantra, but hell, I'd have to say it's certainly a powerful antidote to the short-term pain of churn if you're focused on the right things.


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That was lesson #17 of 29 in scaling Magnet Monster to a 7-figure agency.

Follow me Adam Kitchen 🪖 as I dissect the strategies and processes we're using to scale our second agency in under a year to the same revenue with a different lesson each day!


#digitalagency #b2bmarketing

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