How 514 Digital Wins Agency Clients Through Government RFPs

0:00 · Full service growth agency for 6 to 8 figure brands

Jordan Lally:0:00
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems podcast. Everyone, please welcome one and only Mr. Syed. Syed, how are you doing today, man? Happy Friday.

Syed Mahad:0:09
thank you for having me, Jordan. I'm doing really good.

Jordan Lally:0:11
Yes, sir. Now before we dive into, you know, what the company does and essentially all the the fun tactics that you guys have there, can we get some quick oversight as to essentially yeah, sure what the company is and who you guys best serve?

Syed Mahad:0:25
okay, so five and four digital is a full stack e commerce and digital marketing agency. So we have a small team spread out across design, development, e commerce management. So that includes your either your Amazon account, your Shopify store, or any of your Walmart or eBay store.

And then a small team for social media creative and just AI automation workflows. So we're trying to become a full service partner. So you know, companies doing six, seven, or eight figures, they don't have to hire, you know, multiple freelancers or multiple vendors. They just hire one single growth partner and we're responsible and accountable for all of your growth across all digital channels.

Jordan Lally:1:02
I think working with a full service agency in that perspective is significantly easier because it's one one account manager, we'll call it, or if it's you know, maybe different people that serve different ex different people that have different expertise, it's a part of the same company and not company X, company Y, company Z. I find that approach to be a bit a bit easier. But before we dive into how that was structured, some mistakes and some s successes along the way.

What is the the background story on you, my friend? Are you born here in the States or?

Syed Mahad:1:36
no, so I am born and raised in Pakistan. I came to the US around eight years ago. I came here for grad school. So I went to Northeastern. I did my master's in project management. But before coming here, I already had a marketing agency in Pakistan. It was it it went by a different name. So we know we already had the experience and we are still working with the biggest brands in Pakistan, like Sprite, for example, Sprite Pakistan. But that was more focused on a lot more focused on social media, video editing, photo shoots.

VFX, you know, animation, motion graphics, that sort of stuff. And it wasn't more towards e-commerce or, you know, web development and that sort of thing. So the reason that I came here was because my parents wanted me to get, of course, like every every other, especially South Asian they see parents, they want the kid to have like really good education, right? So I would did my undergrad in Pakistan. It was bachelors in business administration with a majors in marketing.

But then I came here for grad school. I did bachelor's in project management with a focus towards agile scrum methodology. It's more towards software development. And then immediately when I graduated, I went back to you know the the marketing thing because that was I was doing all doing that already. But by that time, I actually had my own brand on Amazon, which I sold for like a small sum back in the day. And we were doing a lot of freelancer jobs on these you know these small platforms like fiver upwork and that's how we really started and then eventually it was skill you know if you're doing social media for a for a client they would ask us you know hey do you guys do websites or you know do you guys do SEO and that you know it just sort of brought out the idea that you know hey I should have all these services in-house and I should start forming my own team instead of just you know referring out to clients which I used to do a lot of the time and we still do for a lot of maybe you know other higher tier jobs that we can do.

2:00 · Starting an agency in Pakistan and grad school at Northeastern

Jordan Lally:2:54
Yeah.

Syed Mahad:3:19
But that's how it originally started. And then I moved to from Boston to Houston is because I knew that I had very little money and I knew it would go a long way in you know in in in over here in Houston as compared to in in Boston, which is really expensive.

Jordan Lally:3:33
Absolutely. Yeah. Boston is probably one of the mo top five most expensive cities.

Syed Mahad:3:37
Yeah, but it's a great place to live though. If you're making really good money, you know, it it's a really great place to live.

Jordan Lally:3:42
For sure. out of curiosity, so completed masters here, went back to the agency because like, dude, I'm making money with this. Why would I stop doing this? did do you feel like let me ask this. Was was getting your masters like a gateway to like, dude, like going going to the States? And you're like, I'm I'm gonna do that.

Syed Mahad:3:48
Is it?

Syed Mahad:4:05
that is a that's a good question. And yes it was as well. I knew that you know we'd be able to expand a lot more aggressively if I came here to the state. So we're three founders originally. It's not just me. So it's it's I'm here. there's another founder in Pakistan, so because someone needs to be there to manage the Pakistan office, right? We gotta make sure the employees come in on time, you know, the work quality is excellent, and someone needs to be there on ground. And then we have another one who's based in the UK.

Jordan Lally:4:17
Okay.

4:30 · Operating a global team across US UK and Pakistan

Syed Mahad:4:32
So that way we're able to, you know, we we're able to get projects from the US, from Pakistan and from the UK at the same time while keeping our Pakistan and US clients happy. So that's how it originally started. But then again, the goal wasn't always to to expand here. I always wanted to, you know, hire and better education. And that's why I originally came here. But the good thing was above the two year program that I was able to do it in one year, I talked to my academic advisor. I was like, Hey, you know, I have a lot of free time because I won't do I wasn't doing any part time job or full time job at the site since international students aren't allowed to do that. So I w I wanna speed up my my my program, right? I wanna do it, I wanna get it done quickly so I can back I can get back to you know managing the managing the age agency. And he allowed me to do it quicker. So I graduated in one year, I really good GPA, and I actually worked for a a few months in another company called Pliancy as a as a as a scrum master. But then, you know, I stopped and then just went back to the agency model.

Jordan Lally:5:25
Got it. That's a very interesting and thanks for your transparency.

Syed Mahad:5:27
I know, it's it's a good combo, right? Project management and marketing and I'm PNP certified too. So I was actually scaling my project management career, but then again, I knew I never wanted, you know, to devote full time to it. So I went back into the HC model. Plus the clients that we already had, they were, you know, just screaming at our ears because of course they're paying a good money for that. So you gotta go back to it.

Jordan Lally:5:49
No, makes total sense. Can't let that down, right? For the company in UK and back in Pakistan, are they the same operations? Meaning like it's four e com companies and it's full service for e-com for D to C. Or do you do certain articles with the different

Syed Mahad:6:03
So okay, so originally we've been at this thing for I think since twenty thirteen. And our original team that we founded, again, it's for animations, VFX, social media marketing, creative, brand identity, design. And after 2017 to 2018, we started, I know I started building the the e-commerce team.

You I partnered up with really, really good people in Pakistan. They had like ten, fifteen, twenty years of experience, much more experienced than me in the e com space. And they knew that I might be able to get, you know, US based clients here. Since I'm present here, we have an office here, we have employees here, we have the portfolio to back it up. And you know, they were very interested in partnering up.

So we're able to handle those senior, you know, seven, eight figure Amazon accounts, which there's a lot more accountability. It's really technical. Because Amazon itself is like a completely different thing, you completely completely different space. You can't have someone who does social media marketing or video editing into Amazon. You know, it's just completely different. You gotta have one or two dedicated people just doing Amazon at this time. It's so hard because of the low margins. So that's how you know we originally started.

And then again, we don't have hundreds of people across these divisions, just like three to five people across, you know, video editing, social media, development, PPC managers, SEO. And that helps helps help us keep, you know, keep it really lean, that we we don't get overburdened. And you know, we manage fewer accounts, but then we pay proper you know attention to those accounts so we're able to produce better quality content.

Jordan Lally:7:28
Gotcha. I I wanna kinda pivot towards the strategy in in s l high level systems now. One of the topics that we have is essentially having great efficiency with very well written emails or to to keep retention high opposed to the spray and pray model. And then editor, if you're listening, you can edit this part out. Does that make sense? Do you know what what we're talking about when I say that? Does your team do up email retention or no?

Syed Mahad:7:46
Okay.

Syed Mahad:7:58
Yeah, so we do that on two or the three different ways. So let me share let me tell you how works. So me and the other two founders, we reach out to people personally, when we see they know if there's a project, if there's a fit. And that way we don't have to do, you know, custom or we don't have to do like mass email marketing. So let's say hey there's a there's a

Jordan Lally:8:03
Okay.

8:07 · Personalized outreach vs AI cold email spam

Syed Mahad:8:19
There's a post on LinkedIn of a founder, and he says that hey, I'm looking for a e-commerce growth agency or an e-commerce partner or whatever. And I can reach out to them directly via email by saying, you know, hey, my name is Sayed, I own Fibern Floyd Digital. You know, we're doing marketing for this, this, this, and this brand. We can showcase you live accounts if you want to see, you know, anything, any any life proof or data, and we welcome a formal kind of conversation. But at the same time, we are doing normal marketing, you know, tactics as well, like normal email marketing, we use Mailjet and Clavio. But those have not been as successful as I as we'd like them to be. Because a lot of those those domains they go straight to spam. You know how it is. so we'd like to you know ideally avoid those generic, you know, generic template emails. And especially if they're written by Chat GPT, you can just tell you know in an instant. So if if because I get those a lot. So I I those go straight to spam.

Jordan Lally:9:12
Absolutely. Yeah, no, there's a correct way to incorrect way. And if you allow it if you rely on AI, which is the next topic, to do like the entire job or all the work for you, just you you get no version.

Syed Mahad:9:24
Yeah, like like Jordan, think of it this way. If there's a a seven, eight figure brand and you're reaching down reaching out to them via AI, like what do you think is gonna happen? It's not gonna work. You know, put your put some effort into it, right? Do it there, do your research, look into the look into the the background of that brand, add maybe one or two lines according to that so they know that you know you're putting in some effort. Otherwise, you're just gonna get left, you know, lost in those other thousands of emails.

Jordan Lally:9:35
No exactly.

Jordan Lally:9:49
I was just talking to somebody else about this that us as marketers forget that a human is on the other side of that email or LinkedIn, LinkedIn DM or whatever. And if we take the extra, I don't know, couple of minutes, 15 minutes to think about what the proper message will be to reach out, like 15 minutes is no time at all. Yet if we take that extra 15 minutes, we can act we have such a higher probability of getting a response opposed to like the mass.

Syed Mahad:9:57
Yep.

Syed Mahad:10:06
Exactly.

Jordan Lally:10:18
spray and pray, which takes two seconds, right? And I and I think when we have like the hustler mentality, it's like I have to go, I have to go, I have to go, I have to go. But there's also a rule in business is like you have to slow down in order to speed up. And I think that's what they

Syed Mahad:10:20
Yeah.

Syed Mahad:10:31
Yeah, exactly. You you can't just reach out to two hundred brands just like a maniac. I would rather reach out to ten to fifteen brands, you know, but do research on them, look into them, check their background, point out, you know, their obvious mistakes, just a little bit. Nothing too crazy. Like don't waste your complete time because you don't know if they're gonna reply or not. But at the same time, just look into them before, you know, just blindly blasting emails.

Jordan Lally:10:55
What with the brands that you typically help, is there a specific vertical like appeal apparel, clothing, f fashion one might say, or like kitchen gadgets or like home equipment? Is there any vertical yeah?

Syed Mahad:11:04
Mm-hmm.

Syed Mahad:11:08
okay. at this point we are working with brands all over the place. So for web design, we've done a lot for service-based brands because that's the most common, you know, roofing, plumbing, flooring, construction, that sort of thing. But for for retail and for social media, we're doing mostly for a lot of hospitality.

So like FnB brands, D2C brands who are selling on Amazon Shopify server handling the creative as well. some of are based in some are based in the SaaS industry, SaaS or legal industry. Like for example, a client is jointova. So it's a disability-based website for for you know for children with autism and you know disabilities, or another client is whoa more. they they sell luxury jewelry online. they're based in Houston. So it just spread out pretty much all over the place. If you look into our portfolio, you'll get an idea. So and and and that gives us like a unique advantage over other people, is because when there's a certain job which requires, you know, prior experience in the legal space or prior experience in the SaaS space, we have that. And it was really hard to get in there because let's assume if you're really good at DTC e-commerce, that doesn't mean you're good with handling, you know, SaaS or legal industries.

But you need that initial breakthrough project to break into that industry and that's really hard, but you can get there.

Jordan Lally:12:26
That's okay, my mistake. I th I thought I was under the impression that you only worked with D to C e com brands, but it sounds like you

Syed Mahad:12:34
No, not really. Not really. Not anymore. Like for example, in here in Houston, we have we're handling the social media SEO ads as an entire growth, one growth package for a lot of flooring and you know, the roofing companies and stuff like that. That that just makes this much more profitable as compared to just handling data C.

Jordan Lally:12:37
wh when did you come up?

12:42 · Why serving multiple verticals increases agency profit

Jordan Lally:12:54
Gotcha. And 'cause this is the hot take right now between niching down and like working with many verticals. You said it makes you more profitable. Do you mind explaining how and why?

Syed Mahad:13:04
you have to niche down if you're starting out because you have, you know, you're very limited on capital. You have no social or any sort of portfolio to back it up. But when you have the portfolio and you can back it up with proofs, claims, accounts, or whatever, and the technical knowledge, of course, you know, you're very confident in reaching out to people, especially senior brands. And the best thing about senior brands is they do very little micromanagement. They expect you to know, you know, your responsibility, which is good, which is the ideal or you know, ICP for us as well.

Instead of just working with people who, you know, pay the least and then they try to micro micromanage you every single time. But then again, you don't want to you know overburden yourself at the same time. So it's one tip, you know, like for example, one account manager or one PPC manager doesn't handle more than two accounts. So he doesn't get overburdened or you know, just blindly trying to optimize for everyone. Cause that doesn't work out anymore. It's getting harder and harder ever especially when you're managing people's ads men, it's a big responsibility.

Jordan Lally:13:58
Yeah, there's real money on the line. Absolutely.

Syed Mahad:13:59
It has real money on the line, so we you know how it is. The Slack channels are blowing up every time.

Jordan Lally:14:04
No, for sure, for sure. Okay, that actually makes a lot of sense. and you say it makes you more profitable because simply you can help more businesses, I I imagine, right?

Syed Mahad:14:14
Yeah. Plus you can reach out to more people, right? Like for example, there's an A B C roofing brand. You can say, Hey, you know, way we helped, you know, Florida roofing get to number one place on Google via ads, SEO and this and this and this, and we made the website. Here are the proof, here are the results. You can reach out to the owner if you want to. Here's the number. Boom. You know, they they book a meeting just like that. It's really easy.

Jordan Lally:14:34
I wanna t I wanna actually talk to you about the early days, bro. I feel like the early days versus like the later days. I feel like there's so there's so much so many nuggets in the early days.

Syed Mahad:14:44
It doesn't get any easier though, because the more clients you have, the more responsibility you have. But yeah, it does get slightly less crazy as compared to the early days.

Jordan Lally:14:53
With the early days, did you work for free to build up to build up that portfolio? Did you work for super cheap because you'd like never do anything for free? Or I guess what was your process, if you don't mind?

Syed Mahad:15:01
That's a good question. So it goes two ways. So when I was in Pakistan, we still didn't work for free because I thank God. I'm blessed by God to come from a healthy background. I had the opportunity the money and the opportunity and the contacts to start our original agency with with you know with with capital. So we had, you know, the the equipment, the video cameras and the team to back it up. So we could go into different restaurants, do their shoots, do the handle the social media, the creative. So we didn't definitely do anything for free. And same as here in the US, especially for hospitality brands, it's they're a lot bigger in Pakistan as compared to the US, which is a shocking I know that for example a third world country is doing better in hospitality as compared to Pakistan as compared to the US, but just that's just how it is. For free, I wouldn't say no. I wouldn't say yes, but we I did have a really low row late, low rate. It was like six to seven dollars an hour when I started off these on these flee ransoming platforms.

But then again, again, you know, I was able to partner up with a lot of people. So that just you know made the process a little bit smoother and the journey a little bit easier. But you cannot start, you know, with $50 an hour or $75 or $145 an hour with no portfolio to back it up. So but when you have that, you know, it's it definitely gets easier. So if you're starting out, I would still never say do it for free because you know, then again, brands will just use you. They'll take your free knowledge, your free data, and just throw you away.

So I wouldn't do that. You know, respect yourself, but at least but don't go overboard. Know your words. So let's start off with maybe just five hundred dollars just to, you know, build that brand presence, that portfolio, those reviews, which are really important. And that knowledge essentially. And then, you know, just very slow, slowly scale it up.

Jordan Lally:16:45
I think when you work for free and you go above and beyond and then they walk all over you, it like hurts your soul.

Syed Mahad:16:51
Yeah, exactly. You can't do that. We've I've been there. I I've done projects for like Sadium, you know, a really complex website for fifty pages. this is twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, by the way, and for let's zoom a thousand dollars and it just crushed me because the amount of work that you know that I did and didn't get the you know the the the amount of money that I deserved and you know because I didn't know it bit better at that time, so I know it it sucks.

Jordan Lally:17:20
I'm actually curious to know about you said you had an Amazon age company, you eventually sold that, it was acquired. What was the process like? Because obviously, you know, in order for a company to acquire you, they're not gonna acquire you if you're losing money. So what what what what what did you sell and like what was that process like for you, my man?

Syed Mahad:17:34
Yeah.

Syed Mahad:17:38
Okay, so I started selling in the UK. it was a product in the the the gifting categories was basically one of those, you know, those small green leaves, those fake leaves that you apply. this is like way back, this is like eight, nine years back. that you use on birthday parties and you just like decoration and stuff. So I started that, it didn't work out at all. You know, I got completely blasted. I lost a lot of money, like I think I lost like seven, eight thousand dollars, which was a lot of money for me at that time. It still is.

17:41 · Launching and selling an Amazon brand for agency capital

Jordan Lally:17:53
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:17:57
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:18:02
It's funny.

Jordan Lally:18:08
It's still

Syed Mahad:18:08
But at at that time it still is, but at that time it was like an insane amount of money. That was like all my money that I I had at that time. And I borrowed from my parents. I didn't know I wasn't out of pocket or anything. So I got blasted from my parents or like, you know, what the hell are you doing? But then again, I feel like that's good, especially when you're entering in the deep in the e commerce space, and especially Amazon. It's absolutely brutal. If you don't know your maths and your mathematics and you know and your margins, you know, and you aren't on point on that, you're gonna get crushed. So I then I started another brand, and this was in a a lot more a lot more focused, you can say. We had a you know, we did a lot of PPC approach, you know, predictable predictability analysis and stuff like that before we launched it. That was basically the other part was a stone bots mat. So it's like a mat that you step on when you come out of the shower and it just absorbs all the water. That was a really good product by at that time. It still is. Even if you check the stats from helium 10 or stuff, it's it still is. You can still probably scale your brand if you have the PPC budget.

Jordan Lally:18:59
Yeah I

Syed Mahad:19:05
But that but at that time there were like less than a thousand sellers. It was like seven, eight hundred sellers. You could come in and you know, and they were like there wasn't, you know, Amazon wasn't selling in this space. There was no brand dominancy, which was really good. And the best part was there was a lot of search volume for for that specific brand with good, you know, convergence ratio. So I started that brand week. It wasn't like selling millions of dollars or anything, it was just like I think three to five thousand dollars of worth of profitability. And then I sold it because I knew that it was.

Either managing the agency or managing that brand, you know, it's very hard to do both at the same time and be good at both of them. So either you completely give it to someone else and no one will run run your brand like you do, right? So I just sold it entirely. It wasn't for like a huge amount, like like that that's $30,040,000. Nothing crazy. No five, six figures, seven figures. But that was just enough to get me started and give me more capital, you know, to invest in 514 digital and you know, do more paid media ad, hire more people, and so on and so forth.

Jordan Lally:20:02
Absolutely. No, that's that's a huge capital gain. Like if somebody gives you I I don't wanna call it a free loan, but if somebody gives you money, definitely use it to make more money.

Syed Mahad:20:09
Yeah. I sometimes regret it because I've I you know I I think that I'm I could have scaled it to like a great point. I could have sold it at a later time if I was a little less greedy, you can say, or a little bit more more patient. But then again, it everything works out for the best. So that money gave us the capital to do more ads, hire more, you know, a little bit more people here for Python Portal, especially for lead generation. That's the most, you know, sales and marketing is everything for a brand, especially when you're starting out. So you'll

Jordan Lally:20:36
Fly.

Syed Mahad:20:37
So we had dedicated dedicated people who could just reach out to people on behalf of us.

Jordan Lally:20:40
From from our experience, man, like people, like capital investor or private equity firms, venture capitalists, they they essentially like just buy the future earnings of that company. So at that point in time, you're probably battling, should I go all in with, you know, F one five here, or should I do the Amazon? And I think I think you have that answer. Even even even if they if the amount wasn't You know, a gazillion dollars. I think you already knew that answer and it wasn't scale up what you're currently doing. Or else, in my opinion, you would have you would have had tons of more brands on Amazon and scaled that up if that's what you truly wanted to do. But it sounds like you're exactly in the right place, you know?

Syed Mahad:21:18
Yep. And Yeah. And think of it this way. If you don't have a job, you still need to pay rent, insurance, everything, right? So that amount of money, thirty thousand to forty thousand dollars was still life changing for me because I knew that now I have the capital to back it up. So just thing is if my work, you know, if my company doesn't blow up, I still have that leverage, you know, at least one or two years worth of leverage. So I can still keep on you know, doing it.

Because at again, when I came to the US and now I was paying for the US office, the Pakistan office, like our you know, expense was blowing up like crazy. So I had to make sure that the revenue keeps on coming in, especially from the US clients as compared to it was a lot less focused on Pakistan clients as compared to here. So and that's what we've done. Like we've let's assume from Pakistan, we've offboarded all of our you know smaller clients. So it's just let's assume three to five really big brands now, instead of you know 20, 30 smaller brands.

And that has you know honestly helped us make us life a lot a lot more easier.

Jordan Lally:22:18
for sure man. You know, looking forward over the next I guess end of Q four, right? So end of this year and then going on to twenty twenty seven, anything in the pipeline for like new projects, new ideas, or I guess what are you guys optimizing over the next sixteen months?

Syed Mahad:22:34
here's what we're doing. We're trying to completely go off trying to work with individuals and just having a complete B2B approach. And we're trying to bid less and less on these platforms like again, Contra, Behance, Upwork, Fiverr, and all these smaller project-based websites because they're completely riddled with AI jobs at this time and it's very hard to find legitimate clients.

And we're trying to build more towards a relationship building approach in which we'd you know, hey, we you I'm based in London, or hey, I'm based in Houston, and I'd love to meet and show you my project, you know, show you my work up front, or you know, here's my work up front, check it out, and if it feels like a fit, and and we'd love to collaborate. Another thing that that has been really working out for us is just bidding on RFPs at this point. We have the capacity, the team, the you know, the the fulfillment team to back that up. So we just bid on RFPs on Sam.gov or some other, you know, up up bid or demand star. And these are really good, you know, portals where you get like, you know, bigger, you know, bids from schools or other agencies or other, you know, b bigger companies who want complete marketing services in terms of ads, SEO, social media, creative, brand management, CRM management, automating your workflows and you know just like one of this, all of this as a whole, which is like the ideal job for us at this point.

A client coming to us and paying us eight hundred dollars a month to manage their social media is not the ideal client, to be honest. Cause it's just again, it's a lot of work and we'd hate to disappoint them or have them leave like a bad review on our Google profile. So those are more more focused towards and what we're doing is me and the founders, we take care of that. So we make the RFPs ourselves because it's again too difficult and too, you know, important to mess that part up. And then we have, you know, junior level people just reach out to people doing either Mail Jaclavio or just maybe LinkedIn DMs, because we use a lot of sales navigator. But that also hasn't been working out right. So it's a it's a lot of different strategies at this point that has been working out.

22:38 · Winning 10k plus contracts with government RFPs

Jordan Lally:24:30
I'm honestly not too well versed and I don't know if the audience is well versed in RFPs. I've been watching some Hermosy videos and he has this n well, I don't want to call him new anymore, but he has a third partner with acquisition.com and his background is in RFPs. Can you explain like what that is and like how that process is from a agency standpoint?

Syed Mahad:24:51
Okay, so an RFP is like a request for proposal from a company who'd want a certain number of service, certain type of services from you. So what you can do is you can go to these websites like sam.gov. If you're a legitimate business, you know, you have the the SSN, the EIMs, and all the numbers to back that up. you can make a profile and then you can bid on these certain jobs. So what we do is we bid we we have these certain keywords like inner digital marketing, marketing. a creative design design agency, all these smaller keywords that we know other companies would type when they're looking for services. Because for bigger jobs, they're not going to be on upwork or, you know, these these and these platforms used to be great back in the day, but they're pretty crappy now to be honest. And I would not recommend a someone, you know, going full time on these. They might be part of the strategy, but definitely not full time. Anyway, once you land a certain, you know, RFP, it's gonna be like a really detailed document from that specific company saying, you know, hey, we're let's assume a a school district, and we're looking for a a marketing agency or a digital marketing agency who could come in and you know completely handle our and handle our end-to-end digital presence. So that means you're creative, social, SEO, video editing, marketing, and that you can only do that if you have an entire team, right? So that's the best part about all of that is get that.

That's our ideal I C P at this point. And then we'll up you know, we'd apply saying, you know, hey, a a formal conversation. And we do use AI in that. So you I'm not gonna say that we never use AI. But of course, AI only helps and we we tweak it video massively to according to our our our desire.

Anyway, you tell them that, you know, hey, we offer this, this, and the services. Here's our specific portfolio for you know for schooling, for example. We made this website for this guy, for we made this website for this one, we did their social media for this one, here are the results, here are the clients' testimony, and all their their number the the owner's number, you can call them or email them just to confirm that whether we did this work or not. And that just makes you know the process a lot more easier for that specific client, right? Because you're ha offering so much proof up front.

Syed Mahad:26:51
without being desperate or you know being any sort of being we being weird or anything while being super professional at the same time. But yeah, those those those jobs are better as compared to five hundred thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollar jobs because those the clients who pay the ch you know the cheapest, they're the ones who micromanage the most and they're the worst sort of clients. And I've I've been through the the the hard journey of that as well. And then all of them like managing smaller Amazon accounts, making smaller websites, doing smaller, you know, brand entity projects.

The you know, the the less they pay you, usually the more they manage you, which is really annoying. And once you're bidding for bigger jobs, they just come up to you and they say, you know, hey, what's this gonna cost? You say this is gonna cost ten thousand dollars. Here's our website, you know. we'd like to build this website, for example, in Figma or you know, any sort of custom workflow, and they're gonna be like, Okay, you your portfolio back set up. Here's the deposit, the initial deposit. you can get to work. And that's the sort of project, you know, the client that we like to work with too.

Jordan Lally:27:50
Isn't it so interesting? Like the less they pay, the more they're so nitpicking, the more they're managed, and the less dude. Like that is so so funny, dude. One I don't I've learned this from Cole Gordon. He basically said, the more you pay, the more you pay attention. And this this comes from a consulting perspective where if you pay me $500 and I say, Hey, you should optimize this in your process, they're gonna say F off. If you pay me

27:53 · Why cheap clients micromanage and how to avoid them

Syed Mahad:27:56
I hate when that happens.

Jordan Lally:28:18
five thousand dollars and I tell you, hey, optimize this in your process, they'll say, Okay, I'll do it. And that's where it's like the more you pay, the more you pay attention type stuff. It's kind of similar with an agency, but obviously the difference is like, I pay you, let me know what you need from me. Let's get the results. And that's basically like that's that's

Syed Mahad:28:36
Yeah. I it's that it's a mindset too, right? Because I I hate to say this, but the people who pay less, unfortunately, sometimes you have the mindset, you know, I'm paying this money and it's not gonna come back to me. And that's you know, that's it has a psychological effect on them. And I used to have this sort of mindset too. So, you know, I I I can tell when I was when I was younger. But you need to have that sort of abundance and, you know, mindset that you need to have confidence in yourself that you will get projects and then you do.

Jordan Lally:29:03
Absolutely. great conversation, my man. From a social media point of view in an online presence, where can they find you?

Syed Mahad:29:10
you can find me everywhere. You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok. it's I think it's my my username is is Sayyid Mahat. So if you should just slap Sayyid dash Mahat on LinkedIn, you'll be you'll find me there. My email is Sayyid at five or four dash l code.com. You can find me there. If you reach out to our company email, that won't be me. But then again, you'll you'll still be connected with with our company. And on Instagram, it's again, it's also Sayyid Mahat. You'll you'll see my display picture. So I'm everywhere.

29:13 · Personal branding lessons for agency founders

Jordan Lally:29:38
Amazing.

Syed Mahad:29:38
Well, that's one of the worst things that I didn't do, Jordan. I was always I was so focused on building the work that I never, you know, understood the that personal brand thing. And I was I was I listened to a podcast of one of the you know biggest agency owners in the world, Neil Bertel, and he said that you can have all the clients in the world, but if you're a true digital marketer or you know, you're you're in the agency space, the one thing that you have that you need to have is, you know, kind of a personal brand. And that's when I started attending these podcasts.

And you know, just starting focusing a little bit more towards the personal brand building as well.

Jordan Lally:30:11
That's very interesting. This goes back actually to a marketing principle, is people buy from people. And when when when the when your face is the brand, they're buying the brand, but you are the brand, if that makes sense. Like the reason why we buy the reason why we buy Apple products is because of like how it makes us feel, the community involved. There's no face. I mean, sure, Steve Jobs, but there's no face to that brand. But from an agency perspective, like you are you are the face, you are the brand. So

Syed Mahad:30:26
You are the brain. Yeah.

Syed Mahad:30:41
I I don't like that to be honest. I I it sucks that I hate that, but you gotta do it, and that's completely fine with me, you know. Especially in today's space. Yeah. I love being on podcasts and talking to people. It's just that it's one of those another added responsibilities that you gotta do, whether you like it or not. But then again, that's part of the challenge, right? So whatever you have, you gotta you gotta do it.

Jordan Lally:30:49
Growing pains, growing pains, you know?

Jordan Lally:31:04
Out of boy, out of boy. Well, thanks again for joining us, my man. Today's a Friday, so enjoy your weekend and I wish you all the success with business.

Syed Mahad:31:15
there we go. Yeah.

Jordan Lally:31:16
You okay? I'll I'll redo that. Thank you so much for joining us, my man. today's Friday. So go out there and enjoy your weekend. And I wish you all the success with business.

Syed Mahad:31:25
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Jordan. Have a good one. Bye.