621: Building Trust and Growing Your Agency | Jack Pires

Conquer Local. It’s really a breath of fresh air. Good times. I help leaders go from anxiety to authority under pressure. And then let’s go and get it. It’s an ecosystem. The hardest part here is going to be getting me to shut up on this one. Conquer Local with Vendasta, hosted by Jeff Tomlin. Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast. Our show features successful sales leaders, marketers, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs who will inspire you with their success stories. Each episode is packed with practical strategies as our guests share their secrets to achieving their dreams. Listen in to learn the highlights of their remarkable accomplishments and get tips to revamp, rework, and reimagine your business.

Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketer, or aspiring entrepreneur, the Conquer Local Podcast is your ultimate guide to dominating your local market. Tune in now to take your business to the next level. I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Jack Pires. Jack Pires is a successful entrepreneur and CEO who has made several contributions to the digital marketing industry. As a founder and owner of Social Jack Media, Jack has scaled the agency to a seven-figure business in just five years, demonstrating his expertise in business development, marketing strategy, and leadership. Jack’s vision for Social Jack Media is to provide premier digital marketing services to small and medium-sized businesses. He achieved success by leveraging a technology platform that works well with the best marketing vendors and experts in the field. Jack has assembled a formidable team of creatives, strategists, and business development professionals who consistently surpass clients’ expectations and are responsible for the agency’s stellar reputation and client retention rates. Before founding Social Jack Media, Jack served as COO and executive director

for several hospitality brands where he honed his skills in operations, management, and customer service. With his extensive experience and knowledge, Jack has helped numerous businesses achieve their digital marketing goals and elevate their online presence. Get ready, Conkers, for Jack Perez coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conker Local Podcast. Jack Perez, good to have you. Welcome to the Conker Local Podcast. How are you doing, man? Great to be here, man. I appreciate the opportunity to speak out here, and I’m doing great. No complaints. We just went through a little bit of your background in the intro. You were in the hospitality industry back in 2017 when you made the decision to take the plunge and start your own digital marketing agency. Talk to me a little bit about that. What was a driver for you to take the plunge, and what was it like in those first little while getting up and going and getting off the ground?

Yeah, thanks, man. I pretty much was born and raised into the hospitality industry, the restaurant, and nightlife world. My grandparents, they started, I’m second generation, so they’re Portuguese-American, and when they came over, my grandfather came over, he was about 16 years old. First thing he did was start a bread delivery service. That did well. Then he ventured into a small bar and restaurant, and that did well. Then it became bigger and bigger, and my mother, his daughter, and their siblings, they took over the business, and then they ran it with them. I literally grew up in that life. Entrepreneurship in your blood. In your blood.

Just in the blood, man. I followed suit, and it came natural. Of course, I wanted to work for the best. I worked with Starwood, I worked with Marriott, Hilton, and built more estate down in North Carolina. It got to a point where I wanted to go off and start independent restaurants. That was really my passion. At that point, just prior to 2017, there was a really nice seafood restaurant that helped build, and social was still, up in the air, still doing all the marketing and the easy stuff, I would say, but I was getting solicited by website designers, graphic designers, content developers, SEO, digital ads, all these calls, all these companies every given day, and it became overwhelming. I said, if I’m overwhelmed, there’s business people that are definitely overwhelmed with all that’s available. I was always very creative.

I knew how to start a company or see how well oil operations run. I said, well, there’s an idea here to figure out how to bring everything together, bringing all in one place, so the business owner can handle it, and they can adapt, and things change. They can maneuver and go to market well. My first goal was, as a systems guy, my first goal was to figure out who has the system that I could use to bring this together and go to market. There was a few months there searching for a few vendor that could help me launch this, and so Bindasta ended up becoming that vendor who met all the right criteria, was all about innovation because I knew we have to keep adapting and innovating no matter what. Things were going to come into the market, and I said, okay, I have the tool. I have the system. Now, I got to take the plunge. I have to see if I can get customers and leave my cushy salary. So yeah, we started with how most startups do.

We asked some family and friends, folks who had businesses, test me out. Let me drive on this with you, and it didn’t last more than, I think, two months before I was confident enough the results were speaking for themselves, and I left that world and really went all in on social jack media. It doesn’t matter what type of entrepreneur I talk to. From any type of business, they all say the same thing. God, those first five years are a bitch. It’s a battle, it’s a brawl. How long did it take you to, because you’re 2017, you’re in that range now, you’re five, six years, and how long did it take you to get to a point where you felt, all right, things are clicking? And if you have, how long did it take you to get to that point where, yeah, we’re solid? Yeah, it’s five years and counting, man. We’re still in there.

No, but I think, looking back, I think by year, the first year scary as heck, right? Like, it was scary. It’s, you know, you just, everything to the wall, something sticks. You’re taking any client. It didn’t matter, you know? And it’s just been very blessed that by year two, two and a half, you know, I was able to grow enough to bring on some really important people within the organization. You know, Michelle, who leads strategy, she’s terrific. Michael leads creative. David, who does all the photo, video, sales work for our firm. I mean, I really was lucky enough to bring on some really talented people that helped me scale this thing. Because it’s very hard to do on your own. And I think if I kept going that route, I probably would still be looking at year 10 and in the same position.

Yeah, so you mentioned like, you know, in the first year, you got to take almost, you know, any type of business you can, you got to be really scrappy. And, you know, it’s probably why, you know, there’s a large number of businesses don’t succeed in the first five years because it takes a certain type of mentality and a scrappiness. Talk about that a little bit, like, you know, you’re in the trenches. It takes hustle. Yeah. Yeah, it takes hustle. You know, you’re looking for opportunity in any area, you know, pretty much 24-7, trying to leverage your friends and family, you’re trying to leverage referrals, trying to leverage your client’s best customers, if you can, if you’re allowed to. You’re looking at, you know, something that really, really did well for us. We were looking at who’s hiring, right? There are companies hiring for positions that, you know, services that we offer locally. So who’s hiring for a content writer? Who’s hiring for a social media manager? And find out the hiring person, typically in a local environment, it’s going to be the owner, right? It’s going to be the business admin. So that was like a sweet hook that we got in the door. We had a couple of meetings

and we proved, you know, we showed what we could do and they trusted us and they kind of scaled from there. Nice scrappy tactic. Do what you got to do. Do what you got to do. You know, I read here that you onboard all the clients and you’re still onboarding all the clients today. Is that right? All your new clients? Yes, sir. Like, that’s, you know, that’s a pretty important touch point. Talk about that. Like, why do you make sure you onboard them all when they come through right now?

Well, I still believe that I’m the face of the company, right? And my name’s on the company, obviously. And I think it’s an important touch point, especially speaking on, you know, we’re targeting and trying to support local business that the local owners, they have a trustworthy source. They have a point person that they know, you know, we talked about what you were going to do. You’re going to, you know, now I know you, this is a handshake type of deal, right? I feel like we didn’t want to be that agency that’s too large, that becomes out of touch that you don’t know who your clients are. I never wanted that. And looking at some of our legacy clients, you know, they’re operating in the hundreds of millions of dollars and they still are high touch. So it’s just a matter of having the right system in place and ensuring people that, you know, who you signed up for, you’re going to get us, you’re going to get me.

It’s important to me. It really, it’s an X factor for us, I think. Yeah. So I mean, trust is so important to building long-term relationships, right? And so, you know, how do you approach that and how do you create trust to ensure that you’ve got a long-term relationship there with your client? Yeah, trust is everything. I like to say it’s we’re a handshake away, you know, like a lot of these companies, they’re depending on us to do our job well so that they can be their families and grow their business. And we don’t take that lightly. You know, we build by one onboarding process. We ensure that we collect everything possible from them and share that collaboratively with them. So, you know, they know, they feel that they still own, wish they do, they own all their information. We’re simply the extended family, right? The extended team from them. Our processes, I would say the systems we’re using helps build the trust, right? So, you know, when we’re all connected, they’re seeing results in real time. They’re getting notifications. They’re getting, you know, they’re seeing calls come in. They’re getting the recording. So they’re all in the know. There’s no funny business,

right? We’re trying to prove everything we do. And that helps build trust. And then we try to genuinely meet, you know, once or twice a month, either via obviously video, or if they’re super local, I still, you know, either it’s myself or David, they’ll go out and meet with the client, review some of the reports, see what they need. Helps us try to upsell a little bit too. But and, you know, see how the business is doing and we try to meet them on a monthly basis. You know, you talked about the importance of a system and real time updates and stuff. You know, one of the things that, you know, I’ve talked quite a bit about is the idea of having sort of a Domino’s pizza tracker in the agency world. Because up until, you know, a little while ago, there hasn’t been such a thing. And but people’s expectations change now. You know, they expect to see an order coming through. They expect to see the work in progress. And, you know, they’re used to seeing their pizza that’s it’s going into the box. And now that driver’s taken it out. You kind of want to see the same thing when they’re building a website or they’re having any type of service work done. Do you feel the same?

Totally. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s communication, right? If you take on a project, right? It’s a high ticket project for them. It could be, you know, whatever, whatever dollar amount is, but for them, it means something. They’re investing in you. They want, usually they want update on, you know, how things are going, they want to be in the know, right? So keep your clients in the know. And the tracking system would be great. That’s actually the Domino’s. They’ve really killed it in that space. It’s important.

Talk a little bit about scaling your business. You don’t have a massive sales force right now. Oh, no, I don’t. You’re doing a lot of sales. How do you, you know, with, you know, in a smaller organization, how are you approaching scale at your business?

Great question. Scale is everything. I go back and forth on it. You know, I’d love to be able to say, you know, we’re going to onboard 150 new clients in a moment. Then the other side of me goes back to my core vision and say, no, no, no. Keep it niche. Stay boutique. Do five, five clients, bring them on, make them, you know, do all the things you do well and do it well, execute. So I go back and forth, which is good and bad. But for us, thankfully, now we can be selective. So, you know, we do the same grassroots tactics that got us here, right? So we’re looking for companies who are hiring. And then we do our outreach and we try to set up our discovery calls. You know, we depend, not necessarily depend, but we rely on the referrals.

You know, we’re doing a great work for our clients. Every so often we’ll ask, is there anyone else that you like that we could talk to? And we get those. SEO is a great play, man, for us. It’s, we’re investing a good amount in it in the past two years. That leads to some really good, good lead opportunities. You know, we’re going and the way we approach it is we don’t look to be a one type of service agency, right? We’re like, we want to say, Michelle, Michelle, like this, we like to be the Swiss Army knife. You know, you come to us for one problem, right? And we solve that problem. But then there’s this, this, and this that we can also do, right? Because we listen to you when we talk. So we apply all those things. So we go for, you know, the core things, the website design, you know, the lead generation for, you know, for contractors and those type of markets. Those are kind of low hanging fruit that we bring on. And then we expand on all the services that we can do. You know, it makes sense being able to provide a lot of different services. All the research that I’ve read lately is more and more small businesses

are trying to consolidate how many people that they work with. And so having the capability to expand your customers, earning a dollar from an existing customer or a new dollar from an existing customer is a lot cheaper and a lot easier than getting a brand new dollar from a brand new customer. So it makes a lot of sense to me five times. So yeah, so definitely. So how are you approaching, you know, differentiation and standing out with other agencies that might be out there that you’d be competing with? Yeah, I mean, I’m just having this conversation with a group of friends. There are, you know, there’s plenty, plenty of opportunity out there for everyone to, you know, to do well and to compete, right? There’s so many business owners and companies that still haven’t adapted to digital marketing or any of these services. So that’s one market, you know, whether it’s startup or, you know, really hyper local companies that just haven’t figured it out yet or trust anyone to do it for them yet, you know, that’s, that’s one segment that we go after because that’s what, you know, that was the staple of the foundation of why I started it. Right. We found, we found success in

the contractor construction space and this lead generation space for, for these type of firms, these, you know, B2C clients. So we’re, we’re retapping into that type of market. And that, that we can do nationwide, right? We don’t need to be, you know, stuck here based in Jersey. We can, we can service them anywhere. And then another family run business big success for us or B2B clients, legacy clients. They’ve been family run businesses for a long time and they kind of have to hand down and the next generation is taking over and if we get our foot in the door, you know, we’re, we’re paving the roadmap or we’re very good at blending ourselves as part of their organization and basically being like a chameleon and, you know, saying all the right things, putting out their, the right brand, brand messaging and the brand tone across all these platforms. So, you know, that’s been a very, a very good sweet spot for us. They typically have the larger spans that we can go to market the right way because they’ve been in business for so long. And either they’re looking to redevelop, you know, refresh their brand or go after new markets. So that’s been a, a really good thing for us.

Awful important to have the right people in your team, like to make sure that, you know, you maintain your brand and your brand promise. How are you finding the right people and making sure that you’ve always got the right team?

Yeah, Jeff, you nailed it. It’s, it’s both, it’s team, it’s having the right people and it’s having the right, you know, SOPs and the systems in place to execute everything you can do. I’ve been lucky. I mean, most of, you know, my core, my core teammates have been referral people from when I first started. And what they all, I look at it, I look at it as, you know, I’m a big sports guy. So it’s, it’s kind of like building a team, right? The game doesn’t change, right? The rules don’t change. You still have to play the game. You’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna do our best marketing efforts. We’re gonna do all that. But the organization and how you set the culture up, that, that, that wins championships, right?

Yeah. As the last dance documenter said. So one common characteristic that I found between all of our core, our core staff here, they’re all very entrepreneurial themselves. Yeah. And they all really care about putting out the best product possible, whether it’s the website developer, the content writer, the strategist, right, the account management, they all care. And it’s so hard. I would say it’s, it’s challenging to find people like that, just off, off the cuff without doing some research or, you know, having a very, a very good interview process.

But so we look for entrepreneurial, like-minded individuals who are both kind of like that Swiss Army Knife, that creative slash business mindset that they have the mindset of, you know, client first, we’re gonna give the best quality possible. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. We’re gonna get it done. That type of mindset, they’re kind of like athletes in a way, right? They’re gonna train themselves on their own. They’re gonna make sure that they’re ready to play the game properly. And then they’re rewarded when they do, right? The system is here. The organization’s in place. We do the right things. We, we all take care of each other.

We were dependent on each other. Whatever systems needed, we’re gonna get it. So they’re gonna have the right tools. They’re gonna have the right equipment. They’re gonna have the right technology to do their jobs at the highest level. And then it’s on them to, to execute. Do you have a distributed team or are you finding all your people local in Jersey?

Most of my core people are in Jersey, but we’re all, you know, we don’t have a, technically, since COVID, we don’t have a headquarters, right? So we’re, we’re still remote. We’re hybrid. So the challenge is also in the hybrid model. And how do you, how do we keep this culture without seeing each other every day physically? So, you know, implementing the, in our group chats, our team meetings, our daily check-ins, extra communication all the time, quarterly outings, you know, that all helps. But that’s been, you know, in scaling, not just scaling clients, but in scaling talent, that’s, that’s going to be the next challenge for me, is how to keep that culture without, you know, sacrificing that, that service, that mentality. Speaking of culture, and this is just a side story. One of my, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a little bit over the years and travel for work. And one of my favorite memories was a trip that I had in New York. And one night, you know, I was down across the river and stumbled into an old Irish pub. And there was just one guy up on stage with an acoustic guitar.

And he started playing and living on a prayer. And everyone on the bar started singing. And their arms were around each other. And they’re swinging back and forth. And this is my vision of Jersey that I have in my head. And I could imagine that you’d have an amazing work culture and office culture when you had the office. And anyways, maintaining that is magical. Anyways, it was like a special memory that I had. Think about that any time I go back and visit Jersey and Manhattan. That’s still the case, man. It’s still all time high. That’s playing track in New Jersey. Every bar you go to, you’re going to get that at some point of the night.

It’s good stuff. Hey, man, if you were going to give one piece of advice for someone that was starting out like you did in 2017, what’s that advice now? Oh, gosh. Anyone starting out?

You know, do your research. Understand what service is. What’s the client that you’re going to go after? One, what’s their pain point? And then how can you best service them? So do the research and making sure that you’re going to be able to deliver on anything you promise.

You know, set your business up the right way from the ground up. Have your systems in place ahead of time. Have the technology you want to use ahead of time. And really look to bring on, if not one, maybe two good people to help you kind of scale things a little bit faster than I did. And, you know, learn from podcasts and people who have done it before. You know, I think that really helped me in the beginning was reaching out to a good friend of mine, Jack Mollstein, who has had several companies now, sold them a few of them often now he’s retired, but picking their brains and saying, okay, what got you there? And what mistakes did you make so that I don’t make those mistakes? And how can I get there faster?

That’s kind of my athletic mindset. I can totally buy that team and picking, you know, partners in the beginning. Those first, you know, like we were talking about, the first couple of years are really hard and it’s good having people that you can lean on and share some of the stress and the workload and the early wins and celebrate with you. Super important putting my team together in the beginning. I said that, you know, we live in a time where you’re one platform away from seeing people, quote, unquote, who are millionaires or scaling to, you know, millions and millions of dollars in revenue, you know, every day with an agency they’ve done overnight. Success doesn’t happen overnight, you know, and you have to work forward, you have to build up to it. And I would just, you know, I’d recommend not having the mindset that you’re going to get rich quick.

And if I think if you have that kind of mindset going in, you’re already one step ahead of failure. Oh, with that, that is a fantastic note just to put a punctuation point on.

That’s a great note to end on. Jack, it was an absolute pleasure having you on the show here. And thanks so much for taking the time to spend a few minutes with us here in the Concord Local Podcast. Hope you’ll come back and join us again and share with us a little bit more about what it was, been like five years plus, five, six, seven, eight, wishing you all the best success, man. Thanks, Jeff. Really appreciate it, love to be on. Appreciate the opportunity. We’ll chat again soon. Oh, and as we go, if any of our listeners want to reach out to you, how do they, how do they reach you? Oh, great. Yeah, you connect with me on LinkedIn.

Simple Jack Fires. You can email me jack at socialjackmedia.com. Happy to open a conversation with anybody. That’d be great. Jack, you’re one of a kind. Good to see you, buddy.

Thanks, Ed. Enjoy your day. Appreciate it very much.

What a good guy. I’ve really enjoyed my conversation with Jack. His success in building a digital marketing agency that supports local businesses is based on a combination of innovation, trust building and adaptability. He was able to develop a reliable system for managing clients online presence, while also offering a range of other services such as SEO and website design. To ensure that his clients remain satisfied and informed, Jack and his team meet with them regularly and keep them updated in their progress. To build a strong team, he looks for entrepreneurially minded individuals who are willing to train themselves and work together to achieve shared goals.

Perez’s agency places a high value on building trust in providing personalized services to its clients. By focusing on the unique needs of each client and offering a range of services to meet those needs, the agency is able to expand its business while also maintaining close relationships with the clients. To ensure that his team members are committed to the company’s values and goals, the agency looks for individuals who share its entrepreneurial spirit and are willing to work together to achieve success. By investing in the right tools, technology and training, the agency is able to scale its business while also maintaining its culture and its values.

If you’ve enjoyed Jack’s episode discussing building trust and scaling your digital marketing agency, keep the conversation going and check out some of the older episodes. Episode 300, Building Trust with Customers with Jim Tracy or episode 527, Scaling Your Business with Jason Herman. Until next time, I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome.

You’ve been listening to the Conquer Local Podcast presented by Vendasta. Tune in next week for a new episode. Guest Discovery and Produced by Suleyman Adam. Marketing by Rory Lawford, Nicole Lozon and Suleyman Adam. Executive Producers Brendan King, Jeff Tomlin and Suleyman Adam. Recorded at Vendasta headquarters on the Canadian Prairies.