- CEO Story: Andrew started his marketing journey while he was still in his high school days helping his father set up an online shop on car shocks and suspensions. Started his own agency in college, marketing the bands, venues, and tours, which went pretty well. So from the music industry, he pivoted into hospitality and retail doing e-commerce. He eventually sold it to his partner and did in-house for large e-commerce companies. Co-founded an agency and exited in 2019. Andrew started his own agency in early 2020. Developed marketing strategies targeting people to go to the website. It became a full-service marketing agency.
- Business Service: Full-service marketing agency. SEO, content writing, advertising, etc. Embedding as the marketing department for the clients.
- Secret Sauce: Employees are focused only on where they are specialized. Mapping out and giving out a team for the client based on the strategic plan developed.
- CEO Hack: Take care of yourself and stay in a lighter mood. Go to the gym. Celebrate small wins. Don’t forget where you started.
- CEO Nugget: Hammer out your process. Find a good project management system. Have a staff focused on the process. Developing SOPs.
- CEO Defined: A guide, put the right things in place. You are conducting a beautiful orchestra. You’re on your own little island.
Website: andrewmaff.com
Twitter: AndrewMaff
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Transcription
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00:22 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:50 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Andrew Maff of Blu Task Tusker. Andrew, it's great to have you on the show.
01:00 – Andrew Maffettone
What's going on, man? Thanks for having me.
01:02 – Gresham Harkless
Yes. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the great conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Andrew so you can hear about some of the awesome things he's doing. As a marketing expert with over 15 years of experience in e-commerce, Andrew has not only owned and managed multiple marketing companies in the e-commerce space but has also worked in-house at multiple online selling companies, driving brands to new heights.
With his knowledge of marketing and business strategy, love for staying ahead of the curve, and ability to execute effective marketing solutions, He created Blue Tusker, a team of specialized experts dedicated to the growth and success of e-commerce sellers. Andrew, great to have you on the show. You're ready to speak to the I AM CEO community.
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:42 – Andrew Maffettone
I loved that. Thank you so much. Yeah, man, let's do it.
01:45 – Gresham Harkless
Let's make it happen. This. So they kind of kick everything off. I wanted to rewind the clock here. The reward, how you got started, what a car, and your CEO story.
01:52 – Andrew Maffettone
Yeah. So I, I actually am in high, I think it was in high school and my father actually acquired a small company that sold car shocks and suspension and stuff. And they weren't online. And he's like, it was back when like the dot com-ish bubble was still more or less a thing, I guess. Well, not really, but you get it. And so they brought it online. He was one of the first companies to bring any kind of shock for suspension stuff online. And I always knew I wanted to get into marketing. And I don't really remember why.
But so I was like, All right, I'll work in your warehouse if you let me like intern as a marketing intern, right? So started there, and loved what I was doing. He was actually one of the first companies to be offered to join Amazon besides Books. And so to this day, still pick on him for it because he turned it down. But regardless, loved it, and thought it was great. And then got into college. And actually, that was when I first became, I guess you quote unquote, like a CEO. I actually started my own agency. I was actually in a band and we needed someone that would handle our marketing and our promotions. I was like, all right, I've done a little bit of this.
Let me dig into this. And I ended up doing it. Well, it went really well. So the band did well. I had other bands asking, then I had venues asking, and then I had tours coming in asking for help. And so after a while, I was like, all right, I'm going to create this agency. And it was relatively structured to music, but I then pivoted it to hospitality and retail. And retail is where I started to get a little bit more of that e-commerce bug. Then after like a few years of that, I ended up bringing on a partner and decided we were going to go separate ways.
So I had them buy me out, let the agency, let them take it over. And then I was like, I want to go in-house for a little while. So I went in-house at, at that time, this was probably over the course like 4 or 5 years, I was in-house at 2 different 8-figure plus e-commerce companies and I was the only marketer. And so it was really like I was juggling agencies and juggling like, you know, contractors and stuff like that. And I was like, you know what, like, this can be done better. And it just so happened that one of the companies I was at, one of the investors was working with me a bunch of times.
They're like, look like what you're doing is great. You've already helped a bunch of others like I was consulting on a few of the other brands they were working with. And so we actually ended up starting an agency. I was a minority partner there through, I think it was like 3 years we had the company and we exited that to a public company in late 2019. Then in early 2020, I was like, all right, now, now's, you know, now I'm getting back in this, I'm doing this. So in early 2020, started Blue Tusker.
Essentially, that approach was what I've really started to notice specifically in e-commerce is that the buyer journey is so different. So now that there's Amazon and Walmart and Target and your own website, there are 500 places where you could buy the same product. So we develop marketing strategies that are what's just referred to as an omnichannel approach. So basically our marketing allows, you know, targeting people to go to the website or to Amazon or to Walmart, and we become a full-service marketing department. So we really are like an outsourced marketing department for our e-commerce sellers and our account managers basically act like fractional CMOs to a certain extent. And now here I am on this podcast.
05:09 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I love how everything came full circle and I love how even the seeds were planted towards that opportunity to kind of join Amazon and those things and how it kind of just blossomed from there. You know, a lot of times you, I always say, if you look back at, you know, a lot of times when you're younger, you can see the seeds of the things that you should be doing. And it sounds like e-commerce has popped up over and over again, and You guys have just kind of been crushing it from there.
05:32 – Andrew Maffettone
That's exactly it.
05:33 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. So I know you touched a little bit upon like how you're working with your clients and how you're serving them. Could you drill down a little bit more? Let us know exactly what that experience looks like.
05:41 – Andrew Maffettone
Yeah. So we really try to take a little bit of a different approach. I think that you know, the one benefit I've had is when I was in the house, I was on the other side of it. Right. So I had all these agencies I had to juggle. One of the issues I constantly saw was my SEO agency wasn't talking to my paid ads agency. My paid ad agency had no idea when certain emails would trigger, et cetera. So their retargeting ads weren't lined up correctly. And so it basically became like, while I was doing a lot of the work in-house, I was also spending so much time just managing all these outsourced things and they weren't talking to each other.
And a lot of times I also saw so many people complaining about full-service agencies, right? Because the theory is that it's a bunch of people who don't know, who know a little bit about a lot, right? Yeah, that's right. So, What I did is I was like, okay, so what I want to develop here is something a little bit different. What we’ve implemented is that our account managers function essentially as fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs).
Additionally, we operate with individual agencies under the same roof, which allows us to provide a diverse range of services. So I have a specific team that only does SEO, they don't do anything else. I have someone who's solely in social, solely in content, solely on paid advertising, and solely on the marketplace. So basically I have just a house of specialists and specialist departments.
So that way the account manager, when speaking with a client, can get an understanding of where the business is at, and make decisions based on the business goal, not the marketing goals, which I think is a huge mistake that a lot of agencies make. Like, yeah, you're held to certain KPIs and you want to target certain things, but you really shouldn't know what their real goal is because it's always they're going to say one thing, but they mean another. And then with that, the account manager oversees the strategy and makes sure everyone is talking to each other because they're all internal.
So it makes life a lot easier when we come back to a client, we go look like all of them are talking together here. They meet them all. They're all here. They're all stateside, which is always a question as well. Everyone's pretty much like East Coast Central Time-ish, but we're all remote. We're all over the place. So we always hop on these video chats and stuff like that. And really the approach is to embed ourselves as their marketing department. And if you were to hire a bunch of these types of people to work for you, you would wanna know who they are.
You'd want constant updates from them. You'd want to be able to easily chat with them. You'd want to have recurring updates. So, you know, we always have a recurring call. We have shared Slack channels with all of our clients. They can reach anyone who's involved in their account, whenever they want. It really becomes a, hey, here's your team. And then we get started based on the strategy that we put into place.
08:17 – Gresham Harkless
Nice, I absolutely love that. It kind of sounds like it even is part of the secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you all apart and it makes you unique. But I love that word that you use embedded in the CMO aspect because like you have, It sounds like the specialized knowledge within those agencies that are within the larger agency, but you still get that, like you said, somebody that's actually making decisions based off the greater goal for the business, not just trying to hit whatever KPIs may not actually align with that, but you get to make those strategic decisions and have the trust of the agency to do that.
08:51 – Andrew Maffettone
Yeah, exactly. And in e-commerce, like there are so many different assets and like assets, but like different attributes you got to think about, which is, you know, inventory for a certain product line versus another, is there enough for us to be able to do that? Or, you know, they have, like, you know, the past couple of years has been product supply chain issues. So like, okay, maybe we want to slow down on some of the marketing. So there are a lot higher level conversations that need to be had in order to actually put an actual strategy into place because most agencies respectfully, they'll come in, they'll be like, here's the strategy we always put into place for this.
And it's relatively templated. But if you were to hire a marketing team and they were all in-house, you wouldn't, they wouldn't template anything. They would start to build it. So we do have like, you know, reporting that we start with and certain structures of folders and like shared drives and all that, that we start with. But none of them, after we work with a client for 3 or 4 months, none of them look the same.
And it really comes down to just mapping out. We got a map-out process, which became a different discussion. But like, that's kind of like where I'm trying to adjust the overall theory behind full service doesn't necessarily mean that we're all generalists. It's really more of a here's your team. Now let's, you know, focus on how you want that business to be run.
10:11 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, definitely appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
10:23 – Andrew Maffettone
I really think that it comes down to the person. I think that you know because I'm the same way, right? Like I'll listen to podcasts, I'll read books, I'll chat with people on LinkedIn or whatever. But everyone's motivation and everyone's thing that keeps them driving is completely different. So I have my own podcast and I chat with eCommerce sellers all the time and I ask a very similar question. It's a little bit more about what motivates you to keep going. I don't know if I've ever had anyone give me the exact same answer as someone else. It's all completely different. In my eyes, I've started to really notice a trend just in my general health.
If I'm eating better and I'm working out, oddly enough, my pipeline also tends to look better around that same time. And my clients are generally happier. And if I'm like kind of getting stressed out and I start eating like crap and I'm not like getting to the gym as much as I can, all of a sudden I swear my pipe, there's no way that it's accurate, but I swear my pipe won't get smaller, my clients get pissed and I'm like, all right, I guess I gotta get back in the gym. So like to me, it's just taking care of myself and trying to, you know, just stay in a lighter mood is what's helping.
And then the clear and obvious thing, at least to me, celebrate the small wins. So many times I forget to look back like, you know, 6 months to 12 months ago. And if I look at 12 months ago, we've almost doubled since last year. So when I sit here and I'm in a panic and I'm like, this isn't working, why isn't this working? We should be doing this, blah, blah. I go, yeah, but 6 months ago, I would have killed to be where I am right now. So it's kind of take it with a grain of salt and don't forget where you started.
12:00 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this might be a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice, something you might say or heard or learned from your podcast, or something you might tell your favorite client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
12:15 – Andrew Maffettone
Oh, man. At least for us, from an agency perspective, it's a process. Hammer out your process. Find yourself a good project management system. Spend the time or even have someone on staff whose full job is to just focus on the process. Obviously, in an agency, it's very clear-cut. We need to be efficient while still putting out good work. But I don't care that it's an agency. Every business needs to be that way.
So having a project management system and actually clarifying, developing SOPs because that's another thing where I've seen a lot of sellers we've worked with like, hey, if you actually… Then, we always tell them, to build an audience, and have a big community, but also put SOPs in place and processes. Because if you can actually pick up the business and hand it to someone else and it essentially runs the exact same way because of the processes you have, chances are your value if you go to exit is significantly higher because now there's no training.
You don't have to have anyone in there overseeing anything, you've got a big community to work with. So like, it's to me, like having that kind of efficiencies in place is an absolute game changer. So I think documenting everything you do down to a T so that you could give it to someone who's never worked for you in their life and they could still do it is absolutely a game changer.
13:35 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. Appreciate that. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Andrew, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:46 – Andrew Maffettone
To me, a CEO's job is to just guide and actually just put the right things in place and then be able to, you're like a conductor, right? Like you're constantly conducting. Hopefully, once you get to a certain point, you're not actually also playing the instruments, but ideally, you're conducting and trying to make this beautiful orchestra as time goes on. And there are the cons of it, which is like one of the things that I, even When I had the agency in college, never really realized until the past several years.
But the thing that I think a lot of CEOs don't discuss is it's mentally taxing. Because you can't really confide in your significant other because if they're not on the same page, they're going to be like, well if it's so stressful and it's not working out, why don't you just quit and get a real job? You can't really confide in your employees because you don't want to tell them like you don't want them to think that something's wrong if you're just having an off day.
You can't confide in your clients because of the exact same reason they'll start to leave you more or less you can't really confide in your friends and family because if things are going well, they're going to start asking you for money. So it's like you're on your own little island at all times. And it's so frustrating at certain points because you hit a wall and you're like, I don't know who to talk to about this because I want to talk it out, but I can't talk to anyone. And then you think about getting a partner and I don't, I don't advise doing that.
15:12 – Gresham Harkless
And I think that's where, you know, the beauty lies in that as much as you're guiding, you know, the people on the team, you're guiding the clients, you're guiding, you know, if you have investors or whatever it might be, you end up being the conductor and seeing all those things kind of come to fruition and make that beautiful music.
15:26 – Andrew Maffettone
A conductor on an island.
15:28 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, exactly. I love it. That's definitely a T-shirt or a bumper sticker. So we should go back. Well, Andrew, truly. Yes, I appreciate that definition. And of course, appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people get out of you about all the awesome things your team are working on and of course listen to your podcast as well.
15:55 – Andrew Maffettone
BlueTusker.com no E in Tusker and then You can always just shoot me an email. I love answering questions and stuff. It's my favorite thing to do. So just Andrew at Blue Tusker, go for it. And then all of our social is at Blue Tusker. All my socials at Andrew Math, the Ecom show podcast. If you're an Ecom or seller and you want to tune in, have at it. If not, that's the easiest way to get ahold of us.
16:15 – Gresham Harkless
Make it even easier. We're definitely going to have links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you, and subscribe to the podcast, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:22 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:22 - Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:50 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Andrew Maff of Blu Task Tusker. Andrew, it's great to have you on the show.
01:00 - Andrew Maffettone
What's going on, man? Thanks for having me.
01:02 - Gresham Harkless
Yes. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the great conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Andrew so you can hear about some of the awesome things he's doing. As a marketing expert with over 15 years of experience in e-commerce, Andrew has not only owned and managed multiple marketing companies in the e-commerce space but has also worked in-house at multiple online selling companies, driving brands to new heights.
With his knowledge of marketing and business strategy, love for staying ahead of the curve, and ability to execute effective marketing solutions, He created Blue Tusker, a team of specialized experts dedicated to the growth and success of e-commerce sellers. Andrew, great to have you on the show. You're ready to speak to the I AM CEO community.
01:42 - Andrew Maffettone
I loved that. Thank you so much. Yeah, man, let's do it.
01:45 - Gresham Harkless
Let's make it happen. This. So they kind of kick everything off. I wanted to rewind the clock here. The reward, how you got started, what a car, and your CEO story.
01:52 - Andrew Maffettone
Yeah. So I, I actually am in high, I think it was in high school and my father actually acquired a small company that sold car shocks and suspension and stuff. And they weren't online. And he's like, it was back when like the dot com-ish bubble was still more or less a thing, I guess. Well, not really, but you get it. And so they brought it online. He was one of the first companies to bring any kind of shock for suspension stuff online. And I always knew I wanted to get into marketing. And I don't really remember why.
But so I was like, All right, I'll work in your warehouse if you let me like intern as a marketing intern, right? So started there, and loved what I was doing. He was actually one of the first companies to be offered to join Amazon besides Books. And so to this day, still pick on him for it because he turned it down. But regardless, loved it, and thought it was great. And then got into college. And actually, that was when I first became, I guess you quote unquote, like a CEO. I actually started my own agency. I was actually in a band and we needed someone that would handle our marketing and our promotions. I was like, all right, I've done a little bit of this.
Let me dig into this. And I ended up doing it. Well, it went really well. So the band did well. I had other bands asking, then I had venues asking, and then I had tours coming in asking for help. And so after a while, I was like, all right, I'm going to create this agency. And it was relatively structured to music, but I then pivoted it to hospitality and retail. And retail is where I started to get a little bit more of that e-commerce bug. Then after like a few years of that, I ended up bringing on a partner and decided we were going to go separate ways.
So I had them buy me out, let the agency, let them take it over. And then I was like, I want to go in-house for a little while. So I went in-house at, at that time, this was probably over the course like 4 or 5 years, I was in-house at 2 different 8-figure plus e-commerce companies and I was the only marketer. And so it was really like I was juggling agencies and juggling like, you know, contractors and stuff like that. And I was like, you know what, like, this can be done better. And it just so happened that one of the companies I was at, one of the investors was working with me a bunch of times.
They're like, look like what you're doing is great. You've already helped a bunch of others like I was consulting on a few of the other brands they were working with. And so we actually ended up starting an agency. I was a minority partner there through, I think it was like 3 years we had the company and we exited that to a public company in late 2019. Then in early 2020, I was like, all right, now, now's, you know, now I'm getting back in this, I'm doing this. So in early 2020, started Blue Tusker.
Essentially, that approach was what I've really started to notice specifically in e-commerce is that the buyer journey is so different. So now that there's Amazon and Walmart and Target and your own website, there are 500 places where you could buy the same product. So we develop marketing strategies that are what's just referred to as an omnichannel approach. So basically our marketing allows, you know, targeting people to go to the website or to Amazon or to Walmart, and we become a full-service marketing department. So we really are like an outsourced marketing department for our e-commerce sellers and our account managers basically act like fractional CMOs to a certain extent. And now here I am on this podcast.
05:09 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. I love how everything came full circle and I love how even the seeds were planted towards that opportunity to kind of join Amazon and those things and how it kind of just blossomed from there. You know, a lot of times you, I always say, if you look back at, you know, a lot of times when you're younger, you can see the seeds of the things that you should be doing. And it sounds like e-commerce has popped up over and over again, and You guys have just kind of been crushing it from there.
05:32 - Andrew Maffettone
That's exactly it.
05:33 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. So I know you touched a little bit upon like how you're working with your clients and how you're serving them. Could you drill down a little bit more? Let us know exactly what that experience looks like.
05:41 - Andrew Maffettone
Yeah. So we really try to take a little bit of a different approach. I think that you know, the one benefit I've had is when I was in the house, I was on the other side of it. Right. So I had all these agencies I had to juggle. One of the issues I constantly saw was my SEO agency wasn't talking to my paid ads agency. My paid ad agency had no idea when certain emails would trigger, et cetera. So their retargeting ads weren't lined up correctly. And so it basically became like, while I was doing a lot of the work in-house, I was also spending so much time just managing all these outsourced things and they weren't talking to each other.
And a lot of times I also saw so many people complaining about full-service agencies, right? Because the theory is that it's a bunch of people who don't know, who know a little bit about a lot, right? Yeah, that's right. So, What I did is I was like, okay, so what I want to develop here is something a little bit different. What we’ve implemented is that our account managers function essentially as fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs).
Additionally, we operate with individual agencies under the same roof, which allows us to provide a diverse range of services. So I have a specific team that only does SEO, they don't do anything else. I have someone who's solely in social, solely in content, solely on paid advertising, and solely on the marketplace. So basically I have just a house of specialists and specialist departments.
So that way the account manager, when speaking with a client, can get an understanding of where the business is at, and make decisions based on the business goal, not the marketing goals, which I think is a huge mistake that a lot of agencies make. Like, yeah, you're held to certain KPIs and you want to target certain things, but you really shouldn't know what their real goal is because it's always they're going to say one thing, but they mean another. And then with that, the account manager oversees the strategy and makes sure everyone is talking to each other because they're all internal.
So it makes life a lot easier when we come back to a client, we go look like all of them are talking together here. They meet them all. They're all here. They're all stateside, which is always a question as well. Everyone's pretty much like East Coast Central Time-ish, but we're all remote. We're all over the place. So we always hop on these video chats and stuff like that. And really the approach is to embed ourselves as their marketing department. And if you were to hire a bunch of these types of people to work for you, you would wanna know who they are.
You'd want constant updates from them. You'd want to be able to easily chat with them. You'd want to have recurring updates. So, you know, we always have a recurring call. We have shared Slack channels with all of our clients. They can reach anyone who's involved in their account, whenever they want. It really becomes a, hey, here's your team. And then we get started based on the strategy that we put into place.
08:17 - Gresham Harkless
Nice, I absolutely love that. It kind of sounds like it even is part of the secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you all apart and it makes you unique. But I love that word that you use embedded in the CMO aspect because like you have, It sounds like the specialized knowledge within those agencies that are within the larger agency, but you still get that, like you said, somebody that's actually making decisions based off the greater goal for the business, not just trying to hit whatever KPIs may not actually align with that, but you get to make those strategic decisions and have the trust of the agency to do that.
08:51 - Andrew Maffettone
Yeah, exactly. And in e-commerce, like there are so many different assets and like assets, but like different attributes you got to think about, which is, you know, inventory for a certain product line versus another, is there enough for us to be able to do that? Or, you know, they have, like, you know, the past couple of years has been product supply chain issues. So like, okay, maybe we want to slow down on some of the marketing. So there are a lot higher level conversations that need to be had in order to actually put an actual strategy into place because most agencies respectfully, they'll come in, they'll be like, here's the strategy we always put into place for this.
And it's relatively templated. But if you were to hire a marketing team and they were all in-house, you wouldn't, they wouldn't template anything. They would start to build it. So we do have like, you know, reporting that we start with and certain structures of folders and like shared drives and all that, that we start with. But none of them, after we work with a client for 3 or 4 months, none of them look the same.
And it really comes down to just mapping out. We got a map-out process, which became a different discussion. But like, that's kind of like where I'm trying to adjust the overall theory behind full service doesn't necessarily mean that we're all generalists. It's really more of a here's your team. Now let's, you know, focus on how you want that business to be run.
10:11 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, definitely appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
10:23 - Andrew Maffettone
I really think that it comes down to the person. I think that you know because I'm the same way, right? Like I'll listen to podcasts, I'll read books, I'll chat with people on LinkedIn or whatever. But everyone's motivation and everyone's thing that keeps them driving is completely different. So I have my own podcast and I chat with eCommerce sellers all the time and I ask a very similar question. It's a little bit more about what motivates you to keep going. I don't know if I've ever had anyone give me the exact same answer as someone else. It's all completely different. In my eyes, I've started to really notice a trend just in my general health.
If I'm eating better and I'm working out, oddly enough, my pipeline also tends to look better around that same time. And my clients are generally happier. And if I'm like kind of getting stressed out and I start eating like crap and I'm not like getting to the gym as much as I can, all of a sudden I swear my pipe, there's no way that it's accurate, but I swear my pipe won't get smaller, my clients get pissed and I'm like, all right, I guess I gotta get back in the gym. So like to me, it's just taking care of myself and trying to, you know, just stay in a lighter mood is what's helping.
And then the clear and obvious thing, at least to me, celebrate the small wins. So many times I forget to look back like, you know, 6 months to 12 months ago. And if I look at 12 months ago, we've almost doubled since last year. So when I sit here and I'm in a panic and I'm like, this isn't working, why isn't this working? We should be doing this, blah, blah. I go, yeah, but 6 months ago, I would have killed to be where I am right now. So it's kind of take it with a grain of salt and don't forget where you started.
12:00 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this might be a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice, something you might say or heard or learned from your podcast, or something you might tell your favorite client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
12:15 - Andrew Maffettone
Oh, man. At least for us, from an agency perspective, it's a process. Hammer out your process. Find yourself a good project management system. Spend the time or even have someone on staff whose full job is to just focus on the process. Obviously, in an agency, it's very clear-cut. We need to be efficient while still putting out good work. But I don't care that it's an agency. Every business needs to be that way.
So having a project management system and actually clarifying, developing SOPs because that's another thing where I've seen a lot of sellers we've worked with like, hey, if you actually... Then, we always tell them, to build an audience, and have a big community, but also put SOPs in place and processes. Because if you can actually pick up the business and hand it to someone else and it essentially runs the exact same way because of the processes you have, chances are your value if you go to exit is significantly higher because now there's no training.
You don't have to have anyone in there overseeing anything, you've got a big community to work with. So like, it's to me, like having that kind of efficiencies in place is an absolute game changer. So I think documenting everything you do down to a T so that you could give it to someone who's never worked for you in their life and they could still do it is absolutely a game changer.
13:35 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. Appreciate that. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Andrew, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:46 - Andrew Maffettone
To me, a CEO's job is to just guide and actually just put the right things in place and then be able to, you're like a conductor, right? Like you're constantly conducting. Hopefully, once you get to a certain point, you're not actually also playing the instruments, but ideally, you're conducting and trying to make this beautiful orchestra as time goes on. And there are the cons of it, which is like one of the things that I, even When I had the agency in college, never really realized until the past several years.
But the thing that I think a lot of CEOs don't discuss is it's mentally taxing. Because you can't really confide in your significant other because if they're not on the same page, they're going to be like, well if it's so stressful and it's not working out, why don't you just quit and get a real job? You can't really confide in your employees because you don't want to tell them like you don't want them to think that something's wrong if you're just having an off day.
You can't confide in your clients because of the exact same reason they'll start to leave you more or less you can't really confide in your friends and family because if things are going well, they're going to start asking you for money. So it's like you're on your own little island at all times. And it's so frustrating at certain points because you hit a wall and you're like, I don't know who to talk to about this because I want to talk it out, but I can't talk to anyone. And then you think about getting a partner and I don't, I don't advise doing that.
15:12 - Gresham Harkless
And I think that's where, you know, the beauty lies in that as much as you're guiding, you know, the people on the team, you're guiding the clients, you're guiding, you know, if you have investors or whatever it might be, you end up being the conductor and seeing all those things kind of come to fruition and make that beautiful music.
15:26 - Andrew Maffettone
A conductor on an island.
15:28 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, exactly. I love it. That's definitely a T-shirt or a bumper sticker. So we should go back. Well, Andrew, truly. Yes, I appreciate that definition. And of course, appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people get out of you about all the awesome things your team are working on and of course listen to your podcast as well.
15:55 - Andrew Maffettone
BlueTusker.com no E in Tusker and then You can always just shoot me an email. I love answering questions and stuff. It's my favorite thing to do. So just Andrew at Blue Tusker, go for it. And then all of our social is at Blue Tusker. All my socials at Andrew Math, the Ecom show podcast. If you're an Ecom or seller and you want to tune in, have at it. If not, that's the easiest way to get ahold of us.
16:15 - Gresham Harkless
Make it even easier. We're definitely going to have links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you, and subscribe to the podcast, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:22 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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