Doubling a 20-Year Agency in 6 Months (Susan Fernandez​​​​​​​)
 

[00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:23]
Jesse Gilmore
 I'm here with Susan Fernandez, former founder of Epiphany Studio, now Senior VP of Marketing at UpSpring PR. And Susan, the first time that we talked and decided to work together, you had given me six months to turn your agency around or you're going to shut it down. Where are you at right now?

[00:00:16:23 - 00:01:35:03]
Susan Fernandez
 Well, I didn't shut it down and you did turn it around. So that is the good news. Where I am right now is I am the Senior VP of Marketing for UpSpring. We are a PR and marketing firm, still specializing in the same sectors that Epiphany did. So we work with companies in the built environment, that's architecture, engineering, interior design, as well as the manufacturers that serve them. And all of this came about, I think when you and I first started working together, the thought that I could figure out how to really run Epiphany in a growth mode and kind of get some of these challenges that were really pulling me down out of the way. But then eventually, and it was so fast, I say eventually, but it was so fast from the time we started working together to my business fundamentally changing. And it was almost like this energy and awareness where I reconnected with UpSpring, who was just a PR firm at the time that I had recommended clients to. We found a lot of synergy and eventually we merged.

[00:01:35:03 - 00:01:48:17]
Jesse Gilmore
 And if you think about that way beginning, so it's really, really awesome. Part of the story and why I wanted to bring you on is you have achieved what a lot of people's kind of dreams are when I first talk with them.

[00:01:49:17 - 00:02:03:04]
Jesse Gilmore
 They get to a place where they want the business to run without them. They want to kind of be more of a visionary as opposed to the person doing the work. And we went through quite a lot of the transformation.

[00:02:04:05 - 00:02:19:15]
Jesse Gilmore
 And this actually was a few years ago that we had worked together. And if you can kind of, it's been a while, so kind of go back to that way beginning stage. What did you try before? And what was kind of like,

[00:02:20:22 - 00:02:26:16]
Jesse Gilmore
 to kind of bring us up to speed of why were you giving me six months to turn the agency around?

[00:02:26:16 - 00:02:36:12]
Susan Fernandez
 I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I actually was in my early 30s when I was working at an agency and for various reasons they were closing.

[00:02:37:13 - 00:03:26:07]
Susan Fernandez
 And some clients came and asked me to start an agency. And I did with a partner. We had a pretty successful run and then we decided to separate. And that is when I found a great consultant who helped me get really niche focused. So at the time, every small agency was a generalist. We kind of took on every client, but I really liked the focus of the built environment. And I felt like this client, this consultant, I felt like this consultant really set me on a good path forward. So I was very niche focused. I knew who I was talking to, what was important to them, why they needed help in marketing services.

[00:03:27:22 - 00:03:40:19]
Susan Fernandez
 But what was tearing me down every day, what was really pulling me down and making me fall out of love with what I was doing was running the business.

[00:03:42:09 - 00:04:08:11]
Susan Fernandez
 And I had never found the right consultant or the right framework to help me figure out one, how to get out of my own way and two, how to build a business that did not need me in every single decision. And so I felt very strong. I felt definitely I had an advantage in the market and I was attracting great clients,

[00:04:09:19 - 00:04:24:18]
Susan Fernandez
 not as many as I wanted, but I was basically spending my entire time doing every or overseeing every aspect of the business. It would not function without me. And it was driving me crazy because my people were competent.

[00:04:26:12 - 00:05:08:22]
Susan Fernandez
 Some of my people were really ambitious. So what was the problem? And I had tried various bringing in various prospects as potential partners, thinking maybe that was it, bringing in specialized accountants, really trying to figure out how to address all of the issues that I was seeing one by one. And it wasn't until I met Jesse, I had just made the decision that I was pretty much done. I was like, I will give this, I will give this over to the universe. And if it does not start to bring me balance, bring me a personal life,

[00:05:09:22 - 00:05:27:04]
Susan Fernandez
 consistent financial reward, I wanted to see my efforts being paid off. And then Jesse reached out on LinkedIn and I was just at the point, which I'm pretty blunt anyway, where I was like, Jesse, I give you six months.

[00:05:27:04 - 00:06:54:13]
Jesse Gilmore
 I am so glad that you trusted me in that six month journey. And at that time, I was, you were, it's kind of crazy to even think, but you were one of my first five, like proof of concept with leverage for growth as like a method. It was all like based around, you know, I had learned in corporate and what I wish I would have known in my previous businesses. And it is crazy to think that in the proof of concept, it was like this, if you don't get this right, it's like catastrophic for somebody's world, you know, to be able to do that. So I'm, I'm super honored that you trusted me in that journey. And for those that are listening to this, that have not actually watched your case study, I'll do a kind of a quick, quick summary so that way we can get into the actual strategies. But within those six months, we dove right into systems, you started to get everything out of your head. And so that way, your teams could focus more on actually doing work that was like that you were doing before. So that way, I kind of unlocked you to focus on what's most important. And one of the things that I wanted to actually talk about, which may or may not have been top of mind for you, do you remember filling out like either like a Kolbe A or a StrengthsFinder and talking about unique ability and how we position you according to your strengths?

[00:06:54:13 - 00:06:58:16]
Susan Fernandez
 Sorry, I remember filling it out. But I don't recall exactly what I said.

[00:06:58:16 - 00:07:33:01]
Jesse Gilmore
 Okay, so one of the things that we do differently than than other consultants, which I'm starting to realize is actually like crucial to that fulfillment side is this unique ability where we figure out what is your actual like, if, if Susan had no external factors involved with how she runs, how can we position her according to her strengths? I remember that's how we did stuff with like time log, how we hired your CEO. There was a lot of like, that was one of the feeders. So I didn't know if that was one of the things that stood out to you.

[00:07:33:01 - 00:07:55:05]
Susan Fernandez
 But absolutely, I mean, one of the things of this clarity. So I think that the previous consultant who helped me get very niche focused and some of that is really courage, like you need to understand that instead of making the world smaller for you, when you really hone in on a niche, you're making it much more powerful.

[00:07:56:17 - 00:08:26:15]
Susan Fernandez
 So that was, you know, that was so crucial for me. But then to turn that around and say, so now this, this company I'm building, everything is in my head. This passion for this niche is in my head and in my heart, and how I want things done and how things should be done. And I'm having conversations with clients. And then how is that getting translated to the team? And there was so much grit.

[00:08:27:20 - 00:08:49:09]
Susan Fernandez
 And there was so many things that were slowing everything down that it was, you know, some of it was very bootcamp. You were very clear about time blocking, about getting, not taking somebody else's monkey on and, you know, giving it back to them.

[00:08:51:12 - 00:09:16:16]
Susan Fernandez
 And but it was the day to day, like, how do you set up your day to day that in two weeks I immediately felt free. I was like, oh, this is where what I do is valuable. This is how I get everyone else in line with that in a clear, structured way that's organized

[00:09:18:01 - 00:10:01:00]
Susan Fernandez
 and that helps them grow their knowledge base as well, because I didn't, you know, we want them to be, to learn as they're going, but also really allow them to do a high level of work with minimum friction and it being so clear. And then also when you had us do that task of really getting everything out of our heads and into a document, you could see the redundant, it became very clear, where were the redundancies? Where were we missing the point in, we were following a process, but was it actually in line with what the client needed or wanted or served us?

[00:10:02:03 - 00:10:26:14]
Susan Fernandez
 So there were so many things that we did that where you just had us be introspective of like, okay, what are we doing? What have we built so far? Is it working? Why are we doing what we're doing? And what am I spending my time on every single day that is not moving me in the direction I want to be in? And that was really eye opening. It was also very,

[00:10:28:12 - 00:10:48:22]
Susan Fernandez
 I would say even though our firm was small, it was both a relief to the team to say like, oh, we're going to have all this order and structure. And it was also kind of terrifying because we were used to things going a certain way. And even though we didn't like the result, we knew the process.

[00:10:48:22 - 00:10:50:05]
Jesse Gilmore
 Yeah.

[00:10:51:08 - 00:11:21:20]
Jesse Gilmore
 Yeah. I remember very specifically when we took that guidebook you talked about like the 180 page guidebook, and then we were looking at a very specific service print collateral. And I was like, why do you have so many size options? And you're like, oh yeah, we want to fit like everybody. And then when we looked at the data, 91% of works coming from three sizes. And I was like, just cut it. And you're like, oh no. And then like, I was like this nervous feeling. And then we did it. And you're like, no one complained. And it was like, exactly.

[00:11:23:01 - 00:11:31:18]
Jesse Gilmore
 And then that was like, I remember that was one of those light bulb moments where you're like, I could do this with everything. And it was like this trickle down.

[00:11:31:18 - 00:11:40:09]
Susan Fernandez
 Yeah, that clarity. Sometimes we, especially, so I do think being an entrepreneur is a lonely business.

[00:11:41:21 - 00:11:57:17]
Susan Fernandez
 You are on an island of one. And it's equal sides of the same, it's different sides of the same coin. So you're on your own, which means you get to do whatever you want.

[00:11:58:18 - 00:12:10:22]
Susan Fernandez
 On the flip side of that, you also feel like you need to do everything a client wants. And so in one way, it's power. In another way, it's not.

[00:12:12:02 - 00:12:20:13]
Susan Fernandez
 And having someone come in and say, I'm going to give you a recommendation. And I'm going to back it up by looking at historical data.

[00:12:21:13 - 00:12:30:09]
Susan Fernandez
 And we are going to start putting parameters around everything that we do and we do well. And we're going to let go of the rest is very liberating.

[00:12:30:09 - 00:13:04:12]
Jesse Gilmore
 And you had started to talk a little bit about, and what actually brought you on the podcast many years afterwards was one of your case studies, like short-form repurposed videos went out and a comment that you had made really just kind of stood out to me, which was the strategies that I learned through leverage for growth and working with Jesse, I'm still applying in the agency that you're in. And how many employees does UpSpring have just to give a painted picture?

[00:13:04:12 - 00:13:07:08]
Susan Fernandez
 We are about 40 plus.

[00:13:07:08 - 00:13:40:06]
Jesse Gilmore
 I always say like I'm starting off people and trying to get them on the right foot from the get go. So that way when they grow, they're able to like not have to redo a bunch of stuff within the organization, which is a lot harder to make changes at a 40 plus person organization as opposed to the smaller one. But just off the cuff, what are some of those things that you had learned through working together and applying leverage for growth that you're still holding on to? You talked about the monkey, which is actually one of my assignments that I give for people that keep on taking on other people's work.

[00:13:41:12 - 00:13:49:07]
Jesse Gilmore
 But yeah, I kind of talked through either like principles or anything that kind of stands out as something you're applying right now.

[00:13:49:07 - 00:14:08:20]
Susan Fernandez
 We merged and the PR side of the business has been functioning at a very high level for about 15 years. So UpSpring's been started when the CEO and president were quite young.

[00:14:10:09 - 00:14:50:07]
Susan Fernandez
 And PR is very different from marketing, although they have a lot of overlap. The amount of services you're going to provide is just one service, it's PR. And there might be different sort of projects. One might be awards, one might be speaking, but it's all under PR and thought leadership. And so running teams is very clear, really crystal clear how much a client is, what their scope is, how many people you need. You can just look at it on a spreadsheet. And marketing is very different.

[00:14:51:07 - 00:14:59:01]
Susan Fernandez
 A go-to-market strategy can be small. It can be massive. It could need a team of six. It could be done by two people.

[00:15:00:12 - 00:15:02:03]
Susan Fernandez
 So how to take,

[00:15:03:05 - 00:15:24:06]
Susan Fernandez
 first of all, was the culture merging, was to really understand, I felt very strongly that I know what it takes now to have a functioning marketing team. And so when we merged, there was a culture of kind of like, why don't you guys, since you're smaller, come over and start doing everything the way that we do it. And that was not going to work.

[00:15:25:06 - 00:15:27:08]
Susan Fernandez
 And I had data for that.

[00:15:28:14 - 00:15:30:10]
Susan Fernandez
 So that was great.

[00:15:32:11 - 00:15:58:08]
Susan Fernandez
 I think some of the principles I learned were really about how to manage these teams. And as we grow and we grow in different specialties, so our social team isn't going to be working on a website project. So we have these kind of different silos, and I still have to manage the work across all these silos with different teams.

[00:15:59:20 - 00:16:12:12]
Susan Fernandez
 And getting the projects, getting everybody on the same page clear SOPs, like this is how we do this. This is how you report in.

[00:16:13:21 - 00:16:36:14]
Susan Fernandez
 And it's also gave everybody a very clear, almost, well, they talk about this in architecture, go no go, like in a way to evaluate. I know what the process is. I can start to see where the client is moving away from that. And then we have a clear structure where they can come to me and say, I can see how this is going to escalate.

[00:16:38:11 - 00:16:51:23]
Susan Fernandez
 This idea that everything is written out and it's clear, and someone who is managing various teams can start to identify where we're getting creep in a project way before it happens.

[00:16:53:03 - 00:17:01:13]
Susan Fernandez
 And that is never going to happen until you understand your role, you have a clear principle of how to proceed.

[00:17:03:07 - 00:17:16:14]
Susan Fernandez
 I've empowered the teams now that they're not treading water all the time, which is what we were doing at Epiphany. We literally were treading water at all times. There was no time for strategy. There was no time to stop and say,

[00:17:18:13 - 00:18:06:23]
Susan Fernandez
 what is all this on my plate? Is it supposed to be there? What is the process? How can I realign to it? Really understanding now the mechanics of how this works allowed us to merge. Was there some hiccups? Of course there were. But to take two businesses that look the same on the outside but bring them together and they're radically different on the inside, it was almost seamless, which is crazy, which is crazy to really decide, I'm going to change this business in this way. We are going to plug into a much bigger company and to have it work so easily was really a credit, Jesse,

[00:18:08:11 - 00:18:17:08]
Susan Fernandez
 to you because I felt like I had my arms around the business. I knew how to grow it. We weren't guessing anymore and we weren't treading water.

[00:18:17:08 - 00:18:43:09]
Jesse Gilmore
 Just a recap of some of these principles that I heard. Correct me if I get something off. One of the main things that you talked about was an organizational culture. Understanding your organizational culture from that infrastructure level allowed the merger to be a lot more smooth than it would be if you didn't understand that. Another one was based around the importance of getting everything out of your head and

[00:18:44:10 - 00:18:54:22]
Jesse Gilmore
 using processes and SOPs to be able to manage larger groups of people was another thing that kind of stuck with me. The other thing was that you talked about treading in the water and Epiphany.

[00:18:56:04 - 00:19:40:03]
Jesse Gilmore
 In previous conversations you talked about reinventing the wheel with every client where once we stopped doing that, everything else became more profitable, enjoyable. I remember one of the big things that we had is an organizational culture value. I remember we were like, "What we need to do is we need to make sure that revisions are less than three." Everybody's like, "Ah!" They were like, "Do it!" Then that became the drum beat and the theme that Epiphany was heading into when we were thinking about SOPs and stuff like that. Do you remember that talk and the revisions reduction was kind of like one of the missions we run?

[00:19:40:03 - 00:19:55:07]
Susan Fernandez
 One of the things that all of this clarity gave me also an understanding from the client's perspective. When the client is leading and that's what we were letting them do, that doesn't feel good to them.

[00:19:56:10 - 00:20:06:16]
Susan Fernandez
 They come to us, they want to know we have a process. They want to know we have expertise. That's why they're there. When we're letting them run wild with revisions,

[00:20:07:21 - 00:20:12:20]
Susan Fernandez
 it's kind of like, "Well, who actually has the vision? Who's got the strategy?"

[00:20:13:20 - 00:20:18:17]
Susan Fernandez
 Because we were going all over the place. We were letting them do that rather than saying no.

[00:20:20:01 - 00:20:36:00]
Susan Fernandez
 I just wanted to back up for a second because I did want to tell you that the two partners who own UpSpring, part of their growth plan was always to merge with an agency.

[00:20:38:04 - 00:20:39:15]
Susan Fernandez
 They've looked at a lot of them.

[00:20:41:15 - 00:21:02:19]
Susan Fernandez
 It was clear right away to me that eight months previous, we would have been a terrible fit for them. Absolutely terrible. They had gone behind the scenes with a lot of agencies and they did not see one that at our size had that structure.

[00:21:03:19 - 00:21:34:11]
Susan Fernandez
 I think that's the key thing to me that really made all of this so powerful was having that structure at such a small size. It made us so different in the market. It made us different to UpSpring. It made us different to our clients. It made it different to the team because they were working for a company that was still very personal and small, but we operated like grown up.

[00:21:34:11 - 00:21:36:20]
Jesse Gilmore
 I always talk about end games with clients.

[00:21:37:23 - 00:21:53:08]
Jesse Gilmore
 One of the main things that they say is that they want to either work in the business when they want to scale it to the moon or eventually sell it. What you're saying is from when we first started, it was a four person agency in the beginning.

[00:21:54:10 - 00:22:01:04]
Jesse Gilmore
 Imagine just implementing that increased evaluation and increased the acquisition.

[00:22:02:04 - 00:22:26:21]
Jesse Gilmore
 Sometimes people get really nervous because they're like, "Oh, I want to be at a certain stage before I even consider it or that I feel like I'm ready or whatever." If I'm hearing correctly, getting these more mature types of processes in place from the get go actually set up for an acquisition to happen more based around you don't have to happen right away, but getting it done is what sets up for an acquisition.

[00:22:26:21 - 00:22:43:01]
Susan Fernandez
 Absolutely. Because I think when you go behind, I know this on the client side because our clients can be multinational corporations as well as a family owned business that's been making furniture for 75 years.

[00:22:45:00 - 00:22:49:02]
Susan Fernandez
 You get behind the scenes of a business and you see all manner of things.

[00:22:51:00 - 00:22:59:08]
Susan Fernandez
 Sometimes it's confusing as to how it stays open and other times it's just so beautifully done.

[00:23:00:18 - 00:23:12:14]
Susan Fernandez
 For most small businesses, you are learning as you go. You are, what do they say? You're building the plane in midair. It's not a good place to be.

[00:23:16:12 - 00:23:43:06]
Susan Fernandez
 You only know what you know. To be able to put a structure in place that allows you to now operate on a completely different level only elevates your business and it only elevates your prospects. But that level of, I want to call it maturity because it really just comes from experience.

[00:23:44:15 - 00:24:11:01]
Susan Fernandez
 You coming from the corporate world and you knowing like, okay, this is the fundamentals of what's happening and this is how to do it from an ideal perspective really allowed us to gain years of knowledge in just a few months and it really set us up for success. It doesn't matter if you want to sell in 10 years to have 10 years of that level of success

[00:24:12:11 - 00:24:16:03]
Susan Fernandez
 and the financials that validate that success.

[00:24:19:00 - 00:24:49:02]
Susan Fernandez
 It's just going to put you in a better position then. There's never a reason. I see so many entrepreneurs who are just solving the same, they're all trying to solve the same issue across different locations and it's all taking so much of their time where it's like if you can just see the framework and follow it and you have to blindly follow it Jesse because you're not easy, you do not accept excuses.

[00:24:50:04 - 00:25:10:10]
Susan Fernandez
 I remember trying to get out of something with you and you were like, yeah, just basically tell me when it's done. I gave him like eight valid points to why this doesn't apply to me or my business and he was like, yeah, I've heard that one before.

[00:25:12:08 - 00:25:29:20]
Susan Fernandez
 I think it is that framework that people are struggling against and you can really put in all the hard work you want but without it following the right structure, it really is just wasted.

[00:25:31:00 - 00:25:33:23]
Susan Fernandez
 I hate to say that because I worked really hard for a long time.

[00:25:33:23 - 00:25:46:13]
Jesse Gilmore
 I'm having these weird flashback moments as we're talking about this partly due to the fact that literally right before this, I was realizing that you were one of the first five and since then I've coached 500.

[00:25:48:19 - 00:26:14:03]
Jesse Gilmore
 What's really, really interesting is that it's the same principles. It's the same things, it's the same methodology, it just got proven over hundreds of people as opposed to just the first five, which is really awesome. Working with you also is very aspirational for people that might be just getting started. Maybe they are the four person agency, maybe they feel like they're reinventing the wheel and at some point they want to sell it and they can't figure out how.

[00:26:15:11 - 00:26:36:11]
Jesse Gilmore
 The ability of someone seeing doubling in six months instead of shutting it down, getting fired in 18, moving the principles and the lessons into a 50 or 40 person agency and still utilizing that to continue to grow is just like, it's exciting. It's exciting to see.

[00:26:37:13 - 00:26:44:15]
Susan Fernandez
 It is. I have to say that for me it got to be a mental game.

[00:26:45:17 - 00:27:12:13]
Susan Fernandez
 I was showing up, I was first thing online, 6 AM checking my email, working and watching other people seemingly have it easier, finding the road to success so much more clearly and it's felt like, of course it always does when you're on the outside, it feels like, oh, well, it's really effortless for them.

[00:27:14:00 - 00:27:30:08]
Susan Fernandez
 Especially I think for being a woman, you can start to feel very self critical. This must be something fundamentally wrong about what I'm trying to give to this world, what I'm trying to bring to our clients.

[00:27:33:05 - 00:28:02:04]
Susan Fernandez
 It can become a vicious cycle of like, if only I can just sort time tracking and then I can fix this for this client and you're just on this hamster wheel that is not really getting you where you want to go and it can start to do your head in. It's so crazy to me because part of this is trusting the process.

[00:28:03:10 - 00:28:12:18]
Susan Fernandez
 A lot of the things that I was asked to do working with you in some ways felt counterintuitive.

[00:28:13:22 - 00:28:19:06]
Susan Fernandez
 Even writing down the whole process, why do I have to write it down? It's in my head, I don't need to write this down,

[00:28:21:09 - 00:28:29:13]
Susan Fernandez
 which is ridiculous, I know. But when you're working all the time and when you're not working, you're thinking about why your work isn't working,

[00:28:30:19 - 00:28:39:07]
Susan Fernandez
 that seems like another task on top of all of it. There is a certain amount of like, you just have to trust the process,

[00:28:40:13 - 00:28:54:09]
Susan Fernandez
 you have to accept that hard work does not always bring success. There are so many people who work really, really hard in their lives, we all know them and they don't have a lot of success.

[00:28:56:00 - 00:29:02:09]
Susan Fernandez
 They are not equivalent no matter what we're told as a society.

[00:29:03:21 - 00:29:14:09]
Susan Fernandez
 You have to work in a really strategic way and you can't think your way out of this problem. You have to have somebody else who's going to guide you out of this problem.

[00:29:15:10 - 00:29:17:19]
Susan Fernandez
 I felt like once I relented,

[00:29:18:23 - 00:29:35:01]
Susan Fernandez
 once I gave in and was like, "Okay, Jesse, I'm just going to do what you tell me to do." Then I was at my teenage brat, was like, "Fine, I'll just follow everything you say." Then I was like, "Oh, so this is working, okay."

[00:29:36:02 - 00:29:49:15]
Susan Fernandez
 It gave me so much more confidence. It gave me to really double down on what I'm actually bringing to this market it needs. It's smart, it's good, the design is beautiful.

[00:29:51:09 - 00:29:55:08]
Susan Fernandez
 I can hone in on that now because that other stuff is taking care of itself.

[00:29:55:08 - 00:30:34:01]
Jesse Gilmore
 Man, I feel like we could talk literally for another three hours because my immediate thought was like, if you boil it all down, and this is maybe just a rapid fire before we wrap up. If I think about all of the changes, everything that happened in sequence, freeing up the time, getting everything out of your head, focusing on the offer, your core offer, taking it to the market with Loom videos, and then going into empowering the team and being able to run it. A lot of times people think about it very tactically. They're like, "Okay, I just got to build SOPs." It's not actually SOPs, it's the process flows.

[00:30:35:18 - 00:30:49:12]
Jesse Gilmore
 They think it's the offer. "Oh, it has to be like a Hormozi offer." No, it doesn't. It's really a shift. If I boiled everything down into a very specific thing, it always boils down to the psychology behind it or the mindset.

[00:30:50:16 - 00:31:20:00]
Jesse Gilmore
 People can't grasp what it means because the word mindset just is like just beaten up in the market and used in a lot of different ways. They're like, "Oh," and then anybody that brings up mindset, everybody turns off. In actuality, it's the shift of the way that you think, the way that you think about your business, the way you think about the use of your time, the way you think about systems and SOPs, and what they actually do for the team is create career development as opposed to just constantly making somebody like a robot.

[00:31:21:00 - 00:31:28:09]
Jesse Gilmore
 If you can view everything in a different way, it makes you embrace the actual method of how to get there.

[00:31:30:03 - 00:31:35:07]
Jesse Gilmore
 Is that what you're finding too? It does actually, it's the shift in thinking that is the thing.

[00:31:35:07 - 00:31:59:11]
Susan Fernandez
 I remember you telling me that your business wants to succeed and that I really identified with because when all these people are working together, there is a certain amount of energy and momentum being generated, but it wasn't going in the right place.

[00:32:00:22 - 00:32:11:02]
Susan Fernandez
 The mindset shift, I think what makes someone a good entrepreneur is they believe they can figure something out and do it better,

[00:32:12:18 - 00:33:13:06]
Susan Fernandez
 but that also involves with getting the systems in place means that almost you have to turn off that, "I can do it better. This doesn't apply to me analytical brain and follow it." Then you can start to see, "Okay, we generate this natural momentum. The team's really excited. The work is really good. Now I have everything else that supports it, and now I can really see that the business starts to take on a life of its own." It does want to succeed, but I agree. When you talk about mindset, people think it's woo-woo and it really is not. We have to unlearn, and for most entrepreneurs, I believe you have to turn off the thinking brain and just be like, "I don't know why this works, but I'm going to try it." You see then it does work.

[00:33:13:06 - 00:33:22:07]
Jesse Gilmore
 Last question I have for you before we wrap up. If anybody's listening to this and they have no idea what leverage for growth is, whether an agency owner,

[00:33:23:09 - 00:33:24:10]
Jesse Gilmore
 what would you say to them?

[00:33:24:10 - 00:33:27:04]
Susan Fernandez
 If you want to get somewhere,

[00:33:28:21 - 00:33:41:20]
Susan Fernandez
 you can try to figure it out for yourself, or you can go with somebody who's not only been there, but then this is the crucial piece, can teach you how to get there.

[00:33:45:03 - 00:33:50:11]
Susan Fernandez
 You can waste decades trying to figure this out for yourself.

[00:33:51:18 - 00:34:21:20]
Susan Fernandez
 I've had more than one partner who was like, "Are you sure this makes you happy? Are you sure you want to do this?" Because it can be such a grind, but if you want to succeed in whatever success looks like for you, whether it is working one day a week or whether it is merging with another company, whether it is having an acquisition,

[00:34:23:00 - 00:34:38:22]
Susan Fernandez
 you can get there, but you need that framework and you need that guide. It just is the shortest path between you and the vision that you have for yourself. I would also say that I think it's really one of the things that,

[00:34:40:09 - 00:34:56:14]
Susan Fernandez
 because I was obsessed with watching all these YouTube videos on how to grow your business and all these things, I did not feel like when we had been working together and we had such great success right out the gate, amazing.

[00:34:57:18 - 00:35:15:06]
Susan Fernandez
 I said, "Jesse, I really think I want to take this." I did not feel like it was that you, Jesse, that has one vision for what success is.

[00:35:16:11 - 00:35:19:10]
Susan Fernandez
 It's both standard, it's like a set of practices,

[00:35:20:16 - 00:35:25:20]
Susan Fernandez
 a format, but then it gets really custom tailored to each person and what they want.

[00:35:25:20 - 00:35:42:12]
Jesse Gilmore
 Awesome, Susan. Most likely I'm going to have you on for another episode a little bit later because this whole topic of mindset is beautiful. If somebody is listening to this and they want to get to know more about you or connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

[00:35:42:12 - 00:36:08:18]
Susan Fernandez
 You can connect with me on LinkedIn or you can also just email me. My email is super simple. It's susan at upspringpr.com. I can talk about Jesse all day long. I have so much gratitude for you finding me, pulling me out of this whirlpool I was in

[00:36:11:12 - 00:36:30:03]
Susan Fernandez
 really energizing me and building my confidence and even honing my opinion and my leadership in a way that I didn't think could be possible, let alone in six months. I mean, that was crazy. Crazy good.

[00:36:31:23 - 00:36:39:15]
Jesse Gilmore
 Susan, I am honored that you trusted me on that journey and I am so excited to keep on sharing the transformation with others.

[00:36:41:08 - 00:36:44:00]
Jesse Gilmore
 Thank you so much for being on the Leverage for Growth podcast.

[00:36:44:00 - 00:36:45:14]
Susan Fernandez
 Thank you so much.