This is a podcast for anyone buried under spreadsheets, stuck in broken systems, or simply trying to make operations run more smoothly. Each episode explores how to solve real-world business problems with practical strategies, low-code tools like Zoho Creator, and of course smart thinking!
Whether you're building platforms for your business, managing complex data, or just trying to streamline your team's workflow, Trailblazer FM brings you conversations and insights to help make sense of the mess.
🎧 400+ episodes available now, with new episodes launching soon.
In October 2018 we finally decided to go for our dream of launching an event in the agency space. In this episode I share how planned and launched our event along with the lessons we learned along the way. Full show notes: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-launch-a-niche-event/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
How do you grow an agency, and create an exit plan that allows you to retire? Many agencies grow to a point where the founder becomes the bottleneck, the blocker to growth and the reason the they cannot move on from what they created. Feeling trapped? Looking for a growth and exit strategy? This episode is for you. Full show notes: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-exit-your-agency/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
It’s the age old agency problem. You work hard to win the project, and then you are all hands on deck for delivery. In the meantime the sales pipeline gets neglected and before long there is too much month at the end of the money. As a result, you and your team begin scrambling for new business and become less and less fussy about what projects you undertake. Like a black hole, this cycle feels impossible to escape as it sucks you in. Full show notes available here: https://agencytrailblazer.com...
Today we talk with Oliver who shares how his web agency began to develop solutions to help keep their client websites maintained and secure. As their service developed they realised it was time to pivot away from design/web builds and WebArx Security was born. Full show notes available here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-pivot-your-agency/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Agency owners often dream of the perfect PR that generates 100s of leads and yet reality never quite meets expectations. How do you generate great PR for your agency that attracts the right sort of leads? Full show notes available here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-get-more-exposure/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Join us at our in-person event Agency Transformation Live Meet Troy Dean; Lee Jackson, Chris Ducker, Kelly Baader, Amy Woods, Paul Lac...
Chris Ducker is a serial entrepreneur who has worked his way up as an entrepreneur working 14 hour days 6 days a week to become a virtual CEO. Chris has also written a book on becoming the go- to leader in your industry and build a future proof business. Not only is Chris an author he also runs the YouPreneur podcast where he introduces his audience to some of the top online business minds, as well as fellow personal brand entrepreneurs from around the world. Full show notes available here: http...
Kelly Baader is a renowned Digital Sales and Marketing Strategist, Certified Business Coach, Mentor to emerging Christian entrepreneurs, Host of Christian CEO Podcast, author of an Amazon bestseller – A Little Girl Called Grace, and the founder of The Christian CEO University. From a humble background, Kelly had to overcome insurmountable odds since her childhood to achieve the success she enjoys today. That includes surviving from sexual abuse at her teens for over a decade, overcoming cultural...
Are your current marketing strategies failing you? Do you even have a marketing strategy? (Hey, I’m often winging it folks). Today Michelle Hunter shares how we can create a marketing plan for our services. Expect zero “buzz words”, instead easy to understand explanations, advice and actions. Full show notes available here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-market-your-services/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Join us at our in-person event Agency Tran...
Dave Foy teaches graphic designers how to build websites they can be proud of and how to build your websites profitably and quickly. He also shows you how to make beautiful lead magnet landing pages that generate leads like crazy as well as sharing Elementor tricks and sales funnel optimisation tips. Full show notes available here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/speaker-profile-dave-foy/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Join us at our in-person event Agency...
Troy Dean is an online marketing speaker; coach, consultant and podcaster. Troy specialises in helping businesses and entrepreneurs use the internet to attract new customers and build their communities. He also runs a membership community training businesses on how to attract better clients, create better briefs and charge the right prices. Full show notes here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/speaker-profile-scaling-your-agency/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your busin...
Martin is the co-founder of Jammy Digital, a WordPress web design agency in the UK. Martin, along with his wife Lyndsay help personal brands & small business owners to make their mark online. As well as building websites for some of the UK’s biggest names in the marketing space, Martin also runs a membership where he teaches people how to build their own highly successful website. Full show notes here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/speaker-profile-attracting-clients/ --- OUR EVENT: D...
Want to launch your course online but are holding back? Perhaps you struggle with impostor syndrome. Perhaps you are not sure how to get started. Perhaps you have all the knowledge but it feels all jumbled up. In this episode, Mor Cohen shares how she has overcame her fears, how she planned her content and the tools she used to launch her course, The Branding Designer Academy . Full show notes here - https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-launch-an-online-course/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want...
Overwhelm, stress, worry, anxiety can be the everyday experience of an agency owner. We talk with Gabrielle Treanor, and unpack tools we can use to improve our mental health and better handle the day to day. The questions we ask Gabrielle are all from our Agency Trailblazer community from business owners that are looking for help to work through the daily struggles they have. The most common questions revolve around overwhelm or stem from it and Gabrielle shares wonderfully clear and actionable ...
Describing what we do and what we offer can often spill out as a confusion mix of words. As we look at our business, what we are working on often reflects that confusing mix, and can feel like utter chaos. Today I chat with Andrew Palmer who shares his own agency journey over the years. He unpacks lessons learned, gives insights into his online businesses and shares valuable advice for startups and established agencies. Full show notes: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-productize-you...
How do you go about transforming your agency and your life? From experience, small achievable actions lead to big change. Let me share with you the 5 stages of transformation that we have been going through. This creates a pathway that you can use to transform your agency one step at a time. Full show notes: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-transform-your-agency/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Many agencies tend to be working from project to project, often without being able to develop a more long term relationship with their client. Thus an ongoing rinse and repeat of new leads and projects is required to keep the business sustainable. Excite Media had developed as a typical web agency but wanted to move more to recurring digital marketing, because of this exact scenario. With the introduction of the EOS Traction business system they decided to incorporate it into their processes and...
As we develop our agencies, we tend to get busier and busier. Our list of products and services seems to ever expand. Everything we do seems super complicated and unique. We struggle to work out how to bring others in to help us and often we become the bottleneck of our own business. Kim Barrett shares his story from “one man full service agency” to an agency that has successfully productised marketing services in a way that allows them to scale. Full show notes here - https://agencytrailblazer....
No matter how clever we are, we can’t only nail it first time. I’ve always learned by testing and improving as well as avoiding past mistakes. I’m aware that I’ve not applied this to our own corporate websites so I asked Adam Lacey onto the show to help me understand the benefits of split testing and how I can go about doing it. Full show notes here - https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-use-split-testing-in-your-agency/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Jo...
Ever looked at your business and wondered how it got to where it is? Do you like what you see? Bob shares his story of creating a large agency up in Aberdeen. Despite ticking all the “success boxes”, having a large team was not necessarily giving Bob the lifestyle and the satisfaction he needed. Bob took action... He significantly changed things to build an agency that he loves and that he can add the most value. It looks completely different today! Come on the journey with us in this week's epi...
They preach it from the roof tops: "Content is king", and yet how do we create content that ACTUALLY generates leads? Alternatively, how can we make what we've already created work for our business? Full show notes: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-get-more-traffic-and-leads/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
As designers, we are often so focused on helping others build their brand that we neglect our own. Today we talk with Trudie who shares with us how she has created her niche, and built her brand in Northamptonshire and the surrounding area. Trudie and I have known each other for some time, and have often networked together or been a part of each others training sessions. I’ve always enjoyed her personality which is the same both in person, online and in her design and messaging. This episode is ...
Local networking is so often overlooked by design and web agencies. It is assumed that our target audience does not exist locally so it is a complete waste of time rocking up to a local breakfast meeting. Paul Landa and Lee smash that assumption sharing their stories of how they have used networking to grow their agencies. On the back of the large network that Paul has established, he shares the early days and weeks of his new venture, My Web Pal , a pay monthly web build service. He shares why ...
Agencies are constantly hunting for the next project. What if you could build up a business building websites that guaranteed a monthly income and removed the stress of cashflow? It sounds too good to be true but John White shares how he has achieved just that! Lee deep dives with him into how he has achieved his monthly revenue model, what he offers, how he positions it and goes into the numbers. An episode not to be missed. Full show notes available here - https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast...
Many agencies struggle to generate solid leads for their business, as by “serving everyone”, they struggle to communicate who they are, what they do and who they do it for. Alex Curtis shares his own journey of freelancing and launching an agency that naturally niched into the Finance sector. He doubled down and has grown a large team. He shares how he has used social media to generate leads for his niche and grow his business. Full show notes available here - https://agencytrailblazer.com/podca...
There are so many stereotypes of a successful agency. The large London office, huge team and massive accounts. When Joana and her partner were launching their agency, they recognised that they were build building a business that would suit their life, their plans and their family. Having priced up the cost of doing business in London they went their own unique way building an agency and team that serve brands all around the world! The best bit... their office is not even in one of the big cities...
Time with family is the highest priority. Running an agency can often keep us away from those we love and can have a huge impact on our own mental health, our relationships and in turn our businesses. Today I talk with Justin, a single parent, who shares how he was able to go from busy web agency to an agency focused primarily on servicing and supporting websites on retainers. He also unpacks his productised builds to allow him to offer a clearly priced and positioned web build that allows him a...
We all have dreams but often feel like they are unattainable. Perhaps we feel overwhelmed by the challenge, or perhaps we feel held back because of things that have happened to us. Meet Kelly a close friend of mine who has overcome so much in her life to achieve success that has had huge impact for many people including myself. From a humble background, Kelly had to overcome insurmountable odds since her childhood to achieve the success she enjoys today. That includes surviving from sexual abuse...
With the cost of entry for web builds plummeting, how can you possibly compete in your niche? Matthew shares how to launch a turnkey website within your niche to help capture those who cannot afford custom builds. This gives people who want to work with you an experience of your services, and helps them continue to do business. He shares with us the common mistakes he faced when launching a turnkey website business as well as valuable lessons he learned along the way. We go from inspection, to i...
Content creation is not only a powerful marketing tool, but it helps shape you and your business and leads to ideas and opportunities you may never have dreamt of! We catch up with community favourite Kim Doyal as she shares with usher journey with content and how it has influenced her business and business choices. Full show notes here: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-content-influences-your-business/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Join us at our in-p...
Nicole has grown her Social Media agency by developing her personal brand. We explore with her how she launched and hid behind her brand, and how putting herself out there changed her business. Full show notes: https://agencytrailblazer.com/podcast/how-to-develop-a-personal-brand/ --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Join us at our in-person event Agency Transformation Live Meet Troy Dean; Lee Jackson, Chris Ducker, Kelly Baader, Amy Woods, Paul Lacey, Dave Foy and ot...
