Ep20: Clodagh Higgins, Agency Coach and Consultant at the Growit Group
This week on The CoSell Show we are beyond thrilled to have Clodagh Higgins, Agency Coach and Consultant at the Growit Group.
Topics Covered:
- Why focusing on the “gaps” is important in business, as well as art
- When and why you should consider working “on” your business instead of “in” it
- How to maximize global expansion success
- How to create consisted, authentic content for your personal, or professional brand
More about Clodagh and the Growit Group:
Growit Group provides coaching & consulting for Digital Agencies on how to run successful and profitable businesses.
Clodagh S.Higgins is an ex-Hubspotter, now Agency coach and consultant that has owned her own Digital Agency for 8+ years in Sydney & Dublin. She has worked with over 500+ agencies helping them grow and scale their businesses.
She is the author of A Happy & Healthy Digital Agency and hosts a weekly podcast, interviewing Agency Owners about the highs and lows of running a professional services business, Agency Life.
Clodagh believes that Agency owners can have the profitable business of their dreams, with an expert team that are happy, while getting great results for their clients.
You can learn more about Growit’s methodology on their YouTube channel.
When Clodagh is not helping Agencies you will find her training for Powerlifting competitions and she has a World Record in Strict Curl and a National Record in bench press. She lives in the West of Ireland in her retreat in progress called Isleen Cottage. You can follow her on Instagram @queenmaevev2
There are a variety of ways to work with Clodagh & Growit from listening to her podcast for free, buying her book on Amazon, purchasing her Digital Agency Re-energiser online course or hiring her for coaching & consulting through various Growit Group Service Offerings.
Read about the results that Clodagh and the Growit Group team have got for their clients Penguin Strategies Influence Agents & Inbound Norway
Brought to you by our host: Taylor Baker (Podcast Producer and Head of Content at CoSell.io)
Listen and Subscribe:
Follow along with the podcast transcript is below:
Taylor Baker:
Hello listeners and welcome back to the Co-Sell Show. I’m your host, Taylor Baker, and today we’re going to talk about why you should consider working on your business instead of in it, how to maximize global expansion success and how to create consistent and authentic content for your personal or professional brand and who better to talk to you about all of this and more than Clodagh Higgins, Agency Coach and Consultant for the GrowIt Group. Welcome, Clodagh.
Clodagh Higgins:
Thank you, Taylor. I was delighted when I heard from you. Love being on the other side of the mic answering the questions as opposed to being the interviewer.
Taylor Baker:
Yes, listeners, Clodagh has a podcast which we’ll definitely talk more about later, but for now to kick things off, Clodagh, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about your background and your current role in the GrowIt Group?
Clodagh Higgins:
Perfect. Yeah, sure. So I’m an Agency Coach and Consultant. I used to have my own agency a long time ago and now I help agency owners prevent the mistakes in their business that they don’t need to do because I’ve worked with hundreds of agencies all around the world and I help them undo the mistakes that they’ve already done. I absolutely love working with marketing technology agencies, digital marketing agencies, web agencies, just to help them run a better business.
Taylor Baker:
That is so wonderful that you are able to share that and help so many people.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, and I love doing it. I’ve worked a lot with a lot of agency couples who kind of, there could be some marriage guidance counseling that I have to do every now and again. But the digital marketing community, the agency owners, there are a lot of strong-willed, different kind of eccentric personalities and they’re really passionate about what they do. But nobody’s ever taught them how to run a professional services business. So when I was actually working in HubSpot, I realized this, I was there for four years selling software services, consulting and I realized, God, these people opened the doors of a business that’s quite complicated and they need some help. That’s where I got invited to work at GrowIt Group and then ended up writing my own book, creating my own digital course, creating my own methodology and the podcast as well, to just help agency owners not feel like they’re alone and to give them some solid proven methodology, business strategies so they can get on and do what they do best, which is marketing and web development and things like that.
Taylor Baker:
And don’t worry, listeners, we will link to all of Clodagh’s amazing content upon content upon content. And we’ll also talk more about it in this podcast. So moving on, our favorite question here at the Co-Sell Show and you’re actually a fascinating person to ask this too because you actually have some really interesting things on your LinkedIn profile. But what is something fun about you that our listeners cannot find on your LinkedIn?
Clodagh Higgins:
So not on my LinkedIn is the fact that I actually classically trained as a mosaic artist when I lived in Australia and it’s something. I’ve exhibited mosaic art. I’ve worked with incredible teachers to do it the old fashioned way, which is from Italy. The big thing about mosaics that really kind of drove me to it and that I use in my everyday life as well, are mosaics are not really about the tiles. The tiles are a certain part of it and they can be a color, but it’s about the space in between the tiles that gives the art the shape.
And for me, it sounds a bit hippy, but that’s a lot like life. When people are saying something to me or demonstrating something to me, I’m looking for the gaps and going, what does that mean? Why are those two things apart? What’s in between those two things? So mosaic art taught me a lot about business and a lot about communicating, which is one of the reasons I liked the two things.
Taylor Baker:
Wow. What a fascinating way to look at that. I’m definitely going to both in art and real life going to be looking at the gaps a little more closely. I’ve never thought about it that way.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah. Next time you see a mosaic piece, don’t look at the tiles, look at the lines in between the tiles because they give the shape and the next time you’re looking at a problem, don’t look at the problem, look at the gap either side of the problem and see what could be a solution there.
Taylor Baker:
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. You were a key part of the first ever four country agency merger. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what that process was like?
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah. Probably one of the really best business experiences I’ve had in a in my career, the group of investors who had invested in multiple businesses, different types of businesses over the years, they had seen the opportunity with small inbound marketing agencies coming together and they actually approached me to see if I would be interested in being part of the merger team. It was about the time I was leaving HubSpot and I was looking for a new challenge. So everything worked out. The whole premise is that, take for example, it’s sort of different in Europe because you have different countries, different cultures, different languages, different ways of doing things.
So you might have, let’s pick a company like Volvo and they are in Finland, they would like to work with an agency in Finland, but they also want to work with an agency in Sweden and in Norway and in Denmark. They find it difficult to deal with four different types of agencies with four different cultures, four different processes, four different ways of doing things. So the merger team was put together of finding a group of agencies who are willing to merge. It kind of happened organically, mainly at the bar at HubSpot inbound partner days where people would naturally congregate together and talk about the opportunity of merging together. So the first thing was to get people on the same page, their culture, were they happy? Did they want to move together? Did they want to bond together and did they want to work together?
Because if you’re thinking about merging with another agency, you’re going to spend a lot of time with them, so you need to see if we get on. So once we realized that the willingness was there and the work was going to be done, we started implementing a methodology called EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. If anyone wants to investigate that, there’s a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. It is a fantastic read for any agency owner out there who is struggling with processes and business methodology. So that’s where we started, was getting everyone on the same roles, responsibilities, their numbers, who was responsible for what, getting an agency playbook for each of the offices and collectively getting a culture code together so that everyone knew what their values were and what’s important to them. It’s been the most incredible journey.
It’s up over two and a half years now I’ve been part of that merger and there are now 70 people. There’s actually a fifth country involved. Now Germany has been added into the mix and it really has been fascinating working with a bigger and now a bigger agency that had individually agencies with their own way of doing things now harmoniously working together and serving clients across Europe. It’s been quite spectacular.
So I’ve learned a lot to bring to smaller agencies. That’s much where I prefer to work because I really love helping agency owners who struggle with the people, the processes, how their vision is going to come together. I’ve learned a lot from that big merger to help smaller agencies or to help other agencies who were thinking of merging together. It’s been an amazing journey. I’ve seen all of the Nordics at various different times of year in the depths of winter when it’s pitch dark all day and in the height of summer where it was pretty much bright for 20 hours.
Taylor Baker:
Oh my, we don’t get that over here. I mean my days are a little shorter than I’m used to here. I’m based in Austin, Texas and it gets dark about 6:00 but we don’t have 20 hour days or all day long nights here.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, it’s quite interesting in Europe.
Taylor Baker:
It’s funny you mentioned earlier how working with these agencies, you’re often also a bit of a marriage counselor when you’re working with couples that own these agencies together. Being married is definitely in a matter of speaking a merging of two lives and balancing just those two people’s priorities and things is a lot of work. So I imagine when you’re doing a merger of four, now five, companies, 70 people, that’s a lot of expectations to manage. So when merging companies as with partners, it is tricky to find that balance of powers and streamline the order of operations, and you touched on this a little bit, but if you could extrapolate a little bit, what are some of the best practices you’ve seen, whether in that particular merger or other partnerships that have made for the smoothest of transitions?
Clodagh Higgins:
So definitely the smoothest way to merge with another agency is to definitely know your values, but even if you’re in business with somebody, you might be hiring somebody, you might be going into a sales relationship, so you might be serving a client. You have to know your own values. You have to write down the values of honesty, integrity, expertise. What are the business values that your agency is known for? This is where you start. Because if you cannot align your values when you’re going into partnership with somebody, it’s very hard to work together. It’s very hard to get decisions done if your values are not aligned. Working with EOS and the Entrepreneurial Operating System, it will help you do that. That’s where you start. It starts personally because you’re going to be spending a long time with people and then you have to decide what roles and responsibilities you’re going to be accountable for.
You have to decide as if you’re coming into partnership, both of you can’t be head of sales or head of marketing, because he can’t talk to heads of things. So you have to decide as an agency partnership, what are you good at? What gets results? Are they the same things? Do you like doing that job? Because sometimes people go, oh, I have to do that because I’m the agency owner. And sure in the beginning you’ve got to do a lot of things, but as you grow, you should be delegating and finding a leadership team that can take that off you and hiring people that are better than you at what you do so that you can make executive decisions and learn from them and get on with being a particular role in the business.
You’ve got to decide what that is. So it’s a real simple step. I make it sound simple and it should be. Values, your mission, where you’re going, what type of team you need and where are you going to sit? A, lot of agency owners, they kind of get caught in a trap of I should be the managing director, I should be the CEO and I should be head of sales. But really if they boiled it down they might be the person that’s best off doing the finances and the bookkeeping once a month because that’s where they need to be, or making executive decisions at a board level or a leadership level.
Taylor Baker:
You know it’s interesting that you bring up delegation. I’ve seen firsthand companies sort of crumble when it comes to delegation because whether you call it ego or just when you start a company from the ground up and you’re sort of running everything and wearing all the hats, you do sort of have this like sense of ownership and pride and it’s like your baby. I’ve had a couple of people refer to companies as like your company is like a child and a child grows up and now they can have a driver’s license and you have to be okay with them leaving the house without you being around them all the time.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yes.
Taylor Baker:
Having a company is like that. You have to loosen the reins and give other people responsibilities and take a step back. I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t do that because they want to have their hand in every pot. That’s just not how it works.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, the baby analogy is a great one. They’re not at home all day. They go to Montessori, they get influenced by other people. Then they go to school. They get influenced by a teacher. You have to let them go and you have to let your agency go and you have to hire exceptional people better than you who are doing things better than you can do them and decide what you’re going to do. Maybe you want to be the pot-leader of the business so that you’re at conferences and you’re speaking or maybe you just want to come in once a week and hear about what decisions you’ve got to make yes and no’s on and go off and take off if you want to or read books and educate yourself. I know that sounds daft, but I know plenty of agency owners who are not full-time in the business. They’re working on it instead of in it.
Taylor Baker:
Ooh, that’s an interesting way of putting that, working on it instead of in it. I like that a lot. A lot of people could take a page out of that book because in America it’s very, very much work-work balance, like the whole concept of a work-life balance is deeply flawed. So I think that working on it instead of in it is kind of a nice analogy that we could maybe pull into the American way of working.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, definitely. In the Nordics, they have such a healthy respect for family time and simple things that I’ve noticed just being there. They’ll come in at eight, they’ll be in early and they will have their lunch and they’ll sit down together as a team at lunch and they’ll share lunch and talk and then they’ll go back to their desks and do the work. At 4:00, they’re gone. So 4:00, they finish so that they can get home, relax, have some time with their families. They’re very precious about their weekends and they’re very precious about their holidays. They will take good extended summer holidays and enjoy the sun because the light is out and recharge like batteries and come back and have a very strong year and that they’re not as stressed.
Finland is voted one of the happiest countries in the world and they’ve just voted in a female president who’s 34, a woman of the people who’s going to make changes there. I think there’s a lot we can learn from these very successful countries that have a lot of good healthcare infrastructure and their attitudes to work and life and balance and the possibility of actually having it all. I do recall as well. I think it is, I think it’s Nokia. I definitely heard of a company in the Nordics that will not send email after a certain time of the evening. So they shut the servers down. If you send an email after six, it will not be received by the recipient until the following morning.
Taylor Baker:
Wow. I am marveling at that a lot. It’s just a reflex now. The first thing I do when I wake up is check my email. Whereas I used to just like be alone in the morning and-
Clodagh Higgins:
I know.
Taylor Baker:
Make my breakfast and walk my dog and now it’s like a reflex where I feel like even if it’s not required of my company, it’s sort of like societally expected that you are constantly plugged in.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah.
Taylor Baker:
So on the other hand we had talked about like some good things to do, some best practices. What are maybe some mistakes or mishaps, whatever you would like to call it, that you have seen partners or mergers make when coming together?
Clodagh Higgins:
The big one I see, and it just comes back, is to values that they didn’t sit down, they kind of looked at the aesthetics of the agency and went, perhaps it was marketing agency buying a web development team or something like that. They looked at the outside of them and they went, oh, you look good. You’re making good websites, you’re setting good websites and you’re a good fit. But when you sit down and try to merge and they look at the values of each other or they look at the way they do things, they look at the way they communicate and those things weren’t figured out before the merger, they rarely work out after the merger. They usually end in tears and people going back to being independent businesses, a lot of time and money wasted. So you’ve got to sit down, each company, do their own values and sit down together and go, what do you want today? What do you want in a year’s time? Three years time? Are you aligned when it comes to how you’re going to run the business together?
I know it sounds so simple, but those simple things get overlooked because people get excited by the money, by the opportunity and by the more, I guess harder skills instead of softer touches of things like values and personal goals. Some person might go, “Oh, I can’t wait to sell this business in two years.” The other person’s like, “I want to this for 10.” So those things need to be really, really sorted out. And yeah, not speaking to staff, not communicating quick enough with the team is another one. An agency team, you might think you’re protecting them by not talking to them about a merger, but they sniff stuff out.
The first thing they think when they hear merger is job loss. So what you have to do is reassure the team, “Hey, we’re going into some negotiations. The reason we’re doing that is to make the team stronger, bigger, better. And there will be more jobs.” Once you reassured the team, hiding a merger from them, they all find out. They can see where you’re moving. They can see your meetings. You get caught at it and then that creates suspicion. So having a very clear vision for your agency and sitting down and going, “Hey, 2020 we want to go out and find a web development team. We want to add to this. We want to merge. Does anyone know anyone?” Bringing your agency team along the journey and stop treating them like mushrooms. Bring them on board because at the end of the day they just want to know that they’ve got a job.
They are not as passionate about your agency as you are and they never will be because that’s not their role. They care about it and they love their job, but never to the extent that the agency owner is. So yeah, they would be the two main things I’ve seen is keeping the agency team in the dark too long and it creates suspicion and just not getting value and a clear decision about what you both want out of the merger. Really digging into it personally, professionally, for your family, financially, for how long for career wise, for training wise, for education wise, all of those things.
Taylor Baker:
Yeah, I think that’s a really great point. So you mentioned a little earlier that you worked at HubSpot, so I wanted to dig to that a little bit. When you were over at HubSpot, you headed up the Agency Reseller Partner Program. This is a little bit broad, but I’m kind of excited to see where you take it. What are some key takeaways from your time in partnerships at HubSpot?
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, so definitely was part of the partner program team, but I wouldn’t call myself heading it up, but definitely, but I love the sound of that. Influential and making the partner program better. When I joined in 2013, we had trialed a new role when agencies were sold the software, they were handed over to a channel consultant role and we piloted that role in Dublin. It was three of us who were learning how to educate agencies about how to use HubSpot software and how to resell it or implement the software with their clients. So we were kind of part of forming the partner program, changing it, adapting it, and then I was moved onto a special team to make the partner program better.
So definitely in that respect I was helping make it better, helping the agencies get a better return and understand what they were doing and making sure they kept their clients on the software because that was very, very important. I think the key takeaway from working with HubSpot was just the most incredible opportunity and amazing company. I was there before the IPO, learning about launching on the stock exchange. I think the big thing is they have such a great partner program, they invest so heavily with an agency, people, a sales person, somebody to support you with your software. There’s a support team with 24 support. I mean an amazing company to actually be in partnership with if you’re an agency. I highly recommend if anyone’s thinking about being in partnership with HubSpot, that you have potential clients that would benefit from being on the platform and then you can add services on top of that.
They take care of their agencies, they have lots of education, lots of events on, and lots of various different types of certifications. So it’s a really strong partnership. I saw the benefits of any software company investing heavily in software with great devs, with the education, with an academy, with events, with the fabulous support team, an account manager, a sales person. It’s a lot of people that will work with you and you’ve got to understand as an agency how to work with HubSpot, know that you’re adding in this extra team of people. So take that on board and make sure you’ve got enough time to get yourself up to speed is kind of the big thing. What I’ve noticed is a lot of agencies were going, “Oh, it’s just another piece of software.” It’s like, “No, it’s a partnership. It’s a relationship.”
You need time to talk to HubSpot about deals, to learn the software, to get your team up to speed, to make sure your clients are using lots of different parts of the software so that they get the value out of it. It’s definitely not just a small piece of software you’re adding into your tech stack. It’s a big, big piece and you should dedicate a person to it and some good chunk of time to get the most out of it.
Taylor Baker:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. So we’ve touched on this a lot actually. We’ve talked about a little bit of the differences between the European market and America. So you are based in Ireland, but you have worked extensively in Australia, the UK and New Zealand. So what advice would you give American businesses about expanding globally into those aforementioned markets?
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, it’s interesting. The reason I was in Australia for a long time and I moved down there for work and I had an agency down there. Then I moved home because the big thing I think, American companies don’t realize about Europe is there is only today now, like officially one English speaking country, natural English speaking country in the European union. That’s Ireland because the UK speaks English, but they’re out of the European union now. They don’t want a part of it. So if you think about moving over to expand your business operations into Europe, you have to make sure that the country that you’re going to can speak English naturally. Now the great thing about Europe is I never had to learn any Finnish, Norwegian, Danish or Swedish because everyone has incredible English. But some countries are not so great about it.
Some countries would prefer not to speak English. So that’s the thing you’ve got to consider, and this is why Ireland became the tech capital of Europe because we’re Irish, but we are English speaking. We’re only two hours from mainland Europe and we have a lot of people who can speak languages. The thing you’ve got to consider is, is the country that you’re going to comfortable dealing in English? If they’re not, you’re going to have to get ahead of that country. It may be an Eastern European country. You’re going to have to make sure they’re a native and a native speaker. I think that’s the big thing. You’ve also got to make sure, I think the big thing is, if your software or your product is all English based, it was built in English, it can be difficult to start, I guess, localizing that as opposed to building it from the country you’re moving to, up, if that makes sense.
If you’re going to take a software product and sell it in France, yes, you can turn every bit of American English into French or is it better off getting into France, getting some French people and building the product from the French. That’s something that was not considered sometimes in in a lot of software companies that I’ve seen that go, “Oh, we’ll just make it French.” Not that easy. I think that’s the two biggest considerations. It’s going to be interesting times actually the next few years with the UK coming out of the European union and Ireland might get a whole country again because it’s part of the North of Ireland, it’s part of UK and they might come back into Ireland, but Ireland’s very much staying in the European union. Why wouldn’t you have access to 31 countries and travel freely, work freely across them?
If you’re thinking about coming over to expand into Europe, start with Ireland because it’s going to bring you closer and you’ve got great people there. Then you can start by thinking about the next place, but only if you’re product is going to be able to be translated easily.
Taylor Baker:
I think that’s great advice. It’s really funny that you mentioned that and it’s definitely rooted in some truth. I’m sure you’ve experienced that before where people are like, “Oh well, we’ll just make it French. We’ll just translate it.” If anyone’s ever plopped anything into Google Translate, sometimes it’s just gobbledygook. It doesn’t mean the same thing. Words and gestures and all kinds of things are very different across borders. I think definitely starting in the country that you’re looking to do business in and working from there. So just being like, “Oh, we’ll just put it in Google Translate and we’ll be good.” I mean that’s great advice. So we talked a little bit earlier about all this amazing content that you create. You are the author of A Happy and Healthy Digital Agency as well as the host and producer of the podcast Agency Life. What advice would you give your fellow business folk about creating consistent and genuine content for their personal or professional brand?
Clodagh Higgins:
Ooh, I love this one because I’m actually looking at the book here now and I am going to tell you the book you need to get and it’s going to change your life by creating content, the right type of content, which way and how to answer the questions that people ask you is Marcus Sheridan’s, They Ask, You Answer. It’s the revised edition book. We’ve actually been implementing this in our website recently and Marcus has got 10 years of experience. He’s now merged with IMPACT and IMPACT and their team are doing this methodology of how to create content for any business all around the world. It is phenomenal. It starts with all the questions that people ask you and all the questions that you might’ve been afraid to answer in the in the past and you’ve got to start there. You’ve got to start writing about it. You’ve got to start creating content.
You’ve got to start creating videos and it’s just phenomenal. It’s probably one of the reasons that I have a lot of content is I get people asking me questions or they drop me a line or they get on a call with me or I work with them and I solve the problem, but then I realize this agency isn’t alone. So then I make a podcast or a video about it or I create a blog post about it. So I think everyone does have the capacity to create as much content as they have, if they think instead of solving one problem for one person, they could turn it into a piece of content and put it on their website, frequently asked questions. There’s nothing too simple that you can’t put on your website that another person is curious about.
Taylor Baker:
So the book was Ask a Question, Give an Answer?
Clodagh Higgins:
They Ask-
Taylor Baker:
They Ask-
Clodagh Higgins:
You Answer.
Taylor Baker:
You Answer. I mean that definitely the title there really says it all because I think the issue that happens a lot of times when people create content is if it’s very, me, me, me, me, and here I am doing this thing and here I am in this country or here I am doing this. Really, the root of it is like we’ve sort of circled back. The theme of today is value and it’s not just aligning values, it’s adding value to other people’s lives. While it’s really interesting and you have every right to share the fact that you’re riding a horse on a beach somewhere and that’s really cool, that doesn’t necessarily make anyone else’s life better. So what question could you answer for your audience and help them make their business flourish versus just like, here’s something I’m doing?
Clodagh Higgins:
Exactly instead of announcements. If you go, if you don’t know where to start, go to your sales team, your sales person and ask them to go into their sent items in their inbox. They have answered questions all day long because most of your sales team go, “God, if I get asked this question one more time.” It’s because they’re sick of answering it. So take that question, turn the answer into blog, posts, videos, whatever you like, give them Instagram quotes and get it out there and get it in front of people.
Taylor Baker:
And this is also just sort of a personal question on my own respect because we’re all busy. We all have jobs and lives and personal lives. How exactly do you find balance between creating all of this amazing content as well as having your job and a life and all these other things? How do you prioritize or maybe like plan out these things?
Clodagh Higgins:
I’ve absolutely no balance.
Taylor Baker:
Balance, what’s that?
Clodagh Higgins:
I’m in a very fortunate situation right now where I’ve been single for a long time. I have no husbands, no children. I just run my own life, do my own things. I see my friends occasionally, but I’m just kind of loving what I do at the moment. I feel like I’m just really in a flow and right now I’m actually down in Cape Town. I moved down here for the winter because Irish winter was getting so bad that I decided to hit the sun. So I’m actually, yeah, just moved down here and really all I’m doing is working, reading, working out, eating, sleeping. So if that’s balanced, that’s my balance. I think you’ve got to go through phases. I’ll let you know. If somebody significant turned up, there might be some compromise that I’d have to start to learn how to do. But for me, I think I just make the most of what I’m doing.
This is something that I really love. I get so much energy talking to people on my podcast and listening to their stories and then sharing that out and hearing somebody email me back and go, “Gee, that really helped me. I was stuck there and thanks for the content.” I just get energy for that and I don’t really believe in trying to make everything work. I’m very lucky. This is the life that I chose and I’ll also post personally on Instagram and I’ll do personal blogs, but not all the time. Maybe what people see is maybe 5% of my life. I think the whole trying to balance things and trying to be like this, I just don’t really believe in it anymore. I just believe you’re going to do what you love and you’re going to make sure you don’t burn out and make sure you’re hydrated and slept well and nutrient and try and see your friends and have a small group of friends.
Don’t try and do too much. I’ve been very lucky in a small group of friends who totally understand that they might not see me for months on end, but I’ll text them and message them and my family’s really understanding. They know this is what I love to do. I don’t think it’s going to be forever. I’d love to have more people in the business to help me in the future, but for the moment, it’s just one life.
Taylor Baker:
I think you really struck the nail on the head there when you said it’s my balance because I think everybody is struggling to find that balance. But really the key of it, you can read a million books or listen to a million podcasts, but it is just finding out what works for you and-
Clodagh Higgins:
Absolutely.
Taylor Baker:
To try things out.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah. And don’t try and do what you think you should be doing. I think if you don’t try to do what everyone thinks you should be doing, if you sit down and go, “What do I really need and what makes me really happy and” what do I love doing at work that gets the best results? Stay there in that lane. Focus on those things. That’s my balance.
Taylor Baker:
Don’t try and do what you think you’re supposed to do. That is definitely a big pill I had to swallow. It took me way too long to realize that and I’m so much happier for it now.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah. Look out and away from the traditional life. And I know America’s got a lot of things that you got to do. You got to go to college, you’ve got to get a job, you got to get a marriage, you got to get a house. There’s a lot of like, I call it the American board game, which position are you? Where am I now? Where am I now? Which street am I on? Which house am I in? It can be very, very pressurizing. I’ve been so lucky. I have worked with different types of people and different women who are older than me and different backgrounds and some are single and some have families and some are in same marriages. There is a big huge life right there. It is not traditional. I’m here, 46, single very, very happy, no kids, no animals and I got to take off to the sun for a couple of months.
Taylor Baker:
I love that.
Clodagh Higgins:
Just think outside. Make your own life. It’s yours. You can design it whatever way you like.
Taylor Baker:
Girl, you’re such a dream. So do you have anything? I mean you’re on holiday down South, but do you have anything exciting coming up personal, professionally, that you’d like to share?
Clodagh Higgins:
2020 I’m just super excited about. Yeah, big partnership I can actually share with you here because it will be live with everyone afterwards is that I’ve actually partnered with IMPACT. I’m going to be running the agency summit where they’re going to have a whole agency summit at their Digital Sales and Marketing World, their big conference that’s on in April next year.
Taylor Baker:
Congratulations.
Clodagh Higgins:
Yeah, thanks. I’ve been following Bob and Marcus for very, very long time and it just sits really nicely in the work that they’re doing. They’re all about educating and consulting and helping clients grow their businesses and a lot of agencies are kind of looking at them going, “Gee, how can we do that?” I’m going to come in there and help agencies with that partnership, teach them how to get their businesses right so that they can future proof their agencies in the future. So I’m pretty pumped about that because I have just a huge amount of respect for the two guys and love what they’re doing and have been delighted that we could find a way to all work together to make a better difference specifically for me, for agencies.
Yeah. Apart from that, just keep doing more of what I do and all I want to do is just really help more agencies. We had some super successful case studies from last year, great guys that I’ve worked with, great couples I’ve worked with and I just see the transformation. I see their smiles on every call. I see less wrinkles in their foreheads and I go, “Yay, let’s do this and let’s do more of it.” That’s all I’m planning for 2020.
Taylor Baker:
I’m sure our listeners are going to have some more questions for you. How can they reach you?
Clodagh Higgins:
Easiest way to get me as clodagh@growitgroup.com or you can go onto our website at growitgroup.com. You can sign up for our newsletter there or we’ve got a lot of free content to engage with. We’re on YouTube. We’re all over the place. If they want to listen to Agency Life, it’s on Spotify and iTunes and on YouTube and Stitcher as well. That’s probably one of the things I’m super proud of. We’re up to 33 episodes now. We’re finishing off the year and I’ve had the best time, as you can imagine, Taylor. It is so much fun talking to people, hearing stories, and getting to share that out with a wider community. So I really want to thank you for this opportunity. I really am grateful to chat with you and share some more knowledge with a wider audience.
Taylor Baker:
Oh, of course. Thank you. I was going to thank you so much. You have been such a breath of fresh air and we were so honored to have you here. Thank you so much for being a guest.
Clodagh Higgins:
Anytime and hope you have a lovely end of the year and amazing new decade.
Taylor Baker:
Here’s to 2020 vision.
Clodagh Higgins:
Love it. Thanks a million, Taylor.
Taylor Baker:
And to all of our listeners out there, thank you for listening. We wish you a very merry holiday season and a happy new year. Tune in at the top of 2020 for even more exciting Co-Selling content. Now go get your partnership on.
