An Agency Story
First hand interviews of creative, digital, advertising, and marketing agency owners that have walked the talk of running an agency business. These are riveting stories of the thrill of starting up, hardships faced, and the keys to a successful business from agency owners around the world.
An Agency Story
How a GED Grad Out-Earned His Day Job - Enleaf
Adam Chronister took his time on his path to entrepreneurship. Struggling in school and unsure of his future, he took the long road—gaining experience, building a side hustle, and creating financial runway before finally making the leap. In this episode, Adam shares how that deliberate approach shaped the ethos of Enleaf, where focusing on the business, not just the work, became the foundation for growth and fulfillment.
Key Takeaways
- Why struggling in school gave Adam a different perspective on learning, problem-solving, and building a business
- The importance of creating financial runway before taking the full leap into entrepreneurship
- How being intentional about “working on the business” shaped Enleaf’s direction and growth
- The role of autonomy and trust in building a culture where people love to work
- Why letting go of control is essential for long-term agency success
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host Russel Dubree, former eight figure agency owner turned business coach, sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is an agency story. Welcome to the show today everyone. I have Adam Chronister with Enleaf with us here today. Thank you so much for joining us today, Adam.
Adam:Yeah, Happy to be here.
Russel:Happy to have you. Right out of the gate, tell us what Enleaf does and who do you do it for?
Adam:Enleaf is what I like to call a data-driven search marketing agency. What that means is, uh, we help businesses all the way from website design and development, uh, onto the, the digital marketing presence they have in, you know, various search engines. Google, Bing, Yahoo and now getting more and more into large language models, right? Anywhere you go to query a business, uh, that's where we like to have our clients be found.
Russel:I love that. Sounds like a well practiced, uh, elevator pitch. I imagine that took some time to get to, which speaks to your expertise within your field. We're gonna find out all about that, over the course of the show. But before we learn all of things agency, we wanna learn about young Adam. Tell us where he came up in the world and how it get, get us closer to where we are today.
Adam:How far back do you want to go, exactly?
Russel:Birth. What was your birth? No. I don't know. Anything that you think defined, uh, was a defining moment for your eventual trajectory. How about that?
Adam:That sounds fun and interesting. There are some aspects that I don't always get into, but, uh, for you, I'll, I'll lift up the Komodo, as they say. I'll go back to all the way, I guess to high school. In school days, like be, being quite transparent and open like, um, me and school, at least in the early days. Didn't really, really get along right. I think for a lot of people, it's actually kind of surprising, um, because now you know, I'm running a, a successful agency in the software development web design, digital marketing realm, which I think a lot of people attribute to like, oh, you gotta be like, you know, straight A students, you know, uh, college accolades, those kind of things to, to be, uh, an entrepreneur in this realm. But for me, like, I, honestly, I struggled a lot in school. Like a lot of people these days, you know, I, I was an ADD kid, so I was, you know, diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Tests, you know, in high school and even, even once I went to college, were extremely challenging. My ability to like retain information the way that a lot of people do, do, um, was, was, was quite challenging. you know, I struggled, uh, and, and honestly like I went back and forth between public school and homeschooling and eventually, had enough with it and got my GED. Fast forward years later, I met my wife and she was going to school to become a teacher and, and finished up. After she got her degree, she gave me the, the stink eye and it's like, okay, your turn to go back to school. I had two paths that interested me. One was graphic design and one wa was, uh, computer science. She's like, well, I think computer science makes slightly more money. She urged me into that direction. I got my degree, in computer science. I got a, an associate of applied uh, sciences in computer science. I got about three fourths of the way through my degree and realized like, I don't know if I am cut out to be a coder. But I'm already here, so I finished my degree. Safe to say I love that world in that environment. Shortly outta college, I landed a job as a project manager for a software company, you know, using my college experience. It was that first job that I think really, lit things up for me, right? I realized I wasn't the smartest per, person in that agency. Actually, honestly, I was in charge of a lot of, uh, more talented, um, you know, people than myself. Developers, I mean, people that are just like, Mensa smart people.
Russel:I might, have to imagine that was intimidating or was that just inspiring of, you know, just to kind of see and, and be able to be in the same room and rub elbows with folks like that?
Adam:Initially it was kind of intimidating, but the, the reality is like, you know, nobody really knew. A lot of the people that I was working with didn't know that I struggled through high school and then, somewhat in college. What I lacked in, in maybe like, expertise in software, I, I definitely made up in hustle, right? But for me it was an eye-opener.'Cause I realized like, okay, I am, I'm generally responsible for managing these people that are a lot more intelligent than I am, but realistically I was probably actually making more money than they were. That's where I, it kind of really dawned on me that, it's, we're taught, I think, a lot in school, like, oh, get good grades because then you're gonna get a good job and a good career. But when you get into the real world, that's not exactly how it works. And then I started to think about all the different scenarios, like, like the Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak scenario. Now both of them are, are brilliant. Don't get me wrong, but Steve Wasniak, in my opinion, was the brains of Apple, at least in the early days. But he had no business acclimate, right? He wanted to give away, I think it was the Apple 2. And Steve Jobs, probably still incredibly intelligent, not the brainiac that Steve Wasniak was. He's like, you can't give this away. There's a business here, right? And so That was the first time that I think I got like that boost of confidence. I don't have to necessarily be, academically the smartest person in the room. There's other types of, um, I think, intellect, right? Besides just, book smart, right?
Russel:Yeah. I feel like we need to just dispel that notion. I feel like that's like a hundred year old myth now. This whole get good grades and that's the path to success in the world. I even feel like, um, just now kind of going through this journey with my own kids and going to college, that that's, colleges are looking less and less from the, the status quo structure, I can read a book study for a test and do that thing. They want some of that more range and interestingness because, um, as you said, there's so many different types of intelligence and how that actually leads to success. That's an inspiring story already, and thank you for sharing something which sounds like I imagine had to be a tough time period when you just feel like you don't quite fit in or you're not doing it right, air quotes. You know what's interesting though, when you were sharing that story is, I mean, I feel like you hear so many stories like that, that folks that are in the, in the creative realm, like musicians, school doesn't fit. But it's interesting when, and you generally said you're not a coder, but you went down this very logical, um, right brain path. Maybe to what you're saying, you kind of found out that you don't, that's not, not still quite your zone of genius.
Adam:It's interesting these days, especially with what's happening, you know, like with the modern state of like, AI, right? Right now, like, if you go online, there's, there's a lot of buzz around, no coding, right? Large language models have essentially created an environment where, honestly today the, the top programming language is English. It's reduced the barrier of entry because I think for me, the biggest challenge when I was programming and, and for those that are programmers, honestly, it's a lot like learning another language, right? It's like learning Spanish or German or French. You're having to learn different coding languages and you're having to somewhat repeat this for every language. For me, that was the biggest challenge, right? But the creativity aspect, like, I have an idea and I want to see it come to life, like that's, I live and breathe that. And Up until this point, a lot of that has been channeled through, you know, team members. we have developers on staff, uh, designers, writers, um, and so I've been able to channel that through the people I work with, you know, without having to actually put hands on a, a, a terminal. But now with AI, um, people like myself can, can literally go and speak to a computer and start to iterate on ideas. It's this whole new area of, uh, opportunity for those people that maybe, maybe don't have the acclimate or the training or the education to code, but have ideas that they wanna run with. In that respect, it's really interesting and also like the data science is where like my interest is, has evolved. I tend to understand charts and trends a lot more than I did the computer science, which is kind of how I delved into the whole marketing realm in the first place, right?
Russel:I love this. I'm just fascinated. I wanna hear more about your story of just this weave that you're going through to really find where your, where your passion and talent and skills all meet and in one, and how you're able to leverage that in your business. So your wife made you go to college, and, sent you down a path. Walk us into what, where in the moment where you're like, you know what, I'm gonna start a business.
Adam:It started early on. Initially, it was that first startup that I worked at. I still attribute that job, um, to where I'm at today. I still, um, am friends with the founder. What I tell people is, uh, it was one of the worst experiences of my life, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was grueling.
Russel:This sounds how I talk about basic training in the military.
Adam:Yeah. And looking back, maybe, maybe just'cause I was young and not akin to working hard, right? But it felt like, you know, 10, 10 hour, sometimes 13 hour days, it just, you know, it was just a slave. It was one of those scenarios where like, it was sink or swim. The first month or two I was managing, upwards of, I think 20 clients. And it was one of those environments where um, every project manager was almost running their own business. At some extent, if you have that entrepreneurial spark and you're in an environment like that, at some point you're like, well, I'm doing this for somebody else. What if I just did this for myself? Through that process, like even though I was working these long, crazy hours, um, at some point inside that business, I started creating a side hustle. I had well intentions. I was doing this off the clock. But somewhere along the way, I shared what I was working with, with my boss at the time. Long story short, it didn't go over well. I guess it was too much of a maybe a conflict of interest. Essentially what I was doing at the time is I was aggregating, freelance job boards, right? I was taking all of these existing freelance job boards. I was aggregating the, the data through, uh, RSS and then basically acting as the middleman. Instead of having to go to this job board and then this job board and this job board, you could come to my site. And then I would basically, uh, have a, a subscription and, and become the middleman, right? So Anyway, I shared this with my boss thinking like, hey, we could roll this into what we're doing, you know, create talent and just didn't go over well. Eventually we parted ways. It was amicable, but, uh.
Russel:So you were actually trying to bring this idea into your place of work business? You weren't trying to just run, say, look at this, cool, I'm gonna go work on this now. You were innovating and they were basically like, screw you. Why are you trying to think outside of the box?
Adam:I can't say for, for certain, like, but yeah, I, I think it just didn't, it rubbed the, the owner the wrong way. It was from that time that I had that spark of like, I want to do something for myself, even if I'm working for somebody else. Actually it's, that's where we got the name for the agency. This word, this weird name, Enleaf. The entity started out as freelance machine. Um, and today, like if you look at the LLC behind, uh, behind Enleaf, which is our DBA, it's Freelance Machine. That's how that started. That birthed the agency. We now, Eventually we pivoted. We don't have that job board anymore. I wasn't as, as, as good of a marketer as I am today. I was able to get the system working, but then I'm like, okay, now what? In hindsight it's like, man, if I would've, you know, kept with it, who knows? But nonetheless, um, what I learned from that opportunity that environment really helped me kind of propel myself into taking on clients. But it didn't happen right away. I had many other positions and jobs, head of marketing, director of digital marketing after that, uh, while I was running, quote unquote a side hustle. I had a pretty long runway, honestly, um, before going out a hundred percent on my own.
Russel:When you think of yourself, was that, you just maybe aren't risk averse and or in, just looking at it from an income perspective or just really never thought of yourself as a true full entrepreneur? How intentional versus just managing risk was that path?
Adam:It was a little of both. Honestly, like, when I first started it, the whole goal was just to have, some extra spending money, like, and just to have, a weekend like fun project, a client here or two. I would say the last maybe two, three years that I was working for a business, um, that's when I actually started making more money on the side, quote unquote, than I was at my day job. That was around the time where I was like. I was like, okay, I gotta make some decisions here. Honestly, it was around COVID when I completely went like a hundred percent. you know, At the time I was working for a company, I was their director of digital marketing. It was a really cool business. It was one of those companies where it's like, you know, beer on Fridays, had a whole open bar and cool startup, cool startup vibe. It was one of those scenarios where everybody loved this place, myself included, right? A great place to work. But, I still had this feeling of like, I get why everyone loves this job, but I still just didn't feel that was it for me. Long story short, this company, which was in the travel hospitality space, um, you know, COVID came along, basically wiped them out. They were a hundred million dollar series C round and the investors just completely walked. They had never seen anything like this. They were essentially the worst case scenario for a the worst business model for COVID, travel hospitality in the heart of like metropolitan areas. I got a job immediately after that. That job that I had was unfortunately everything I hated about, um, about working for someone else. Micromanaged. There's a little bit of bait and switch. I thought I was gonna have a team, but then I was just by, by myself. I was doing a lot of things that just didn't interest me, and it was at that time that I, I had a conversation with my wife. I was making a lot more money on the side than at my day job and I forced her hand. I said, hey, one of these has to go'cause I'm working way too many hours. I either need to quit my job or sell the business. Obviously the business is making more money. It's only taking about 20% of my time. The day job's, 80%. She's like, okay, let's, let's just get a plan together. Let's save up a year's equivalent salary. Which honestly only took me a matter of months. It was that experience because, you know, I basically, for a while, I was kind of just, you know, putting this on my wife, like, oh, she needs the quote unquote security of a day job. But at the point where she said, okay, let's, let's make this work. Then it was like, oh crap, now it's, now it's on me. Then I started to be like, oh man. I started having these thoughts like, okay, what if I do this, I go out all on my own and I'm still not happy? I still have that unfulfilled feeling. Well then the problems with me, not, not the workforce. you know, and I can say like, it was the right move for me. I wish I would've done it sooner, um, but I also, you know, I don't regret the process that it took. I think the one blessing for waiting so long is that, um, I didn't have to have those nights where I, I didn't know where money was coming in. I had enough of a runway, maybe a little bit too long of a runway, but enough of a runway, um, that the switch wasn't difficult really.
Russel:I can really see, and, and you know, it probably is a good lesson that it, it it is better to, you know, just this idea of instant gratification or delayed gratification of wait just a little bit longer than something seems necessary, um, or, or desire, right? What your heart wants, and then what's practical, because that word is what come to my, came to mind is runway. If we can give ourselves that comfort in runway, it, it's so much easier to focus on value and the important things that are actually gonna make you successful, not where am I gonna get my next meal from? Which can, quite honestly, and I think in my own case, you, you can make a lot of bad decisions when you're just trying to get a meal. Versus no, what's most valuable for the customer and how do we create that, do that? I can see where that's been very helpful in your journey.
Adam:Right. Yeah. Absolutely.
Russel:So, Enleaf. Did you ever tell us how, what the name was or, or behind the actual name Enleaf? I heard, uh, the, the other corp, corporate name.
Adam:There's really not much to it. I've tried to make up like anagrams and all this stuff, but honestly it was just, I, I, I grabbed the URL back in the day. There was a period in the internet where you had all this web 2.0 stuff and people were coming up with these, crazy names that really meant nothing. But they were short and they were dot com. I worked one at one point with a company called WakeFlot, I think they're called WakeFly, which again, one of these weird, uh, names that, doesn't mean really anything. Originally that started out as a freelance job board, but I dissolved that. I'm like, hey, I got this short, somewhat like buzzworthy name. It does in some regard connotate, I guess, growth, just in the fact that there's the word leaf, but really it's just a, it's just a short, uh, kind of out there name. It's what we've had and so we've kinda stuck with it. Sometimes people call it Onleaf or I get all kinds of weird analogies. It's one of those things where, um, I guess it works for us. Doing it over again, I might have something a little bit more descriptive, but it, it's, it's the stamp we got, so we're sticking with it.
Russel:It's not weird if it works. I was joking, I don't know if this was on a podcast or not recently, but that I could just do a whole side podcast of only bringing people on to talk about their naming journey and whatever that looks like. And I feel like that would actually be an interesting, uh, side. So niche. Agency Naming Story, uh, Podcast, and there'd be no shortage of good content.
Adam:Yeah, that'd be fun.
Russel:All right. You made this leap. Had conversation with the wife, decided, you know, saved up, go get yourself this runway. What was your first focus day one? What were your intent on?
Adam:Honestly, day one it was just kind of like figuring out processes, um, trying to onboard new clients. Just trying to figure out like all of the core structure. Which is funny'cause I feel like we're always doing that. We're always, making slight changes and modifications, uh, to our processes, our product, um, all of that good stuff. Day one is just kind of really trying to, nail down what our offering was.
Russel:What was that process you went through?'Cause obviously you'd been doing work for a while. Were you thinking that was going to change now that you were doing this full time?
Adam:As we were getting into it, I mean, a lot of it was just kind of like, honestly like flying by the seat of my pants. I had more time to like, at some extent, to start slowing down and like, okay, what could we be offering in addition to like kind of some baseline, right? It wasn't as articulated as what we have today. Today, we have a pretty good overview of our package, a nice little presentation. It was kind of, I wouldn't say as, as loose as like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, but also it was, it was a lot more, um, ad hoc per client than even what we do today. We still very much tailor stuff to each client, but we have a pretty good baseline. It's like, hey, 80% is gonna be defined and the rest we're gonna customize to each client. Back then it was probably closer to like, 50%.
Russel:Because you built this runway for yourself, you could take a, a different approach where I think a lot of people get to the luxury of, or not the luxury, I guess you could say, of having where it was this, this was the first time you actually got to take a step back and probably refine your offering, you know, because it was a side hustle. You were trying to do it in, in the wee hours and stuff that. I think even what you're getting at there, um, is how hard of work it is to, to narrow down. Even going back to how you described the incident, beginning very succinct, like getting crystal clear about your offering, how you do it, and, and making that resonate with people is not easy work.
Adam:No, it took, yeah, it took a while. There's a couple things that I wish we would've done sooner. One, um, we have kind of a pseudo little pitch deck. Anytime we get prospect on the call, we have a deck that we go through that details, here's, here's the what and the why's, and then also case studies. That's something that I wish we would've done much sooner, but now we have that built into our processes where, it's a definitive part of what we do. It took a long time to really put polish on things. Before that it was just like more of a general like, explanation and, hope and pray that people would understand through, a general articulation of here's what we do and why. Luckily, you know, we've, we practice what we preach. A lot of people know us because of SEO. That's not all that we do. You know, we go, We do Google advertising, design, website design and development, and so, knock on wood, um, carved out a niche and expertise in that so that, you know, for a lot of our clientele, they're looking for that particular discipline, um, or looking for web design. Because of our own SEO capabilities, we've, we show up prominent where we want to show up, right? Doing the same thing for ourselves that we do for our clientele also has really helped. Get what we do out there, right? Now it's just, in the later years it's all about polishing the presentation. Luckily we were able to make that all work in the sequence that we we unpacked that with.
Russel:I love that. I'm sorry. Angels were singing in my ear as you were saying that, that, this notion of, um, because right, so often we hear it, I'm sure I've talked about this on previous episodes of, you know, the painter's house is never painted, cobbler's kids has no shoes always applies to agencies and how, how backwards we really have that. We have to prioritize ourselves as an agency. For all the reasons that you just stated, be your own best client. Obviously time, just to find time, that always seems to be difficult But what do you think? Why was that so important to you? Or how were you able to overcome something that can be very, very hard for a lot of other folks?
Adam:Going back to kind of like my story, like, a lot of the early days when I, had one or two clients and Enleaf was just a side hustle. A lot of my effort was was my own business, right? My own website. That's where I spent a lot of the time learning how does this SEO stuff work and this digital marketing and conversion rate, optimization and design. I had many years to perfect that with our own entities, so that when it came to clients, not only was our own business showing up prominently, but it's like, hey, we've done this. Now we, we can, you can prove that we can do this for you. there are, and Even in our own business, there are segments where it's like, the shoemaker is missing, missing a shoe, right? But I think we've done a pretty good job, uh, at, at, you know, keeping an eye on what we're doing. And now, As of late, now that I have, a team built out and all that stuff, um, that's kind of my, my main role within the company, outside of high level organization, I still get involved with, kind of sales and prospecting. But a lot of what I do is to become kind of, you know, working on the business, not, uh, not in the business, less so, than the early days. That's not always for someone who's just starting out. That's not always a luxury, but that should be the goal, right? Is get to the point where you can either become the face of the business or be working primarily on the business instead of in the business like. That should be your objective because that's where you start seeing growth. That's where you can start focusing on what really, lights you up at the time.
Russel:Great takeaway. I can start to understand where nomenclature has to just shift, even if it's the same sentiment, right? This work on the business, not in the business. I think it's almost become white noise from, yeah, yeah. I know I need to do that, but I've got a billion other things. Someday I'll get there. Here we're sitting here saying how important that really is for success, making that investment. All I'll say for our listeners out there is how important that investment, if you can only do an hour a week, do the hour a week, and over time, how can you pull back more time to do that? Because that's the investment that has to be made to, to get on the road as to solve some of the problems you're feeling today. That's how you put those fires out by making that investment. Maybe if we just go back to that runway piece that you had has just allowed you to always have a little more clear, um, picture of the importance of that, or it's been, it's been reinforced to you maybe is what I'm hearing.
Adam:Yeah. And that's the thing is like, not everybody's built to be an entrepreneur, right? And run a business. If you're really happy as a specialist in one discipline, maybe you're a graphic designer or you love doing SEO or Google ads, like maybe it's not your, your place to necessarily run a business, right? Maybe you could be just as happy working for a company or an agency, um, and that there's no harm in that, right? That's the other challenge like, that I, I see a lot of entrepreneurs is they're really good in one area, but they never, they never graduate to being, you know, more of an administrator or a project manager or, uh, you know, a business owner. You have to kind of go into it if that is your goal. Knowing that at some point I'm gonna need to pass the baton on my specialty, right? These days, I don't do a lot of SEO. I talk about it all the time. I'm on stages, domestically, internationally, and I still live and breathe that stuff, but I'm not actually doing a lot of it because, I just not, I, I'm not at that stage anymore. Now I, I'm able to pass that on to, um, to others, right?
Russel:I was very inspired by, as you were sharing that, I think I'm gonna write some content about this idea, but I don't know, just to, to the point of kind of what you're saying is, is almost take a step back and look at the job you're doing. What is the job you're doing? You kinda mentioned, am I doing a lot of admin? Is that the job? You would hire someone and probably pay yourself whatever you're paying yourself to, to do that work? I'm gonna guess in a lot of cases the answer is no. I would not pay myself a hundred thousand dollars a year to do a bunch of admin work or whatever that case is. Just ask the real question, um, that, I guess, and it seems like you've been able to do this really good in your, in your career and life of, am I happy? Is this taking me down a place of fulfillment? And if we can just be really honest about that, that we're, no matter whether we're entrepreneur or not, we're gonna end up in a good spot.
Adam:That's the thing is like there are still times where I get my hands, you know, dirty. Right? It's kind of fun'cause like I have team members that, you know, they're still passionate about the, I don't, I don't even wanna call it the grunt work, the technical stuff, right? And that's great to have that passion. But like, again, you, as a, as an entrepreneur, you kind of gotta figure out what to let go of and what to, to maintain. Luckily I've been doing, you know, um, SEO and, and website development management and all that stuff for so long that it's like, it's like old hat stuff for me now. Okay, what else could I or should I be doing? But at the same time, I get to live vicariously through a lot of our team members. It's fun seeing them like learn stuff and they're teaching me stuff, right? And I'm the quote unquote, you know, old hat at this stuff. Sometimes it's fun with our team because a lot of times I play dumb. It's like, oh, I don't know. But then sometimes I gotta step in. I'm like, you know, pull up my sleeves and like, okay, let me show you the, the master at work. It's this fun game that we play. That's the thing too, is like, I think as a, as an entrepreneur, once you start growing a team, um, I think one of the hardest things is letting go, right? Letting go of responsibility. That's a big thing, uh, especially for those that have been doing things for so long, is being able to trust your team, knowing that they're gonna make mistakes and, and that's gotta be okay. Otherwise, you're, you're never gonna scale.
Russel:They gotta go through that same learning curve that effectively you got, you got times a thousand. If we can just give them times a hundred, that's better off than, than nothing. I love this, uh, playing dumb. That sounds like, you know, and you read so many things about leadership, that that's the last thing you'd ever want to put down in a leadership book. I'm gonna be behind this because I equate it oftentimes, leadership and management to parenting. When I give my kids an answer or they ask a question and I just blurt out a solution or an answer, I'm, I'm missing an opportunity for them to learn some of those being like, I don't know. Gosh. Do you know something about this? They can go explain something and reflect on their own thoughts and have this moment. I can see where that can be really powerful.
Adam:We're in the age, you know, especially now, like where, even when I was going to school, before we had all this cool fancy like, um, AI stuff, like, even then, like a lot of it was not about finding the answers. It was like figuring out, uh, or knowing the answers rather. It's about can you find the answers? Even back when I was doing, software development, well over a decade ago. A lot of it was like, okay, what libraries can you dig up and repurpose? A lot of the coding was not writing code from scratch. It's like taking libraries and calling upon those things. These days, I think one of the most, important skills, that we don't emphasize enough is not rote knowledge, but can you find answers? Can you problem solve? If you don't know something, what is your procedure or process to find the answer? I think that's an underemphasized, necessity in today's age.
Russel:Folks I work with that are kind of trying to go through that process of untangling themselves to the business. That's the big thing we first work on is, when you're asked a question, what is your response? If it's a solution, that can't be the case anymore. You have to wear a bracelet, whatever that case is, so that you don't just jump into solutioning mode. You basically come back with a question of, um, I, you know, I'm sure I've got some thoughts, but, you know, what do you think or what do you, what would you propose to do here? Don't become the resource. Help them create the resource or, or guide them elsewhere. It sounds like that's been probably, that's probably been an effective tool for you to be more in a place where you can focus on the business.
Adam:Yeah, it certainly has.
Russel:Awesome. The through line that seems to be coming out in this episode is, um, just, you know, about fulfillment and just making sure you're thriving in, in what you're doing. You kind of have a focus around a results only work environment, which I know is a spectrum unto itself as a concept in terms of what it looks like in a business. I imagine that has something to do with it, but how, how has that looked in your business and, and why is that important for you to have in your organization?
Adam:I've had the opportunity to work for a few different employers where they gave me a certain level of, of autonomy, right? Some of those were pushed upon them because I had this side hustle. Even if you're not to the point where you're ready to jump out, having a side income can be very powerful because then you have leverage at your day job. Before this was ever popular, I was, I mean, pushing the envelope, like remote work and this is way pre COVID, right. I would make the arguments, a lot of this was, basically birthed by the Four Hour Work Week. I went through that book and I took Tim Ferriss's model for the, the request for remote work. I was like, I'm doing this. I'm gonna figure this out. I did that really early, to the point where I made myself so valuable inside of businesses, um, that I could push the envelope, you know? I was working a month in Costa Rica, or working, once or twice a a, a week at home. I knew that that experience, that type of autonomy kept me happy in those businesses, at least, until it no longer worked. I've always wanted to recreate that inside of our own agency, right? I want people to, um, really enjoy what they do. The whole idea is, that, it's not like we're gonna micromanage you. We don't have time clocks. If you need time off, just let us know. If you want to travel, you want to be in, you know, the Philippines, one month and then somewhere else, uh, another like, that's fine. The objective is, are we meeting our goals? Are we meeting our KPIs? There is a book that's, that's in sport inspired, um, by, um, also. That's kind of what we tried to breathe into our business. Virtually all of our team are, are remote, right? We have team members all across, you know, the US and the globe. It's worked really well. These days it's a lot more acceptable post COVID, but we've been doing that, you know, in some extent, even, uh, before that.
Russel:Way to be a pioneer. What's the book that, uh, that you're, you're saying was the inspiration?
Adam:Now I'm blanking. I think it's just called ROWE or Results Oriented Work Environment. I should have looked that up prior. If you do a search for that though, uh, you'll, I'm sure you'll, you'll be bound to find it.
Russel:We put resources on the blog post, and this is a shout out to our listeners here. If you come up with it after the episode, we'll put a link to it there.
Adam:I know Best Buy was experimenting with this, and so they have some pretty interesting case studies. Obviously not for their in-store employees, but for a lot of their corporate. I don't know if they still do that today, but I was inspired. One of the case studies basically, if I remember right, he wanted to be basically, he was a roadie, I wanna say for the Dave Matthews band or something like that. They're like, hey, he gets his work done, and we don't care that he's traveling around, around with this, being a roadie for these bands. As long as he's getting the job done. I'm like, that's great. And, and Honestly, like that's also the biggest part of, or a very big part of the DNA of our business. We're not looking to be this huge growth business, right? We're a small boutique agency but we really want a lifestyle business. We want to, to be a company that our, uh, our staff, our employees love working for, because that ultimately benefits our clients. They see that we, we show up, we're happy to do our work. An extra spark of, I think energy, that you may not always get from a large growth agency. And There's no harm in that. There are some people that really want build a huge growth company, and that's, that's great. But you have to go into this understanding, are you gonna be a lifestyle business or a growth business? Those two things are not necessarily the same.
Russel:To the whole point back to, again, maybe say fulfillment and intentionality of this. What is that and how do those align? I'm optimistic and still believe, and, and we got, we got a little bit bigger than, than the, what you might consider the boutique. I think we had around 40 folks and it was always my goal to say, I believe that if with the right intention and, authenticity that you can, you can have a bigger organization and still, just, just have some of those cultural elements that you don't have to just become a big corporate machine. Now, I'm sure, you know, I, I don't know, part of me, in a second life wants to go test, like, can, how high can you scale that? Can you scale that into the thousands, that idea? I believe you can, but I, I, I could see where, um, you just really have to look at things very differently. Glad to hear you're out there being that place. I'm so sad that we're having all this return to work initiatives through all these, uh, corporations now that, um, we, we were close to the light and then they just couldn't handle the, they couldn't handle it.
Adam:I know. I agree with you. I think it's kind of a bummer, but, and part of me is like, you know, rubbing my hands. I'm like, okay, that's more people we can attract to, to what we do because now we're gonna become the outlier again. Once again.
Russel:That's a good call. I'll live with that. Big companies keep doing that. Return to work. Great. Great idea, good policy. Keep that up. Awesome. Got a glimpse of kind of what the future looks like for you and your business and how you're approaching this. Sounds like just more fulfillments, and as you said, a lifestyle business. I'll just leave you with one last big question here, Adam. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Adam:Honestly, I want to say both, but I think they're born before they're made. At least from my experience, it was, it was a spark that was inside me. I think I kept it dormant for, uh, way too long. Once I accepted that, then I had to work on actually crafting and making, you know, what that looks like in my life. Maybe it's a cop out. I'm gonna say a little bit of both, but I, I think they have to be born first and made, made second.
Russel:No cop out at all. Like anything, we don't really live in a world of absolutes, so it's always gotta be some, some combination there. Great insight. If people wanna know more about Enleaf, where can they go?
Adam:We're easy to find, uh, enleaf.com. It's E-N-L-E-A F dot com. Otherwise, if you're interested in connecting with me, I'm, I'm pretty easy to find. Just do a quick Google search for, for my name. Happy to connect with you guys. I'm on basically all the different social media platforms and so yeah, I'd love to connect and learn more about, uh, about the listeners.
Russel:Perfect. There you have it folks. Thank you so much, Adam, for taking the time outta your schedule, from working on the business to share some of your insights and your learnings. So many great takeaways from just the importance of intentionality, runway and just, you know, the, the perspective and, and be able to bring to your business with those ingredients. Really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.
Adam:My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Russel:Thank you for listening to An Agency Story podcast where every story helps you write your own, subscribe, share, and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit an agencystory.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at@anagencystory for the latest updates.
Adam:One of the first clients that we worked with, uh, it was me and another partner at the time, and this was be, this was before we had gone out, uh, before I'd gone out, uh, full time, right? We were excited. We landed our first client as a, as a side hustle, right? We spent a month or two starting to do an SEO campaign for this client and lo and behold, uh, we realized that there was, uh, a no index, uh, option set on their website two months in.
Russel:Ouch.
Adam:Here we're supposed to be helping them get visibility online. We're supposed to be the quote unquote experts and nobody bothered to check if the site was actually indexed in Google. Man, it was embarrassing. Now, I'm glad that happened early on because now guess what's the first thing I check whenever we take on a new project?
Russel:That's why the first rule of tech support is check the power button.
Adam:The first rule of, uh, uh, of SEO is check if the website's actually indexing in Google.
Russel:Maybe someone else got to hear this today and learned their lesson from your, from your mistake. Another, um, class in the school of hard knocks. We all gotta take our very heavy course load in that sense.