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
Selling Less by Teaching More - KDE Technology
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Clients often know the result they want, but not the right path to get there. In this episode, Tony Brown of KDE Technology shares how his role shifted from selling websites and digital marketing to educating business owners on what they actually need to grow with confidence.
Inside this episode:
- Why education can become one of the most important parts of the sales process
- How KDE helps clients toward clearer business goals
- What Tony learned about building a stronger team through mistakes, patience, and humility
- How KDE’s West Virginia roots continue to shape its mission, ambition, and commitment to local businesses
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RusselWelcome 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, who 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.
Meet Tony Brown
RusselWelcome to the show today, everyone. I have Tony Brown with KDE Technology with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Tony.
TonyThank you for having me, Russel. I appreciate it, sir.
RusselWell, glad to get started. We overcame quite the technological challenges to have this conversation, but, we're excited to talk about all the fascinating things about your business today.
TonyIndeed. Yeah. If, we hadn't started off with some sort of technical problem, were we really doing a virtual meeting, I mean, honestly?
RusselAbsolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's there to humble us and remind us every step
What KDE Does
Russelof the way. Well, if you don't mind, just kick us off and tell us what KDE Technology does and who you do it for.
TonyAbsolutely. KDE Technology is a full-service design firm located in Charleston, West Virginia. We primarily do fully custom websites, digital marketing, we do a lot of graphics and some cybersecurity work. We've got, uh, a team of 14 total. We've got three offices, uh, in... One, one in Charleston, our headquarters, one in Huntington, West Virginia, one in Columbus, Ohio. We've got clients all over the United States. I believe we've... We're in about 17 states, I wanna say. Primarily, we're focused here at home. Uh, about 80% of our clients are in the state of West Virginia. Um, but we do a lot of very high-end web development. So we've got your local coffee shop and things like that, but where we really flex our muscles is we, uh, we have a full stack development team, and then in the past few years, we've really, uh, piled on a lot of digital marketing as well. We do a lot of Google business setup and management, a lot of social media setup and management, a lot of content generation, um, and then of course, a ton of branding.
RusselThat is fascinating, and can't wait to hear, uh, more about it. Before we hear more about how you do all that and how you got to where you're at today, I want to hear the story of young Tony and how and where he came up in the world, and we'll get to all that agency stuff later
TonySure.
Growing Up West Virginia
TonySo I was born in Charleston, um, so literally right down the street from our offices now. I've lived in, I guess, three, four states, something like that. Always end up finding my way back home. This is a, a theme in West Virginia. If you- Yeah if you talk to a West Virginian, you'll hear this, uh, routinely. Um, "Well, I left, but I somehow ended back here." Absolutely. Um, and that, that happens pretty often. I think we've... West Virginians have deep roots, so y- frequently we do, we do end up back here. And I enjoy the fact that I get to, uh, do what I do in Charleston for the city that I was born in. I would've never honestly dreamed that this is what I would be doing. When I was very young, I wanted to be a writer. That was, like, my... You know, when you're a kid and you wanna be an astronaut- Yeah or you wanna be a, a police officer or whatever, the earliest memory I can have of wanting to be a, a, you know, something, wanting to do something for my career was writing. I love to write. I actually generate a ton of our content here, uh, with KD Technology because it's a, a natural skill of mine. But, I've really parlayed the, the writing desire into communication. Um, so a lot of what I've done throughout my life and in KD Technology has been communicative, whether it's public speaking or training or sales, lots of different things. I was a rambunctious kid. I, I- got hurt a lot. I was kinda wild. Also a theme in West Virginia, our, um, moniker is, is wild and wonderful. So I mean- Okay i've lived up to it. I've broken about every bone you could break. I've been- Oh the ho- uh, my mom used to joke the hospital knew me on a first name basis. Um- I got
Russelhurt a lot. That sounds expensive.
TonyGetting cut in creeks and just living a very, you know, uh, outdoors childhood. Still love the outdoors. We still do, uh, a lot of outdoor stuff here. For a tech company, I think that's very important. You know, we, you and I spend a lot of our time behind a desk or in an office inside. And we're always plugged in, right? We are always plugged in, so I think it's good for us to literally unplug. Um, so we still enjoy doing that. I've done that throughout my life, and still very much enjoy completely detaching from internet, from phones, from all the things, going on a hike or hitting the river, something like that to decompress. We had a very high, I really don't wanna say a high-stress job, but it kind of is. Um-
RusselIt is a little bit. That's, uh, that's fair to say we're
Tonyresults driven. Yeah. What, what we do is results driven, so it's, you know, we're constantly having to perform, if you will. Meet a goal, meet a goal, meet a goal, surpass that goal, surpass that goal. You know, and that can become exhausting at times. So it's great to be able to pull back on that a little bit on occasion, and completely detach and unwind, and sort of get back to my roots as a child and, um, growing up in rural West Virginia. It is very rural here. I don't know if you've been to West Virginia- I have not, no or if any of your listeners have been to West Virginia, but it is a lot of what you heard. Fair enough. Very rural. You know, mountains, and I mean, we've still got almost entire counties that don't have broadband internet, so it, it's still pretty rural in many places here. Fortunately, we're in the capital city, Charleston, um, so you know, we don't experience many of the hardships that a lot of West Virginians do. You know, but we're all from the same state, so you know, we, I feel the pain, um- Yeah of my, my neighbors and am happy that I now have the opportunity to give back in a lot of ways to these people, to the, to the businesses because, you know, that's, I mean, that's really what I do every day. I wake up and help other people make money. Yeah. You know, or save time, do other things too, but the main thing they like to do is make money.
RusselThat's, that's great. I love to hear that. I mean, that's what we're here, we're here in the world to help.
Community Roots
RusselI'm just curious, when you were a kid, is the building your office is in, was it around when you were young?
TonyIt absolutely was, yes. Um, yeah. I don't know exactly what was in this particular office. We're in a very large building downtown. It's almost an entire block. So there's, like, residential places upstairs. There's businesses on each side. There's businesses on the backside. So I don't recall exactly what was here, but this is a historical building. It's actually been here, my partner would know probably almost down to the year, 'cause he's a freak like that, but I would say it's been here since the 1800s.
RusselOkay. Definitely there then, yeah. Yeah. I don't think you go back to the 1800s, but... Yeah, that'd be really cool. I grew up in a really small town But, if I had a business there, just the memories of young Rusty, going by what was to be his future business, I think that would be, that'd be a pretty cool scene or, or spot, uh- It's pretty cool. Yeah yeah. There's
Tonya lot of nostalgia that we have doing business here in, literally in the places where we used to ride bikes, and we used to play in the park, and we... You know what I mean? Like right down the street. It, it's pretty cool. I mean, one of my favorite things about what we do is that we genuinely get to Help in our community with things that we would have very much benefited from when we were kids. Lee also, my business partner, also grew up here right in Charleston, in downtown Charleston on the west side, and, we know the struggle. We, we had difficult lives growing up. We were poor. We, we've really had to scratch and claw to get where we're at, both of us. Um, and it's, it's probably the most rewarding thing that I get to do is to give back to my community, the kids that, are in the place that we used to be 35 years ago. It's, it's Very few things make me as happy as that when it comes to work.
RusselThat's awesome. That's cool. Well, w- I wanna, I wanna talk more about that, but I wanna continue down our story line
From Government to Agency
Russelhere. And, uh, as I understand it, you had a career in government, and clearly something happened at some point for you to wanna, get out of the private sector, the work for someone else sector and start your own business. What led up to that? How did... where did that moment occur in your journey?
TonyYeah. So, uh, going back to when I was a young adult, I actually dropped out of high school right before I would have graduated, which was a, a terrible mistake, but I did that a- as part of some family things that were going on. We moved my senior year, like six hours from home. The, uh, requirements in my new state were s- way more stringent, so I was going to actually have to go an extra year of school, and I was like, "I'm not doing that." I was ready to graduate. My... I was mad at my parents. You know, they yanked me from home and gonna make me, go an extra year of school somewhere. Uh, so within a few months I had my GED, um, about the same time I would've graduated. Uh, ended up going to college, got two degrees. I got a degree in human resources management and business management, and after graduation, I went directly into the private sector and started... Well, first I was in restaurant management, which is brutal. My goodness. I bet. If you ever want to test your resolve, go be a restaurant manager. Wow. I have a lot of respect for those folks. So I did that for about six months to a year, after about a decade of working my way around private sector management, I moved to the state of West Virginia, and got a job with the state of West Virginia. I did about another 10 years, 10-year bid in the government here in West Virginia as a public sector employee. Worked all through human resources, business management. Virtually everything you could do in those two fields, in, in management and HR, I did it in the state of West Virginia. And at about the... It was actually about nine years, I wanna say. My business partner I mentioned earlier reached out and had been doing, uh, websites on the side. Um, at the time I was working at, the DEP, actually, and he reached out and was like, "Hey, man, I think I either need to lean into this or I, I gotta abandon it? It's gotten so big now that I can't really properly manage the things that I've done for people, and I didn't really wanna get into managing websites anyway. I just kinda wanted to design them and give them to somebody and, and, you know. So would you be interested? And we'd known each other since we were kids. We're very, very close, like brothers. And, uh, I thought about it and I, I wanna say maybe a day or two, and then I reached out and was like, "You know what? Let's do it. I'ma, I'ma jump off a financial cliff and we're gonna do this thing." Uh, that was November of 2017. And- Okay.
RusselDid you just quit cold turkey? This is
Tonythe- Just quit cold turkey. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Uh, left my very secure, very stable state job. The old adage in West Virginia is, uh, if you're a state employee, once you're hired you're never fired. So- um, I left that very, very-
RusselThat might be every state for that
Tonymatter job, um, to do this crazy thing that we're doing now. But man, it's been, it's been phenomenal. I, I don't regret it. Um, not that there haven't been days that I haven't regretted it, 'cause there certainly have, but never truly, though. Uh, honestly, this is exactly what I wanna be doing. W- I love it. I love it More than I could express, honestly
RusselYeah. I can tell. Your passion certainly comes through.
Learning Digital Fast
RusselAnd I, I mean, so it sounded like you were jumping in a space you really didn't have a, a fundamental, Maybe you had a fundamental understanding, but it wasn't your core area of expertise or skill set. What was that part of it like?
TonyYeah. I, so when I came into KDE Technology, I had virtually no knowledge on websites or marketing. You know, I, I... Lee brought me in because he'd known me for, 30 years or whatever at the time. He trusted me. He knows that I'm good at business. The skills that I have in, in business in general, people skills, communicative skills, he has confidence in those skills and that I could parlay those into the skills that I would need in order to properly run a digital marketing and web development company. Fortunately, he was right. I spent probably my first six months or so learning everything about web development with Lee. He's an expert in web development, had been doing it for decades, um, and had been tasked with basically teaching someone enough about it to be able to sell it, to be able to educate people on the difference. One of our biggest challenges in this company has been that we're creating technical projects that are at the forefront of technology in a state that's about 10 years behind in technology. So there's a massive educational gap in West Virginia, uh, that has been probably the single most difficult thing to educate people on in this state, is that doing it different and there's a good reason why, and you should care. You should care about the quality of a website. It matters a lot. Your digital presence matters a lot. Digital marketing, will more likely determine your success as a business in 2026 than your ability to do the thing that you're passionate about I, I feel very strong about that. Because in 2026, it's really not just about doing a good job and offering a good service. There's so much more to the success of a business now because of the way the world works, right? Because we're all online, because if we go to a new city and we want a steak, we go to Google to find out where that steak is at. Like, we've, we've just shifted the way that we shop, the way that we operate, the way that we choose a business or, or whatever it is, and businesses either adapt or they get left behind. And we're in a state where most businesses are literally just now starting to adapt. They kinda had to be dragged into to this digital age kicking and screaming. Wow. Okay, yeah. Well, yes, sir, they're correct. So there's been a lot of that for us and, the education piece, me getting educated first from Lee about how all this works, um, and then me having to take that and run with it and re-educate other people, it's been a fascinating aspect of this business and us growing it and how we've gotten to where we're at. It's, uh It's honestly probably the thing that I least expected. I, I didn't realize that in doing this, I would become more of an educator than a salesperson.
RusselWell, it's funny, the similarities in our story, 'cause I think I was the exact same as you and started-- Seems like everything's just in a ten-year shift here. I started in '06. Pretty sure I couldn't even set up a computer back then, and had to go through a same level of education process. And then, right, '06, I think we were having some of that same challenge of, right, getting folks just even open to the idea of what digital could be and how they need to do it and leverage it in their business. So that, that resonates a lot. But it, it's interesting in hearing you talk through th-this challenge of education. It really sounds like the problem agencies face everywhere, that clients just, just different starting point perhaps, but clients often don't know exactly what they need, or they might arrive what they think they need, in maybe less than correct ways. But probably can ask anybody, and everybody knows their goal, and our job is to help educate and share, what is important for them to, to achieve that goal and how we assist in that process. So differences, but similarities all the same as I'm sitting here, you telling that story.
Scaling Education Programs
RusselHave you been able to do that education piece on more of I guess you'd call it mass scale, or are you just always having to do that in one-to-one conversations with your potential clients?
TonySo we have. Um, I'm actually very, very happy about where we've gone with sort of mass scale training, if you will. Over the last, uh, I wanna say three years, that's about, about right, we've had this office space that I'm talking to you from right now, and this is 1,600 square foot on Hale Street in downtown Charleston, our capital city. This actually has been multi-purposed into a training facility. So we actually do trainings on things like, what's a logo and why? What's the difference between a template website and a custom website, and why does it matter? Uh, we do cybersecurity training. We, we just did, training with the company about, password management and to- the importance of 2FA and mult- multi-factor authentication. We now are, in the last few years, getting to a point where, yes, we can train 25 people at a time, or we've gotten linked up with a lot of local networking places like, alliances and chambers and things of that nature. So we've partnered with, the SBDC, SBA, and other places of, similar nature so that we can offer trainings for them as well. So we'll do things like, we did a lunch and learn a few months ago where the, Charleston Chamber, actually it was the Huntington Chamber, they set it all up. They just have us come in and teach the class. We just send them a presentation. We come in and we teach, I think, I wanna say there were 70 people there. It was a huge class, but it was awesome. We did, an AI prompting class. We actually have, my business partner's an AI expert as well, so we do a lot of training in AI. So that was super fun, but it's been great to be able to do that on more of a mass scale. I still very much enjoy the one-on-one and getting, really into the weeds with someone, but w- we've done it so much now, so much trainings, we just... You know, we've built so many websites. We manage so many social media accounts. We've done so much of it that we've really lasered it in so that it is, I don't wanna say just as effective for me to train 25 people at a time as, as for me to sit down with just you, but it's much more effective than it would've been five or six years ago for me to try to accomplish that when I was, honestly still trying to figure some of it out myself.
RusselRight.
TonySo that's, that's been a great, upgrade for us with regard to the educational aspect.
RusselYeah. Well, I mean, it's always great to hear stories of when you can scale in any aspect of the business from one-to-one to one-to-many to, one, have more impact. I mean, I just imagine just, getting your voice out there, sharing this expertise and experience, ties really back to this passion you talked about earlier of small businesses and everything. And, and if it leads to the opportunity to serve in more meaningful ways, great, and if it's not, you're, you're just creating an all-around better ecosystem. Um, so I lo- love to see this in action
TonyYeah, we love doing it. It's, uh, it's fun. M- most days it's fun.
RusselYeah. I, I can feel that. You know, it's, I probably mentioned this too many times on the podcast at this point, but, uh, look, business is nothing more than waking up every day, getting kicked between the legs, and doing it the next day, and you learn, you grow, and you find out a little bit more about yourself and others in the process.
TonyI, I completely agree. I mean, that's a very good assessment.
RusselYeah. Yeah. Well, a, a lived as- a lived assessment, a lived experience for certain on, on my part as well.
Hard Parts of Scaling
RusselOne Of the things that you've talked about is some of the challenges in, in economically in the area that you're in. As you've come up through the years now, what else has been tough, or what's been one of the most toughest or frustrating moments in your journey?
TonyWell, I think, and this probably speaks to all business, but scaling is very difficult. I truly think it, as someone who's now got nearly 30 years in business, it, it might be what I personally consider to be the most difficult part of business is scaling it. Figuring out a good product or a good service and then figuring out your, target audience and then delivering that can be challenging, but taking that s- that thing that you've successfully done, you figured out your product or service, you've delivered it, and then turning that into, our, from our two-man team to our 14-person team, oh, it is a challenge. People are... we're all unique and we're all interesting, and we have these quirks about us and piecing people together to make a successful team, to make a successful, even just a, a project team, but it, it can be very difficult, having different personalities and different, some people are early, some people are late, some people, you know, are, are visual learners, and some people need to read it. And it, it just, there's so many, uh, different characteristics that go into a successful team, and I think it's extremely important and difficult to piece that together in such a way that it truly does run like a well-oiled machine, and everyone understands their role and everyone else's role, and it's all symbiotic. And, for the most part, we're always moving f- the same direction at the same speed. It's a beautiful thing. It's art, to be quite honest, to accomplish, but it is challenging. I mean, it's taken us, again, I, I like to mi- to think of myself as, pretty much an expert in business and human resources. It, I could hire and manage 1,000 more people and 1,001 would still be tricky because that, that person is their own person. You're you and there's not a single other person quite like you, even though there might be some people that from a distance you look like, you know, their doppelganger. So trying to take all that and, and piece it together, it's, um, it's tricky. It's, it's, uh... But we now have what I consider to be the best team I've ever been a part of. And I've been a part of a lot of teams, and I've pieced many of them together. Most probably. But the staff that we have currently, I, man, these people are like family. I, I, I, I love them. I mean, I truly, like, adore our staff. Uh, and we, we cannot function without every single person. And we, I try to make sure that they all know because it's, it, again, it's very difficult. It, it's hard to get the perfect team. Um, and I do feel like a- a- at just eight, nine years in, we finally got
Always Keep Learning
Tonyit.
RusselWhat's the biggest lesson you've learned in, in the process to even be able to get to where you're at today?
TonyOh, gosh. The biggest lesson, probably the biggest lesson that I have learned is that- No matter how much I believe I already know about a thing, there's always something to learn. I, again, self-proclaimed, business and human resources expert, there is rarely a day that goes by that I don't learn something about those industries. And, and I really do like to think of myself as one of the best i- in this area in those things. I've done them just ad nauseam, and it's very important to me to, to do it right, to do it well. But man alive, there's not a week that goes by that I don't make, uh, the lion's share of mistakes. Lee and I like to frequently say, like, "If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying enough things. You're not doing enough things. You're not pioneering, you're not trailblazing, you're not doing something new. You're just doing the same old thing that's been done. You're, you're staying safe, staying inside your little box, inside your little container, and that's not growth." So, with growth comes error, comes mistake, and it's been... you may have picked up on this at this point, but I'm a little bit of a, a know-it-all. I, I see a thing, I'm like, "Oh, I have interest in that thing." I try to learn everything there is to learn about that thing. I wanna know that thing inside and out. I wanna know how it works backwards. I wanna be able to reverse engineer it. I wanna know all there is to know about the thing. But the truth is, and this is that, that part that's been hard for me to... The big challenge is I'll never know all there is to know about the thing. I'll never know all there is to know about the thing. Yeah. So I gotta consistently remind myself of that. Like, "Oh, Tony, you still got stuff to learn, buddy." Yeah. Every day you still got more to learn.
RusselYeah. Well, the business will always give us a stark reminder, in different ways that, we all have more to learn. But, the ability to recognize that, is, important in and of itself that, there is more to learn and we're just on that journey. It's funny, as you were talking earlier about this whole human thing, and I've always said that, is that, agencies are m- a very difficult business, if only because there's just lots of humans involved in the process, from us to our team to the clients, their team, their clients' clients. I don't know. It's making me think of the saying, you might have heard of herding cats. I think that saying might need to be switched to herding humans is the more difficult, um- Yeah. Agreed analogy than cats. Cats might be easy when it comes to the agency business.
TonyYeah, I think that's probably true. Cats get cocky too, so
RusselThat is true. That is really true. That would be... I feel like you could have a whole TikTok page just devoted to, uh, trying to herd cats.
TonyCat-
RusselUm, cat herding business. Um, well, you know, you talked about too, right, scaling is a challenge, and I, I think, I think there are a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of humans. That can be a hard thing to scale.
Big Expansion Vision
RusselBut obviously you're on this track it sounds like, and, and if I understand correctly, to, to move beyond your borders and expand the business to other geographic areas. What does that look like for you? What is the goal with that, and where are you at so far in that journey?
TonySo our plan, i- which it is, it's a mountain to climb, but- uh, our plan is to become a, a household name in web development and digital marketing, cybersecurity as well. We aim to have offices throughout the United States. We've got these three in the east right now, but we want to have, places out west, places down south, places up north, and essentially create a canvas, a network of offices and employees rinsing and repeating what we've been able to accomplish here in Charleston, West Virginia, uh, with regard to, you know, helping businesses increase sales, save time, secure what they have, uh, already earned, and do that on a scale that quite literally, has us a, a GoDaddy one day or a Bluehost or a HostGator, someone that is, again, a, like a household name. We, at the beginning of this call, I mentioned that, if someone wants WordPress, we can build you WordPress. Well, I, I want to be known like that. I believe this company can achieve that level of notoriety, at some point. We're Google Premium partners. I, I've been in calls with Google where they've said things to us like, "It's not supposed to work like that. How did you make it work like that?" That's a... I mean, my jaw's hitting the floor. When Google looks at you and says, "Hey, Mr. Engineer, we designed this thing. We designed this thing. You figured out how to make it work in a way that we didn't design it to work in. Could you show us that? Could you teach us how you made it do that thing?" It's, that is like, you know what? I'll, I'll be remembering that, Google. I'll be remembering that. And one day we'll get to the point where, we'll be that, that level of, I don't know about Google, but w- we'll be at a level where, that sort of education will be en masse because we are so large and we have so many, offices and employees and, hopefully hundreds of employees at some point in time, that we can take what we've been able to do here in this tiny little place and duplicate it, metropolitan areas all over the United States and help so many businesses achieve goals that I believe many probably thought were either unachievable or just more work than they were willing or able to put in.
RusselNow, well, I've got your new tagline. Google calls us. There, there- I love it there you go.
TonyKick.
RusselYes. Um, that, uh, that, that'll get some people in the door. Man, I love to hear a, a big goal. I, I honestly think back to my own journey and probably had, a similar goal that, just the pathway didn't eventually make sense to pursue that. But, that's an amazing goal, and you wanna help businesses, and so the, the bigger and more places you can be and showing up that way is gonna have a, a wonderful effect, and I can't wait to see how that journey plays out for you.
Born or Made?
RusselOne last big question for you, Tony, is, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
TonySo, uh, I, I love this question. Never, uh, heard it or been asked this question. I believe entrepreneurs are born and made. I believe that as with many other things in life, a lot of people are born with the traits that, can be nurtured and polished into an entrepreneurial spirit, right? Th- Maybe you've got, you just came out of the womb with a set of traits that would make it, that would facilitate you becoming an entrepreneur, being your own boss, running things. I think a lot of times these folks lean in, and they do become industry leaders, they become business owners, and I think sometimes they choose a different path. Uh, they end up with a family or whatever it is, and, someone that maybe could have been, uh, the next Steve Jobs, had five kids instead and went a different route and is doing something else. Likewise, I think that there are folks that thought they would never own a business, that, they didn't wanna be other people's boss, that they, are happy just, with the status quo or just getting my paycheck or whatever it is. And then something in life happens or a change in mindset occurs, whatever it is, and then through hard work and determination, they develop the necessary skills to become an entrepreneur. I truly do think that, that it's both.
RusselYeah. I tend to agree with that, that, uh, it can work either way and, but to ultimately be successful, yeah, your path h- has to be made. So great answer there.
Where to Find KDE
RusselIf people wanna know more about KDE Technology, where can they go?
TonyOur website is very, very simple. It's kde.technology. You can also go to kdetechnology.com, but we love the kde.technology. It's su- super simple. We have a ton of information on our website about our products, our services. You'll see my face on there, a little bit about me, lots of, uh, examples of our work. Just a, a lot of information on our website. We have pricing online, which is very unusual, um, in our industry, that we have just stated pricing for most of what we do, um, which we find is, is, is very unique. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Uh, we've got, like I said, offices in Charleston, West Virginia, Huntington, West Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio.
RusselNice. Wonderful. All right, folks. Well, you know where to go, and, for those listening, you can always go to anagencystory.com/podcast, find this episode with Tony, and the links to all that will be there, as well as a recap of this episode, and you can listen to it there as well, as well as any of your favorite podcast apps. Well, Mr. Tony, man, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to share so many wonderful insights that really that, probably our most important role in this business is, component of education, and we have to do that for our customers, that, mistakes will happen along this journey and the difficulties and challenges of navigating herding humans. Really appreciate y'all taking the time to share all that with us today.
TonyYeah, of course. I appreciate you very much for having me, Russel. Thanks for reaching out. Uh, it's, it's been a pleasure.
RusselLikewise. Likewise Thank you for listening to An Agency Story podcast, where every story helps 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 anagencystory.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram @anagencystory for the latest updates.
A Tense Blessing
TonySome of the, you know, quote, "negative" things that have happened have actually been phenomenal for us. I mentioned earlier that, you know, Lee... This was really Lee's business in the beginning. He was doing it on the side. He had me come in, my business partner, and I sort of picked it up and ran with it. Well, he, for the first, I don't know, up until September of last year, he maintained a day job. The, the job that he had when we started this thing, he kept that job. I did not. I left my cushy state job and, and did nothing but this. So that worked pretty well for us for about seven years, and then we've got a whole team of developers. We've got network guys, database guys. I mean, we've got... There's... It's a lot. It's a lot happening. I'm managing, like, four people on my side, and he's got twice as many on his side, and he's trying to manage those while doing a, a pretty intense day job that's, 40, 50 hours a week on a good week. Last summer, honestly about this time last summer, I had gotten to the point where I thought, "I don't know if I can mentally take this anymore." We've got, servers crashing that have never crashed. We've got websites crashing that have never crashed. Like, all these little things kept piling up, and I reach out and I'm like, "Lee, look, man, if we, if we don't get you on board, if we don't find a way to get you on board, we're, we're gonna tank. And life served us up a curveball in him having, uh, lost that job in September of last year. I initially, I'm super excited. I'm like, "Oh, my God, all my, all my prayers are answered. Uh, Lee's coming on board, it's gonna fix everything." The thing that I hadn't thought about, Russel, is Lee comes with a salary And his salary is very similar to mine. In fact, it's identical. So overnight, while one problem was basically solved, a brand-new problem that I hadn't even really considered yet was on the horizon. So he came on, he immediately solved all those problems, um, but then we had this glaring, huge money problem. Well, within, uh, I would say another month or so of that nearly ending me, things started clicking and, and all the promises I'd been telling Lee forever, like, "I promise if you just come on board, we'll figure out how to make it work." And now, after having gone through probably what I would consider one of the most difficult years we had for two different reasons, uh, we've now had the best quarter we've ever experienced in nine years. But we dug in. We made adjustments. We did all the things that I know we're capable of doing, and i'm very happy with where we're at right now, and honest to God, if you would've reached out six months ago, I probably wouldn't have even done this. I'd have been like, "I got too many thing, too many fires, Russel, I'm sorry."
RusselOh. Uh, I'm glad I con- I contacted you at the right time. Uh, sounds like a, a high-stakes game of Whac-A-Mole.
TonyAbsolutely, yeah. So-
RusselYeah. Awesome
Tonywe're
Russelrolling
Tonyup now, so.
RusselGreat. Well, that's good to hear. Always love a turnaround story.