An Agency Story

You Can't Delegate Conviction - Foster Consulting

• Russel Dubree • Episode 198

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Building a better agency is about creating better outcomes for your clients. In this episode, Tom Foster, Founder of Foster Consulting, shares lessons from more than 30 years in the marketing industry, including why founder involvement still matters, the need for clear outcomes, and ideas for becoming a better strategic partner.

Inside this episode:

  • Why outcome-based conversations are replacing service-based selling.
  • The role a founder's experience and perspective plays in winning clients.
  • Why your clients' success is the best measure of your own.

Podcast Welcome

Russel

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, 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 Tom Foster

Russel

Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Tom Foster with Foster Consulting with us here today. Thanks so much for joining us here today, Tom.

Tom

Well, thanks so much for having me, Russel. This is a great, thing for me. I'm excited. You and I have been talking for a long time, about doing this, I love talking about this type of stuff.

Russel

Yeah. Well, here we are, finally made it. All good things, come to those who wait, as the saying goes. But, if you don't mind, start us off. Tell us what Foster Consulting does and who you do it for.

Tom

We've been around for 30 years, a long time, and we provide, marketing, digital marketing services and management of those assets for lawyers and doctors. That's primarily who we, cater to. We do have other businesses, but our focus is on primarily, primarily lawyers, and that's what we've been doing since the internet was born.

Russel

Since the internet was born, way back in 18 what year?

Marine Corps Origins

Tom

Well, I, um, just to give you some background, I'm a Marine. I was in the Marines from '85 to

Russel

91. Okay. Uh, so I- Thank you for your service. I, I'm an Air Force guy. I don't know-

Tom

All right.

Russel

Thank you for your service uh, we, we can start to-- Well, thank you. Yeah. We can- That's great we can tell some jokes about, i love the Air Force to Marine jokes about, yeah, who had it rougher and combinations and all that.

Tom

Well, I already know the answer to that- so we don't even need to debate that. Um, it was funny. B- real quick on that note, right before, uh, I think it's MEPS, uh, we're, uh, receiving, you know, when they're taking in- Mm-hmm up in Baltimore, they're taking in all the service guys and then sending them off to... You know, you do your health check and c- you know, simple stuff. And it's everybody, all the services, and then they put you in a, You might remember this, when they put you in a hotel room, some crappy Roachville hotel room with, three, four other guys And we were all sitting around talking about, um, and it was me, Army guy, Air Force guy, and I think Coast Guard guy. And, um-

Russel

Seems like a start of a joke.

Tom

Yeah. And, um, he's like, "How long is your boot camp?" "Oh, it's two weeks." "How long is yours?" "Four weeks." "How long is yours?" "13 weeks." So I was like, "What have I done?" And, um- Yeah so that was the beginning of a education for me about the differences.

Russel

Yeah.

First Sales Hustle

Russel

Right

Tom

from the very start. But I was, when I, after I got out of the Marine Corps, um, I didn't really know what I was gonna do with myself. And, uh, I had a... Yeah, just married, uh, just had a kid, and, um, I got an opportunity to, sell software. Now, this was back before Windows and back before even box software was on the shelf. Uh, there was no CompUSA. It was all, like, phone calls, and I was selling translation software, English to Spanish, Spanish to English, Russian, German, French, and it was $1,000 a pop.

Russel

Wow.

Tom

And, you know, basically handed a stack of dropout cards that were coming out of airline magazines that people would fill out and send it in, and our job was to call them up, that's it. And, and no... It was all 100% commission, but I made 300 bucks on every one that I sold.

Russel

That's pretty good.

Tom

But it wa- it was good. Uh, but it was hard. It was hard. Right. So you had to get through a lot of nos. And, uh, so what I did was I set up a system where I brought home my gaming machine, my Packard Bell, 386, and installed the very first fax card- they made, and installed it in there, brought it in Got a list of, like, thousands of, uh, language professors in all the, universities, and just started... And I created this little order form, out of WordPerfect, if anybody remembers that. And, uh- Oh,

Russel

man, I haven't heard

Tom

those words used some clip art. Now I'm dating myself, right?

Russel

I haven't heard those words in forever, man. WordPerfect, yes. What a, what a program.

Tom

Yeah. Well, I'm 59 years old. I've been doing this a long time. Yeah. I've seen it all.

Fax Marketing Breakthrough

Tom

And so I sent that out, and I would send them out, And I would just program it to do it at night as another way to- These are

Russel

faxes you're sending out? You're, you're, like, are you- Faxes are you the first-ever fax spammer?

Tom

I'm one of the first, and I've got a follow-up to this.

Russel

Yes.

Tom

Um, so I did it, and it was great. And, uh, I used to... I would get, come in the next morning, I'd have a bunch of orders. And, uh, the company was so impressed that they... I got promoted to project manager, I worked for that company for a while. I went to other companies, and then my specialty was selling, uh, box software into distribution, and CompUSA was one of my accounts, Computer City, and all that, and I worked for several companies 'cause I had those relationships. And then the internet came. And it basic- like, overnight, box software was done. I mean, it was, like, quick. It was a quick... And I found myself, you know, looking for a job. I was actually unemployed, and it was r-really scary. And so I went to work with my mother-in-law, who is a court reporter here in Virginia, very successful, and was helping-

Russel

Like, were you doing court reporting too? Like, what,

Tom

what are you doing? No, I wasn't. I, I built her a website.

Russel

Okay.

Tom

And this is back before people were like, "What's a website?" And, uh, I built the website, uh, for her, and, um, 'cause I knew how to do it. I knew some of the early, uh, HTML coders and, uh, some of the first software, the people that did that, just in my world. And, uh, I didn't know... Who knew back then if the internet was gonna be what it is today? Yeah. It was like this new thing that nobody really understood.

Russel

What year are we talking about here? Just for reference.

Tom

This is in the '90s.

Russel

Yeah. Okay.

Tom

I partnered up with these, these d-different companies and... In any event, what I did was I was also doing trial presentation, so helping lawyers present their cases, with technology, like we're scanning in all their, all their documents, all their exhibit, video, doing video depositions. So we were like high tech court reporting offering all these other services.

Russel

Okay.

Tom

And what I did was one day I was like, "Hey, man, I'm gonna do that fax out again." And so I did the, I did a fax out to seven hundred lawyers on our list Our clients or prospects and sent it out, and I got two responses, and I was offering trial presentation, consultation, let's talk about your, your case and see if I- we can help you. Two, two responses. The first one I got sued for unsolicited faxing.

Russel

Wow.

Tom

That was a thing back then.

Russel

Oh, that's, that's crazy.

Intranet Deal Sparks Agency

Tom

And then the other one was by an attorney who said, "Come on in here and let's talk about this." And, uh, he checked me out before I came in there and he saw that we had a website and he had just built his own website. And then he was working with a group of about 70 personal injury attorneys in the area, and like a mastermind.

Russel

Mm-hmm.

Tom

And, uh, they wanted an intranet, a secure website that they could share information. And this was way before... Nothing existed like this, right? So, and he had a proposal from another company, and I, and he ha- he was like, "Check this out. Read this." And so I sat over across the desk from him and glanced through it, and I was like, "Oh, g- that's a good thing that that's in there. You know, that's important." I didn't understand half of what was in it, but I got to the end, and I said, I think it was 30 grand. I said, "I'll do it for half." I said, "I'll do this for you for half of this." And we shook hands. He said, "Okay." And we shook hands, and based on an hour, hour and a half conversation, I walked out of there and I was like delighted and also scared to death of what I just signed up for. And I drove to Borders Books. Remember Borders Books? It's not-

Russel

Oh,

Tom

yes. Oh,

Russel

yes

Tom

there anymore. And got a book on how to build dynamic websites, and it was, uh, by Ben Forta, and it was ColdFusion, uh, webs- which was, that was the only dynamic language, that and d- uh, .NET, ASP back then, which was Microsoft's dynamic language. Ugh.

Russel

I have... Not that I'm a coder by any means, but, uh, I've, I, I remember hearing enough horror stories about- Yes working in ASP and stuff.

Tom

Yes, exactly. So got

Russel

the, the, the shivers.

Tom

Anytime you work in a window, my... it's crazy. So I built it, this intranet for these guys, and with the lawyer's help,

Russel

Wow out of that group That's a, that's a pretty fast foray into-

Tom

Right

Russel

into a business. And,

Tom

yeah. And so I, that's when I left my mother-in-law, and started my own co- Foster Web Marketing. And, uh, but I'd started Foster Consulting, and I bought the web biz- the web clients from my mother-in-law for 70 grand. And went off and did this thing. I was overwhelmed immediately

Russel

did you have to do cash on the barrel head or did she give you a, a payment plan? Did you get a...

Tom

I had to pay some built bulk up front, and then I did a payment plan

Russel

Gotcha. All right

Tom

A smart business woman.

Russel

Yeah. Right.

Leveraging a Platform

Tom

Anyway, so like I said, I was immediately overwhelmed because, I'm thinking these guys are gonna help me with content and, they wanna write their own thing, you know, the, the website content, but none of them did that. So I had to not only, you know, design, be strategic, work, but I also had to get all the content. So I had to build a content department. I was overwhelmed with updates and changes, so what I did was I built a CMS Content management system

Russel

Oh, yes. The, the era of, uh, there were so many CMSes built in the-

Tom

Yeah

Russel

in the early days of the web. Everybody was-- We, we built our own back then, and,

Tom

Yep

Russel

it seemed like the thing to do is, uh, that's obviously pre, pre-sophistication of WordPress and other more mainstream CMSes. Yep. But, yeah, we did the same thing.

Tom

And that CMS turned into DSS, Dynamic Self-Syndication is our software that all our websites run on., We added a, a CRM to it, lead management. Anyway, it's just the platform and the software that all our clients use to update their websites and our own people use to update, uh, the websites. And so we've maintained that. We're in the process of a complete redo of it right now, getting out of ColdFusion, still in ColdFusion. And so we're getting, uh, building a new one. It's about halfway there, and we hope to launch the new one, which has-- It's so much more sophisticated. AI-enabled. I mean, basically can write your own content with help from AI, and then edit it, and then post it.

Russel

So this is Essentially a system you've, you've built in the early days of your business.

Tom

Yeah. Yep.

Russel

And then have

Tom

kept it- And evolved over the years. Yes

Russel

Wow, that's some staying power.

Tom

Yeah. And you know, everybody, WordPress, WordPress, WordPress, and, it's not. And, you know, the amount of plugins that you have to put in to make WordPress work just slows down your website. The coding and architecture in our websites are faster, leaner, and, uh, than a bloated website, WordPress website or Wix or whatever. You know, those are pretty. They look pretty, but it's all what's going on underneath, right? Under the ground that people don't see. All of the things that break constantly on a website that need to be maintained.

Russel

No. It's hard to cover that long of a span of a career, and it's very, very fascinating. And again How quickly you came into your niche with a focus, and then having a core platform technology piece that you've, you've kept around, improved, upgraded over the years. Very fascinating.

Competition And Referrals

Russel

What, just going back to maybe some of those early years, what was the core challenge you were facing in business

Tom

I would say the biggest challenge is, uh, competition. The competitors came flooding in when they saw how lucrative the lawyer- Mm-hmm um, marketing world can be, especially for personal injury lawyers. Lawyers tend to be next best thing. Mm-hmm. And, you know, they're easily swayed to a new technology or a new opportunistic speaker, and they all listen to each other, and, uh, they're not necessarily, not all of them, some of them are good at, measuring ROI and getting- Mm KPIs and all that stuff, but a lot of them just go with whatever the flow is. So competition was tough. In the 2000s, we, uh, Ben Glass and I started Great Legal Marketing, which was one of the first lawyer-focused masterminds. We would do a show every year. We would do smaller shows, every quarter. And through those referrals, and I would speak at those shows, and through those referrals, w- we grew the business. I mean, it was, it was relatively easy with that referral. My brother was my, sales guy, and people would just come in and say, like, "I hear you're the one to be." And, and, uh, so it was easy. And so-

Russel

So you created, you created your own mastermind network, um-

Tom

With Ben. With-- Not just me- Okay but,

Russel

you know. Kind of more of a partnersh- Okay. You partnershipped it. Right. It was a partnership. Okay.

Tom

That lasted for years. That went on for a good 10 years. And- Yeah uh, but-- And at the beginning, I was the only web guy that would come to these events and speak at these events. But the more pressure that got put on Ben and his team from other people wanting to pay him tens of thousands of dollars to come speak, you know, that ended up happening, so we got other people in there, and it, it just got diluted.

Russel

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tom

And, cheaper options, and they would just look at the price and that was that. So that's been the biggest challenge. And so because of that Easy referral. I didn't build a- Mm-hmm sales funnel necessarily, you know what I mean? I didn't have- Yeah I didn't have sales. I mean, we did marketing, of course, but it wasn't aggressive.

Russel

well, that's, honestly, that is such a common, obstacle or as I call that, that, that hump of the referral wall for an agency that, yeah, if you do good work and you just do a little hustle in the world, you can get a good book of clients, build a good business. But at some point, if you wanna grow beyond that, that, uh, it's a whole new muscle and set of- Yeah skills to build to be able to generate your own lead stream. But, so yeah, not, not a unique challenge per se, but how folks get over it is certainly unique. So I don't know. How did you end up solving that for yourself?

Sales Team Missteps

Tom

Well, we're still working on solving that. I mean, we went down a bad path last year by offering all these other services to differentiate ourselves from our competitors, but it wasn't well mapped out. I mean, it was, uh, it wasn't Nobody in the company understood really what we were selling. I hired a bunch of salespeople. I hired a sales team. They couldn't sell it. They were untrained. So that was a big goof. That was a big oops that we did the last two years. And, um, I came back, I pretty much kind of-- Like I s- I'm 59, you know? Yeah. I've been doing this a long time. I was hi- uh, hiring people to do it, but I wasn't there anymore.

Russel

At some point, did you bring in somebody to, to run this thing for you?

Tom

Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm.

Russel

Mm.

Tom

And I'm not saying it was all of us. A lot of people helped me out along the way.

Russel

Sure.

Tom

Been with me for years and years and years. Some are still with me. But it was missing my voice. It was missing my, um... It was just... We were just like another company. And, um, what I realized is that what the world needs now, or my world, is-

Russel

Making a song play in my head here at some- Yeah.

Tom

Because all our competitors have been bought, been bought up by these big companies, and we've resisted. I've resisted that. I've still got work to do here. Uh, we still have a lot to offer.

Outcome Based Positioning

Tom

We've changed our frequency from here, you want a website, here are all the services we do, right, to, for your marketing and your website. Instead of that, we're outcome-based. So what outcomes do you want, Mr. Client, you know, Mr. Prospect? What out- what have you not been getting? Where are you now? Where do you wanna be in six months? Where do you wanna be in a year? Where do you wanna be in th- you know, and mar- and work backwards from there. Instead of just selling them on a services plan that has no objective really, except just, "Okay, I need you to service my website." So it's a complete mind shift in that we are working with them strategically to achieve their objectives and their outcomes.

Russel

Yeah.

Tom

And that seems to-- That's working really well. Um- Yeah people like that. Measurement, and we're working with a lot of, uh, CMOs from law firms, you know, where they used to not have them. Uh, so we're working with their marketing people to achieve the success that they're looking for.

Russel

Yeah. Well, I think you're, you, you're certainly far ahead of the game when you came online in terms of positioning and having a more focused what you do and who you do it for, and I think that's the new shift that we're seeing today, and AI is probably accelerating that of that, going the way of the dodo bird is services for service sakes, and the market clients are demanding more of that outcome based what are you go- what are you actually going to do for me? What's the so what of your service?

Tom

Um- And it's a moving target, right? Yeah. I mean, like, that's the thing is that your marketing company that you work with Has got to be able to move with the times and cannot sit complacence. You know, the, the, "Oh, it worked like this for so long, it was so wonderful. Please keep it going." It's not how it works.

Russel

Yeah.

Tom

And, we have AI now, and, AEO is w- is the name of the game, and that's what we're really good at, is getting people, our clients placed in the ser- in the AI search. But that re- that's a different game. It's a different game than just adding content to your website. You know, you need to be out there doing more than just... You need to have your content on your website, for sure, but you also need to be putting that content in your social media portals and, you need to still be engaging in pay-per-click. You need to have all these channels going. Uh, it's not just one channel. You have to have them all going.

Russel

Yeah. I think you could boil that down to say that the stakes have definitely been raised for agencies and which I think is a good, healthy thing, to be quite honest, I feel like in, in the marketplace.

The Founder's Voice

Russel

Um, something I wanna come back to, 'cause I, I feel like you see this so often in big businesses, certainly things we hear stories of you said the founder's voice, that when the founder leaves the business, that it, it's very ripe for whatever you're saying. Something goes missing. When you think about your own journey, how would you describe, what is that founder's voice? How, how would you describe that, and what do you think was missing from the business?

Tom

Experience, energy. You know, lawyers are tough and, um, they're tough clients to have. They demand results, and they should. And so it's a lot different message coming from somebody that's been doing it for as long as I have than from a hired salesperson that they can see right through that doesn't, has, does not have the experience. Yeah. I mean, and so that's the biggest thing is that n- that's not to say that I don't wanna build a sales team, I do. But I need to be back in it now to see the landscape and to h- and to understand, because I haven't been involved with the clients to understand what questions they're asking, how we can create the outcome that they're looking for, where before salespeople are just trying to sell a services package.

Russel

Well, it brings up such a, another good notion. There's a, phrase that gets passed around in the agency space that every agency has a failed salesperson or, I liken it to, I had a s- brief motorcycle journey in my life, and someone eventually told me there's those that have wrecked and those that are gonna, and that seemed to be the sort of failed salesperson part of a business. And I think it gets to the heart of what you're saying, that it is such a hard role to pass off, that it's so relational, it's so experience-driven, that someone coming off the street, they could be the best salesperson in the world, but if they don't have that, that functional knowledge and experience, it's gonna fall flat. Like you said, clients are gonna see right through that, and generally why that leads to a, a, a failed salesperson story. Yeah. Yeah. It's a ri- almost a rite of passage it seems like for agencies. Yeah. And we, we did it too. We, uh, we hired a salesperson very early on in the business and thought this was gonna blow open the whole thing for us, and I think, uh, I think they lasted about four months and sold one website and, uh, and then it was- Yeah time to part ways.

Tom

Yeah.

Russel

I think that probably is even just going back to the founder's voice is such a key lesson for owners that, there, there's, there's something you're bringing to the table that's not just functional or just tactical, but that energy, that almost the je ne sais quoi of just kinda bringing all the things you have to the table, that's a hard thing to replace and, um, but, uh-

Tom

And also it depends upon the size of your agency, I think too- Yeah is that, we've always been very focused, uh, not trying to grow to thousands and thousands of clients, that we cannot manage. You know, we wanna do a great job for everybody.

Russel

So you've stepped back in the business. You're, you're redoing this technology that's obviously been helpful to your business over the years.

Tom

Mm-hmm.

Russel

What does that future look like? What, what are you trying to achieve? What's the big picture?

Their Story is Our Story

Tom

Well, we wanna grow, we wanna get better, better clients. Not that we don't have good clients now. We've got great clients now. We've got... And, and that's really the story is our clients' story more than it is my story, I think. Mm. It's the success of the clients. I mean, we've got like Hupy and Abraham, that's one of my biggest and best clients. They're up in Milwaukee, and they came to us. They had one office in Milwaukee. They were probably doing a few million. And, um- Now they're in-- I think they've got 11 offices in three states, and they're a multi-billion dollar firm. And that's not all, uh, on be- because of us. They do a lot of other things. They do TV. Uh, they do other things. They, they're great with their social media. They're great in their community. But the website, we do the website for them, and that continues to be their biggest draw. Uh, and that's just one of them. We've got another, Derrick Law down in South Carolina. You know, when he first came, I think 15 years ago, he was, uh, one man with his wife in a little tiny office, and now he's, he's got four or five offices and a billion-dollar firm.

Russel

I love that saying. I wrote down You said that your story is the client's story it's a way to look at it at the lens of, look, how successful is our client being? What is, what is their version of this exchange, this interaction, this interplay with us? Part- And that's, that's

Tom

really what, where we're getting and where we've gotten all of our great clients is referrals from other great clients. I just had a call yesterday with a prospect that, uh, is in South Carolina that sees us and we were recommended. I think s- they told me, "Well, those guys do Derrick Law, so you should talk to them." They got a website, right? And it looks good. They don't know if it's working or not working, or it used to work and it's not working anymore. Then you dig into it and you find out why it's not. Usually they stopped maintaining it. Usually they, they got, in a certain spot, right? They're like, let's stop marketing so much. Let's stop spending money over there. And so like the one yesterday, I did an analysis of it before I talked to them, and it's not broken. It's just been ignored. But it's where do you want to get to? Because that is a, a path that changes constantly, and you need to work with so-- in terms of what you need to do to get there. Well, we gotta t- start with the end in mind and then bring it back. And that's really... And they're looking for confidence. They're looking for, "Have you done this before?" Yes, we have, many times, thousands of times. Um, and then how are we gonna do it? And especially with lawyers, I wanna know everything that you're doing.

Russel

Yeah, I mean, it, it seems like in so many circles, probably inside the agency life, business, all the things you can say that, the ability to achieve success is to work backwards from a future goal in mind, and so you can take the next best step forward and, and go in the direction you want to towards the goals you want. Simple in concept, but, uh, takes a lot of

Tom

experience-

Russel

100% skills

Tom

uh,

Russel

to make that happen. And, and

Tom

and that's critical now. Critical now. Yeah.

Russel

Yeah. Well, fascinating and, someone that's been around the block and, and seen all the different transitions, comes back to those fundamentals, and it's different tools that help you along that way.

Tom

And, and Russel, another thing I just wanna throw in there is that it requires more from the actual lawyer now than it used to. No.

Russel

Yeah, You can't outsource your business. You can't outsource your marketing who- wholeheartedly and-

Tom

No expect it to work. You've g- It's about your brand, right? The most successful ones are out there on social media, out there doing podcasts, out there doing YouTube videos, making sure that their content is, is correct on the website, updating content, doing campaigns, out there in the world talking about it.

Russel

No. N- nothing more impermanent than, marketing efforts in, in, in the modern world that, uh, it's a machine that has to always be running.

Tom

Yeah.

Russel

Well, very fascinating.

Born Or Made?

Russel

Uh, a lot of, lot of tidbits and takeaways, but one last big question for you, Tom. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Tom

I think they're born. I think that it's in you or it's not in you. I think you can be made to... If you don't know that you're one. I think a lot of lawyers are entrepreneurs. They don't know that. They figure it out. And so there's more entrepreneurs out there than they know. You know what I'm saying? Like- Yeah I didn't know I was an entrepreneur when I first got started until somebody told me, "You know, that's what you are is an entrepreneur." Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. That's what the label is? I thought I'd just been, you know, surviving, right? I

Russel

didn't- Yeah, that, that's what, that's how I'd label it. Yeah, I'm a survivor. Yeah. That's, uh, that's probably fair terminology. I

Tom

mean, I, I did what I did because I was afraid, you know? I had no college degree. I'd just got out of the Marine Corps, you know, was an enlisted guy. I didn't know what I was gonna do. And especially when I was unemployed like that, I was f- totally afraid. And so I, I just did, did that because I didn't know what else to do.

Russel

Yeah. I think A spot a lot of folks find themselves in and probably to the point that it was born or maybe within them, but they had to become made, and, I, I think that's a, that's a good way to look at it. Mm-hmm. Well, if people wanna know more about Foster Consulting, where can they go?

Tom

They can go to the website, fosterconsulting.com, or fosterwebmarketing.com. All goes to the same place. Um, I'm happy to, uh, talk to anybody about their marketing experience, and if they wanna make a change, a conversat- like old school conversation. We can do an audit of where you are now and figure out where you wanna go and how to get there. Nice. Yeah. And we've done this many times, so it's... I'm not saying it's easy. Uh- Yeah it's not easy, but we know how to do it.

Russel

Yeah. If it was easy, nobody would need us But, very cool, Tom. Thank you so much. So many wonderful nuggets to the idea of investing in positioning, transferring that to outcomes, the client's story is your story, and, reinforcing the importance and energy of the founder's voice and everything that brings to the table. Really appreciate you taking the time to share all that with us today.

Tom

Well, Russel, thank you so much. It's great talking to you, great meeting you, and thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me.

Russel

My pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much. 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 wanna visit anagencystory.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at @anagencystory for the latest updates.

Green Screen Studio Tales

Tom

I have a green screen studio in Fairfax, and we had that go-- be- pre-COVID, we had that going, I-- We were in there 15 years. Big 5,000 square foot office, fourth floor in Fairfax. Real quick, I got it back again, and it's, it had been sitting vacant for five years, and I found out about it, so I just got it back. I gotta restore it, but I'll get there. But anyway, had a big green screen studio because we were doing green screen videos for lawyers. We still do those. Um, but we also outsourced it to others. And so we would be in meetings and, and the craziest people would walk in to go back to use the green screen studio. I remember once a chorus of showgirls came in, like Vegas showgirls with the headdress and we're in the middle of a meeting, and they, right there, they just all walk in. But we would have Washington players, sports players like, I don't know, Art Monk, who's like one of the best Redskins ever, was sitting in the, just sitting in the waiting room one day. I walk out and I'm like, "Oh my God, Art Monk." Darrell Green, you know, like we've had them all in there and, um, it was, it was a lot of fun meeting a lot of celebrities when we had that video studio. And, uh- Yeah we're gonna get that back again, so

Russel

I'm working on

Tom

it. Okay.

Russel

I, that sounds cool. Oh, there's gonna be an uptick, I feel like, in now folks that listen to this and getting their own green screen studios, uh-

Tom

Yeah.

Russel

kind of interested in myself.

Tom

Yeah. It's great. It's a lot of

Russel

fun. That's a great story