Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Planify Podcast. My name is Angelo Gonzalez. I'm the director of operations for the Planify Agency, and we are a business growth agency. We're excited to be sharing with you a lot of different resources that are all meant for business owners and business leaders to be able to grow and scale their businesses and their life all around. And we're, you know, we do marketing, but uh part of what we do is not just focusing on tactics, on marketing tactics or sales tactics or anything like that, but working on the foundation of a business to be able to look at it holistically so that everything works together to be able to uh help a business grow. So, Casey, uh we have Casey Cease here. He is the owner and CEO of Planify Agency. Why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners here?
Speaker 1Yeah. Hey, thanks so much for taking the time to uh check into the podcast, watch the video online, wherever you're watching it. Uh I'm Casey. Uh Angelo and I have been friends over 20 years and have been working in Planify Agency over five, working on six years now, and have done work before that together. But uh yeah, our heart is for business owners at various stages of business growth, whether you're just getting started or you're looking to break through eight figures, nine figures. Uh I worked with uh board of directors uh or a uh leadership executive team at a $1.2 billion a year company. Um, but the the fact is, is regardless of your size of business, there are consistent problems. People are people are people, and we have to figure out how do we take what we do and put it in front of the right people and offer them the best service possible, the best outcomes possible. And so our hope really for this podcast, as Angela said, is to be a resource uh for business owners, business leaders, those in nonprofit leadership, and really help give you guidance and insights on what's going on, whether it's marketing, sales, operations, AI, the life of a leader. Uh we have a lot to bring to the table. And so we just thought, hey, it's best to capture that information um and talk about it and bring it through this venue. Uh, one, because we love helping business owners and leaders. Number two, uh, we have fun doing it. And Angelo and I love opportunities to hang out. Uh, and three, we want really uh to provide a resource that expends extends beyond our our ability to reach one-on-one.
SpeakerYeah. And you know, it's 2026, Casey. Everyone has a podcast these days. Who doesn't have a podcast? If you don't have a podcast, are you?
Speaker 1I mean, there's there's like podcasts run by AI avatars where they're not even like real human beings. That's right. And what terrifies me is their content might be better than ours.
SpeakerThat's right.
Speaker 1They never grow tired, they don't get wrinkles, they don't gain weight or lose weight. So the race is on, but we're here for it. And we we, you know, it doesn't matter if we get uh a 10 million followers or 10, we want to make an impact. Exactly.
So let's talk a little bit about the history of Planify and uh where how how how did it start? Um, I remember you giving me a call and telling me, hey, I'm starting a little agency here. Can you help me with some website and tech work? Yeah. And that was, I think, in 2019.
Speaker 1That's right.
SpeakerAnd uh and I said, Yeah, sure, I can I can help you out. And uh that was, you know, kind of the beginning of it. Why don't you tell a little bit about you know the genesis of Planify Agency?
Speaker 1Well, it the genesis comes through a crisis that we many business owners share called the COVID pandemic. But prior to that, uh, I was I own a book publishing company called Lucid Books, and we were going and blowing, helping publish books and everything else. And so a lot of people, because we were having success there, and I was the marketing guy, and I've I've loved marketing for a long time. And so people started asking me, like, hey, can you help me with my marketing? And, you know, can you give me a website? Can you do these things? And so I started, uh, it was called lucid marketing at the time, under lucid books. And then the pandemic happened, and all of a sudden I was like, okay, I mean, it was abrupt. Immediately it went from overnight printing. You know, a book gets ordered on Amazon or your favorite place, print on demand would happen in a day, it would ship and it would be off to the races. All of a sudden the pandemic hits, Amazon quits buying books for about 90 days. They buy medical equipment and household goods, which I understand, but they quit buying books and then are we're with the largest printer and distributor in the world. It took 48 days to print one book. And so um something magical happens when you're sitting there and saying, What are we going to do? Right. And so, having read, you know, business books for years and have friends in different backgrounds, I started realizing that a lot of companies, though, that weren't really emphasizing much in digital marketing needed to get online very quickly. Yes. And so I realized, okay, I have a great team at Lucid Books, but if Lucid is going to collapse, which thank God it didn't, but if it was, I would want to build something fresh for them to join me in and also provide solutions for business owners I knew that needed support uh right away. And so uh I wish I could give a flashier uh description of like, man, I had this idea, and you know, we had a million dollars in seed round and we're able to, well, no, it was water's bailing in the boat, people have a need. I see the need. And so we went and I had I had a friend of mine that was a branding strategist, and I went to him and I said, you know, hey, what does it cost? I usually charge $15,000 just for a brand name and for a logo. And I said, um, can can we figure something out? And he was very kind and worked with me, and and we he did a global research on names and everything else, and you know, asked me a lot of what I like to do. I like to help people have a strategy and really make plans that they can execute and measure. And so through all of his research, he came back and said, Well, interestingly, Planify is available uh for a trademark and everything else. And it's it seems like that's what you want to do, help people planify their business. And so that's where the name came from. I used a branding expert outside of myself because I actually come up with some pretty dumb names. Um, the the day names I come up with may be meaningful to me, but very confusing to my target audience. And so I, you know, people are like, well, you're a marketing guy. I'm like, yeah, but I know where I'm good and where I'm not. And so I can come up with a bunch of ideas and occasionally accidentally land on one. But um, so Planify Agency was a help of a branding specialist. We're able to then, through with my attorney Nick, able to get the trademark uh and registered trademark for Plantify. And, you know, we launched and we were able to help clients out and see businesses grow. But it was a scary time. So I wish I could say, like, I had this great idea on the beach.
SpeakerWell, I think, you know, it that probably resonates with a lot of business owners because I think you're it's probably not unique, right? I mean, you probably talked to, I mean, you mentioned it, but a lot of innovation in the world, just in the history of the world, comes from there's some something some kind of crisis, some kind of disruption happens. And then people see, I mean, you could cry and you could bury your head in the sand. But but then we I guess in live stream it. But then you start going, okay, I can sit here and do nothing about it. Or right, I can look for an opportunity and see, okay, God can still work in this. We can still there's something that can happen here. We can still do something. So so you start kind of thinking about what are the opportunities here in this crisis or in this time that seemingly looks like it's gonna tank my other business. What can I do? And then this opportunity reveals itself. Well, I'm really I'm kind of good at these things. And right now, yeah, there's a lot of things shutting down, but people need to be online right now. So people are scrambling for that. How can I help? And you you saw that as an opportunity to kind of you know jump in. Well, here's here's something we can do, and also maybe create a business out of it, you know, and create something that's lasting. Yeah.
Speaker 1When I was I was doing some consulting at the time, you know, I I have a coaching and consulting practice that was a separate thing. And I thank God every day there was a plumbing company that I was working with about an hour from here. And so within a couple weeks, they were a what do they call the mandatory service or you know, necessary service where they were allowed to stay. Right, doesn't it? I mean, it was you know, five, six years ago, and it feels like twenty years ago. Yes. But um, you know, but I I remember they were kind and let me finish my engagement for a couple months, right? So that I was able to finish everything that I was setting out to do. And then from there I was able to go and you know, so I I I I pivoted from just the coaching consultant because that fell off, unless they're, you know, a necessary service provider. No one was having you out. And so uh, you know, and and you're right. I mean, whenever I've tried to start a business to just make money, number one, I don't have the drive long term to follow through. Whenever I ask the question, how who needs help and how can I help and what am I good at to offer that help, then I'm able to really find the solution that um you know, and start, you know, with the publishing, with this, with the coaching. And I think for business owners, the the the knee-jerk reaction is I've got to make money. What can I do to make money? But I've been fortunate enough that the plans that I put in place that are working are things that I actually really enjoy to do. Uh because, you know, I I've started some companies just to make money. And even if they made some money, I hated them. And so it was like, okay, that's that's not my shtick. Some people can do anything all the time, whatever. I'm not wired that way. It's like I I'd rather have less money than have to do that ever again. Um and you know, some some people might say that's a flaw. Uh, but for me, I've just tried to turn it into a benefit. But it is it is interesting to see the origins of businesses where you know, one, I do think it's a gift from God. And number two, I do think it came from a place of panic, but then rethinking of like what what does the world need right now? What do I
need? Well, I I need to slow down, I need to be reflective, I need to be aware of what's going on, I need to be take inventory, whatever happened. And quite honestly, part of it happened was I started giving things away for free, right? Like just saying, hey, if you need help thinking through how to repurpose your strategy, you know, I I'll give you 30 minutes or an hour or whatever. And I would just have people reach out over Facebook and everything else and just give away. I remember I I did a pay anything you want for a bookmarking master class during the pandemic early on because there were a bunch of authors who couldn't go to their speaking events or they couldn't go network like they were. And so I put together like a five-week thing and just said, pay whatever you want. And like one gal came on there, like a friend of mine from middle school, and sent me $300. And I was like, I'm so rich right now, right? You know, because I, you know, and I was like, you know, the business side's like, well, this content's worth three grand. But you know, I mean, I literally said a minimum of a dollar, you get to be in, whatever. And some people are paying a dollar. I didn't care. But I I think part of that lesson that we carry over into what we do with Plantify is there is momentum that needs to have. And a lot of times when we interact with business owners, they think they just need marketing, but really what's happening is they're stuck.
SpeakerYeah.
Speaker 1Right? There's blockers in their business, they're too close to it, they're not able to see it. And so when Plantify, the vision was beyond just a marketing agency, which is usually an entry point for people with us, but what people are really asking is can we make a plan to make this break through our barriers in a way that is strategic and that is measurable? And that's been a real push of ours uh the last five or six years is putting that in place.
Yeah, you know, you talk about being more holistic, thinking through not just doing marketing, because you know, we've had our fair share of clients and people even we've engaged with that maybe even don't even become clients, but people we, you know, do sales calls with or, you know, give a proposal to. And you mentioned marketing being the point of entry. Oh, I need to do social media, I need business, I need to run Google ads, uh, I need a new website, um, I need lead generation of some kind, right? What have you seen over the last you know, six years that now Planify has been in existence of those type, you know, that mindset of looking at the thing, the tactic, and how Planify is different in that, and when we when we come and look at that, you know, I this is what I tell people, I said, yeah, we can, yeah, we can do your social media for however much a month. Sure. Three posts a week, whatever. But we don't want to just do that. And and or we can run ads for you, but if there's certain things in your business that are that are still broken foundationally, the ads that we can bring you leads, it's not gonna matter. So talk a little bit more towards that about kind of you know the clients we work with and their mindset behind all of that.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, people come to us all the time saying, hey, can you fix my website or set me up on Google local service ads, or what about AEO answer engine optimization? It's like, yeah, we know all about that, but who are you trying to reach? Right? If an author comes to me and says, like, can you help me sell my book? I'm like, great, who's the target audience? Everyone. And I'm like, okay, is this for a nine-year-old girl? No, they probably wouldn't find it interesting. Okay, what about an 85-year-old man? No, probably not. So everyone is probably a stretch, right? They don't have an ideal target. And so what probably happens is, you know, many agencies are like, yeah, we'll run ads. And they you get in a fight with them because they're like, well, we're bringing leads. You get click-throughs, you get this and that, but none of them are good leads. And so the first thing we have to do is address strategy, right? And look at, okay, what is the goal? Who do we want to reach? Where do we want to take them? How do we take someone from a stranger to a raving referral partner? And what is our strategic process to take them there?
SpeakerSo whenever we're working with business owners, sometimes we get in a proposal stage or, you know, we get even we engage with them and they start asking for, well, let me can you do my social media? Can you uh help me with my website? Can you help me with lead generation or Google Ads or whatever it may be? You know, all of these different marketing services that are out there. Um, and sure, yeah, happy to happy to do those things. But we like to work more holistically, as we mentioned, right? So talk a little bit about the difference between looking at just the tactics of a marketing, you know, of a marketing plan, but actually having a marketing strategy and where kind of we shine in that area.
Yeah. I early on, it was like, can you do this? Yes, please, I'll do it and we'll figure it out and I'll undercharge for it, and and you'll still be not satisfied, right? I mean, I that's just that's the nature of starting any sort of agency. But always, as I said, the vision was being a business growth uh agency where we understand if marketing works and sales is on point and operations is fully operating and functioning, a business will scale substantially. I've seen that in my own companies and we've seen it in our clients. The challenge is for so many years, marketing agencies have been a turnkey. I remember back in the day when the yellow pages went digital. And you go to the yellow pages to, you know, get in their book, but also get listed online and they would sell their services. And you have a lot of services like that. The challenge, though, with marketing tactics is tactics are meant to be implied implemented well at a certain stage of a value journey for a customer. But most of the time, people just, okay, we're gonna turn on your plumber, got a broken toilet, whatever, and they might have it in your demographic or whatever or geographic, but it doesn't, you know, the lead quality may be all over the place. You're not really sure how to measure it. You're not sure if it's word of mouth or whatever. And so for us, what we tell people is we want to help you come up with a growth strategy for your business. Because you and I both know we've had many clients we've helped flood with leads. I mean, we had a call recently and they're like, keep it where it's at, but please no more leads. We're we're capped, right? Well, if we're just a marketing agency, we're like, okay, set it and forget it and check on it every so often. But our question is, well, where are we getting stuck? Where are we getting capped off? Right. Because we're strategically inclined to help think through sales struggles, operation struggles, you know, scheduling struggles. Are there tools we can use? Are there AI solutions to help break through those bottlenecks? Um, and so for us, what we do is we tell clients, like, yes, we can we can handle tactics, but we're not comfortable doing so without a documented strategy. Right. And really, just to break it down real easy, Angelo, and for our listeners, our growth strategies, whether you call a marketing strategy, I like to call them a growth strategy, identifies three things. Who are we trying to reach? What is the the high-end offer of that relationship? And then, and so what's the journey that we take on that relationship to get to that offer and then make them into a referral partner? And three, how do we measure each step of the process? With those three things, the the person, the who, the process of building that relationship, and then the measurement component, then we're able to appropriately say, okay, where's your ideal client or customer located? Where are they paying attention? Where are they looking for this? What tactic will be best to at least try and measure? And then how do we scale that as it goes? It seems like just, oh, strategy, tactics, same thing. It's not when you break it down because ultimately you don't want to have to go to 85 different vendors. Case in point, we have a client that we we signed at the end of last year, and he came to us, you know, for asking some questions about AI and then maybe some marketing. I said, Well, do you have a documented marketing strategy? And he said, No. And so I went and we spent some time online. I went and flew and saw him where he lives, worked with him for a day, put together a fully documented growth strategy. And I was thinking he was going to hand it off to all of his vendors. And he came back to us and said, You understand my business better than I had. You understand it better than all my vendors. Um, can you can you do everything that needs to be done to make this happen? And it went from, you know, a smaller engagement to we're now running, you know, not only the marketing element, but also the lead flow element, the AI implementation, everything. Because for the first time, with all the vendors he's spoken with, not many people really emphasize strategy. And we won't start unless we're there. Right. Right. And so that that's a big difference for us because I don't want to just grow your lead gen and then, like I said before, fight about the quality of leads. I want to know who we're going after, where they hang out, what should they be communicated at, what stage of the process. So that by the time they get to your salesperson, you know, or they get you know handed off to a client management associate or whatever, they're sold and you have an opportunity to continue marketing by treating them well.
SpeakerRight.
You know, I was just speaking with a business owner who recently bought a franchise. So he's about three months in and he was asking me. Uh, I asked him if he was doing, you know, any kind of marketing. Yeah, we have a marketing agency that works with our franchise and they're sending me reports and it has like the click-through rate and the cost per lead. And he was like, What's a good cost per lead? He asked me. And I, you know, I'm just like, well, there's a lot of different facts, you know. I think he was just asking, well, is it $50, $100, $25? He was like, I just think it's too high. And I said, Well, what's the lifetime value of your of a client, of a customer? You know, and I just kind of started asking him, and how, you know, if you get a referral from that client, you have a referral, then your lifetime value actually doubles because now you're like the cost acquisition goes in half. That's right. And I was like, so yeah, you, you know, how much it so and how much are your services? Are you, is it $500? Is it a thousand? Is it, you know, a hundred? Well, we it varies. I was like, well, pick pick an average or do two different services, you know? And I kind of just started talking them through, but so many people were just like, well, what's what's a good cost per lead? What uh how how much should I be posting on social media? How do I do SEO? What's good SEO? And those are all good questions. And they're questions that business owners need to be asking. But at Planify, I feel like the thing that we value so much is diving into that strategy, diving into deeper questions, more foundational questions, so that let's say we don't want to do Planify anymore. God calls us something else, or Planify shuts down, or whatever it may be. They have a strategy now that they can go and do it on their own. Let's say, man, we're growing so much, we're gonna hire our own in-house marketing now. Well, you have a documented strategy you can take. And it's not just the it's not just so, oh, well, we can charge more and we can, you know, uh have a longer engagement. It is for them.
Speaker 1Well, it's that's the the bigging, the big leaky hole of, I mean, yeah, no offense, but most clients, when I'm like, who's your marketing agency? Not many are thrilled. Right.
unknownRight.
Speaker 1It's just like they're at least a known factor.
SpeakerYeah.
Speaker 1Right. And we frustrated some of our clients early on because we didn't insist on the strategy.
SpeakerYeah.
Speaker 1But when we have a strategy that we have agreement on, that we have KPIs we're measuring, we can have real scaling conversations on how to grow their business. And so that's why I'm really excited about this podcast, Angelo.
Excited to have those discussions, answer questions as people send them in. Yeah. Bring on guests that share their journeys in business and growth and failure and learn together in this community.
SpeakerYeah, definitely. So we're really excited for you to be joining us on this journey. We're going to be providing more content, interviews with business owners, interviews with business leaders, uh uh topical type content, content that'll enrich uh business owners' lives and business leaders' lives. So make sure to follow us on Facebook, on Instagram. You know, you can follow us on all the social media platforms. You can find us just type in Plantify Agency. You can visit planify.agency on the web and find our website there and find a lot of different resources. But we hope you enjoyed the episode and we will see you next time.