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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today’s show, I am talking with Shane Reilly of Lonely Viking Fame, and he will be sharing his agency journey. There is so much that we can learn from this. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Welcome to a conversation with me, Mr. Lee Jackson. And today on the show, we have the one, the only, Mr. Shane Reilly. How are you today, young man?
Shane:
I’m doing very well. Thank you, Lee. Thank you for having me.
Lee:
That’s awesome. I just remember the first time we physically met and the first thing I did was reach out to your beard to stroke it.
Shane:
Yes, I will never forget that moment.
Lee:
Guys, if you don’t know who Shane is, then please join the Facebook group over on agencytrailblazer.com/group. Go to the members section, tap in Shane, and you will see a glorious picture of a guy with an awesome hat and a beautiful beard. That’s my mate Shane, who is on the podcast today, and he’s going to be jumping in the time machine. But instead of me doing some terrible introduction for you, I would really love it, mate, if you could just introduce yourself, we know your name, at least. Tell us where you’re from, a bit about what you do, and maybe something that we don’t know about you as well, or you think people don’t know about you.
Shane:
Okay. Well, as you said, my name is Shane. I live in Johannesburg, Augsburg, South Africa. I’m originally from a town in South Africa called East London, which, as you can imagine, gets pretty confusing when you’re in London and people ask where you’re from and you say East London. And they’re like, Oh, Essex. You don’t sound like you’re from Essex. But so, yeah, I’m from the Coast and I’m a surfer. I don’t know if people would know that. And now I currently live inland, which is difficult. And I run a business, as you said, called Lonely Viking. And we We do web development, business automation, that thing. The way that we position ourselves is new, but we’re saying we help overwork business owners to get their lives back and grow their businesses. I like it. Yeah. We’re basically aiming at business owners who are overworked. They spend all their time in their business. They don’t get to spend time with their families. We want to help them to use automation and digital marketing their websites to help them to have more time to do the things they love to do.
Lee:
I’m loving how you describe that niche. There’s been a lot of conversations over the last few months, especially on niches, as well as in the premium community that we have where people are constantly having conversations. How do I impact my niche? I’m struggling on an industry, etc. One of the conversations we also had, though, was that you don’t necessarily have to be in an industry. If you can describe the type of person that you work with really, really well, ie, the stressed out business owner who’s got too much on spending too much time in the business, wants time with their family, etc. Then I can start to think of those people locally that would probably benefit from a conversation with Shane. So your niche can transcend the industry as it were, and can very much be about a range of services to a very specific type of people. So I love that all of that just ripped off the tongue there from you, which was wicked.
Shane:
Great.
Lee:
It’s actually all over your website as well. So I already knew that because you deep dive into it and you’re saying, hey, do you want to spend more time? I think you were saying I was giggling because you’ve written soccer. We’re like football, mate. Oh, yeah. A shoot of bow and arrow. I think he’s like, Do you want to go hang out with your family? Do you want to go hiking? That stuff. Then work with us. Or was it play Fortnite? I think was well. It’s quite funny, guys. Go check out lonelyviking.com and scroll down a few screens and they talk about what would you like to do in your free time because obviously they’re focusing on automation. All right, before we deep dive into lonely Viking and all the good stuff in there, can we jump in the time machine? I don’t know if you’re into Doctor Who or something like that. I am. Look, Doctor Who. Amazing.
Shane:
I know about Dr. Who, but I’m not.
Lee:
That’s enough. You’re from the East End, mate, so you should know. Yeah, exactly. I would love to go right back to when… Probably before the beard, I’m guessing, and when your voice had maybe not broken. How did you actually get into this industry in the first place? What was your first dipping your toe in the water of even beginning to, say, build a website or get into design or whatever your first part of this industry was?
Shane:
When I left school, I decided not to go to university, although I could have gone, I guess, but I didn’t want to have student debt. So I decided to get a job. I got a job in a property valuation and quantity surveying firm as an intern, and then they were paying for me to study. And that was probably the most boring thing I’ve ever done in my life. And so what I did was I did that for a year, and I still staying at home with my mum at the time. And so I saved just about everything that I made in that job. And I decided When I leave that job, I’m going to start a surf brand, like a surf clothing brand. I saved all that money and I started that. Basically, through doing that, I learned I was self-taught like graphic design because I had to design the stuff for the T-shirts and all of the marketing material and all of that. During that time as well, I was getting into video stuff because my friends and I were making surf videos of each other. I did that for about eight years until I met my wife and then we decided to get married.
Shane:
I realised the lifestyle that I had doing that was cool for a single guy, but it wasn’t exactly the lifestyle that you want to bring a wife into. I wasn’t making enough money in that business. But what I had learned over that time, I decided, Okay, I’ll start a second business doing design for clients. I started doing graphic design for clients. And then one of the clients that I was doing a logo for has to me, Can you build websites? And not knowing a single thing about websites, I said, Yes, sure, I can build websites, because it seemed like websites were gaining popularity at that stage. And it seemed like a good pivot for me to start earning more regular income.
Lee:
You just made yourself sound really old. You said websites were becoming popular at that time. When was this? Is this like the ’90s now or are we talking in the 2000s?
Shane:
No, no, no. Okay, well, let’s put this into context. I live in South Africa, so the rest The rest of the world, websites were already a thing. But where I lived, so this was about 2006. So it was. Not too bad. Yeah. And so I said to this guy, Yes, I can build a website. And he said, Cool. We agreed on a price. And then I promptly went to Amazon and bought three books, a PHP, an HTML, and a CSS book. And when my wife would go to bed at 8:30, 9:00, I would stay up just going through these books till 1:00, 2:00 in the morning. That somehow managed to build this guy website where he could capture people’s email addresses, send newsletters, all kinds of things. I don’t think I could do I’m set now, to be honest with you, without WordPress or something. But that’s how I got into it.
Lee:
That’s incredible, the fact that you did that. You got the three most hardest books you could find to go and learn the really hard way because WordPress did actually exist in 2006 as well. It wasn’t as powerful as it is now, though.
Shane:
I never heard of it, though.
Lee:
I think we’re spoiled, though, aren’t we? Because now what you achieved there with code is exactly what I’d have been doing as well back in the early 2000s. Everything was PHP, and maybe I’d find maybe a $59 script that someone else had written that would save me a few hours, or maybe I would find something someone had shared in a forum, but there was nothing like we have now. I can imagine it, and then I can just grab WordPress and advanced custom fields, create post types, and find another plugin for some nice workflow logic, and I’m done. I’ve created an entirely new system for somebody, whereas back then, it was hard work. How long did that take you then? How many nights, weeks did it take you to turn that site around? Can you remember?
Shane:
I think I spent probably the first two weeks just learning, and then I think probably altogether, six weeks to deliver that website for the guy.
Lee:
That’s a good turnaround for a beginner.
Shane:
Yeah, and he still had it online up until last year. I kept contacting him saying, I think it’s time for a new website. And then I checked it out a couple of weeks ago. He’s got a new site up there that he got someone else to build.Judas.Yeah..
Lee:
I’m joking.
Shane:
That’s all good.
Lee:
I’m joking. That’s a pretty good return on investment, though, isn’t it? Yeah, not bad. 2006-ish. That’s over 10 years.
Shane:
Yeah, that’s 12 years, I guess. That’s incredible.
Lee:
Does it still exist on archive. Org? You’ll have to go check that out and see if you can still see the website. I think it does, yeah. If it does, can you send us a link and we can check it out?
Shane:
I will do. I will.
Lee:
Epic. That’s awesome. No, that’s fantastic. From there then you’re like, Okay, I can do this. I’ve aged a bit now because I’ve spent six weeks working until 2:00 AM in the morning. At that point, did you then make that one of your core services or How did you get into the digital world from there then?
Shane:
Yeah, so then I started to look for web clients, but I got some word of mouth from that initial guy, and it just went from there. I think back then, if If people heard that you built websites, it was like a thing. Nowadays, so many people build websites that you can’t pitch yourself that way. But back then, if someone said, Oh, do you know someone who builds websites? If anyone had heard from you that you do it, they would just say, Oh, yeah, Shane does that. So I would get lots of people contacting. And then I got into flash. I was building flash websites. Oh, mate. Yeah. So I was learning action script and oh, man. Wow.
Lee:
Do you remember… So I couldn’t afford Macromedia Flash, the builder, so I ended up buying something called Cool Moves. It actually still exists. They’ve morphed over to doing HTML5 animation. You can still do HTML5 animation. Well, they call it. Is it even called HTML5 animation? It’s what they used to call it anyway. But it still exists. It was very similar to flash, but a lot easier because I didn’t want to learn all the action scripts and stuff like that.
Shane:
Action script was tough. But it helped. Now I can do a little JavaScript and stuff. Perfect. Yeah.
Lee:
That’s phenomenal. Now, obviously, I know a bit about you guys and where you got. That’s the early 2006, 2007, 2008. I guess at what point can you remember getting into the world of WordPress? Because that’s how me and you met. Yeah.
Shane:
I would say probably around 2008, I started getting into WordPress. I’m not exactly sure how. Probably I was searching for some way to do something and then came up on a Google result of how to do it with WordPress. To be honest, I was never really very involved in the WordPress community community until a couple of years ago. I didn’t even realise there was such a great community. I was just building sites on WordPress and learning how to edit theme files and all of that stuff.
Lee:
Making all the mistakes we all used to make. Like I used to add the plugins, and then all my changes would disappear when the client would plug in. I was like, No, don’t look at that. That’s plug in. All the things I didn’t know.
Shane:
I think what all of those, what that time really did for me with especially getting into WordPress and that, it’s made me, for lack of a better phrase, a Google power user.
Lee:
I get exactly what you mean.
Shane:
Often, my wife or someone will say, I’ve been trying to find this thing online. I don’t know how to… For some reason, I’m able to type in the search phrase that finds the answers. You start to get a knack for how Google wants you to ask the question. It’s all of those mistakes and all of that trial and error. I guess part of my personality is I’m an intense problem solver, and if there’s a problem, I just have to solve it, which is a blessing and a curse because sometimes there’s an inconsequential problem that I waste time solving. But yeah, it helped me to be really good at googling. I think that’s probably my superpower.
Lee:
That’s actually something I’ve been teaching. Well, I taught Larissa as well. She’s really good at that now and Karthic as well. It’s the ability to type in search phrases in such a way as you’ll get the results you need. I watched my wife do it. She’s like, How do I do this? I’m like, No, take out how do I out for a start off? Then just go on a keyword-based search. I’ll throw in a phrase and then I’ll just throw WordPress at the end if I need to do WordPress or jquery or whatever it is, and then it seems to give me the results I need, which is phenomenal. Then I’ve stopped bookmarking things because I’ve actually started remembering searches, which is bad. Oh, yeah. I just tapped that in last time and found it. Then it’s like Google algorithm changes and we’re like, Oh, man.
Shane:
Oh, man, exactly.
Lee:
Right. Well, this is phenomenal. I’m loving the journey already. You’ve got WordPress, et cetera. I presume you had no particular type of client. You were just working with lots of different people because you said, Yeah, Shane does websites, so you’re just getting all sorts of people. At what point did you start to work out that you needed to be working with the niche you describe, which is the business owner who needs the automation, who needs after? When did that happen?
Shane:
Probably about five months ago.
Lee:
No way.
Shane:
Yeah.
Lee:
All right. Well, describe life before then. Describe life before then and compare it to now.
Shane:
It was like that It’s definitely the feast and famine thing, which I’m sure you definitely know about, and probably most people who will be listening to this know about. Most of the work that I got coming in was all from referrals, which is cool because that’s usually a warm to hot lead, which is great. But I would give discounts, and then the lead coming in from the person I gave a discount to would be expecting a discount or would have heard the price that I gave to that person. Now they want the same for us. That started becoming frustrating. I would say probably about 18 months ago, I didn’t start niching down, but I did start to think, I need to do this a different way. I need to change the cycle of the way this where everything’s going. And so I realised I’ve got to start raising prices and I’ve got to stop giving discounts. And so that started to really change the kinds of clients that I started to get to just actually draw a line in the sand and say, Okay, I’m not going to… And there’s that fear of thinking, Well, if I won’t negotiate on price and if I won’t do this and that, I’m going to lose out.
Shane:
And so the big struggle was to work against that fear of like, Well, what if I never get business again? But once I started to do it, it was actually amazing. The kinds of people that I was doing work for were just so much better. They would trust my advice and actually ask. Instead of the clients I would get before, it was like I was this guy that just pushed buttons for them. So it was like, Do this and do that. And then I would try to say, Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Well, I’m not paying you for your ideas.
Lee:
Oh, I would just want to punch you if you just said that. Yeah, that’s terrible. That’s my instant reaction. Yeah. Carry on.
Shane:
I basically got to the point where, Well, I want people to pay me for my ideas. That’s what I’m good at. I started to focus on actually turning down work if it wasn’t the client or the work that I wanted to do. So that made all the difference. And then I think just on Facebook, there are these groups like yours and several other groups, and you get to know people because some of the same faces are in the different places. And the conversations that were happening were about niching, particularly with your agency Trailblazer Group. Like you said, it’s been a theme that’s been running for a while, and I started to think about that. I’ve now got better clients, but it’s varied. Different industries, different. I still get some clients that are really difficult. I don’t know if we’ll ever get away from difficult clients. So I started to think, Okay, I need to niche down. But as you said earlier, I was thinking about industry niche, and I could never really find an industry niche. And to be honest, I had this thought, if I was doing only websites for bakeries, I would get super bored.
Shane:
Unless you really like bread. Yeah, and confectionery, which I do. I was like, I’d probably get bored. I don’t really want to focus just on one industry. But then I was like, well, how do you niche down without doing an industry niche? And I started to think more and more. And then I was like, Well, what value do I want to give to people? What do I want to achieve? What work would make me feel good about the work that I’m doing. As I started to go through that process, I started to come to the conclusion of what I shared with you earlier about the niche that we’re focusing on. Because for me, It was like, what would I want someone to do for me? Because I felt like an overworked business owner who’s not getting to see my family enough or do things I enjoy enough. I thought, well, two things will happen. If I start doing this niche, well, I have to practise what I’m preaching, which is going to help me to get out of that rut. Then the satisfaction that I’m going to get from helping people to do that is something that make me want to wake up in the morning and actually do what I do.
Shane:
That’s how I to the niche that I’m at.
Lee:
Well, it’s going to be something that, like you said, you want to wake up to do. It’s going to be different every single time, but the same. It’s working on the skills you already have, i. E. Google Power User, but also experienced with automation and experienced in making your own business processes streamlined, etc. Then you can apply that to other businesses. It’s something that I do in the events industry and absolutely love it because they have no exposure to Zappia or all of these amazing tools. They’re just all flying around sending spreadsheets around the office and just Oh, it’s just a nightmare. And then I go in and they think I’m a God. It’s hilarious because they’re like, What? What is this tool? This is incredible. I love that thing. Yeah, I get absolutely crazy for it. Now, I know it started off with you, the business did. And also, just quick stop here. Everyone, be encouraged with regards to the niche. Nishing is definitely a huge subject. It’s something that a lot of people are struggling with. People are struggling on an industry, etc. Remember, take encouragement from Shane. It can be a very specific type of business owner or a type of business has a very specific problem.
Lee:
You can have a problem niche versus an industry niche. Shane and his team are focusing very much on a problem, but that’s very easily describable, which allows other people to still send leads your way because we can all think of business owners who could use automation. We can all think of business owners that need some handholding from Shane and his team. That is also a completely acceptable niche. You don’t have to pick bakeries like Shane said. All right, now let’s switch back into your agency. It started with just you. Now, I know your team’s expanded and you have a co-owner now as well, which is an unusual. So could you tell us all about how that happened and how you grew as well?
Shane:
Yeah. So I started my original business, as I said, way back then. But my clothing business, I had sold chairs in that clothing business to some partners, and that went very badly and ended up ending in a very ugly way. And so at that point, my wife and I decided we’re going to go to the UK and we’re going to live there for two years. And so we went to the UK and we lived in London for two years. And I worked in a real job, which was challenging. And so after two years in London, we travelled for a bit and we came back to South Africa, and then we were starting again. And so I decided I’m going to start my business up, but with a new name. And I came up with the name Lonely Viking. And that was about seven years ago, I think. Seven or eight years ago. And I’ve been doing the business by myself for that whole time. And in the meantime, I became friends with a guy named Martin, who’s now my business partner. And he is a developer, but like a real developer, not like a guy who bought a PHP book and figured out how to build a website.
Shane:
He actually worked at the biggest bank in Africa as one of the lead developers there. And his strength is APIs and automation. And so he He was working at the bank, and on the side, he started to build websites. Then every now and then, he would ask me how to do certain things, which was weird because he’s so skilled as a developer, but there were things that he just didn’t quite get about websites and stuff. He was asking me things, and then I would share with him. Then it seemed like we both started to have a similar idea at a similar time that we could maybe join forces. He had a handful of clients, and I had my clients, and then we started to talk about what it would be like to connect and join up. Because I had a rough experience with the partnership before, I was very apprehensive We decided we would trial working together. We worked together for 10 months, just working on one another’s client work and seeing how it would go until after that 10-month period, we decided, Okay, let’s just give go. Basically, he had quite a small thing going on with just a handful of clients, and I had built up this brand over the seven years or so.
Shane:
Then we started to talk about what would a merger be like Because I already had a strong brand that had some brand identity behind it and stuff, he didn’t really have that. I had a bigger client base. We started to talk and then he was like, Well, maybe he could buy some shares in Lonely Viking. The way that I personally came to the decision, it was difficult because in some ways I felt like I was giving away part of my baby, if I could put it that way. I had put lots of hard work and effort into the brand in particular. That was a tough decision for me. But at the end of the day, I started to realise that for me to grow the business to the point that I needed to on my own was going to be very difficult for one. Then the next thing was that both our personalities and our skill sets are very complementary. He could pick up things that I’m not very good at. Then my strengths, I could focus more on what I’m strong at, and that would be better to grow the business. We decided, let’s go for it.
Shane:
I think about two months ago, we signed the papers and did all the signing on the dolled line stuff. Now it’s official. Martin is co-owner of Lonely Viking. I must say it’s maybe a honeymoon period, but things are going extremely well. That’s brilliant. It’s awesome.
Lee:
That’s really good. Great as well to hear that you have, despite it going wrong in the past, you’ve still gone ahead and done it. You’ve felt the fear you’ve done it anyway because you guys have also trialled working together for some time. I think you said about 10 months, did you? Yeah. Getting to know each other, can we really work together? All right, let’s commit. It’s almost like you’ve dated. You’ve dated Pretty much. Now you’re married.
Shane:
Yeah.
Lee:
But yeah, okay, I won’t say that. I’m going to say something else. Moving swiftly on. All right, so you are growing your business, and to do that, you’ve actually taken on another person as Well, you’ve given shares in your business and now you have that person as a co-owner. Your journey from growth has been, so far, it’s been to say, All right, I want to do something on the side. I’m designing stuff to add extra money because I’m now married. I’m I’m getting married, et cetera. I’ve got this surfing business. I need to an extra cash. You then say yes to someone who wants a website and you’re buying books and teaching yourself over six weeks and you’re then launching your first website. You’re growing that, you do a stint in London, you come back, you then start to grow your business over another seven years in the digital space, et cetera. You’ve then started to formulate your niche. You’ve found the ideal business partner. You’re in the honeymoon period, which is also long may that continue. You’ve grown your business. Part of that growth has been, A, your experience that you’ve had over the many years, but also part of that growth has been you starting to realise what you really want from life, what you want to create, which has helped you grow that business, and also then starting to bring in that co-owner who has got the right skill set to free you up to do all the amazing things you do.
Lee:
Now, you also have other team members. When did they start with you?
Shane:
I have my wife. She worked with me in my original design business when we got married, and she’s done other things in between. She’s actually a sign language interpreter. But she was working at the major university here in Joburg, and she resigned at the end of last year. We start homeschooling our daughter. She’s doing the homeschool thing and then also helping out with admin and stuff, and I’m teaching her how to build sites with Elementor. That’s cool.
Lee:
Presumably, what’s listening to punk rock music as well? Yes, definitely. All right, just checking.
Shane:
And then I have a part-time graphic designer, and her name is Anastasia, and she’s actually based in Russia. And then we have a WordPress developer whose name is Aziz, and he’s in Bangladesh, and he’s been working with me for two and a half years. Awesome. Yeah. And we currently… I think we’re going to probably look for a full-time designer, maybe locally, but we’re trying to figure that out.
Lee:
Folks, if you’re in Joburg, there might be a potential job here. That’s phenomenal. And Aziz then has been with you through that journey then because you said over the last, say, 18 months, it’s been that focus on more of the problem niche, the automation and understanding who it is you want to serve. So I think Aziz has been in a great position with you there to enjoy that journey with you and learn with you as well, which is phenomenal. I’m loving this journey, mate. This is the ideal chart, I think, of we need that experience over the years. We need to be burnt a little We need to be burnt out a little bit, I think as well. We need all of these experiences that we can then build on to build an agency that we absolutely love. I know you’re really enjoying what you’re doing, and you can tell from the pictures, and I’m excited to see where you go. One of the things that really frustrates me is when people are advertising that you can start an agency tomorrow. You don’t need to know any code. You need no nothing. Just instal these templates for your clients and become a web agency.
Lee:
Even AppSumo will do deals where they’re like, Yeah, just do this website builder and you’ll be an agency owner. I’m like, Stop it, please. That’s not how it works. Yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah. That’s why I love interviewing people like yourself, mate, because people can hear the journey. I’m not putting off people launching agencies, that’s fine, but get the right people involved. Don’t think that you can do it alone just with a theme and hodge it and spot it and hope for the best. Your story has been inspiring because you’ve got Martin involved. He’s your developer and like you said, your new love. You got Anastasia there rocking the graphic design because that’s what she rocks. Although you’re a good graphic designer as well, you’ve got Aziz doing his WordPress, et cetera. Lindsay listening to punk rock music. I’ve literally read every single piece of text on your website, by the way. I feel like I could write a biography all about Lonely Viking right now. So maybe I could be a ghost writer. Now, this has been a fantastic journey, mate. Now, you did come, like I said, right at the very beginning, you came and hung out in the UK for a little bit.
Lee:
In fact, you made a whole month trip of it, I think. Went and saw a whole load of old mates, etc. And then the penultimate finish to your stay was to join us over at the Agency Transformation Live event that we did. That was my first ever event How did you find it? When did you enjoy yourself? I’ll edit it if you say no.
Shane:
No, I loved it. There were so many people that I’ve become friends with online that I got to meet in person. For me, that was the first thing that I was excited about, and that turned out really great. I just love meeting you and Paul and Oliver. Now I’m getting nervous. I’m going to leave names out. They’re two Pauls, by the way. I met Tiago and Vita and all of these guys. It was just so cool. From a business point of view, just the speakers and stuff were incredible. I think the first talk was from Troy, and the major takeaway that I got from that was you’ve got to have the right people in the right seats at the right time. For me, that was confirmation of the direction that I’m going in, but also to not lose focus on that. A struggle that I’ve had is that… Basically, I would call myself a visionary, and I always felt arrogant if I said that. I don’t know if that’s a colonial British thing where you can’t talk about what you’re actually good at and you feel arrogant.
Lee:
I don’t know. I’ve got a huge ego, mate. I have no idea.
Shane:
Okay. It’s just me then.
Lee:
You’re very humble.
Shane:
Yeah. I had a great chat with Michael Killen about it over some Indian food. He’s great, isn’t he? Yeah. One night, I think the last night of ATL, a bunch of people went out for Indian, and I was speaking to him, and that was an amazing conversation where he was like, Stop apologising for what you’re good at and just do that. I’m like the ideas guy. I come up with ideas and the vision and the direction. I always felt bad about that because sometimes you don’t do a lot of work. You don’t sit down and code and whatever. You’re just think thinking and dreaming and coming up with ideas. Atl, for me, was a confirmation that it’s okay to be that. In fact, the world needs people like that. That’s why this partnership with Martin has been so great for me is because he recognises that this is a valuable personality, character, trait thing. He’s really good at getting stuff done and just finishing things. I’m that guy who is excited at the beginning when the idea is fresh and Let’s do this new thing. It’s amazing. Then as soon as I solve the problem in my mind, I’m bored and I don’t want to do it anymore.
Shane:
He gets it done. We make a great team. Anyway, I digress. Atl was amazing for that reason because it solidified for me that this is who you are and you should be okay with that and just go for it. Totally agree. That, for me, was the major takeaway from ATL, meeting the people and just learning a bit more about myself Cool.
Lee:
I’m glad I didn’t have to edit that. I’m not very confident in my South African accent, so that all sounded pretty good. Okay, great. Or I’d have just had to sample different words from each and then just tried to make… It was very good. I enjoyed it. You should go. Agencytransformation. Live. There are, I think, as of recording, 12 early bird tickets left, folks. This is now a little mini-advertisement, but if you want to grab the early bird tickets for 2020, there are only We have left, I believe. So go ahead, grab those. If you are budget-conscious, you can pay it off over three months as well. Sorry, mate, I just had to throw that in. We are going to be limited on space because we’re going to use the same venue, but that’s deliberate because we don’t want too many people in the room because I think We had 80 people. I think we’re going to aim for about 100 this time because it was just a nice environment to have that many people. It didn’t feel too overwhelming for everybody, which was awesome. It was great to meet you as well. I actually was a little bit star struck because you have a good strong brand.
Lee:
You’re the only Viking, I love the logo. You show up on social media. You’ve got your own group. I’ll put a link in the show notes. You’re a great contributor to social media, but equally, you’re on YouTube as well. You do great videos, which I really want to encourage you on the video side of things. Do more, mate, because you’re really good at them. When I met you and you use good quality photography as well, all the things I don’t do. I was like, Oh, man, he’s there. I’ve got to play this cool. I was like, Yeah, all right. Giving you a hug, trying to be all cool. Inside, I was like, It’s cool. It’s.
Shane:
I think we both had the same moment then. At the same time. I was like, Oh, man, Lee Jackson. This is like this guy owns the Internet. What?
Lee:
That would be cool if I did. I would block Donald Trump. Someone reached out to me the other day saying, I really should stop sharing my political opinions because I might start losing listeners. I love anyone who loves Trump. I just don’t love Trump. That’s all. Okay? Let’s just get that out. That’s cool. If you love Trump, that’s cool. I’m cool. I’m done with it. We’re all good. All right, mate, you are a freaking legend. Thank you so much for your journey. I’ve really, really enjoyed this. I would love to give a shout out to your group. I’m going to put a link in the show notes, folks. If you check out, Shane has a group that you can go hang out with him in there, and he’s just put something really hilarious in there about a project that goes wrong. I’m not going to spoil it, and I’m not going to reshare it in my group. You got to go ahead and join Shane’s group to go and find out what that is. But it is hilarious, and I was crying. That is funny. It was really, really good. It’s entitled when a project doesn’t quite go as planned, and it’s just hilariously funny.
Lee:
So go ahead and check that out. Shane’s got a great sense of humour. But also Shane, you’re doing video series as well, aren’t you? For people who want to be able to build websites without the experience, etc. I think you’re putting stuff like that together. So if there are anyone who’s listening who are in the earlier stages of agency life, so you’re in that journey where you’re learning everything you need to learn, then go ahead and follow Shane for that as well because he’s going to be sharing more good stuff as well. So lonelyviking.com or check out the show notes of this episode for all the other ways to connect with Shane. Shane, mate, all that’s left for me to say is have a wonderful day and thank you for your time.
Shane:
Thank you, Lee. It’s been great, man. You’re awesome.
Lee:
And so are you. Take care. Big kiss. Cheers. You didn’t kiss back. That’s just rude.
Shane:
Sorry. I have daddy issues.
Lee:
That’s all right. Okay. Well, fist bump. There you go. Fist bump.
Shane:
Yeah, fist bump.
Lee:
Sure. See you later.
Shane:
Cheers, man.
Lee:
And that wraps up today’s show. If you are not part of our free Facebook group, then head on over to agencytrialblazer.com/group. Don’t forget, if you want to be a part of Shane’s group, then check that out in the show notes of this episode. And finally, if you have not grabbed your ticket for Agency Transformation Live 2020, there are only, I think, 12 or 11 tickets left for you to grab for 2020. That’s the super early bird tickets where you will save £200. If cash flow is an issue, then don’t forget there is a three-month payment plan as well. So that’s agencytransformation.live to grab your super low-price 2020 tickets to be a part of the party over here in the UK next year with some amazing speakers and a wonderful community. Oh, and of course, if we don’t see you in the groups at the event, we will see you in the next episode.
