How to Overcome Agency Owner Burnout and Scale With Colby Wegter

Burnout. It’s something that too many agency owners face but rarely talk about. In this episode, I sit down with Colby Wegter, founder of Autonomy Agency, to explore the deep challenges of running an agency and the toll it can take on both mental and physical health. Colby shares his candid journey of burnout—not once, but twice in a single year—and how it forced him to reevaluate how he was running his business.

We discuss the common limiting belief that so many agency owners hold: that without them, their business would collapse. Colby breaks down why this mindset is holding you back and how building systems is the key to escaping this cycle. He also shares powerful insights on how you can retain clients for years, increase their lifetime value, and ultimately scale your business with less stress.

If you're an agency owner who feels overworked, stuck, or simply burnt out, this episode is a must-listen. Colby’s approach is not just about fixing the immediate pain points, but about setting you up for long-term success.


Connect with Colby Wegter:
 
 If you’re an agency owner feeling the weight of burnout or struggling to scale, I highly recommend connecting with Colby Wegter. His approach to building systems that free you from the day-to-day grind can transform not only your business but your life. Visit autonomyagency.com to learn more about how he can help you regain control and scale with ease.


Books Mentioned:

• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown 

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:01 Accidental Leadership
• 4:00 Scaling Through Impact
• 8:00 Facing Burnout Head-On
• 15:31 The Power of Systems
• 21:31 Overcoming Founder Overdependence
• 29:31 Building a Community for Agency Owners

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I'm so thrilled today to have Colby Wechter on the podcast. Colby is a top 1%, globally recognized digital marketer and the creator of Autonomy Agency, a community that teaches agency owners how to solve their lead problems for good by keeping their clients for years. He excels at teaching others how to 2X, 3X or 4X client retention and increase their lifetime value. After 12 years in the agency world, he's fulfilling his mission of helping others find more time and financial freedom through their agency with as little stress as possible. Colby, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Golby Wegter: 0:44

Dr William, I appreciate you having me on because the conversations we've had in the past have been too fun, so this was destined to happen.

Dr. William Attaway: 0:50

You know I'll walk away from everyone more encouraged and having learned something, and I know this one's going to be no different.

Golby Wegter: 0:57

I'm excited for it.

Intro/Outro: 1:00

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:17

I'd love to start with you sharing a bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Golby Wegter: 1:28

Yeah. So to keep it brief and on the leadership kind of thread, I think I was just one of those kind of accidental leaders. I guess is I'm the youngest of four kids and so I basically kind of got that independence really young. It was around 15, 16. I was kind of like, oh yeah, I could go to college now that would be great. Kind of got that independence really young it was around 15, 16. I was kind of like, oh yeah, I could go to college now, that would be great kind of thing. But of course I had a couple of years left and so we could pinpoint okay, I was the captain of the high school football team and that sort of stuff. I was on student council, but it was a small school. There were 36 kids in my class.

Golby Wegter: 2:10

So, I don't think I really had that. And then in my 20s I was just kind of, I was a top performer but I wouldn't consider myself a leader. And it wasn't until late 20s when we started our agency, which was still you know, for the first four or five years we were bootstrapped and scrappy. I didn't really have anyone to manage but myself and I, being a high performer, was always a self-starter. So it was once we started getting staff that I was like oh man, okay I'm. I'm really fascinated by almost the the trade of leadership in a way right, because once you are no longer responsible just for your life, you're responsible for other people's lives professionally. That is something I wanted to be the best possible version of myself.

Golby Wegter: 2:49

Right and I'm sure we'll get into details about it, but it was one of those things where it kind of corresponded with. Once I started being a top performer. I kind of had that thing where I had to do everything for a while and that's a whole separate story about burning out and doing everything. But at the time it was like, oh, I want to learn the hiring practices, I want to create the job descriptions myself, I want to give them a roadmap that makes them want to not only do the job but think that they're working towards personal goals as well, like all these sorts of things. So I created in many ways I probably could have consulted resources and it would have shortcutted my time to where I ended up getting.

Golby Wegter: 3:26

But I kind of did all of these things from square one. How would I want to do it? And all that sort of stuff. But I did take a lot of inspiration just to kind of bookend what I'm saying here. At that time it was like a lot of Brene Brown, a lot of Simon Sinek, a lot of Adam Grant, all that sort of stuff.

Golby Wegter: 3:45

And so I kind of every time I was leading someone, I just asked the question like how would I want to be led and many times it wasn't the easiest amount of work to complete but it was the worthwhile work right. So that's kind of my very, very brief story. And then, towards the end of the agency, I just jumped from the agency now which I was a partner in, to start autonomy agency which, as of recording, hasn't fully launched yet but it's very, very close. I had 1,100 marketing clients in my career but I thought if I could help other marketing agency owners in particular, that expands that impact so much further, because one marketing owner could have 20, 30 clients, maybe even 100. And now, if I have 20, 30 marketing owners, now we're talking 1,000 at a time instead of 1, thousand over a 12 year period. So that's where I want to transition. My leadership is kind of with other practitioners who are trying to run their own businesses instead of being a manager to my own employees.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:55

I think that's brilliant. As far as increasing impact, you know the ripples. This is why I work with leaders, why I choose to do that. Because I believe that when you impact a leader, you don't just help one person. You help, if they're married, their spouse, you help their kids. If they've got kids, you're going next generation. You help every member of their team, every client they're ever going to serve, and all of the ripples from them, just by helping one person, person. And I love that you're thinking that way in agency world, because I think that's that's so incredibly true. You help an agency owner.

Golby Wegter: 5:31

The ripples from that go a long way. Yeah, I think there's that you really hit. That point too is, like you know, helping agency owners. There is no one size fits all. How I got out of burnout and how I like started just kind of having higher leverage. Time is what I say.

Golby Wegter: 5:47

I did the math literally yesterday of my take-home salary versus how many hours I was working Owning an agency. I was probably working at $12 an hour. Wow. The crazy thing with that is that money and what your revenue is and the amount of people you manage and all those top line costs, whatever. None of that really factors into where's your leverage, which is how much you're earning versus how much time you're spending, and the unwritten cost is the mental spent in time, right.

Golby Wegter: 6:20

So the reason it was just so clear to me I had to help agency owners was because I was getting on coffee chats with. Probably in the last 18 months I was getting on coffee chats five to 10 times a week with agency owners, right. So we're talking like 100, 150, 200 chats and a good majority of those people me not having any agenda other than hey, I'd love to meet you and, and you know, see how your business is going. You look cool from afar. What if we chat? That's how you and I met. Right Like you look cool from afar, let's chat. It turns out you're very cool.

Golby Wegter: 6:56

But they kept saying things like that they couldn't leave the business, that if they, if they stepped away, that all of it would fall apart, or they wish they were making more money. Or I would ask them what their initial goal was and I was like and have you hit that? Well, no, is that the same goal? Well, not anymore. So it's almost like a giving up on their dreams, simply because they've been doing it all themselves and everything they were saying I was like you sound exactly like I sounded six months before I burnt out the first time.

Golby Wegter: 7:23

I was like you sound exactly like I sounded six months before I burnt out the first time and so, having those very real conversations, I was like, oh, I could just stick with my agency and that's comfortable and we'll deliver really well for our clients. I mean, we keep clients for five, six years when the industry averages like eight months, six to eight months but it just didn't seem like far enough. Now I had no idea what that looked like and I still don't, because I haven't officially launched it yet but I was like this is, this is the higher calling right. If you can lead other leaders, you're exactly right. I want to circle it back.

Golby Wegter: 7:53

That just trickles down to everything and to me I think the immediate impact is just having support from someone who has done it and understands it is going to, within days, weeks, impact that family life right, because these people have a partner, they have kids that they are not spending that much time with, let alone the dark hours of the night where they're not sleeping and their thoughts are going crazy. If we could just quiet those a little bit, they can now be a higher leverage human being If we could just quiet those a little bit.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:27

They can now be a higher leverage human being. Yeah, very, very true. You talk about the need for an entrepreneur, an agency owner, to wear so many hats at the beginning and I see that all the time. It's startup phase bootstrapping. I mean that's normal as you grow, as you begin to find success and are able to hire people to help you with fulfillment. Hire a team, leading that team, can be a challenge, but some people don't make that turn. Some people just continue to try to do it all themselves. And when you talk about when you hit burnout, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and what that was like and what you think led to that.

Golby Wegter: 9:08

With the beauty of hindsight, yeah, Well, I will say I think burnout is something that is becoming more spoken about, which is a healthy thing. Yes, it is, and for me I'm trying to be as transparent as possible with it. I mean it was, it was really like a scary couple of times. I burned out twice in the same year, and the first burnout resulted in me, just my wife was sitting in the kitchen after I you know for how many months in a row had just been angry about work or complaining about these things and that sort of stuff, and she finally was like and my wife and I've been together now for like half my life, 17 plus years, right, so at that time she just looked at me. She was like Colby, you have to do something, like you know, in a way. She was just kind of like I've hit my limit. Yeah, do something, anything. And so this is me discovering myself very, very early on in my kind of who do I want to be game. And so I still reacted the way I normally do Anytime something didn't work or whatever. This is my safe space. Found the first Airbnb, didn't even look at the photos. I was like, yep, that's in the neighborhood I want Off, we go Right.

Golby Wegter: 12:00

And so a couple of weeks later, I was on a plane and the plane starts taking off, like the wheels just left the runway and my heart stopped beating and I was just like, huh, you know, this is kind of weird. And then, like another 10 seconds goes by and like, oh, this is kind of bad. And then another 10 seconds goes by and you're like this is how I die, right, wow. So luckily, 10 seconds after that, you know, it jolts back to life like some sort of shock treatment and then two minutes later, it's like it never happened, but like to speak to burnout. I'm trying to share my very real story so other people can feel comfortable to be like, hey, I'm trying to share my very real story so other people can feel comfortable to be like, hey, I'm not okay, this isn't all going perfectly for me, right, and I would really hope they don't get to the point where, like, their physical health is so deteriorates, so much, that they're like I, I don't think I can survive this.

Golby Wegter: 12:54

Right, and the misconception is is that it's the agency owner. There's over 100,000 just digital marketing agencies in the US. Right, that's where I was and we were top 1% only doing two and a half million a year. So what does that tell you? The majority of these are sole owners, only probably making max like 200 to 300 K. That's like that's a good 50, 60, 70% of that population. It doesn't. They shouldn't feel any more under supported than anyone else along the line. That's right. You're just asking to do things yourself. So the misconception is that the agency model is easy to start and hard to maintain that the agency model is easy to start and hard to maintain Right.

Golby Wegter: 13:59

But that's the story I'm trying to flip Now. I'm obviously doing it from my lens. Like burnout is is rampant across any industry, any, any, from the C-suite down to entry level employee. But for me it's just there needs to be much more spoken about. Okay, if this is how it appears, is it truly that or is it something else right? And so I am kind of going on this tangent. But it's like I'm really trying to just not convince anybody that they can do it. So much as just shed light on there is something else right. All the way down to I have an agency owner in my inbox today.

Golby Wegter: 14:44

I've been very open about paternity leave, because that's what kind of snapped me out of it, right, getting out of burnout and putting systems in place and that sort of stuff. And he's over there knowing it's possible because I've been very transparent and done it, and still asking me like I don't think I can go on paternity leave and and leave my agency for three months, like the place will fall apart without me. So those are the daily kind of battles I want to take on to say it's entirely possible. You know it is because I've done it. You just don't see what it is. So what you're not saying, it's not possible. What you're actually saying is I don't feel supported enough to believe it's possible, right, and?

Golby Wegter: 15:23

that is a pretty good candidate for burnout with that, oh yeah, a hundred percent.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:29

I think it's really difficult to be what you can't see Exactly and and I think for a lot of people they don't see oh my gosh, if I'm gone for a week, it feels like I come back to a dumpster fire. If I was gone for three months, there wouldn't be anything left Because they haven't prepared. You know, I took a three-month sabbatical last year and when I came back, good for you. When I came back, the team, the organization was stronger and better than it was before I left. But it took six months of preparation to get ready for that, and I think that's the part that a lot of people don't get.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:12

Prior planning prevents poor performance. We all heard that. That's so. That's a so much of a of a of a statement that people would resonate with, I think. And yet too many agency owners are operating like firefighters. They just move from fire to fire, to fire, to fire to fire and they're not planning, they're not thinking ahead and they're not asking themselves the right questions Is this the business that I want? Is this the life that I want? Is this what I signed up for? Or have I just created, like you said, a harder, lower paying job?

Golby Wegter: 16:49

Yeah, which is it's? It's really, it's really sad, like when I was working out those figures yesterday. I don't, I don't want to get like two in the weeds because it too many numbers without actually like seeing the visual is going to distract, right, but it is essentially was combining. If anyone's heard of Alex Ramosi and the ignorance tax that's where I heard it. I think it predates him potentially, but it's just like. Whatever your goal is and monetary is the easy one because it's raw numbers so say, you want to make a million dollars, whatever you make right now, the gap between that and your million dollars is the tax you're paying to, not make a million dollars.

Golby Wegter: 17:30

But to me I was like that is so baseline and so kind of it doesn't go deep enough, because the real resource that is not infinite, is time. You and I talked about this before.

Golby Wegter: 17:45

That's right, right. And so I more look at it again as hourly leverage. We're all hourly workers because you put in a certain amount of hours and then you get paid for it, right, and so whatever those two divided by each other is how much you make per hour. And people say, well, I'm salary, I'm not a wage slave. If you are working, you're putting in time to make money, right, unless?

Golby Wegter: 18:07

you have a fully automated business. Congratulations, speak to the public on how you do that. Share your gift. That's right. But that's how I figured out, like, okay, I was making like $12 an hour, right, and that was that was after I hit a six figure salary because I was working 70, 80 hours a week, right? So the real, the real figure to me is yes, you have your monetary goal, but how many hours do you want to make it in? Because that is, you're going to compare those two hourlies, right? If you want to make a million dollars at your current 80 hours a week, it's going to take you tens of thousands of hours to do it. If you want to make a million dollars in 30 hours a week, you're a higher leverage, you're a higher income earner. It's going to take you less time. And so the only thing you need to figure out is how do I close the gap between the hours I am working and the hours I want to work to achieve the same goal, and when you attach your currently hourly? I did this as an example, right? So I think it was like a person who makes $24 an hour trying to make a million. When you do that math, that person has a $500,000 problem. Wow, because it would take them 20, 30,000 hours, whatever it is times $24 an hour, that's a half a million dollar problem. So the ignorance tax is one thing. I'm all about closing gaps and it doesn't happen overnight.

Golby Wegter: 19:38

Right, when you said it took six months of preparation for me with paternity leave. A, they were my second kids. We had twins the second time around. The first kid I had peak covid. We were in the hospital for 36 hours because I was hustling. Five minutes after we put the car seat down on our living room floor, I I was back at the laptop working. I'm not the mother, so I don't have to nurse, and all that stuff. I was like, well, my mission is to make money for this family. Off I go. Yeah, right, yeah. Second time around it was like I'm going to do this differently. But that didn't start after the babies were born, right, it started before.

Golby Wegter: 20:15

Yes, babies were born, started before, and so, like you said, I'll say it. My way is like you don't know what you don't know. I had no idea what three months of paternity would look like, but I had to get in my head that I will figure this out. And what is business if not like the unknown that you have to figure out? Literally today I've in. I was always organic marketing so I never ran an ad, right, have no idea how to do ads, but with my new business and that sort of stuff, I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to do an ad and all that sort of stuff. I spent the last two days trying to figure that out. Right, it's been the most painful process ever, but no one's making me do it, yeah.

Intro/Outro: 21:01

Right.

Golby Wegter: 21:01

Yeah and I'll be better off for it. And my advice to anyone who's like I want to. I want to be a better leader. I want to have more financial freedom. I want to be more autonomous and say yes and no to whatever I want. The first step is be like assume it sucks. Yeah, assume the way to get there is just constant pain. Like I knew going into this ads thing, my expectation was it's the same thing with kids. My expectation is they're going to be screaming and yelling all day. So when they're not, I am pleasantly surprised when they are. It's like I'm prepared for this. And paternity leave was the exact same thing. I was like I assume my employees would fail. I assume the clients wouldn't be super thrilled because they'd been working with me. Like I assumed all these things. This when assumptions are powerful. It's like assume the worst. And I mean that in the nicest way possible, because if you know where the bottom is in your brain, it will never be as bad as that.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:03

I like that. That's solid. You know, one of the things I love, colby, that you're doing is you know the pain that you went through burning out twice in a year is no joke. What you experienced on that airplane is no joke and I love that. You are taking what I believe there's three experiences that none of us would want, none of us would seek out. But you're taking those and saying how can I leverage what I learned, not just for my benefit, going forward, but for the benefit of other people, with the community that you're launching, for agency owners who are dealing with with loneliness, with burnout? I love that you're leveraging those lessons for the benefit of other people.

Golby Wegter: 22:46

Yeah, thanks, I mean, it's I'm so interested in just like impact. I have no idea what that looks like. Okay and it's. I'm kind of getting anti goals at this point because we tend to conform to the goals, whereas like, if I, if I want to impact a thousand people, what if my potential actually allows me to impact 10,000, a hundred thousand, a million? So I'd rather not have the goal at all and just focus on the. What is the next right thing to do to try and impact the most people, and so people who set like monetary goals.

Golby Wegter: 23:20

I can tell you I was poor up until like three years ago and I've, and compared to many, I'm still like on the lower end, right, because I'm not the highest earner, and that's. Every one of those decisions was my own, just and just for the record. I burnt out because of me. I said yes, yes to everything. I wrote every word on our website I had. I was managing 50 clients at a time. Like I was doing all of this stuff. I managed five other people, like all. I said yes to everything. So I think warren buffett said the most successful people say no to almost everything, yes, or like to 90% of things or whatever. Yeah, I learned that after burning out twice, but uncle Warren is is pretty right in that regard.

Dr. William Attaway: 24:06

I was following his path versus mine but.

Golby Wegter: 24:11

But I can tell you, like with goals, I don't even know how I landed on goals, but whatever you set for yourself, you have to believe that it will be worse or better. But very rarely is it going to be exactly what you expected. Right, when I wanted, all I ever wanted was to make six figures a year when I was poor, and I tell this story occasionally. But, like when I hit it, guess what happened? Nothing, no fireworks, nothing. I didn't feel any better. I wasn't like I hit my goal. Yeah, it's, it's the same thing. Like I would tell my clients they'd have this, they'd have a website project or something. It's this exciting thing. It's like a present at christmas or Right, and the moment the website launches I was like congratulations, the real work begins.

Dr. William Attaway: 24:59

That's right, and the goalpost moves.

Golby Wegter: 25:02

Yeah, exactly, and that is all. That is all businesses. It's that's why I like Renee Brown so much. She's like embrace the suck. Life is so much better when you just are like this is supposed to suck. It makes the good moments so much better, right, and it makes you not as someone. I.

Golby Wegter: 25:21

I have a lot of hindsight because I was a very anxious person and through my burnout I I didn't realize that till post-burnout. Right, like if you, if you know my story well enough, I'll share it really quickly here. It's like so burnt out, had the airplane thing spent the entire time in new york that week just journaling and reading right and thinking like here's what I'm going to change, here's what I'm going to change. Thought I changed it like. Seven months later, burned out again worse. Uh, my heart didn't stop this time but I literally thought I was going to die. And so it was December 26, 2022.

Golby Wegter: 25:59

I was so angry because I was a minority partner managing several million dollars at a company I started. I was like I want more because I was here day one and because pretty much like 70 to 80 cents of every dollar walking in the door'm responsible for, but I only have like five percent of this company. How does this work right? And it was my last hail, mary.

Golby Wegter: 26:21

It's december 26, 2022 and I sent a 93 minute voice note to one of my business partners. 93 minutes, 93 minutes. I don't even recognize that person. That's how burnt out I Wow. And he didn't even listen to it and it was like, okay, then I need to change my tactic, I can't keep going back. And so I think it was the next day I just went on a website that I had seen advertisements for right Marketing runs the world and just filled out a survey and, within like three minutes of answering like seven questions, it's like you have severe anxiety and within 20 minutes after that it got me uh in a live chat with a doc and 10 minutes after that they had fulfilled a prescription to send to my house.

Golby Wegter: 27:07

Wow, right so it's like the magic of the internet. But two weeks after I had been on the prescription I remember walking uh to from the coffee shop to my home, which is only a block, and like halfway I just like, all of a sudden it seemed like all the colors just showed themselves for the first time. It was like I was in some black and white noir movie and everything turned to color and I was like is this what normal feels?

Golby Wegter: 27:30

like I hadn't felt like that for six years, wow, right. And then, soon after then, I started talking with other people, and then now it's it's been about two years since then of just learning like, oh okay, what I was experiencing is way more common than I wish it was. And so you said me being transparent and leveraging my story. It's almost a moral responsibility to me because I fear for what not coming out of the other side of that would look like. I don't think I was ever predisposed to ending it all and all that sort of stuff.

Golby Wegter: 28:11

I've always had a pretty strong mental fortitude in terms of like, yeah, life's not fair or fun, that's fine, but I don't. I'm pretty sure I would have resorted to other vices had it not been for just a lot of that self-action. Like I had support from my family, but they didn't understand, sure. And so I think the message I would want to finish with before you ask another question is just like you definitely need help, but if you are waiting for help to arrive, that's not the way it works. Like you have to. That's why they say rock bottom and stuff. You can only go up.

Golby Wegter: 28:49

But like you have to have that moment of like I'm going to change something of like I'm going to change something Right, and for me it was filling out seven questions on a website I'd never been to before, but it was like just the knowledge oh, I'm diagnosed with something. Rightly or wrongly, it just lifted like yeah, you don't have to hold it all together. You got a serious mechanical problem, man, now it's time to fix it, right.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:22

And now launching a community to help people who are in that spot.

Golby Wegter: 29:24

Tell me, tell me a little bit about what's your what's your vision is for that. Yeah, so my vision I wanted to basically be on on two really strong pillars, right Is one. After talking with all these agency owners and also sending surveys and stuff as well, I wanted to like not guess what the problem was. I wanted to know. The two problems that kept revealing themselves was one everybody is afraid of where the next business is coming from. Right, yeah, so they, what does that look like on the front end? People say lead gen or sales or whatever, um.

Golby Wegter: 29:54

And two is it's really hard to do this. I'm kind of guessing a lot. This is really lonely. I would ask every single one of them the same question. I said have you had or do have a mentor to help you? Who's actually done this before? And overwhelmingly the majority of them said no, Right. And these are the same people who were like, yeah, I wanted my agency to be 20 million a year and scale to top 1% and all this sort of stuff. I'm like, okay, what's your revenue right now? Oh, we're at like 1 million a year. The gap between 1 and 20 million is not talent.

Intro/Outro: 30:32

That's right.

Golby Wegter: 30:33

It's not To me it's belief. That's right, it's not. It's to me it's belief. That's it Like it's.

Intro/Outro: 30:42

And systems.

Golby Wegter: 30:45

Exactly, and that's really the pillar. So these are the two problems is consistent business and loneliness. And so what am I going to deliver? Well, first of all, I think chasing new business is 10 times harder than maintaining your existing clients.

Golby Wegter: 31:03

Yes, 100% your existing clients, even if you don't like your existing clients, if they're price conscious, if they're high maintenance, like I've had 1100 of them, right, I've had more high maintenance clients than entire agencies personally, yet I could keep them for five or six years. And it's not my talent. I'm a publicly educated kid from the middle of nowhere Like this. I'm not particularly good. Looking Like this comes down to what. What is the client truly after? Speak to that and then make sure you're delivering it consistently.

Golby Wegter: 31:38

Your communication is clear. The expectations are very obvious. Clients don't. Clients don't want above and beyond. They want exactly what you promise, yeah, but if that's open-ended, they don't want above and beyond. They want exactly what you promise, yeah, but if that's open-ended, they don't know what you promise, and so they start thinking up their own. If they don't know when to expect your communication or how you communicate, create their own expectations. Yes, my agency should be calling me at 8 pm If you don't set that expectation. My agency should be calling me at 8 pm If you don't set that expectation that you respond like.

Golby Wegter: 32:08

For my agency it's very clear. We told every client their first week you will receive a response, not an answer, because maybe your problem is more complex, but you will receive a response guaranteed by the end of the following business day. You know how many communication fires I had to put out with that. One thing Like none. And if a client would get out of line? I don't want to say get out of line, that sounds dramatic, but if a client would misunderstand, it was very clear, and so I would just reference the previous point. Problem solved Right, right, and so, like so many of these people in this space who are burning out are connecting their value to their availability yes they're connecting their value to their talent.

Golby Wegter: 32:56

They're connecting their value to how many different services they can provide. It's like all of that is distraction from, and a direct contributor to, how painful your life is right now. One of my good buddies says if you don't create a business by design, it creates itself by default. These people are running default agencies. Yeah, they feel too deep. Where they can't pivot, you can always pivot Right, and so to me, all of these people like people making a million a year, people making 500 K a year, people making two or 3 million a year, if you want more, I fully believe there's an extra 20 to 30% revenue sitting in your current book right now that you just need help to unlock. That's what the community is for is to help them unlock that 20 to 30% in a way that feels seamless and low effort, because I have those systems and I want to teach those systems, but to also just give support.

Golby Wegter: 34:04

You've never had a sounding board. You've never had a shortened board. You've never had a shortened feedback loop, because you've been doing everything on your own. You're standing on you island. Wouldn't it be cool if you created a little commune of people who understood you and could chat with them whenever, like Lord of the Flies style, we're all just hanging out, let's do this.

Golby Wegter: 34:25

So any person I've ever worked with, I'm very clear. It's like I'm not your sales expert. Right, you're a sales expert, you're the killer, but you, what I am is like kind of. It's almost like they're cheese that needs to be shredded or something like I'm shredding away all of the barriers that prevents you from being the best killer, the best version of you. I'm not a top salesperson. Anyone I ever work with will be a better salesperson than me, but they will know how to use their skills because they have space to use it. They're not distracted with all this other stuff. The system runs itself. The community helps you. I can't think of anything I could have used more than exactly what I'm trying to build when I burnt out twice.

Golby Wegter: 35:19

If I would have had this, I would have been great and our agency would have hit 5 million by now. I'm certain been great and our agency would have hit 5 million by now. I'm certain of it. Like it's just, it's not even. Obviously. I'm very passionate. I could talk for hours and hours about this, but it's not even a question in my mind, right? It's so clear, and so I know it's unique in a way pretty much everyone's promising lead gen. I know it's unique in a way Pretty much everyone's promising lead gen, and so that's kind of I like. If I'm going to create a personality online, it's going to be like us versus them. Them is like 20 sales calls a week, 50% don't show up. Having to convince people, all that sort of stuff. It's like your clients are already paying you. Wouldn't it be nice to make more?

Golby Wegter: 36:12

money without having to even spend more money You're actually earning already. Shouldn't we just kind of add 20 or 30% to that with proven methods? Yeah, let's do it Right. So that's the plan is just kind of, and my hope is, like anyone I've ever managed, like I would tell my employees, I want to help you become a better person, not a better employee, which, if I succeed, you'll probably want to do your own thing. At some point you will leave me. It's the same point with this community. Like I would love to work with people for years and years, like I have with clients, but I think this is set up for them to fire me. Like I feel good now, right.

Golby Wegter: 36:39

And so they go teach the next generation as well. So that's a plan. I love it generation as well.

Dr. William Attaway: 36:52

So that's the plan. I love it. Thank you, tell me. Tell me about you for a second. Like you, are an entrepreneur who has navigated some pretty rough waters that we've talked about. Your team needs you to lead at a higher level today than you did five years ago. And your team and your business are going to need you to lead at a higher level today than you did five years ago. And your team and your business are going to need you to lead at a higher level three, four, five years from now than you lead today. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that they are going to need you to have?

Golby Wegter: 37:21

Yeah, I love that question. Well, first of all, I think you have to know what your core values and beliefs are, because that's your compass, that's your true north. When everything goes wrong, how think you should always be a practitioner? You never have it all figured out. I'm reading a business book. You know. I typically read one fiction, one nonfiction, one business book simultaneously. Obviously, our, our love of books is something that ties us together. Yes, it is.

Golby Wegter: 37:56

You know you're the only person I'm jealous of on earth, cause you have more books than I do. Not a comparison jealous person.

Golby Wegter: 38:05

I want that, not a comparison jealous person. I want that, um. So I think you know the practitioner mindset, of course, is like ingesting new information, trying to stay at the forefront as much as you can, but really it comes by. Doing so, yeah, and I think, doing with humility. So, like I said, I just left my agency, but every single one of them I'm still in touch with them. There was no like animosity with the departure. It was very, very amicable. I'm actually going to still be a consultant for the agency, all that stuff. But all of those people are still like I'm getting text messages from my staff now and they're still asking questions like how would you do X, what should I be thinking here, and that sort of stuff. And that just fills me up because it's not about every time I would talk to them I'd say it's not about me, yeah Right.

Golby Wegter: 38:55

This is about. I'm essentially a knowledge base, and so my mission with them was to teach them how to become higher leverage people, which means how to ask better questions, how to put yourself out there, how to not worry about emotions. My favorite saying that I've just lived by is I'm addicted to solutions, not feeling good. If I can teach that to other people and your core beliefs are I'm trying to be a good person and I'm trying to impact the world, yeah, then it's okay if it's a little uncomfortable because you're addicted to a solution that has a longer term benefit. You're not doing it to be a terrible person, right? So how?

Golby Wegter: 39:36

How I lead again is using the backdrop of how I was led to. How I wanted to change things was I wanted open communication like nobody's business? So every time an employee would say, well, I don't want to bother you, I'd say stop it, stop saying that right now. Yeah, and I would you know I'd keep it light. I'd say, obviously I don't recommend you say you're going to assault your employees or whatever, but I would be like, if you say sorry to bother me, one more time I'm going to come over to your house and I'm going to kick you in the shit. But it's like those little moments where it's like, hey, I'm human too, I make mistakes, and I would say that stuff all the time. I'd be like hey, just so you know, I make mistakes daily. I make more mistakes than you guys Because I'm constantly trying to improve. The only difference is you don't think I make mistakes because you're not looking. That's right, right, like that's, that's not a me thing, that's a you thing. And I want to make so many mistakes in a positive way, because you're trying new things and you're trying to learn that I want you to be able to see those. Obviously, like my mentor I have now. He says everything he's trying to produce content wise is like art. Right, it's stretching him so far, and like 90 of the stuff he's produced I thought I think is amazing because you can see someone trying to get better. His last video he did on youtube. I'm like this is terrible, this is crap. You know what? It doesn't matter, because it's the same remit for all of it. He's trying to create art and he's trying new things.

Golby Wegter: 41:14

And so how I lead other people is to basically like constantly ask questions, like just to tie this up is anytime a staff member asks me like what should I do here? I'd nine out of 10 times It'd be like ask open-ended questions, especially around like clients Right, I'm not getting the results I want out of the client. Well, do you know or do you think? Right, if you haven't asked the client this question, you don't know, you're guessing? Yeah Right, that you don't know what you're guessing? Yeah Right, that's good, that's on the application side.

Golby Wegter: 41:48

But internally, like you should constantly be asking questions, right, like with the ads thing, I kept asking myself this question like is this the best way to do it? Should I keep spending more time on this? Like I actually deleted my Facebook account today because I had gone through all other options to be like oh okay, facebook just is telling me don't do it this way anymore, and so I'm trying to think should I continue to play a game I don't enjoy playing or should I just burn the boat and figure out a different one? That's just one example, but that happened an hour ago. Right, like it's nine, 50 central. Right now, I've asked myself probably 30 questions since I woke up this morning, and so how I lead is like trying to help people ask as many questions as possible. I'm actually having an epiphany right now, but that's like how I would lead. I would say it's just like how many questions can you ask?

Dr. William Attaway: 42:49

Well, asking the right questions is the only way to get the right answers. Yeah, and asking questions is a skill that we can develop. We can get better at that, and since you are the hardest person you will ever lead and I'm the hardest person I will ever lead asking ourselves the right questions is absolutely critical. You, like me, you love to read. Is there a book that has made a huge difference in your journey that you would recommend? Man, if you haven't read this book, you got to read it, Can I?

Golby Wegter: 43:20

can I break the rules and give you two?

Golby Wegter: 43:22

I'll be, really you can give two Absolutely Okay. So my favorite business book of all time is the Almanac and Naval Ravikant, because I think it just makes you think different, right? Particularly just how you value your time. It's very similar to the when I was referencing the ignorance tax and then combining it with your time value. Naval says you know whatever you think your hourly value is. Say you've been in the space for a long time and you would charge somebody $250 an hour to have a phone call or whatever.

Golby Wegter: 43:51

You should be behaving like. That's a $1,250 investment, right? You should at minimum 5X how you behave with what you would do on the front end, and then you start making decisions accordingly, right? So I'm trying to produce content right now. I would love to learn video editing, but I think I would charge my hourly value somewhere between two and $300 right now. As I level up my skills, I can get a video editor for less. So it doesn't matter if I don't want to spend a hundred dollars a day or a week or whatever. It doesn't matter if I don't want to spend $100 a day or a week or whatever. It's lower leverage than what's 200 times 5. That's $1,000. If I'm not paying a video editor $1,000, then it's the right move. Pay them, because otherwise it's a $1,000 problem for me to learn it.

Golby Wegter: 44:48

And I think again, like Warren said, say no to almost anything. And if you ask I don't know exactly the origin of it, but it's like I think it was like Zuckerberg, warren Buffett, richard Branson, all these like super big names. They were asked if you had one resource and no other resource, what would be the one thing that you would want the most? And they all said focus. I'm not focused when I'm editing video. I'm not focused when I'm answering emails from someone who is complaining about like I'm not focused with these things. So the Naval Ravikant thing, I think, just makes you think differently. Whatever you think your value is five, exit and behave accordingly. It's huge.

Golby Wegter: 45:29

And then the other one why? Why I believe so much in systems is good to great. I think it's Jim Collins right. Yeah, great book. Yeah, I mean the. The way it's is written is a little bit more corporatey and that's fine. But the, the big takeaway I had from that and I said this for I was at my agency for nine years. We had employees for three and a half of those Since day one of our first employee. I just said hey, just so you know, we're a good company, we're not a great one.

Golby Wegter: 45:59

Because this company relies on the individual talent and time of the owners. We're trying to get to a great company, which means it relies on a vision and systems and, to be perfectly honest, I still think it's a good company and I was very open about that with everyone there. Not because it's like, hey, we suck, we're top 1% company. We didn't suck it's because we're not great yet. This still relies too much on me. So that's why paternity leave and all that sort of stuff was a really good indicator of we could be great someday, because I took my talent and time away from this and it didn't fall to pieces. In fact, we grew. So then it became a process, before I decided to step away, of, like, how can we do that with the CEO? How can we do that with the other partner? Right, all this sort of stuff. I think they can absolutely be a great company someday and I wouldn't have left unless I thought they were in really good hands without me. Um, but it's, it's still good.

Golby Wegter: 47:04

So good to great was just revolutionary for me, in that you are, you have to own what you are. You can say we're a great company and we have a great culture and you know. Please never say your employees are a family. That's not what it's about. They have families. You're not it. But there are are ways. There are clear indicators of are you headed towards greatness or not, and the first one is is like you will never be great if you have ego running your company right, and so I don't have any kind of bow to tie on it, aside from just be really realistic with what you are. All the agency owners I'm going to talk to William. They're at best good because they think I can't step away from the business. That's a limiting belief. That means they will never be great until they crush that limiting belief, and I hope I can help them do that. But that is like it has nothing to do with you at all. It's not. You're a bad person. Your personality is none of that. It's reality.

Dr. William Attaway: 48:11

You will not be great if it has to run through you, just as Colby, every time we talk, I could just keep talking every time, and this has been no exception. I thank you for sharing so generously from your experience, your story, and for what you're doing to take what you've learned and leverage it for the benefit of other people. I know people are going to want to connect with you and continue to learn from you. What is the best way for them to do that?

Golby Wegter: 48:41

Yeah, so Colby Wechter I'm the only one out there, it's Colby, like the cheese and then W-E-G-T-E-R, so you just Google that, You'll find anything. I post on LinkedIn every day, because now I've left the agency and I'm all in growing wings on the way down to help as many agency owners as I possibly can, and the website for my community is autonomyagencycom. And then I am also trying to be as generous as possible, like you said, and so I'm trying to provide concepts on YouTube pretty much once or twice a week, just a bit longer form. If that's your sort of thing, to learn the systems that I've used to, you know I wouldn't say defeat burnout. I think once you've burned out, you're, you're just a recovering. You've never fully beat it. But to get from that point to enjoying every single day, whether there's a ton of money in the bank or not, knowing that you're headed in the right direction, the YouTube would be a really good resource for for anyone trying to grow with less stress, and we will put all those links in the show notes.

Golby Wegter: 49:52

Amazing and this I'm so honored to be here. Thank you so much for uh, for inviting me on, because, yeah, if we I, the only downside is we. I wish we could talk for three hours, but I don't know how many people would listen the whole way, so it's good we have a constraint. This is Colby. Thank you again. Thank you so much.

Dr. William Attaway: 50:05

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 50:41

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 51:25

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.