Catalytic Leadership
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Catalytic Leadership
The Systems Behind White Label Agency Growth at Scale
Scaling your agency shouldn’t cost you peace, clarity, or capacity. If growth feels like a bottleneck — more clients, more chaos, and too many hats — this episode will help shift that.
I sat down with Brent Weaver, serial entrepreneur and now CEO of E2M Solutions, a white-label services platform supporting over 300 digital agencies worldwide. Brent built, scaled, and exited his own agency, then led UGURUS inside Cloudways (a $100M division of Digital Ocean) before stepping in to help agency owners like you remove the operational ceiling.
We talk about the systems behind sustainable white label agency growth, embedding external teams into your ops stack, automating proposals, leveraging AI for service delivery, and how to build with discipline — not burnout.
This isn’t theory. It’s proven strategy you can plug in now.
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
If you're an agency owner exploring white label partnerships, or simply want to connect, Brent would love to hear from you. Reach him directly at brent@e2msolutions.com or visit e2msolutions.com
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
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It is such an honor today to have Brent Weaver on the podcast. From founder, entrepreneur and best-selling author to speaker, coach, partner and investor, brent Weaver is currently the CEO of E2M Solutions, a leading white-label services platform helping digital agencies scale profitably with expert WordPress development, e-commerce, seo content and cutting-edge AI solutions. He previously led the UGURUs and agency growth teams within Cloudways, a $100 million business unit inside DigitalOcean, focused on delivering cloud web hosting solutions for the SMB market. Delivering cloud web hosting solutions for the SMB market he and his teams helped thousands of agencies worldwide master sales, marketing and operations to achieve freedom in business and in life. He is a serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, following over a decade of digital agency value creation. He's also an experienced team builder and servant leader who is passionate about hiring and developing top talent, building high-performing teams and creating customer-obsessed cultures. Brent, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you, william. I'm so looking forward to this conversation.
Brent Weaver:I wasn't nervous before, but now that you've given that introduction, I'm clearly nervous. I think you've set the bar maybe slightly too high for me, but we'll take it from here.
Dr. William Attaway:You know, all I did was right size expectations for what you're going to bring today. I'm just going to start there.
Intro: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:I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?
Brent Weaver:Gosh, I mean, I think the as a leader, I mean I guess I would, I would think back to from a company perspective, like first time you hire somebody, I don't know, maybe that's like your first like jaunt into leadership or maybe that's more management. But you know, I think, like if I were to even go back further than that, I mean, I think I've always had kind of a knack for organizing people and trying to achieve something. I tell people often that my first business was selling seashells on the beach when I was, like you know, eight years old or something, and I had enlisted I was the youngest cousin, but I was I was selling the seashells on the beach, which obviously beaches have plenty of seashells, right. So there's a there's, there's not a supply problem, um, but I think there's there's a cuteness factor of an eight year old selling seashells on a beach that, uh, that that becomes a business, right.
Brent Weaver:But I enlisted all of my brother and my cousins and they were all much older than me. So, you know, here I was at, you know, seven or eight years old and I had these you know kids that were, you know, 11 and 15, right they were. I had organized them to go and find the best supply right, and so I think, from very early, I had a knack, for you know, hey, we have a goal or we want to achieve something, and it's not just about what I can do, but what we can do and I think that's a core part of leadership is that you have to find a goal or a mission, and you can go much further when you have a team of people, and I think that's something that I've I've recognized at a very young age.
Dr. William Attaway:How did you get into marketing?
Brent Weaver:Started building websites. Uh, and I don't. I don't think it's. I think it took me a long time to realize that websites for most businesses, you know, are kind of fit underneath the marketing budget. To get more customers, get more leads, let's grow this thing and so. But that was not where I started, but that's where I think we eventually kind of found ourselves. Now there was a period of time we also built websites that were more web applications or, you know, building custom software, and I think you could, you could certainly go one of the direction we kind of leaned into, the get more customers, get more leads for our digital agency. But the first website I built was probably like in 1995-ish 1996.
Brent Weaver:You know, I was in high school just messing around with computers and you know, had an internet connection, wrote an HTML page and a text editor uploaded it to some free hosting. I had that was you know, with our internet service provider and I called a friend of mine and said check this out. I had him type in a super long URL, right, because it was part of our free hosting bin or whatever, and he pulled it up and it just it said like hello world. It probably said something more inappropriate for that because I was, like, you know, 15 years old or whatever. More inappropriate for that because I was, like you know, 15 years old or whatever. But you know it said something and he's like okay, like what is this Right? I'm like it's a webpage, right. So that was. That was like my first webpage. I'd say that's where it got started for me.
Dr. William Attaway:And from there it was a rocket ride.
Brent Weaver:I mean a decade plus running your own agency. What was that like? I love, you know. I mean I'm back to running an agency different than what our initial agency was. I mean, the scale that we operate at E2M is much different than what my kind of boutique agency was. But I feel like my first agency was my unofficial MBA in business.
Brent Weaver:I got to, um, you know, I got to meet, uh, you know, I think I think the internet was the only type of business that you could run, where you'd walk into a conference room of you know corporate executives or oil tycoons or whatever, running a billion dollar business. And here you are, this 24 year old kid, that 25 year old kid that really doesn't know anything about anything, but they all look to you for the answer. Right, so it was. It was cool because I got to learn a lot about business. You know we had a lot of success in various niches. You know I got to go and tour all these businesses. That was something I love doing. I would go in and try to win an account and I'd drive over to their business. It's very different now with Zoom and whatever. I don't know if I would have been driving as much had I been.
Brent Weaver:You know, if I was running this type of agency today, but I would drive over to these businesses factories, breweries, restaurants, corporations, right and I'd pitch them on building websites and doing marketing for them and you know they'd always want to give me a tour of the business. They would always give me kind of this whole like any question that I asked right, how much revenue do you do? How much profit do you do? What are your most profitable products and services? Right, because the website was like this, like we kind of had to help them grow the business. Because the website was like this, like we kind of had to help them grow the business, most clients were very open to really talking about their companies.
Brent Weaver:Right, and we had to, obviously, a lot of times sign NDAs and stuff. But I got to learn a lot about business and so I think that's why I look back at my first agency. That was like my fondest memory was just every day seemed like I was learning something new. Memory was just every day seemed like I was learning something new. Now there's elements of having to constantly learn about all these new businesses. That's not necessarily profitable or very scalable. We eventually kind of learned how to niche down our business and really become masters of some verticals. And then that became a lot different type of learning, where we weren't learning about all these different types of businesses but we were more learning about what it took to scale a service and scale a system.
Dr. William Attaway:You know, a lot of the people who are listening can resonate with what you're describing that rocket ride of learning and just constantly adapting to new environments, new situations that you've never been in before, you know and that's what that sounds like. Is that where you thrive, in that space where you are just constantly in learning mode?
Brent Weaver:I mean, I think I love to learn. I definitely love the idea of having a growth mindset. One thing, though, is I think, if you look at it over a decade, maybe we can use rocket as a, you know, as a metaphor, but I think, if you looked at the individual days that were my life over that period of time, I mean I would say that you know and this is something I try to tell people that are thinking about running a business or growing a business that a lot of it is. It's it's like watching paint dry. I mean, it's slow, you're doing really boring, repetitive tasks. I mean, I think, if I look at you know, how would I recommend for somebody to get out there in the niche, right? It would be like, all right, well, we're going to build a list of, you know, a market map of all the different speakers and stages and influencers and podcasts, and then we're going to, one by one. We're going to reach out to them every day, and we're going to, you know, we're going to LinkedIn, message them, we're going to email them, we're going to call them on the phone, right and we're.
Brent Weaver:And then there's this moment where you get on a podcast or you get on a stage it's kind of exciting, you're at an event. But then there's the other 97% of your time, which I think for a lot of entrepreneurs is like the more okay and comfortable you can be with doing like really mundane, boring kind of stuff. I think that that's a key part of being successful and I think we see this with, like professional athletes, olympians. It's almost like their tolerance for doing the same thing every day. The routine it's actually not very exciting, right. If we look at when you know somebody wins an Olympic medal for you know swimming or whatever, it's very exciting. You know the starting gun goes off the buzzer, it's like this two minutes of intensity, right.
Brent Weaver:But if you looked at the other 99.9% of their life, it's like driven by routine. But if you looked at the other 99.9% of their life, it's driven by routine. It's driven by them getting very comfortable doing things when they really don't like doing it anymore. I'm sure there's moments where there's passion and drive, but I think there's a lot of. When I look at my business success, it's like I've become, I think, pretty good at doing things that are uncomfortable or that aren't super exciting every day. So you know, I mean that would be. My message to the listeners is, like you know, find the things that aren't that exciting, learn how to do them well, learn how to do them at scale, and I think you can find a lot of success in your business. And then you get some frosting, you get some, you know, really high moments interspersed in there, and those are always fun, of course.
Dr. William Attaway:I'm so glad you brought that up, brad, because I think we tend to look at the exciting parts, and that's typically what makes its way to social media. We see the highlight reel you're on the platform receiving the gold medal, but you're exactly right, you're not seeing the other 99.9%, which is just discipline. It's discipline, it's consistency. It's the unsexy part of it, but you don't get to the platform without it and some of the teams that are producing these videos right?
Brent Weaver:Whether it's, I think, I read somewhere. I don't know what the number is, but like the average amount of money that Mr Beast puts into a video right.
Brent Weaver:He's sometimes giving away these massive amounts of money, right, but, like, the actual production of what he does is orders of magnitude more than the actual money that they give away, and the amount of energy and time that they put into that, uh, is insane. Um, you know, my, my kids are a big fan of mark rober and and I don't know if you watch him he's got an amazing youtube channel covers. He's a former nasa guy, pivoted, and he used to launch, like I think it was like one video a month or something you know. So it's like he would do 30 days of work to produce this like six minute video. You know, and I think that's a really good, like you know, parallel to business, in that you'll see these highlight reels, you'll see the really amazing introductions, but there's so much stuff that you've got to do behind the scenes.
Brent Weaver:It's actually one of the reasons, like, when I look at what we do with E2M as an example, right, we're a white label agency, we're kind of the back end for more than 300 digital agencies and that's kind of one of the things like we provide peace of mind, I think, as a business and we're able to we're able to kind of abstract a lot of that hard work, abstract a lot of that hard work, that daily grind of building websites and SEO campaigns and pay-per-click campaigns right, we're able to kind of abstract that away for the average digital agency, where they can rely on our team to do those work cycles, to have a very scalable and flexible team for them to produce their projects, and then the agency can maybe focus more on those the more exciting stuff right, getting out there on social media speaking on stages, growing their business, and not have to worry about, you know, going and interviewing 100 people to find one web designer.
Brent Weaver:Right, that's something that we do every day. We've got amazing processes for it and they can just tap into our team and be able to deliver great value without having to deal with all that headache. So how did you get to E2M?
Dr. William Attaway:to deliver great value without having to deal with all that headache.
Brent Weaver:So how did you get to E2M? You know I mean so. E2m was a sponsor of UGurus, my former company. So Manish was introduced to me by one of our coaches, our mentors that were part of the UGurus program. A gentleman by the name of Jonathan Hinshaw said hey, you should. You got to meet Manish, he could maybe you know, he's got an amazing team he should come and support you gurus. And at the time, e2m was doing a his mind of okay, maybe agencies could be our. You know, instead of us going and hiring a big sales team in the US, maybe agencies could be a distribution channel for us. And so he made a very bold move, which was to essentially stop doing direct client work and pivoted 100% to a white label agency for, for digital agencies. And yeah, so then, so, so, so E2M was a supporter for UGURs for many years.
Brent Weaver:I think one thing that made E2M stand out as a company was that they weren't as obsessed about the you know, sponsored came to events, would take people out to lunch or whatever. Never a hard pitch, never a hard sell, just built relationships, provided help where he could. And, you know, one person signed up for E2M, then two people signed up for E2M three people and then what ended up happening? It was kind of cool, of cool, like our, our, our community became the marketing engine you know, one of the marketing engines for e2m and you know, all manish had to do was show up and be in the room and so many people had such a great experience with e2m that they kind of did the, they did the pushing, totally voluntary. Hey, well, you got to use e2M, right, we use E2M. Oh, e2m makes it so easy, right? So the customers, our community, really was talking about E2M. And so when we, you know, ugurus was acquired, it was exciting. We had a lot of amazing growth as part of DigitalOcean.
Brent Weaver:Ultimately, digitalocean did not want to run a services business unit within their core computing infrastructure AI business. You know, if you're familiar, digitalocean is kind of like Amazon Web Services for small businesses hosting compute. I mean hardcore info, security, data, I mean literal hardware, right, Like, yeah, giant warehouses with servers and all that kind of stuff, right, and so to run this like agency community was kind of a little bit oil and water just didn't fit. They wanted to get really aggressive about artificial intelligence that decided, hey, this doesn't work for us, so they decided to shutter the business and they're ruthlessly focused, which is a good thing, that's great. They didn't even want to think about like spinning it off or whatever. It was just like stop doing this, right.
Brent Weaver:And so I actually parted ways with them very amicably and, and when I did, manish was like, hey, we should talk, right. And so then we started kind of scheming up ideas of how to grow E2M and there was a few different options at table. And you know, we were, we were meeting actually in in phoenix, and I was about to leave the meeting and he said I have one other idea. You know, it's kind of this steve jobs, move right, like there's one other thought that I have. And he said what about? You know, what would it look like if you became? You know, you came on board and did you know we're, we're a CEO at E2M? It's like, oh, okay, well, I'm interested, we should, we should keep talking. And we did and and yeah, here I am. What a story.
Dr. William Attaway:You know, I had I had Manish on the show and we got to know each other and have stayed in touch since and he dropped so much insight on the show.
Dr. William Attaway:And I love that, as you're stepping into this and getting the opportunity to meet you and talk with you and get to know you and you're doing the same. I mean, your story is just littered with so many pieces of wisdom that, even though you had found success, and then you found success again, you're like, hey, what's next? What does this look like? And I think that teachable spirit that seems to pervade you and your story is at play there, because it's so easy to push back on an opportunity or a potential open door and say, ah, no, I've never, I'm not, I'm not doing that, I do this, I couldn't do that, I do this. And we tend to box ourselves and limit our own potential because we only see that we do X, when by having an open hand and a teachable spirit, you can be open to something that maybe you didn't see coming. I'm guessing you didn't see that coming becoming the CEO of HUM.
Brent Weaver:My wife and I do. It's been an annual tradition for the last, I guess, three years, so it's I can now say annually we do this right. But we one time, on one of our date nights, we made predictions for where we're going to be in a year and we wrote those down, we put them in an envelope and then we, you know, put on the schedule for our date night. A year later we would look at our predictions, right. So I think we've done like three of these. Year later we would look at our predictions, right. So I think we've done like three of these. And and, and I have to say I think my we do it in april. So april of 2024 to april 2025.
Brent Weaver:You know, in april it was like you know I was. I was still at digital ocean, you gurus was doing really well. We were growing. There was a lot of like excitement about what's happening next. And you know, april of 2025 was like my last day at DigitalOcean. I had no concrete idea of what was going to be next. I mean, I was in conversations with E2M by that point, but it was just a good reminder of that.
Brent Weaver:There's just a lot of things in our life that we certainly have control over, and we have a lot of control over our daily choices. Like we're presented with, like crossroads were presented with options and we can kind of choose, but but oftentimes the options that get presented to us, uh, are outside of our control, you know, and it's like just kind of how we, how we navigate life. Obviously, um, some of the a lot of those things are are are things that we don't have a huge amount of control of. But we can control how we show up, right, and I love that phrase, that teachable spirit, because certainly, you know, when I sat down with Manish and said, okay, I want to do this, you know, here's the stuff I know, I know, here's the stuff I think I know but might not know right, and then there was like this blind spot of like there's so much that I don't even know, that I don't know. And that's where I'm like, you know, if I step in on June 2nd, you know, are you? I was like, are you, are you stepping out? Or you know, just look, I think I think there'll be 90 days of a lot, kind of a joint partnership, and then at least a year of mentorship and so kind of coming back to that long-term view.
Brent Weaver:That's something that I'm really learning to admire and appreciate about Manish is that he definitely has a very you know, in our day and age of entrepreneurship where it's instant results, got to get something. You know, I've got to do an ad, see a click, get a view, get a buy. You know, see my real ads, right All that kind of stuff. And then to be talking to Manish, he's got a very long-term view for his business and he's willing to make big bets, and so that's something that I'm learning a ton from as an entrepreneur, because I probably would put myself you know, I'm a performance, come from a performance marketing background, I certainly like my stats and my data, and so I think balancing that with kind of this more visionary, long-term view has been really helpful for me and I'm learning a ton in the process.
Dr. William Attaway:You know, playing the long game, I find, is so often what separates people who endure, who last as an entrepreneur. Because you're not thinking microwave, you're thinking crockpot. Yeah, you know, it's very, very difficult to see the whole picture when you're not thinking microwave, you're thinking crockpot. It's very, very difficult to see the whole picture when you're in the frame. You just don't have the perspective. And one of the things I get to do is come alongside leaders and businesses and help them see what they can't see because they're in it every day, and I love that. He's creating that type of an environment at E2M. That speaks volumes. And I know you're's creating that type of an environment at E2M. That speaks volumes, and I know you're going to continue that. You're going to take that baton and you're going to take it to the next level. Let me ask you a lot of our listeners are agency owners. A whole lot of people listen to this show who are either thinking about white label partners or maybe they've heard of E2M, but they don't know much about you. What differentiates E2M?
Brent Weaver:heard of e2m, but they don't know much about you. What differentiates e2m? We're well, I mean, we were actually currently doing a real big deep dive on this for our own business and our own brands I feel like this is this good, good question, uh, william, because it's very fresh in my mind.
Brent Weaver:But one thing is that we're we're 100 about agency growth, and so there are a lot of white label teams that also serve end clients. They kind of do white label as a side strategy. They have direct-to-client business and then they kind of see white label as this opportunity to, you know, just fill up their pipeline and try to grow their business. And so we're focused 100% on agency growth and so a lot of times we go into work with an agency, their biggest concern is, you know, can we help them with their WordPress website development? Can we help them with go high level? Can we help them with do that? Can we help them with Shopify BigCommerce? Right, they have very tactical focus. They have a project. They need to get it done. They want it to be done in a cost-effective way right, we check all those boxes, right. That's very easy for us.
Brent Weaver:But what ends up happening in terms of our partnership with clients is when we start going and actually working with them. Because we work with over 300 agencies, we get to kind of see like, what are amazing processes and where are there processes where agencies could benefit from improvements, whether that's in our pre-sale support. So a lot of agencies might have like. When I talk to agency I say, well, what do you enjoy about sales? And they're like oh, I love talking to clients I love doing.
Brent Weaver:You know it's like, okay, great. What do you not enjoy about sales, creating scopes of work and proposals and whatever, right, right. And so our team makes that stuff too right. So we actually will do that pre-sale support with you. We'll look at what your client's asking for, we'll meet with you and we'll build not just a quote but a proposal that you can essentially turn around and use that within your proposal. So that heavy lifting of what do we have to have in the scope of work, how do we break that down in terms of cost and timeline and investment? Right, that's an example where we kind of build that for you and a lot of agencies. When they see how we do it, because we do it so much and it's at scale, we start to see them adjust their processes and they start raising the bar for how they approach their clients. And this goes through the entire life cycle of the agency process, whether it's the development processes. So, like our team because we know it's frustrating to work with a white little partner that's outside of your business we embed ourselves within your existing processes. So our team will actually go in and be a member of your teamwork. Asana ClickUp Monday we'll actually go into your project management system. We'll be a member of your teamwork. Asana ClickUp Monday We'll actually go into your project management system. We'll be a member of that system and we'll work within your agency's process. So, instead of you having to learn a whole new process, we do the heavy lifting and we learn your process, which is just really interesting.
Brent Weaver:So I used to be a partner in a company called Unlimited WP which got acquired by E2M and we had the opposite process and I remember we had a big discussion about this and it was like for us to go in and learn every agency's process was just going to be an incredible amount of work and overhead and the complexity. I was like adamant that we didn't do this. But now that I've joined E2M and I see how they've been able to accomplish this, I'm like man, this is like two-day shipping, right? Like I'm sure everybody at Amazon hated the idea of two-day shipping. It's impossible, right? People probably said this is not possible and Bezos says no, we're going to do two-day shipping. And so I think Manish basically said no, we're going to make this easy for agencies we're going to work within their systems. It agencies we're going to work within their systems. It's not going to be easy for us, but it's going to be really valuable for our clients and so good.
Brent Weaver:I level all of this up to being a growth partner for agencies, and I think that's one of the most unique components of working with E2M is just how much we think about not just doing the task, but how do we help our agency partners grow their business. And a lot of that comes back to just peace of mind, how to help you like not have to stress about it. Oh, you work in our system. Oh, okay, we just add you and then you're in there and you're working on the task. You're working on the projects, right? Oh, sales is really frustrating. We have to create our own scopes of work, but you guys do that for us. Oh, that's really easy, right?
Brent Weaver:Just adding those peace of mind layers on every element of the business. And I mean I could go on, like in terms of our pricing. We have recurring kind of flexible plans. So if an agency's business fluctuates, if they all of a sudden don't have work, you know we have an active account manager that works with the agency. We'll pause that plan to make sure that they're, if they're not going to utilize the time. We're not going to be billing them for unused time right. So we're very actively managed in terms of our plans with our clients. We kind of move clients up and down on their plans based on their demand, so that helps the agency be more profitable Again, just that peace of mind. That growth partner stuff is really what makes E2M unique.
Dr. William Attaway:It's fascinating and it's very different from a whole lot of other white label partners I'm familiar with, you know, and the fact that you step into into the agency system, that's that's a massive differentiator. I love that.
Brent Weaver:Yeah, it's, yeah, not, not easy, but but the team does it and they do an amazing job with it. And it's, you know, when we look at why people stay with us. You know we have very, very low, less than 1% churn of agency partners and one of the things that I look at that I say, well, it's because we're integrated with the agency's processes, we're an extension of their team, we're part of their team, we're flexible within their business model. The ups and downs of running a business I know for myself.
Brent Weaver:You know, one of the biggest stresses when I was running an agency was payroll and it's very difficult, without hurting some feelings, to fluctuate your payroll month to month. Right, like, if you're spending 50 grand a month, you're like, oh, we don't have work this month. Like, you know, you can't just notch that down to 25 grand without, you know, devastating some people on your team. Whereas within an E2M relationship, hey, if you don't have the work, cool, we'll scale your account down and we'll reallocate our human resources to other areas, right, other clients, our own business, et cetera, and you don't have to have that stress of feeling bad for having that fluctuation in business. So we want to see agencies be profitable. We want to see them be productive. We want to see them grow faster.
Dr. William Attaway:I think that's really going to resonate with a lot of people listening. You know, one of the things that I'm talking to a lot of people about in agency world right now is AI, and at E2M you guys are stepping into that in a pretty unique way. Could you share a little bit about where you are and where you're going in that realm? Could?
Brent Weaver:you share a little bit about where you are and where you're going in that realm. Absolutely, we definitely want to be a go-to white-label partner, but we also want to be the world's best AI-first white-label partner, and I think a lot of people are using AI first or AI curious or these different things. I don't know how many people are walking the walk in that space and I think this requires an investment and you have to almost hit pause on some areas of your business and you have to say, okay, how are we making time for this? Are we actually giving team members at every level of the organization time to leverage AI? So we're doing AI in a few different ways. One is through our own internal tooling and services that we're delivering. So, whether that's WordPress, pay-per-click advertising, seo, every single team member at E2M has an amount of time that we're allotting for them to invest in AI tooling, ai knowledge and things like that we're actually even doing every first Friday. Everybody in the company comes in and works on that. I'm sorry, ai for Saturdays I missed the date there. Saturdays, every first Saturday, a whole team comes in and is working on AI knowledge and tooling and kind of doing some hackathon type projects, and so we're curating that, we're bringing in speakers, we're investing in team in terms of tools and presentations, and so that's something that our team is coming to the table and they're saying, hey, we're willing to invest some of our own time in this. And then we're also coming to the table with additional investment in courses and knowledge and stuff like that, and because we look at this as this is like once in a lifetime and so, you know, it's like we kind of have to maybe bottle some of our inner you know Elon Musk and kind of go hardcore and like, hey, we're going to go the extra mile.
Brent Weaver:So that's something that we're doing internally. We're building a lot of really cool tools within our business to help serve clients better, do things faster, better quality, all that kind of stuff. The other piece that we're doing is, you know, we're actually building some software around. We have a tool called Razor Copy. It's our content team. So obviously, chatgpt has been transformational in terms of content. But there's a lot of things that are missing from chat, just in a lot of the other SEO tools, a lot of the content tools. We've actually built that as an internal tool where our human content team is enhanced with a very specific kind of application called Razor Copy, so that's been really cool. We're going to be launching that later in Q3.
Brent Weaver:And then we have our fractional AI service offering. So this is where we're actually going in as an extension of our agency partners teams and we're doing AI strategy for them. We're building AI workflows, agentic workflows, we're building custom agents, and that's been revolutionary. So right now, like as of recording this, we've got over 20 agencies that we're supporting. We have a team of I was just looking at this morning.
Brent Weaver:I think we've got about close to 20 people on the AI services team and we're constantly, just every day, inside of those agencies looking at how do we help them to grow their business faster, how do we help them be more profitable, more efficient, how do we help them deliver more value to their clients, leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, and so that's probably one of the most exciting areas for us, just because of the amount of learning that we're doing. I think the team has launched over 100 agentic workflows for agencies, everything from automating lead generation with Go High Level automating, proposal creation, invoicing, billing, delivery of services. You know, doing some of the things that agencies are doing with clients right. Helping them to automate those to help them, you know, increase capacity, increase profits, create new revenue opportunities. Wow.
Dr. William Attaway:I love the fact that you're stepping into this space with such intentionality and you're looking at this space saying where can we come alongside of agencies? Where can we add value and truly be what you said a minute ago, truly be a growth partner, helping them to grow what they're doing and increase the services and the level of excellence they're providing for their clients. I think that is leadership and well done with that.
Brent Weaver:Yeah well, I have to give credit where credit's due. A lot of this train was already moved. I jumped onto the side of it, so you know it was obviously AI has been a big part of when I was running YouGurus. We started running a monthly webinar around AI for agencies Incredibly well attended, tons of registrations. We'd bring in case studies from our members and showcase that stuff, and so that was really cool for me in terms of just learning what agencies are doing with AI. I think it's very different when you're actually the company that's behind the scenes building that stuff with those agencies. And so you know, coming on to E2M's team, you know, june 2nd, I mean, the biggest thing that I was thinking about in reading and trying to uplevel my own knowledge and growth around was AI coming into this position. But even just since I joined June 2nd, I mean I feel like the amount the hive mind that is AI within E2M is absolutely incredible is AI within E2M is absolutely incredible.
Brent Weaver:We actually have an event that we're going to be hosting in Denver September 28th through 30th called Vistara. That's all about AI for agencies, and even just thinking about us planning the content for this event, I have to know like it's like from when we're recording this to when it's going to happen. It's like 65 days or something, 68 days, and, like I know, I'm going to learn so much about AI. I don't even know what I'm going to talk about in September. I have no idea, right, because I know now and then my knowledge on AI is going to increase exponentially and so, but yeah, we're continuing to make that investment.
Brent Weaver:We think that it's important for agencies to hit pause and come out of their business for a couple of days, come to Denver, hang out with us and invest that time to learn about AI, because the only way you're going to do it well is if you kind of put on that student hat, that beginner hat, and say, look, I don't know what I don't know, and I certainly don't know everything there is to know about AI.
Brent Weaver:And I need to hit pause. I need to go learn for a couple of days, immerse myself and then, and then from there we can start building strategy. From there we can start experimenting and making some bets. And I'll tell you right now most people's AI bets a year from now will probably not pay very, very good dividends. A couple of them will be extraordinary, but most of them will probably be thrown in the trash can. That being said, if you're not making AI bets, you're certainly not going to have any winners and you're not going to have those failed bets until you start making bets. So I think the key thing for agencies is start investing that time, make the space to learn about AI, put that beginner mindset hat on, and I think it'll be a fun journey.
Dr. William Attaway:You know you have to lead at a different level today than you have previously. You know you're leading in a new environment, in a new role. How do you maintain that mindset, that student hat, how do you stay on top of your game and level up with the new leadership skills that E2M and your client and the business as a whole is going to? They're going to need you to have.
Brent Weaver:Gosh, I think I have my.
Brent Weaver:I'm learning a ton from Manish.
Brent Weaver:I also try to keep my own kind of personal advisory board separate from the business.
Brent Weaver:So having those people that are kind of trusted advisors I mean I have NDA agreements with some folks, right, just so I can discuss my business matters outside of the core confines of the business, right and so I think having those people that can come in and kind of teach you, constantly, provide that feedback, has been huge, mean outside of the normal, like listening to podcasts, reading books, kind of always having a little bit of my my foot in or toe in the river of kind of you know knowledge around leadership and things like that.
Brent Weaver:But I think I think a key part of just getting that perspective, having some you know mentorship for yourself, having folks like yourself kind of in your corner where you can go and say, okay, here's the situation, what do you think about this? I actually have been a huge fan, I mean, lately I've been kind of bringing that student mindset and using chat as a great thought partner, as a great knowledge partner, and I've got kind of a little bit of a personal SOP of here's the important things about me and, hey, I need to get feedback on this decision, or how would you approach this?
Brent Weaver:And I like you know, not all of my personal mentors like to be woken up at 4 am or, you know, 1 am in the morning or whatever, and give me feedback right, and so I think chat's been great for that just-in-time like kind of information and it has required a little bit of reprogramming for me to you know. Oh, you know what I should ask before I asked my mentor, I'm going to ask chat, or maybe I'll ask chat. Hey, I'm going to go talk to my mentor about this issue. How would you frame this Right? What can I do? What can I? What can I think about now? That would help me frame this and get the right experience share, you know, from my mentor, and so that's been. That's been huge for me. I love that.
Dr. William Attaway:As you are continually learning and reading. Is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening?
Brent Weaver:Um, yeah, there's. I was thinking about this one, William, and I've got so many, but there's a book called, uh, the boys in the boat. I think they turned it into a movie. I never saw the movie but it's about a crew team and it has so many parallels. Right, building an amazing team. Right, getting people right person, right seat. You know the discipline that is necessary to be successful in business and, I think, competitive crew. It's a very touching story.
Brent Weaver:I won't give away too much of the book, but I think if you're somebody who really obsesses about right person, right seat, how do you build an amazing team that's literally rowing in the same direction? Right, those are things that we say in business all the time right, right, person, right seat, rowing in the same direction. But Boys in the Boat, I think, was one of the books that really helped me to understand that. You know, sometimes you have, you know the right people in the boat, but they're just in the wrong seat. Sometimes you have the wrong people in the boat, right, and just how to be, you know, kind of ruthless about that to some extent, right, I think most companies are better framed as a team, not as a family, right, and we can have some overlay in terms of family and company, right, but I think you know building a high performance team is what leaders should obsess about, so that would be my book recommendation for your listeners.
Dr. William Attaway:I love that I have not read that, and now I'm going to check it out. Thank you, I have not read that, and now I'm going to check it out, thank you. So last question you know anybody looking at you from the outside, brett is looking at the highlight reel that we all have online and they think, oh man, you know, he's just, his journey's just been up and to the right, like he's never really struggled, he's never really had to go through the days like I have. You know, and if somebody were sitting across the table from you and they were listening to you talk about your story, they said something like that. I want to ask this question with that in mind. If I had the ability right now to snap my fingers and solve one problem in your business or your leadership, what would you want that problem to be?
Brent Weaver:Gosh, I, you know, um. Besides, like you know, I think every business leader is always thinking about growth. You know where's the growth going to come from? How are we going to serve the growth? So I mean, if we're talking about total magic wand, right?
Brent Weaver:I think that would be the one, but I think more like a strategic and tactical level. I think that you know, and we're certainly no exception to this, we have a lot more appetite, maybe, than we have a stomach for. Right, we have, you know, I think a lot more businesses suffer from overconsumption than from starvation. Right, we take on too many ideas, we try too many shiny objects, and I don't think we're, you know. I think that's one area where I have to exercise a lot of discipline of just like how to say no to things effectively throughout the day and throughout the week.
Brent Weaver:I think if we were to kind of solve one problem though, it's, like you know, at the leadership level, even though a lot of us are in individual seats, we wear a couple of different hats, and so I think, you know, if we can magically, you know, bifurcates of our leaders, you know, just like dna, copy that person, like hey, we need more people like this person, but instead of this person having four kind of seats they're sitting in, they can have two seats they're sitting in or, better yet, one seat.
Brent Weaver:So so I think that's, that's an area where, you know, I wish we could snap our fingers and just replicate our best top performers, but it's. That's a little bit more. I think you have to take more inspiration, for maybe, like gardening right, you have to like, plant a seed, you have to water it kind of back to this idea that a lot of this stuff is really boring William is, I think, having that patience. So I don't know if that's a very good answer to that question, but you know, maybe it's a cloning machine, maybe it's a patience wand, I don't know, it's one of those, william, I love it.
Dr. William Attaway:You know, developing a leadership bench is a process and, like I said earlier, it's a crockpot. There's no microwave for this. Developing a bench that will serve you three, five years from now is something that you start today. It's like the old Chinese proverb about planting a tree. You know, the best time to do it is 20 years ago. Second best time to do it is today, and I think what you just shared and I appreciate the authenticity and honesty there I think what you just shared is something a lot of people resonate with and struggle with, and they wish they had started this three years, five years, some 20 years ago developing that bench of leaders so that you can bifurcate the roles, so that you can allow people to serve in their zone of genius instead of perhaps two or three areas, one or more of which they may not be in their zone of genius.
Dr. William Attaway:Developing that bench takes time and today is a great day to start that, and I just want our listeners to hear that and understand that it doesn't matter where you've been, but you can start today. That is an action item that you can take from what you've shared today, brent, and I love that from what you've shared today, brent, and I love that. I'm so grateful for your time today, for your generosity in sharing so much from your journey. I know our listeners are going to want to stay connected to you, to continue to learn from you and to learn more about E2M. What is the best way for them to do that?
Brent Weaver:Yeah, I mean, if you're an agency that's looking for a Y-level partner, or if you just want to connect, talk about some of the themes we talked about today, whatever your motivation is, you can reach me on email, brent at E, the number 2MSolutionscom. You can obviously go to our website at E2MSolutionscom, but if you want to connect with me individually, just drop me an email. I'm also on all the major social media platforms, but probably I'm most responsive on email. So brent at e2msolutionscom.
Dr. William Attaway:We'll have that in the show notes, Brent. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, William.
