How to Stand Out as an Agency in 2026 (Brand, Positioning & AI Strategy) with Chris Willow

Full Transcript

0:00Today, brand advertising underlooked because people still want to do this uh uh like direct response like measure the funnel, but nobody Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Jolly SEO's TL;DR. I'm your host, Greg Heilers, and Jolly SEO is your provider of earned linkbuilding and now Reddit brand mentions as well as full circle back to on-site content. But enough about us. I'm excited. Today, our guest is Chris Willow, founder of wayfront.com. And some of you may have known sp.co.

0:53Chris, you're going to speak a lot to our listeners here because you used to run an agency, which I'm just finding out as we get the jump on this episode. So, thanks for taking the time and sharing all of your knowledge. Yeah, happy to be here. Yeah, I I I used to run an agency um which is how like I came into this SAS thing as well as I think like pretty much same story as everyone. um you kind of run an agency, you see the issues, you want to build something to fix it. I think the unique thing about um the agency I was running back then, we were creating like these promotional videos from like literal templates. So, it was very cheap and easy. So, you pay like a couple hundred bucks and get the results back in 24 hours.

1:33So, it was kind of streamlined like that. There's no room for any kind of back and forth and stuff like that. So, so we built like all these custom automations, this form tool, the spreadsheet to put all the orders in. Um, and then realized people were like go going back to the form link and filling it twice. And so we had to check if if they have actually paid and stuff like that. And so yeah, I built like service provider pro initially for myself, sold it to a few people later and uh now it's gotten to be this whole platform that thousands of agencies have used to sell over $500 million in services.

2:20Uh and like our whole thing is is the uh is a productized agency, right? Like you're selling the packages, it's a fixed price. Um and you have SOPs, everything streamlined. Uh so we serve that. Yeah. Yeah. So CLA Classic uh solved your own painoint and then became a SAS founder. We we stumbled into SP a few years ago.

3:08we bought uh a small company and they were on there and I I just remember turning to Morgan and being like why why were we not on like the the things didn't work out with that acquisition but that that was the one thing that I loved about it was actually your platform your company so when when you and I met a few months ago in Chiang Mai I just remember thinking oh awesome I get to meet you in the flesh it's a super cool platform yeah and then you and We brainstormed some name ideas and stuff because at that point we had decided that service provider pro not a great name. We have to rebrand.

3:50Um, so I can go into whole reasons why, but essentially we have rebranded now to Wavefront and we this took months and I've learned a lot about like what makes what makes a good brand versus what we had you know uh which I think might be helpful to agencies as well because as part of the process we reviewed the agencies that we have as customers just going through their website seeing okay what is their like value proposition what's the Hey, what's the logo? Can we understand what they're offering? Um, and for productize agencies, for the most part, it's pretty clear, but yeah, in in the classic agency world, if it's if if they say, "Oh, we're just doing like all these services, and it's like not really clear what it's for," then immediately you're gone. So, I think they're like, "Yeah." Well, we want to dive into this episode.

4:33I want to ask you about because you've got a lot of data obviously anonymized aggregated data but over $500 million of services sold on the platform at this point. So I I want to ask you questions obviously plus your own experience what these inflection points so many people are still interested in like what does it take to break a million in gross for example. Uh I want to ask you things like managing 10 20 plus client accounts when people are are getting to that point. Um even things like talent management but let's first start with just your most recent experience this whole branding thing because we also when when I met you we also I was saying we we might have to drop the SEO from our name at some point. I don't know.

5:11uh with with GEO taking off. Um I'm I'm less less knee-jerk on that right now, but I still am heavy into thinking about exactly what you just mentioned is what do people think about us when they hear our brand and what do they assume we're capable of versus not. So yeah, service provider pro was a mouthful. What does Wayfront do for you that sp.co didn't? Hey, hope you're enjoying the show. We're going to get right back to it. Real quick, if you're not sure how you're showing up in AI tools like Chad GPT, Perplexity and the like, click on that first link in the description.

5:53If you fill that out for us, we'll send you your own AI visibility report and see how we can help you boost your results. All right, without further ado, remember that link and enjoy the rest of the show. Uh I think it like big picture it unties us from all the from any kind of category associations because service provider the the connotation is maybe okay this is like home services or these kind of services.

6:32So it the the worst thing you you can do is to have the wrong category association to have like like you have SEO that's a that you have a category association it's good people see your name they know oh it's SEO very clear um so I think that's fine but to have the wrong one is the worst right I I actually never thought that about your brand uh but I hadn't put enough thought into it and I can totally see it now that you said it that people are thinking you're the perfect platform for the pesticide pest management companies. I never occurred to me. So, okay. So, wrong connotation. Um, in part of that like decoupling, do you do you also want to paint yourself into a corner though and like be be part of a specific niche or that that wasn't something you were reaching for here?

7:15So it can work for if if there is an established category but for us it's kind there's the category is like still after all this time is still kind of new uh as in the pro the whole productized services because you have so many different agency tools. You have like one billion project management tools and and we're not that. So we wouldn't want to be called like put in the project management kind of bucket you know. No you're not. Yeah. Mhm. We we worked with with a really good SAS copywriter as well on our positioning and stuff. Do that was after the name change, but the same kind of idea is do we want to mention the category or do we want to keep it vague and do problem first?

7:55So if you productize, you have these problems, you know, and then we fix these problems. That's kind of our angle now. Yeah. Fascinating. So I'm curious in this experience because this is a monthsl long process for you. Uh and and everyone has that everyone listening has created a brand whether it's just a personal brand or a corporate brand. uh when you're just starting the process and then as you're you're probably even midway through it, like what are some of the cold feet moments where you're like this like this not not worth it? There's not the juice is not worth the squeeze here. Great question.

8:41I still have that moment. Oh no. Post launch. Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, you're emotionally attached to the old brand, too, but it's a business thing as well. For sure. Yeah. Um, and especially like given how the the AI stuff has sort of disrupted all this agency world, like let's be real, things are changing and some people are getting crushed, some people are succeeding. So, it's it's it is very dynamic right now. Um but so we redirected the website and didn't post any announcements. Uh so so there's some feedback sent it in app then sent an email got some good feedback from that. People were happy.

9:25So I was confident okay now we can like post on social and stuff like that. So So you left yourself out just in case you didn't like it or or the the the soft launch didn't go as well as you'd hoped. Yeah. Yeah, ma maybe you could say that. But, you know, I I I think like our I I kept people up to date throughout the process. It's like this is our decision. Uh we're considering this reply, let me know what you think and people replied and so they sort of felt maybe like a part of the process which was good. So, we used the wisdom of the crowd a little bit.

10:07Um so, it's better than like springing a new brand on them like overnight. I I also remember when we met, I found your take on this quite insightful. You were saying this is really about the market that hasn't heard of you yet and more more so than not that you disrespect the existing users uh but this is more about how will people who have never heard of your company perceive you and so I guess now you're thinking about taking these next steps. This opens some doors for you.

10:50you must have imagined well what's what's the next step now that you feel all right we're not going back to as like I can I can I can announce this so for the past like couple years we've been doing a lot of like sponsoring conferences creators like podcast stuff like that and for that this kind of like brand is very important so so that you hear it and you have some some kind of association if it's just SP it's three letters you'll remember it as SSP and so all this like advertising budget goes to waste. Um yeah, so anyway, I think like today brand advertising underlooked because people still want to do this uh uh like direct response like measure the funnel but nobody buys on the first step, right?

11:35they they get get into your funnel, they like research more about you, then they come back a month later, a year later. So, it's a long-term process. And for that, branding super important. It's not especially for agencies. If you're selling more like something that costs potentially thousands, it's not that they will find your ad, click your ad, buy now, and you have a nice little conversion funnel that you can track. It's way way more messy in real life. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do my best on attribution and every time a new lead genen vendor or even someone internally is curious about everything, I I open it up and I then I start to get sheepish.

12:12I'm like, well, this is what the data says, but just keep in mind like what actually happened is very different than what the data says because this is maybe the sixth time this person interacted with us, but it's the first and last time I have them uh as having expressed interest. Mhm. Uh all the same, uh I think it's definitely a process we all consider, we we have to and like you said, I think um if you're all if you're only focused on performance, uh that's that's definitely not where my head's at. Obviously, like doing the podcast, we're not expecting a listener to click now and buy. This is for other purposes. Yeah. Yeah.

12:52Well, I want to ask you um kind of transitioning from the branding side, you you had your own agency and you mentioned things are a little rocky. Uh and I think that part of that is due to AI's influence on SEO, but also uh the market's perception of services's value. If I can just get an AI tool to to do it myself, why hire someone to do it? Uh labor's got a little less leverage.

13:44What What are you seeing from inside Wayfront, whatever you're allowed to share in terms of uh churn data like we churn has been such a big focus for us for the last six months really year of how do we get a grasp on what people perceive as the value that we're delivering? How do we communicate better? Is that going to influence turn? Um but you you see things at a higher level than I do across many companies.

14:25Uh well to be completely transparent we we don't have any kind of dashboard where I could pull like the global churn or anything like that from all our users but just like to with the people I've talked to they've said yeah it's rough out there uh a lot of the times and on some level I think it's because the the sophisticated client maybe like B2B SaaS or if you're selling to SAS companies or are kind of like these technical clients, they're they're very into all this GPT. They will do all this stuff, custom MCBs and skills and and try to like replace you, but then people selling to creators and uh to like these local businesses, they're still going strong. So, I don't know. Is is it a matter of time where things shift or do we go full circle where people kind of realized okay that like clicking the buttons in Google ads is not the value the value is like the strategy or the device or like the experience. Yeah, I think that's part of managing.

15:08Um, and I came at it from a turn angle, but I also wanted to talk about I think the the thing people are more interested is growing. Usually, uh, growing often you hear to a million, uh, or then of course it' be eight figures, but I think it's to do that, you have to communicate the value of your services. And a great takeaway from a mastermind I'm in was uh we're don't hammer how much AI is saving you time and money. Don't don't even don't even need to talk about that really. People are less than that. They're they're interested in your expertise. So really communicate all of the success you've had for clients and how you're going to bring that same success to the client. Yeah.

15:54Anybody who's saying like AI is saving me all this time and money, they are trying to sell you some AI kind of either course or some kind of claw bot setup or something like that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, what could a what could an agency um or let's even say soloreneur, but they want to have an agency. Uh what what could they do? It's it's early 2026. There's a lot of froth in the market, but what can they do to to stand out and and attract clients even given what you said? Some of them are are more technical and able to push buttons themselves, right? And may may judge the value that you're providing.

16:41So, I think the like up to a million, I think you you probably just need like one thing. you you're focused in on like this is the one thing. This is what I'm good at. All the all the content I post all everything about this company or this agency is about this one thing. And then that's how you sort of become known as as the go-to person for that one thing. And it's very it like fixes all your positioning issues, all the branding issues because it's just one thing. It's very clear. like we do Reddit for whatever, you know, and that that that's it.

17:25And I think for that, I think you can run the agency into seven figures and from there branch out into all the other stuff because obviously then you sort of have the benefit as as with with us as well where once you have some customers, you will always have unlimited feedback for okay, I want this, I want that, can you recommend somebody for this? And and this is how you organically grow. Whereas if you say okay we we have all these services you pick whatever there's it's not the spear kind of approach I guess. Yeah. I mean productizing saved uh at least my interest I'll say in running an agency. We we tried an agency model about 10 nine years ago where we were a content agency.

18:10Um, but really we were we were trying to do anything we could, right? We tried a little PPC, we tried a little linkbuilding, we tried a little uh and and then when we found our first thing, we we kind of made a name for ourselves in this done for you Harrow service and and like you said, it just simplified everything. There was really only one page that mattered on our site. There was really only one thing to promote. There was really only one thing to talk about sales calls, one product to price, one one type of person to hire to fulfill. Every just got so much easier. What What about though? Um now we're stepping along the journey. It's years later.

18:50We have a few things we productize. Is there an inflection point where you think, "Yeah, you should go full suite or would you say actually I don't know if it's worth the danger?" Like there's a lot of lurking dangers there. Just stay productized. Oh, so you're thinking to go from but like the agencies we work with they might be productized but they have like this whole catalog of other productized stuff and uh very often it's not even an agency delivering it they're just selling it you know there's some other agency delivering that particular like maybe PPC management and their focus on SEO they just they sell it to the customer

19:36because the customer that the client wants it but they're not the ones delivering it. So that's another like avenue to go to look into for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Really leaning into your marketing skill set rather than trying to deliver everything inhouse. I think at one point um Morgan, my co-founder, and I needed needed someone to really communicate to us. The phrase I used that they they used is like, is this is this a hill you're really willing to die on of of fulfilling 100% in-house? And and it was really a pride thing.

20:15Uh and I thought that it was what clients ultimately cared about, but as we've all heard a million times, and I just needed to sink in, they just want the results. they're not that interested in exactly how you do everything. Uh yeah, whether it's AI or another agency or whatever. But I think like ultimately they're buying kind of your taste, your seal of approval, your kind of reputation, whereas they could go on Fiverr and get all this stuff, you know, but because it's coming from you, you know what you're doing, you you kind of vetted it.

20:56So that that is where where the value is especially for like really high-end clients that I don't think they buy like a lot of productized services to be frank you know they they want the hands-on even more but even for productized agencies is it's it's the brand of of of the agency that is the biggest value ad I guess yeah once you start working with clients where the procurement process is an actual procurement process with legal teams and multip And even things like onboarding specialists for vendors, uh you they they don't want to run up the bill finding another vendor. If they can just ask you, can you just do this for me? They can get started tomorrow instead of six months of vetting.

21:37So yeah, it's it's something that it's taken me a long time to swallow that pride and and say like, oh, they they just want my help. Uh they don't actually care if it's me doing it or the next person. And if you were to like let's say be be like okay I'm not going to do this but I will refer you to the to this other person which we have also done for like customization work and and templates and stuff and that other person screws up and they have the client has a bad experience then now that reflects negatively on you right and so you have a lot of downside and no upside in referring that client to somebody else.

22:23So, you might as well help them as as like the middleman, I guess. Yeah, I've seen it. Um, I don't want to name any names obviously, but we've we've tried over the years to find people we could refer out our clients to. It's a big leap of faith. And as you said, it's Yeah, I wouldn't say no upside, but it's extremely small. Extremely small. uh and you're trying to do it in good faith to your client and you're actually burning them in the process. Uh it's uh it's a really it's a hard one to to dig yourself out of that hole uh with a client and they're sympathetic, but the fact of the matter is you did it and they were just asking you for help. Uh so that's tough.

23:02Uh what about not clients, but you know, you you surely built a team at your agency, but also now you I'm sure run a team. For me, running an agency, one of the biggest pain points has been, we could call it HR or talent management, but I've had to hear some pretty harsh feedback about my communication style, and that's not uh why I'm bringing this up. I'm saying I've I've burned some interpersonal bridges learning the hard way of how to properly interact with people.

23:46Uh what are you know what what's something you've learned along the way that maybe someone either at my level or or just building their team could really do better by any particular book or resource or or just you learn the hard way yourself. Yeah. I'm not the best person to house this because we have a small team but like with the agency my philosophy was to hire the whatever the cheapest way to get the job done right like hire off offshore you just follow the SOP you get the job done doesn't matter now with with the SAS it's completely the opposite I like hire the people where I trust their kind of judgment and their skills or whatever. So, I don't like I'm not a great manager. I don't know how to manage people. I'm more like, okay, you you know, you do it.

24:32You figure out what you want to do. This is kind of my approach. And it it works for me, but I imagine it doesn't work for in all cases, right? It's very it's just something I'm not not that, you know, I'm not a particular good manager or anything. Oh, it's a it's a hard it's a very steep learning curve for a lot of us agency owners. Uh would a lot of us come from freelancers and then we just managed to get enough business that we can't do it all ourselves anymore and then now we've got new skills to learn. Uh I know for myself uh the biggest unlock I've I've kind of approached this in reverse.

25:17I think I'm reading Dan Martell's Buy Back Your Time right now and he says first first one should be an assistant. Uh I didn't do that, but I can say the the best investment in the last year has has been our operator uh Muskaan. She's it's just it's a tough position to operate when you got a team of dozens of people. And I don't I I don't want to go back to that position. Uh I it's just so hard. you're dealing with problems all the time. And so my hats off to her uh to to run that.

25:59So that that would be my tip is like if you're feeling stressed by all the competing needs for your attention, uh find find that person who can sit in that seat and take a step back and but really it's ideally a step up to be thinking about things beyond the day-to-day. Yeah, for sure. But I think for like a like proper agencies, uh this this hiring skill set definitely something I admire because like you got to be on it all the time, you know? It's you have maybe churn, employee churn. So you have to be hiring all the time. You have to like make sure everybody's happy. And this is this is like the other big skill set. I feel like if if you know how to do that, you could build any kind of company maybe. I don't know. That depends on on size.

26:46Yeah. I mean, we're we're obviously all dealing with AI um and grappling with like does this replace people, but rather than uh replace people, I think I think it's just changed recruitment. We're looking for different types of people. We're looking for critical thinkers, uh, early adopters of tech, uh, these these kind of there are I used to I used to not understand the term entrepreneur, but I think I've got a better handle on it now. Just people who are really curious and and trying new things. So like this old school way of hiring, you're like almost like a robot. You complete these SOP steps.

27:29Maybe that is no longer a thing if if you have like SOP steps that AIs can do. That AI can do. Yeah. It's a tough balancing act because then a real Greg that my team would note if I see that we've been going off the rails off an SOP, I'll be like, why are we going off the SOP? Like what? Like you got to have a good reason for going off the SOP. Not so much critical thinking, please. like just just stick to the it's a tough balancing act but to to grow there's a lot of pain there like you gota you got to try new things too.

28:11Yeah that that's my my idea as well right now is you at this time of like sort of turmoil I guess or uncertainty you got to try new things and that's kind of what I'm doing. Yeah. We're trying new things across uh the entire company with the rebrand. Uh we try to keep these pretty short, but I I still want to ask my favorite question. Uh you just you have a wealth of experience and I only ask what I know to ask. So, what did I not ask you about that you'd love to share with our audience that we can jam in here in the last couple minutes? you know, like one one secret ingredient, I guess, in a in a whole of this, and I'm sure you know it, is patience. It just takes a long time for for anything.

28:54So, if you're in the game for long enough, you it'll work out. It'll be great, but you just got to be patient. And not many people stick with it these days. I appreciate that for myself. It's a good reminder to have because those rainy days just come. You know, you hear and see people's social media posts and you get DMs on social media. I'm sure you do. I have, oh, you're crushing it. Like, your brand's crushing it. It's usually a vendor pitching you, but you you get people telling you how awesome you are. And and then you're like, really? It doesn't really jive with how I feel right now.

29:39Uh, but over a long enough time horizon, It just compounds. It just you got to put the time in. I I agree. Uh yeah, this was great. I I enjoyed meeting you in person. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Obviously, people need to check out wayfront.com. Uh Chris, where else should they look you up and learn more about the new brain? Uh you can follow me on LinkedIn. I post some stuff occasionally. Uh you know, it's not AI. It's just me posting because I haven't figured it out yet. But uh yeah, uh if if you're on a productized agency, check out Wayfront. Um yeah, perfect. Thanks for coming on, Chris. And hope to see you next time.

30:21Thank you, Greg. Cool, Chris. Thank you so much.