Passing The Torch #03: Building an Agency, with Hal Zeitlin

Marcos Bravo: Hello everyone. Welcome back. My name is Marcos Bravo and this is episode three of passing the torch. Today I have the pleasure of talking to Mr. Hal Zeitlin. Hal was one of my first calls in GrowthMentor even though he came with a completely different problem at the time, but I’m gonna let you listen to the story. I also want to invite you to follow our podcast, follow our social media channels, and make sure you enjoy the following conversation. Cheers.

Marcos Bravo: Well, hello, hello, Mr. Hal, how are you doing these days, man?

Hal Zeitlin: Incredible. It’s beautiful to be here.

Marcos Bravo: So just so you know, at home and Hal is in Colombia managing right now is not where he lives usually he’s just taking advantage of the business is good these days, I guess. But um, I’m gonna let you introduce to the audience. You can tell them who you are, what you’re doing. And then I’ll tell a little bit of the story of how we met as well.

Hal Zeitlin: Awesome. So hey, everyone, my name is Hal for about four years was a marketer fell in love with all different things, and just got really obsessed with learning different types of marketing, eventually leading marketing for a few companies. And in my most recent company, I worked at Farmer’s Juice, which was a Shopify store. I just was looking over ads, creative website, and email, and I just wanted to over-deliver and made sure to, you know, serve the company well. So I found GrowthMentor over two years ago. And I did my first session, I think I’ve done over 100 by now. And I just started meeting with people about all these different tactics and strategies. And really being able to expedite my learning, and my ability to advocate for what was needed for the company. And so about a year ago, I decided to transition and started a Webflow agency that is now about to hire our 10th person. And it’s been a blast. It’s all due to the growth mentor, honestly, directly and indirectly, the network here is just so loving and strong. And so many of our great projects have directly and indirectly flown through this community.

Marcos Bravo: Man that’s amazing to hear because I just want to let people know that you were one of my first calls. And first of all, he’s one of the OG mentees. I mean, he is one of the people that helped build this place, because he’s kind of early on. You were one of my first calls to man. I remember we talked, we talked about something completely different. It was no marketing agency. At that time was the deli, right?

Hal Zeitlin: It’s the deli. Yeah. And I have another I have a second business. I and my brother have a deli in Chicago. And that’s a whole other story.

Marcos Bravo: We’ll talk about that one a little bit too man because I really curious I have I have no idea where it is right now what’s going on. I still follow you on Instagram too. But um, it’s crazy that everything started with that simple call. And I mean, for me, it was a great call, because I was really never like, I never done anything like, sort of straight to customer, especially bagels and all this stuff. And it was such a cool conversation. And I with the with time we stay in touch. And I remember when I decided to lounge, my agency, you were one of the first people I talked to, and you told me man agency life and I’m like, oh my god, I’m not alone in this journey. But it was great. But going back in time, right? How did this whole sort of curiosity or need for help come out? Like where were you that you said that? You said, Okay, I think I need to talk to someone that knows more or knows differently. Like, what was the little bug? Bye, cheers it. Yeah, this is what I want to do.

Hal Zeitlin: So I think a lot of it comes back to me wanting to control outcomes. And serve clients. Performance marketing used to be a cool hot term four or five years ago. Now it’s not so much. And it was exciting that through smart strategy and hard work, I could like generate results for a company. I thought that was so cool. And I was in this place where this company really blew up overnight. And we just had all this opportunity to grow and hit some goals. And so I had to find people to help me. And usually, experts are just way too expensive to hire for consulting. And I was just surprised that these people who normally their time would be worth hundreds of dollars an hour were essentially sharing it for free, and like excited to do so. And so I just really made a habit of at least once a week, if not more, meeting with people and talking about all these different strategies. And it has really helped me expedite my professional growth and really help to serve the business that I was responsible for leading marketing for.

Marcos Bravo: Did you come the first time for something specific? Was it something that you really needed to fix or do you just get a general just to check it out?

Hal Zeitlin: I think it was around Facebook ads. It was right before things kind of fell apart. I was getting crazy relaxed. It was awesome. But I wanted to scale that row. So I wanted to be able to go beyond the few campaigns. And Nicholas Mulin was one of if not one of the first mentors I met with. And it was just crazy. This person has managed millions and spend knows the E-commerce vertical. And he was just there, like, literally looking at my campaigns and giving me thoughts and ideas. Okay, what’s the next step? And after that first call, I was like, Whoa, this is sweet. Oh, my gosh.

Marcos Bravo: So, you got you you had your advice first? Oh, yeah, you figure out some sort of some stuff with Facebook ads. But then you decided to move on. I mean, if you’ve done almost 100 calls, that means that there’s something else that you’re finding around. And I’m going beyond growth mentor here. And I’m going to be finding the sort of mentoring idea, something helpful for your business for your career. So how do you take it from that first goal into sort of getting deeper into talking to all of these cool mentors that are doing stuff for free?

Hal Zeitlin: I think the first thing is like, I love what I do. I love digital marketing, I love digital strategy. I love creating things. And so it just flows from this. And if you are like a T-shaped marketer, and you have broad responsibilities, I feel like Earth mentors, like, such an awesome opportunity for you, if you want to go beyond a certain discipline. And so, you know, maybe one week, I was just thinking you’re running ads. But the thing is, like, you have to run analytics on the ads, and a lot of marketers and people. It’s not like they’re lazy. They’re just like normal people who want to have work-life balance, and they say, Okay, I’m just gonna focus on this, and either this other thing won’t get done, it won’t get done as well, or we just need a budget to hire someone else. My personality is more like, I want to not only be able to know, make sure it’s done, right. But I want to be able to talk about it. And so most of the time, I would put something together and then surely get real-life feedback and kind of see what the unknowns were before me. And usually, if you listen to podcasts and articles, it’s not at all the same as meeting with someone who actually does this as a profession. And so there are always problems to solve always opportunities. And so growth mentor, it’s just that directory, you can get lost in it if you want it to.

Marcos Bravo: That’s actually interesting about you when you mentioned because I’m having yet we’re doing this podcast and the idea of doing this podcast, for example, right? We wanted to do something different. And not to talk about the framework of this or the steps to do that. But we wanted to sort of look into the behind-the-scenes, right? Like how people get to go for help, and how they apply that help. Did you have your agency when you started finding mentors, or you came up with it later?

Hal Zeitlin: I guess when I first started at Farmer’s Juice, I had a few other things I was doing small on the side. But I always was helping people I have an issue sometimes saying no, but I’m getting better at it. But I always had a few other things going on, just because people would ask for my help. I really, it was only like, maybe eight months to a year into Farmer’s juice. When someone asked me to help with what I learned in Webflow, like, three, or four years ago, and someone asked for help with it. And then I realized I just love this. And so I started doing things slowly on the side. And for the last four or five months of my time at Farmer’s Juice, I was just really building an agency at the same time. And it was, it was pretty intense. And so you know, my growth mentor experience then turned somewhat more from marketing tactics and strategy and more into leadership, hiring, training a team, and even just client management there. And so growth mentor, you know, helps me talk about strategy and tactics. But also it’s just incredible, talking with people who’ve managed agencies their whole life, and even people who own agencies, just about those, those gotchas and catches of that line of work.

Marcos Bravo: Now and these days, right? Well, you’re managing like, what are you doing managing? First of all? I think everyone should hear this.

Hal Zeitlin: Yeah, our project manager, Natalia, who’s just oh my gosh, she is the best. I appreciate her so much. She lives here. And I do have a meditation retreat next week. I’m taking off for five days, but I thought it was a great opportunity to go down, do some strategic planning, and meet my people in person. Most of my design team is in Asia and Indonesia. So last August, I flew us off to Bali for a week. We got a villa and had fun was created together. And right now we’re planning off-site with our dev team, about six people in Spain and Portugal. And so I’ve just kind of felt like GrowthMentor is a hack to just really expedite and evolve your professional life. I’ve just found with remote teams, being able to get together with people in person, look them in the eye and just like, share that joy, it makes a big gathering, it makes such a difference. And it’s really difficult to do, especially if you have children, I don’t have children. And I’ve sort of been able to put the energy that would go into raising a little baby, and to look after my team and, and trying to build this environment where it just serves everyone who touches it, which, honestly, it’s been extremely challenging

Marcos Bravo: How many people do you have in the agency these days?

Hal Zeitlin: We have over 20 people on payroll each month, that doesn’t mean they’re all full-time. And there are some people that kind of I shared between the agency and the deli. But I think we just Dahveed we’re doing our test project with him new developer that we’re hiring, he’s in Bogota, I think he’ll be the 12th FTE, and no company across the agency and the deli.

Marcos Bravo: Man, that’s quite a growth.

Hal Zeitlin: It’s, you know, it’s insane. And I mean, I’ve invested everything we’ve made back into the company. And sometimes it’s been a little risky. But like recently Webflow enterprise referred us to a project, I think about it, I can say that. And it’s just like just that lever of working directly with Webflow on some of these larger projects and builds and just having that trust there. You know, this project in particular really motivated me to grow the team a little bit more and just really hone in on our craft and, and deliver that high level of delivery. And, again, having these conversations, all flows from over, I guess two years of being on Growth Mentor talking with people. If you’re an agency owner, and you can talk about the strategy, and you know, this, okay, let’s talk about analytics. Okay, now talk about SEO, and let’s talk design, like, you know, it’s not for most people, to kind of spend all that time learning it, but spending a little bit of time, it really can help you build trust with people. And it also can let you genuinely help people and not just be like a fake SEO guru. No disrespect to fake SEO.

Marcos Bravo: There are plenty out there. They’re making their money, I mean, everybody needs to be some. So what are you guys as for the Webflow for the people who don’t know what Webflow is? Can you give me a little rant about what, what are the agents doing? What Webflow really is?

Hal Zeitlin: Cool. Webflow is all about helping brands on their marketing layer, there’s a spectrum, on the left side is no code, like drag and drop, super abstract, you don’t have to think at all. But when you do that, it’s making a lot of decisions for you. There are limitations, and the underlying code is clunky. So that’s on the far side, on the left, on the right side is pure custom code headless, like you need a lot of engineers, it’s super slow, it’s more expensive, that’s on the right. Webflow, I feel is the optimal solution, because it’s a visual interface, so you don’t have to write a ton of code, you can write a ton of code, and we do. And so it’s right in the middle of that. It’s complex and difficult, but it’s not as complex and difficult as going full-on code. So what it’s allowing brands to do is build these super custom, high-performing marketing sites. And then lets your marketing team manage that site without needing a ton of engineers. It really is the industry leader in SaaS and startup companies for building these marketing sites, where it’s just the sweet spot between efficiency scale, and just being able to build really cool things.

Marcos Bravo: And when you get a new customer, and it’s like, you don’t just deliver their product, right? Do you have a whole sort of step-by-step holding hands with them? Because it’s a new thing? I mean, I never used it. I never, I never really got it. Well, I was I was either we have a bunch of developers doing stuff or someone come with no code. They’re just putting little squares together, right? How do you manage the process of not onboarding, but beyond onboarding, right, like getting a customer to say, okay, look, I know what you do not that much. What can you do for me, and, and how you’re going to help me out as a company, right?

Hal Zeitlin: Customers asking how we can help them. Now, first thing if you’re building a marketing site, especially if you’re a tech company, the first thing that’s most important is having a scalable design system that’s consistent, it’s professional. If your design system isn’t strong, your site’s going to be clunky, it’s going to break it’s going to be messy. And so the first thing we’re helping customers do, it’s not development. It’s not love development, it’s design and looks and feels. And that’s going back to the growth mentor. What’s helping us here and growth mentors? It’s, it’s helping us go beyond our narrow area of focus, to help serve a bigger picture to help serve our clients serve our companies. So we start off there and from there, we just go into development, but with development, we have to ask, Okay, what’s your growth strategy? How are you sending traffic here? How do you want to manage this? There are so many small decisions we have to make and I’m someone who spent a good bit of money on ads. And I spent some time in design, we’re just able to have these conversations that this core hub of your website, if your business, it’s optimized, it’s working. And so TLDR, we guide them through design, we understand their marketing strategy, and we advise them on building a marketing site, it’s gonna hit their growth goals. When we build a site.

Marcos Bravo: Do you think learning all of these little things from all these, as people would experience makes you a better leader to take on this project? Because if someone comes to you, and they want to focus on the creation and Webflow Yeah, but they have nothing like they have no clue what to do in social media afterward. I mean, you could tell them eventually, well, this is what I learned.

Hal Zeitlin: We can talk about it and jam out. But I also am super focused on a few service offerings. And there’s a handful and I have experts that I work with. At this point, there are people in the company who are better, I mean, everything I do, and I can talk about all of them, and I enjoy it. But social media is one thing we just aren’t going to touch because I’ve just learned, despite learning all these things from GrowthMentor, you really the saying is, you know how Jack of all trades, master of none. I think that I’ve learned over time in the agency to really focus on the service offerings and focus on really mastering certain levels of service and then expanding from there does that make sense?

Marcos Bravo: It makes sense. But what do you feel you’re at? Or how do you translate your leadership skills to your team?

Hal Zeitlin: Oh, boy, my leadership skills, honestly, I just, here’s how I think I there’s like four different areas, there’s the client, and what’s in their best interest. There’s the company, the business, what’s in their best interest. There’s every individual team member, and what’s serving them their goals, hopes, and their dreams. And there’s this whole team unit of the team, how we work together. And there’s this whole team dynamic. And usually in corporate America, or just the world, one, two, or even three of these are getting the short end of the stick and one party is getting optimized, or maybe to my goal, and the vision of the agency is to be like very straightforward with clients. And the team is saying, Guys, we’re trying to optimize that everyone is getting what they want. And no one’s getting the short end of the stick. And so the more and more I think just having that empathy and asking the team members, hey, is this in line with what you’re looking for? For the client? Is it serving their best interests, I think trying to operate from there has helped us all come together. And it’s helping the team make decisions and advocate for things without me having to try to guide them. And disclaimer, I make a ton of mistakes. And there’s much to learn. But as far as my leadership strategy, I just tried to tap into that and see what happens, you know.

Marcos Bravo: I totally relate to that strategy. But it’s, that’s not an easy strategy at all. I mean, because when you try to tick all the boxes, right, is as complicated as it gets.

Hal Zeitlin: Yeah, I mean, I ran out of money, like, you know, like, even like, I’ll get into all the details. And look, there’s stuff coming in. But yeah, like I’ve been, it’s hard, it’s super hard to do that. And if you want to save up money in the business, too, it’s been very close and tight for many months. And so can you do that, without taking on venture funds or without having, you know, without being close, I don’t know, maybe some people with certain backgrounds and experiences you can for me? It’s been very tight this experience building up the team to this place. And I’ve been comfortable making that because I’m trying to just build a team and a product that I’m really proud of. And it’s happening. I mean, surely it’s happening.

Marcos Bravo: I think that’s the kind of company that they really end up succeeding or staying, right? Because if you go and get money. Yeah, I mean, there’s still money that doesn’t matter what recession or whatever, right? People still have money, they still want to invest in stuff. But when you bootstrap your company, right, is it makes a difference? I think that even the team feels differently because they feel there’s a purpose behind they’re building something together.

Hal Zeitlin: Yeah, they all are a little too in the loop there. But I think that’s true. And also we have a core team, and there are certain consultants and nice contractors there. But I’m also maybe things will change. I’m not trying to grow this massive agency, I definitely want to be able to take on projects and have structures. But I think also by keeping the core team to a certain level, it keeps a level of intimacy. And I’d speak of many agency owners because just through growth mentor in general, and they get to a point and then they keep growing and then everything changes, the dynamic changes and I feel it’s possible. But I’m honestly content right now. Building this core team brings this all really close together feeling happy and living in that vibration. And let’s see where it goes after that.

Marcos Bravo: I think it is possible. I remember when working with Big to Chart, it was a team of 50 people and into a company with 11 million people using the product. Right. I mean, and 50 people working their butt off just to make sure that they weren’t. But it’s definitely and you feel the difference, right? I mean, like going from a company of I don’t 500 people go into a team of 50. Wow is a huge difference. But you feel it on the team too. And I’m going to jump into something completely different now. Because I really want to want to relate all of this. Because you’re learning curves started with the daily right, like, tell me literally, how was the deli business? And how did you manage to make work, because it’s a completely different thing.

Hal Zeitlin: It’s crazy that so my brother’s a world-class chef, like truly went to culinary schools and worked in many Michelin-star restaurants. And I guess during the pandemic, everything shut down, and he started baking bread. And before and bagels and getting into that, before he knew it, he was like at the farmers’ markets in Chicago had the longest lines, like I felt bad for all the other markets stands because Sam is just like, doing it. He’s like go crazy, do it. Like this is his baby, his dream. And eventually, he quits his job and goes on it all for himself. And you know, like the food business success rate is like a portly low. Most of them don’t make it and I see you and so I just, I had this team. And I really, I wanted to support him. And I wanted to help him kind of make his dream come true and work together. So that’s maybe been over two years. I mean, one reason I started the agency was to get him designed to development support technical support, to build a business that he could support a family on. And so we’ve just been going month after month, I built him a team. And we shared some of my team. And you know, this summer, we’re going to be in 30 markets. And we now have her own kitchen location. And we’re saving up like we need a million dollars saved up to have her own spot. And now we’re like, Okay, how are we going to do that? You know, we’re 60k in debt right now. And it’s like a little. I’ve never been in for that agency we’ve ever been there. Forgive me, Sam for talking about this openly. But yeah, like we’re 60k in debt. And my brother calls me it’s like, how, like, Are we okay? Like, is this okay? Like, what’s gonna happen? Because he’s, you know, he’s, he’s a chef. He’s not, like, you know, a trained business school person. And like, he’s like, Oh, I have no money, what’s gonna happen? And so we’re just kind of holding off for the summer. But we filled out these projections, we have all this technology put together that once the summer the sun comes out, we’re in these markets, we’re going to pay off our debt, we’re gonna start saving up money. And we’re just marching to having your own brick-and-mortar. And we have this team of people. We’re all dedicated. And like, we’re we’ve won the bagel bracket of Chicago, like we literally are selling bagels, where’s this bagel bracket, my dad always wanted Sam to work at Ritz Carlton as a chef because it’s the most like, white collar, pay, perks, vacations. And literally today, we are selling our bagels to like, my brother is working. Like he’s built his own business, the server, it’s called, and without. And it’s his thing. It’s his baby. And it’s just like, it’s been, it’s crazy. And it’s been so hard to manage the agency, honestly, right now, I put more time into building his team to support him. And now we’re just using the agency to write some small checks to help things go along. But before I know it, like this, this will be in a really strong,

Marcos Bravo: But that’s with any businessman like that doesn’t matter what you do, there’s always a moment that you will be a minus. And the only way to get out of the mind is to just keep going, you kind of just got to just leave it and let it die. If you just keep going, he’s gonna work.

Hal Zeitlin: And it’s just that the whole idea of bootstrapping, and being in debt for the business was like nothing I ever knew about it. Just like I’m just working and serving businesses I’ve learned that’s kind of how it works and the different ways and being able to use growth mentor and talk to people who have personally been in that situation, or, you know, who work in companies where that’s the norm. It’s helped me mature a lot. And it’s helped me sort of operate beyond my age, I hope. And certainly speak with confidence, especially to my brother to tell him like Sam, like, this is the way it has to be. We’ve got this like, I know it’s scary. But like look at this plan that we have, it’s gonna it’s going to work out and there’s no way to grow the team and train them without doing this and it just kind of flows from just this professional life and working with folks like you or we just have that that understanding of this is how business life works. You know

Marcos Bravo: But again, that’s the only way I don’t think there’s anything that can prepare you for any I mean, I told you, I had my own food business that I had to cry because of the pandemic I had my ice creams and stuff but yeah, nothing prepares you to feel like oh my god, I’m down. Big time. I have no money but Well, I mean, the only way to get money is just to keep going to keep moving forward. What’s next for you, with the agency? You said that you want to keep it boutique style, maybe small, like a small team. But what’s next, not only with the agency but also with your own growth with your own professional career where you want to take it?

Hal Zeitlin: So right now, so the cool thing about web flow is it lets people who are not like trained developers, and a lot of, you know, subpar developers, you get into web and great, like, if you want to earn some money and build your own career like Webflow is one of the best options to do that for sure. But with the clients we serve, we can’t just be using self-taught average web flow developers, we need like really strong people. Why am I saying this? In the agency, Webflow, lets people who don’t have a technical web development background, those an agency where they can bring in other skills. So maybe you were like a media buyer, and you learn Webflow. And now you’re bringing that in, or maybe you’re like, a great communicator, and you’re able to build this agency around that, for me, I was a marketer. So I’m able to build this web flow agency without being a professional, designer, professional developer, and serve that. So I’m having to learn a lot on the job. And there are pros and cons to that. So right now we’re focused heads down on building incredible processes and systems. We have two clients that like our really high-growth startups, once even a unicorn, we got a unicorn client, which is kind of crazy. And we’re doing better and better each month, and like, they’re happy with our work. But we need to be in a place where our service that we’re offering them is so strong, it’s so organized and efficient, where it’s just like, if there are budget cards, or things get rough, it’s like, we can’t cut candidly, we have like we have to find a way to make this work. And we can be flexible if things get hard, too. But we’re trying just to build that system where we’re such a reliable partner. And the quality is so high that we just are dependable there. And that’s incredible. I thought it was gonna be much easier to do this. And we’re like, We’re doing great, and we’re getting better. But I think building that well-oiled machine is like, all of our extra resources all of our time. We’re just heads down on building that, because I’ve never worked in an agency, I manage agencies before. So I’m getting to work with people and go with mentor and other people that network to like, learn, okay, how can we, how can we do this. And sure, you can buy a course and this and that. But there’s nothing different than making mistakes, hitting your head against the wall, trying something, and having the team own building something, getting that buy-in, and launching it’s exhilarating, and also like tier producing as well.

Marcos Bravo: I’m really, really happy for you. I’m trying to figure out what kind of questions I should use to close the conversation, right? You know, like in every podcast, you have some sort of let me ask you. So I’m going to try this one because you mentioned the failure, right? Like, is there any big mistake or any big fail that you, like, still keeps you awake at night, before falling asleep, or something that people can learn from hopefully?

Hal Zeitlin: I work really hard, Marcos to not disappoint my clients. I have some time. So we have I think the first thing is when you’re starting a business, and you don’t have that much money, and you’re getting going like you don’t get to afford the best talent. And you have to start off with a certain thing. And I mean, there’s one thing in particular, where we just like, you know, for what, and it wasn’t even the thing, these failures aren’t even that big, like, they like they could, things could have been so much worse. I think it’s just the lesson. I guess I learned from there. In hindsight, even though I grieve about making, not having the best client experience, it’s just accepting that when you’re starting a service business, you’re going to have to make some mistakes. And unless you have a lot of money saved up, you’re going to have to work with people who like, aren’t perfect. And you should really accept that and accommodate that in your process and system. So that if there is a mistake or something has been done to your standard that you can make sure that it’s right. Every six months, I’ve kind of upgraded the team and hired so much more talented, expensive people. And so I would think just that kind of approach is something for bootstrap service businesses. In my view, that’s just kind of the path and just I wish I had earlier accepted and given myself some space for that. Because it was very stressful and sad for me sometimes to disappoint a client, but it’s happening way less and less. Sometimes clients have unreasonable expectations and I need to also have to take a deep breath and beat up on myself.

Marcos Bravo: But I mean that’s cool. You’re literally learning out of all of that, right? I mean, definitely don’t have to put the extra pressure. Just drop a little friendly advice in there. Just take it easy. You’ll you’re doing, you’re doing great. And also, just to finish it on a higher note. What’s the biggest or best move that you’ve done in the business? Like the best decision that you’ve done lately? That you say wow.

Hal Zeitlin: The best move?

Marcos Bravo: Yeah.

Hal Zeitlin: Oh, okay, what’s the best move?

Marcos Bravo: Something that made you proud lately? You said like, yeah, I made that goal.

Hal Zeitlin: Super proud. I think it’s just building a team of people. And then like putting them in a place where you’re not rude about them proving themselves but giving them clear standards and expectations, letting them brides those expectations, and then putting them and just saying, Hey, this is something you’re leading, go for it. And it starts with attracting the right person. But for this new person to V that we’re about to hire Sabrina, one of our developer leaders, she just like put together a test project scoped it put together clear directions, like everything, I couldn’t have even done it better. Just setting this guy up for success to kind of enter the company and prove himself. And she just like, it’s just so beautiful. And I’m just so proud of her. Sabrina is really, really happy, like what you’re doing in the company. And just, you know, I’m going to be offline for four business days on a meditation retreat next week. Never done that before. Like, even if the unicorn websites are down, I won’t be available. And I just like building buildings to a place where I’m like, Alright, team. Like, let’s serve each other. Let’s serve our clients. Let’s do it. Well, just seeing little things like that pop up more and more. It’s just like,

Marcos Bravo: Man, that’s a huge, being able to alright, I’m just gonna go back to my cabin. The ship should be very soon you take care of it. No, I’m really happy and impressed with the journey that for me started with that composition with you about the deli and now he’s moving to these amazing behemoth that you’re building.

Hal Zeitlin: It’s really nice. And yeah, it’s been so great being in touch with you. Over the last year. Oh my gosh, it’s been a while.

Marcos Bravo: It’s been a while man. Absolutely.

Hal Zeitlin: You’re just you’re born to like, lead these conversations, by the way. And you have a very nice microphone too. And it’s I know,

Marcos Bravo: I know. I’m gonna try to get these people to sponsor me because it’s a good one.

Hal Zeitlin: Yeah, thank you for Spirit sharing your time and just guiding this conversation and making me feel so comfortable and safe.

Marcos Bravo: Man you you’re rocking the World Man. So thank you

Hal Zeitlin: And shout out to growth mentor peeps all the friends there everyone’s

Marcos Bravo: They’re definitely watching this

Hal Zeitlin: Y’all are great. Much love.

Marcos Bravo: Brother. Big hug. Thank you for coming. Enjoy meta gene. Say hello drink good coffee drink good. Forgot that I will keep drinking kombucha and there’s a very good drink that I forgot like Anish flavor. But they’ll let you know just asked him for the annual labor drink. And then they’ll tell you. Okay, brother. Thank you. All right, all the best in your retreat. And good luck, man.

Marcos Bravo: So as you can see, that was a very fun conversation, it was almost like catching up with an old friend, there were a few things that they stayed in my mind. And they’re probably the biggest nuggets that I took from this gumbo this time. But I’m gonna do it with a regular so so let’s go for this. So one of the things that I really stayed with me is the passion that Hal has behind his business. So if I have to take that nugget out of that little bit, it will make sure you love what you’re doing, because it’s gonna make a huge difference in the way you deliver your final product when you have passion behind. Things are completely magical. I really like the way that how did over 100 calls with GrowthMentor, that means he wasn’t ever scared of asking for help. He was ready to jump and say I don’t know this and know where to find the answer and where to find help. So if there’s something you need to remember, just please don’t ever be scared to say I need help. I really liked the way Hal is also building an agency from scratch. That’s something that you should really listen to and think and listen to the way he’s putting together the team, and how much he focused not only on the team but on four different pillars that sustain the whole business. And something that I also enjoy is when he focused on welcoming the customer in a way that he’s ready to help and makes them feel that he is ready to help them at any time. And this is something that came out of his growth mentor experience, how much you are willing to give in order to take a little back. So those are the four things that probably really stayed in my mind. I’m gonna let you go and go back and try to find them and listen to them yourself so you can get something out of it. So wait, let me finish this real quick. So yeah, those were the things that really stay with me. I really want to invite you to go and revisit them. I also want to invite you to follow our podcasts and social media channels. So you are always aware of all the things happening around growth mentor, I want to invite you to listen to our next episode coming very soon. And I want to thank you for all the support you made our podcast, one of the most-watched videos on the GrowthMentor channel, so thanks, and I hope to see you next time. My name is Marcos. This is passing the torch. Thank you for coming. Cheers.