Steve Pockross has been the CEO of Verblio for nearly five years. As CEO, he applies leading marketplace and SaaS principles to create an industry-leading content creation platform with 3,000 U.S.-based writers supporting the creation of premium content at scale in every niche. Verblio has grown over 400% in the last four years. So, Steve is sharing his insight on why it's important to lead by putting people first and how that contributes to your agency's growth as a whole. 3 Golden Nuggets Exhibit your agency's values. Don't just say what your values are but actually exhibit them. Lead by example and personify the company culture you wish to set. The key to finding great talent is marketing to them. Treat your recruitment like you would a client. Write a unique job description that appeals to the right person and then market to them. Attract agency talent the way you would attract customers for your clients. Three keys to putting people first: (1) willingness to sacrifice other areas, (2) constantly seek feedback, (3) reward people who identify holes in the culture.   [smart_track_player url="https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/jasonswenk/How_to_Lead_Your_Agency_Team_By_Putting_People_First.mp3" ] Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Leading Your Agency Team By Putting People First Jason: [00:00:00] What's up beautiful agency owners! I'm excited. I have another amazing podcast guest who actually has been back several times. I don't know why we keep inviting you back. No, I'm just kidding. He's a good friend of mine and, uh, we'll provide lots of value. And we're going to talk about leading with people first for your agency. Now, before we jump into the show, I want you to do something. I want you to take a screenshot off your phone, listening to the podcast, upload it to Instagram, tag us. And give us a shout-out on Instagram. And then I can shout you back and say, Hey, thanks for listening to the show. So let's go ahead and get an episode. Hey Steve, welcome to the show. Steve:: [00:00:40] Hey Jason. Good to be back. Jason: [00:00:42] Yeah. I don't know. Like I said, I keep inviting you back, I guess you do well each time. So now we'll welcome back for the people that have not checked out the other episodes and we'll link those. Into the show notes of the episodes to make sure you guys go to JasonSwenk.com and check those out. Tell us who you are and what do you do? Steve:: [00:00:58] So I'm Steve. I am the CEO of Verblio. Oh, we are a Denver-based marketplace, content creation platform. So we have a network of highly curated, fantastic writers that we put together with our unique business model and put it on our platform so that we can do high quality content at scale for any niche. And we work primarily for agencies. Jason: [00:01:19] Awesome. Well, welcome back. And let's kind of jump into it, right? So, Let's talk about what does it mean to lead with people first and a growing company? I mean, you guys are, I think, 30 plus employees on your team. And I think a lot of agencies will relate to this. Steve:: [00:01:37] We've been fortunate to have some really high power growth in the last. So I took over as CEO four and a half years ago, and we were talking about what are some of the lessons that we could really pass on to agencies to help them with their growth as well, that can relate between the type of business that we do and the type of work that agencies do. And so one of those big strategies is putting people first. And that might sound like the most cliche strategy of all time. Going back to "Good to Great." Put the right people on the bus first. I think we took a really, well, we think abo