Do you sometimes doubt your ability as an agency owner? Are you constantly comparing yourself and feeling like you have imposter syndrome? Setbacks make every agency owner nervous about their ability to push through. Today’s guest has been successfully running an agency in an unconventional niche for years. They have experienced their share of setbacks and she was forced to come to terms with the fact that hard times shape her business as much as successes. Our guest shares how she learned to separate her identity from her role as agency owner and the importance of looking for outside support. As a result, she’s become much a more effective leader. Kate Ahl is the owner of Simple Pin Media, a Pinterest marketing agency focused on both organic and ad marketing. They help clients create a multi-layered approach to marketing their products or content on Pinterest. After seeing steady growth for a couple of years, her agency was recently hit by setbacks that shook her confidence. In this episode, we'll discuss: Second-guessing yourself as agency owner. Not letting the agency define you. Regaining the focus to get through the tough times.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.   Finding a Gap in the Market and Building an Agency Around It In 2010, Kate got her first taste of the digital marketing world by helping a friend who did Facebook marketing for freelance clients. They also dabbled in Pinterest and the potential for this overlooked platform. Three years later, Kate’s family was hit by the reality of post-recession when her husband lost his job. By then, her friend had learned more about Pinterest and suggested she manage people’s profiles. “It sounded like the dumbest idea,” she recalls, but since she was in a desperate situation, she gave it a try. She bought the Simple Pin Media domain, went through some content creator struggles, and got to work. Right around that time, Facebook changed its algorithm and businesses were scrambling to find other alternatives. It was the perfect opportunity to give Pinterest a try. After three or four months, her first clients started spreading the word about her work as a Pinterest educator. Still, the agency remained a side hustle for a while until a referral got her five inquiries at the same time. That was the turning point. Kate hired a business coach and from that point treated the agency as a serious business. Second-Guessing Yourself as an Agency Owner Revenue was a particularly tricky goal to set for Kate because of its variable nature. However, as the agency and team started to grow, the million-dollar mark seemed achievable. They did reach that milestone in 2019 and then continued to grow in 2020 and 2021. Unfortunately, she got hit later by the pandemic and in 2022 started seeing a decrease in revenue after several years of growth. Kate used to think the 7-figure mark was the dream for her agency. In reality, it is just another vanity metric like the number of employees. In fact, getting past the 7-figure mark came with a sudden awareness of the level of responsibility she had to employees and as the breadwinner. She started to question how clients were getting into their ecosystem and how sustainable it all was. She was suddenly very aware of how improbable it was to get over both a pandemic and a recession unscathed. The weight of being responsible for a large team – mostly made of working moms – really got to Kate. Suddenly, scaling back to a solopreneur or having a smaller team started to look very appealing. In reality, she can see she was self-sabotaging. Her coach brought this to her attention and helped her s