**Cold Open (Jake almost dies at a paintball tournament)**

**Skip the Cold Open at 13:00**

1 in 5 businesses fails within the first 5 years. We think that number is much higher in the digital agency space. We're rounding off our 4th year with Evergrow and seeing continual 100% year-over-year growth with no business debt.

But when we look around, we see new (and even older) agencies doing really dumb things that are killing their businesses.

The gurus out there will tell you that you can hire an appointment setter and closer on a strict commission basis and even do the same for the marketing execution by outsourcing it to the Philippines. Although, yes, you can do this -- it's a surefire way to kill your business within that first 5 years.

If your entire sales process is
outsourced, you have no brand identity.

If your entire marketing execution is outsourced, you have no quality control and no value prop.

You'll get away with a few bucks in the first year. A respectable wage as a solo operator, but eventually, the business will die -- and sooner than you think.

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As always, you can head over to our website at everbrospodcast(.com) (I'm leaving the link out to see if this episode gets discovered more by doing so -- sorry, it's the SEO in me).