Ep 112 – Jay Owen, Business Builders – Slow Growth, Strong Culture
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Featuring: Jay Owen, Business Builders
In episode 112 of Agency Bytes, I sit down with Jay Owen, founder of the multimillion-dollar agency Business Builders and the community Agency Builders. Jay started his web design business at just 17 and has spent the last 26 years growing it—intentionally and steadily—into a values-driven company focused on people over ego and sustainable growth over fast wins.
We dive into the long game of agency leadership, building a business that can thrive without you, and the fulfillment that comes from creating jobs that others love. Jay shares how his faith and values guide the way he leads, the role community has played in his journey, and why slow growth might just be the secret weapon nobody talks about. Whether you’re scaling your team, wrestling with niching, or thinking about legacy, this episode is full of wisdom for the road ahead.
Key Bytes
• Jay Owen started his entrepreneurial journey at a young age.
• Slow growth can lead to more sustainable success.
• Creating job opportunities for others is a key motivation.
• Community is essential for agency leaders.
• Collaboration over competition fosters growth.
• Integrating personal values into business is important.
• Niche down or maintain variety based on personal preference.
• Productization can enhance agency efficiency and profitability.
• Having a support system prevents burnout.
• Building a strong team is crucial for agency longevity.Chapters
00:00 The Entrepreneurial Spirit Begins
02:37 Navigating the Hills and Valleys of Business
05:35 Building a Team and Creating Opportunities
08:54 The Importance of Community Over Competition
12:50 Creating a Supportive Environment
16:56 Integrating Personal Values into Business
20:56 Niche vs. Variety in Agency Growth
23:32 Productization and Agency Wisdom
Jay Owen started a web design company at 17 years old that has grown to a multi-million dollar agency and still growing 26 years later. He’s the author of Building a Business that Lasts and Host of a Podcast by the same name. Jay founded Agency Builders, a community to help agency leaders grow and scale in a healthy way.
Contact Jay at the Agency Builders Retreat or his AI with Jay website.
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Steve / Agency Outsight (00:01.518)
Welcome to Agency Bites, a podcast dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive. I'm Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Jay Owen. Jay started his web design company at just 17 years old. And fast forward 26 years later, it's a thriving multimillion dollar agency. He's the author of Building a Business that Lasts and the host of the podcast by the same name. Jay also founded Agency Builders, a community helping agency leaders grow and scale.
the right way. They have a retreat and a Slack channel and tons of other resources. So Jay, thanks for joining me. Welcome to the show. Yeah, so Seventeen, man, you were not the typical 17 year old. I was typically not very coherent at Seventeen to be launching a business. So good for you, man. What was that driving force?
Jay Owen (00:38.19)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve.
Jay Owen (00:47.095)
Yeah.
Jay Owen (00:51.864)
Well, I've kind of had that entrepreneurial thing in my blood from a pretty young age. My grandpa ran a restaurant chain. My uncle ran an insurance business. And so think when you see it, you want to do it. It's also just like in my nature a little bit, I think of just how I think and feel from a very young age, you know, pulled a little red wagon around a ballpark when I was eight or nine, selling drinks and snacks out of it. And like many other boys, you know, down here in Florida, ran a yard business when I was 12, 13, 14.
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:15.472)
Yep.
Jay Owen (01:21.742)
And, um, and then I started doing websites really about the same time. I was probably 11 or 12, which really when the internet came out and by the time I was 16, got an internship, uh, with a company here in Jacksonville, Florida. And, um, one thing led to another, you know, I thought, well, if somebody could pay me, you know, X amount of dollars an hour, which is probably like $8 an hour back then to do this. Um, I probably could do this for myself and start my own business. And so.
That's what I did at age 17. I mean, I used the word business very loosely because I think the total revenue that year is about 5,500 bucks, you know? So, uh, at this point we need to make that between like nine and 10 AM on a Tuesday, you know, to make the thing work. But, uh, but back then it was great. And I just need to pay for my car and movies in the weekend. And, uh, it was good enough.
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:51.132)
Mm-hmm.
Listen, at 17, that's a lot of money for a 17 year old.
Steve / Agency Outsight (02:08.08)
That's amazing. Yeah, I also had that entrepreneurial spirit. My parents are both entrepreneurs. And so as a kid growing up, my mom put me to work for her and her business and she had a general company and and so yeah, similar car washes, lawn, lawn services, anything we could. Selling things on sides of roads kind of stuff. So I love that man. Talk about like what the trajectory of the business 26 years. mean, Hills and Valleys, I'm sure hasn't all been straight skyrockets.
Jay Owen (02:37.08)
Sure, no.
Steve / Agency Outsight (02:37.422)
what were some of those hills and valleys for you?
Jay Owen (02:40.588)
Yeah, I mean, I am, I'm the slow grow guy, you know, I mean, I everybody in today's world wants to grow fast. They want a quick fix and usually it doesn't work very well that way. fast things when they crash, cause significant damage and when things are moving a little bit slower and they crash, you know, you wipe the bumper off and keep moving. And so, I've, I've always grown really slow. probably spent, gosh, close to a decade, just running it by myself. I say by myself, but I contracted out a lot of things when I couldn't.
Steve / Agency Outsight (02:49.307)
Hmm.
Jay Owen (03:08.098)
figure out how to do something myself. would find somebody to contract it out to, but I didn't hire employees for literally a decade. And then now once I started hiring a team, thought, okay, this is actually really great and kind of fun to create opportunities for other people. Actually, it was around 2008, like when the economy was collapsing.
the business was doing pretty good because I was in a little bit of a sweet spot and like a lot of the big agencies were actually losing work because companies were retracting their budgets due to the economic collapse. But I was so cheap at the time, it actually was a huge advantage. And so I was picking up work that I wouldn't have otherwise picked up somebody that would have spent $50,000 on a project before now can only spend five. Well, I was the guy that could do that back then, you know, and make it work and still be profitable.
Steve / Agency Outsight (03:39.312)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (03:53.966)
And I thought, looked around and thought, I think I could create a job for somebody else. Like I think I could create a job that I would want to have if I was another person. so part of my inspiration and really desire and heart in even having the agency still today, um, versus selling it and moving on to something else is I like creating a space where other people have a great job. Like, I mean, that, that is a driving force for me as much as profitability or anything else. Like I want to create a space where other people go.
This is a cool place to work. Like I like this makes my life better being here and that's that's worth doing to me.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:28.848)
Yeah, I had the same feeling when I had my agency. It presented me with so much gratitude to be able to employ people and give them a place to go where they could express themselves creatively. I didn't treat the business like a family because I kind of feel like that crosses a line for me. But I certainly felt like there was a relationship that we built where I was able to help support them in their career and guide, you know, be a part of their guidance and their trajectory. So, yeah, giving people a job is just the greatest thing.
Jay Owen (04:53.656)
Sure.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:58.236)
At what point in starting to add people to your team and grow the agency, were you able to get away from building websites yourself, getting under the hood, writing code, et cetera, to fully just being on the operational side?
Jay Owen (05:11.086)
Yeah, in the business first on the business. I mean, it took me a long time. Honestly, again, I'm a slow guy. I'm a slow learner. You know, one of my big mistakes early on was I didn't get in community soon enough. I didn't get around other people who had already done the thing before. I didn't have good mentor. had, I had a good mentor in business, which was my uncle when I was younger. But when I got into the agency world, it took me a long time to get in community and find people who had already done the things that I had that would have shortcut.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:16.87)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (05:35.298)
some of the mistakes and errors that I made. And the problem is I'm a tinkerer. So I like to get in and do the things. I'm a little bit of a jack of all trades, master of none, which is what has allowed me to last for so long in the early years by myself, because I would just do all the different things. They were never great, though, in the early years. I'm a below average designer. I'm a significantly below average developer. So I can do all the different pieces of the business.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:59.056)
Thank
Jay Owen (06:02.222)
but just not as well as the people who are actually experts in those particular pieces of the pie. so, but there was a season, um, when in the business where I was at a conference and I was talking about, um, next steps and growth. And, it was actually at a Dave Ramsey Entree Leadership event. Simon Sinek was speaking. I got to ask him a question. I forget what the exact question was, but it was about like growth trajectory of the future of the business. And he said, well, the question is how long does a business last? Uh, if you walk out in the street, you get hit by a bus.
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:30.524)
He
Jay Owen (06:30.79)
And is it six days? Is it six weeks? Is it six months? Is it six years? Like, is it 60 years? What is it? And I thought about that a lot and thought, I mean, probably not that long, honestly, probably doesn't last very long without me at all. I am the linchpin. And then you go, well, do I have a business or do have a job? Do I just have a bad job actually? And I realized that I actually had a reasonably bad job for a very long time, not an actual business that had real value. And so I started asking the question all the time.
You know, when I go out of town, whether it's a half a day, a full day, or eventually in 2020, I took a full month off. I want to have a list when I get back that says, Hey, these are all the things that we said we can't do until Jay gets back. And those are things to solve for. And eventually we solved for, I mean, I don't think it's ever a hundred percent, but probably 95 % of those things, to the point where it really doesn't need me, day to day, I think it would last a very long time without me at this point. and that is.
me a truly valuable business, both for my sake and the security of my future, but also for the team. Because I don't think any team wants to work at a place where if one person gets severely ill or, God forbid, dies, that all of sudden they lose their job next week. Nobody wants that kind of instability.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:42.778)
Yeah, I love that. think that kind of nods to Simon's book. I'm drawing a blank on the name of it.
Jay Owen (07:50.38)
He's got a maybe leaders eat last or.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:54.772)
Man, I'm gonna have to look it up. It's something about the longevity of a business and anyway, I'll look it up, but I don't wanna draw blank symbols here. But yeah, I love having the longevity. You've got probably the people and the processes in place that make it a business and not a job. And I think so many owners build themselves in the jobs you identified super early on. That's not what you want. You want something stable for yourself, for your team.
How big is the team now?
Jay Owen (08:26.19)
Internally, it's about 20 people and it's a really good size. That's where I like it. I don't really have an ambition of building a 200-person agency. It can be problematic though in the agency world because it's like you want to create growth opportunities for other people. In order to do that, to some extent, the agency has to keep growing, at least financially. And the agency world, I mean, you know this, but the agency world is traditionally a butts-in-seat game.
I mean, you have to have more people to scale it beyond a certain level because it's people who are getting the work done or engaging with clients, whatever else. think that this new world of AI presents a different opportunity to that. I think that we're going to be able to scale the agency significantly beyond what we would have financially and as far as what we're able to achieve and provide to clients without having to add a ton more people, which I think is really a big deal. I think The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek was the book you were thinking of, by the way.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:05.692)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:21.058)
Exactly. Yep. I also just looked it up. A great book and it talks about leaving a legacy and not just building something that's going to, like you mentioned, go on vacation or for whatever reason, dip out from the business and it dies out on you. And it ties back to the people and the allegiance that they have to your why and to your mission and what you're building and why you're building it. And you mentioned community being like a linchpin for you and discovering that early on. so that's.
Jay Owen (09:25.507)
Yep.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:49.212)
quote unquote competitors, we call it not competitors, friends, neighbors, whatever peers, but they're doing the same thing. How has that evolved for you over the years and talk about the value of community over competition for you and your agency?
Jay Owen (10:02.316)
Yeah, I always say I think any business leader or owner should be involved in at least two different kinds of communities. One, I think is it good to be in a generalist business owners community, people that do all kinds of different things. I've been in all kinds of different versions of these over years from local B &I groups to a C12 group to Dave Ramsey's Entree Leadership Team group. All those are similar in that there are many different kinds of businesses involved.
Also, for those of us in agency land, it's also an incredible prospect pool because you're involved with all these other people who mostly all of them need your services. And so there's a double-edged sword there. And on the other side, think people, regardless of industry, need to be involved in an industry-specific group. A group of people, when you walk into the room, generally, everybody does the same thing. Now, I know different industries are different with regards to how they handle competition. I have found in general, at least in the circles that I've been fortunate enough to be in,
agency owners and leaders, at least in the spaces that I'm in, tend to be pretty collaborative by nature. think design and creative people tend to be a little bit more like, let's build community, let's create things together. And so we believe a lot at agency builders in this idea of collaboration over competition. And I was in a group called the Bureau of Digital for a very long time, a guy here locally in Jacksonville, Carl Smith started that awesome group. I learned a ton from those folks. And yet over time, you also find like,
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:04.028)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (11:26.978)
You start to build your own tribes and your own circles. And I found that I had a bunch of agency leaders who were in many different buckets, some in C12, some in Entrez leadership, some in the Bureau of Digital, some in other places where I had met them, some in Storybrand. And I was trying to connect with them in all these different places. And I thought, well, let's just rally these folks together. In fact, we were at a, it was me and like five other guys who were sitting around drinking some bourbon late night after an event up in Nashville at a Storybrand retreat, actually with Donald Miller.
And we were like, we need more of this, like like-minded agency owners and leaders who are just willing to sit around and share the realities and be authentic. We're not in here trying to measure success in some objective way that makes us feel better than everybody else. We're just trying to share ideas. And so I was like, well, let's host an event. We can do a little thing down in St. Augustine Beach, because that's where I live and people like to come there.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:55.292)
He
Jay Owen (12:21.422)
in the spring when it's still snowing everywhere else. And they were like, great, let's do it. And so we did it four years ago for the first time had, I don't know, 30 people and everybody's like, well, when are we doing next year? And I was like, well, I didn't really plan on doing it next year. just thought we'd have a nice time one time, you know, and I lost money doing it, but it was fun anyway. And I was like, okay, well, I got to do it. If I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna not lose money next time. And I think we had 45 people the next time and 65 people the next time. We'll have close to a hundred this time. And so just again, some of the slow growth got little by little.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:41.904)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (12:50.24)
a few more people each year building community collaboration. We got almost 400 people on a Slack channel now. That's just kind of community that's connecting and sharing ideas. I am struggling with this. How can I solve it? And so that's kind of the evolution and the metamorphosis of creating our kind of our own space and my own community that I get to lead. And it's just a joy. love being with these folks. It's a really good time.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:12.22)
Hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:15.578)
I love how you talk about wanting to build a community to support one another and to share almost like the struggles and challenges and the commiseration or like, and a lot of these other groups do the same thing, like you're called the wife, another not assignment. why for wanting to build these communities is really heartfelt. And I admire that. And I see that in you and a lot of what you do, talk about like kind of what your
Jay Owen (13:33.646)
Sure.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:44.316)
almost the key to you building community is getting the right people around you, whether it's agency builders or on your agency team.
Jay Owen (13:50.572)
Yeah, I mean, the differentiation to me in this particular scenario is I think there's a lot of communities that talk about, you know, going from six figures to seven or seven figures to eight or eight figures to nine. A lot of communities talk about it be more profitable, about scaling your business, about, you know, all these kind of things. And those things are great. Like money and profit are not bad. You know, I see people that are like, you know, it's people over profits. I'm like, I mean,
Yeah, but it turns out you need profits to hire more people and people like to get raises and the way that they get raises is better profitability. Um, but that said, I always say that there's more to life than just work, even though I love to work. I'm a little bit of a workaholic, if I'm being completely honest. Um, but, but I've also got five kids, you know, who are growing up very fast. My oldest is 20, my youngest is 12 and other people who have had kids, especially older kids realize this is the toddler year seemed to last forever.
And then there's something about these later years. It's like time feels like it's accelerating, you know? I've been married to my wife for 22 years. I'd like to be married to her until the day that I die, you know? And I everybody's been through all kinds of different stories. Everybody doesn't get to have that same outcome sometimes. And so I'm empathetic to that. But at the same time, I want to build a community people who go, yeah, I would love to have a strong marriage and a strong business. Yeah, I'd love to be a great mom or a dad and a great leader in the company.
Like these things are not mutually exclusive. And so that's a big part of my heart with agency builders. And my faith is a big deal to me. There are two things people always say you should never talk about in polite company or politics and religion. And I love to talk about both of them. I also love to be around people who totally disagree with me in all those scenarios, as long as we can have some fruitful conversations. think that one of the biggest problems culturally with us right now is we're incapable of doing that. We get in these rooms and...
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:15.356)
.
Jay Owen (15:40.812)
and people just ends up in a screaming match and you're like, what are we doing? We got a lot more in common than we do different. And so I want a place where, you know, some people may find it uncomfortable, but like when I start an event, I pray over the event because that's what I believe in. if you don't, no problem. Like you want to like stare at me oddly while I'm praying over the room. That's fine. You know, that's okay.
And at the same time, if you're to come to a thing that I'm leading, you should expect that. Because if I say I believe these things, then what am I doing if I don't do those things? You know, I'm just lip surface. And so for me, it is about, you know, more than just building a great agency. It's about more than just, you know, making more money. It's about family. It's about friends. It's about community. It's about faith. It's all those things tied together. And really, that is the heart of agency builders to me.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:31.92)
love that man. And I'm in the same vein that let's have conversations, let's bring opposing points and do it in a loving, caring way and hug at the end and walk away friends and go share coffee afterwards or something like that. I'm all about that. Otherwise, there's just like this giant elephant in the room that nobody's talking about because we all have a belief in something. We all have a faith in something and a trust in something and whatever you want to call it, wherever you go to connect with it. There's always, you know what I mean?
Jay Owen (16:41.517)
Yeah.
Jay Owen (16:56.942)
Sure.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:59.208)
And again, whether it's politics, religion, different beliefs, you carry that through every thread or pull that thread through every aspect of your life. And man, so many people don't. And you talk about like they don't need to be mutually exclusive. there's I've got clients, friends, etc. that they run their business fully differently than they run their homes and live their lives. And I just feel like it's so much more authentic and it goes so much further when you bring it into all areas of your life. So I love that you honor that.
And how does, so talk about how does that come through your business? Cause there's a lot of people that are like, oh, so, and I'm not talking about your business, like, God doesn't belong in the workplace or religion doesn't belong in the workplace. Like how does that infiltrate at work?
Jay Owen (17:38.574)
Sure.
Sure, I I do a lot of things that a lot of people would disagree with and that's okay. You you get to run your business however you want to run it and I get to run mine however I want to run it. And people that want to work here are going to be okay with that and it's up to them. And same thing with clients, like clients may not be comfortable. mean, on the wall behind me is our six core values, which would make many people uncomfortable. We've got three personal ones and three company ones. Faith, family and joy are kind of on the personal side.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:49.616)
Absolutely.
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:03.708)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (18:07.406)
commitment, experience, and quality are in kind of the professional side. And I think all those things blend and overlap. Now, I don't expect people that come to work here or clients to go to the same church that I do or believe the same things exactly that I do. That's not a litmus test, you know, by any stretch of the imagination. That said, like I said earlier, if you are going to be incredibly uncomfortable and don't like the idea of me praying over a meeting, you know, you might be uncomfortable here. You don't have to sit in it. You can leave for that part if you want. It's not going to break my heart. You know, I want
I want people to be comfortable, but at the same time, I'm not going to hide who I am or what I believe. so, like my faith, for example, is a big part of who I am. And I don't think that it's something that happens on Sunday mornings. I think it's the paper on which all of life is written. And so, for me to not have that as a piece of my business or life would be inauthentic at the highest level.
And so that's kind of how I think about it. But at the same time, I want all kind of people involved. I want all kind of opinions. And we just got to be able to talk intelligently and fairly and reasonably and be kind to one another. And I think if we all do that, we'll be a lot better off. Family, another core value people are generally uncomfortable with. The Harvard Business Review had this big article on why family should never be a core value for a company. And I just disagree. And that's OK. I understand the
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:00.763)
Yeah.
Jay Owen (19:27.714)
the issues behind it that many companies over time or some companies over time have used it in almost like a manipulative way to kind of, well, you know, we're a family, so we're gonna all work together to work extra Saturday this week, you know? It's not like that. It just means caring for people in the way that you wanna be cared for, you know? It means treating people as more than just a resource. The whole idea that we call people human resources is an absolutely insane thing to me. Software is a resource, people are not.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:56.464)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jay Owen (19:57.23)
And so those are some of the things that drive me in and out of work. And I don't always do it right. There's plenty of times I do and say things that probably aren't aligned with who I say I want to be, but that's a lot of things are aspirational identities versus actual identities. And I appreciate having people around me to hold me accountable and hopefully keep moving in the right direction.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:17.488)
Yeah, they have to be aspirational. We're not perfect. We don't wake up every day and start floating on water or anything like that. And so there things that we strive for and things that we want to emulate and inspire other people to do. And the way you break down family is so much different than the way a lot of businesses. We're a family here. that means a lot of days don't want to work with my brother and sister. I love them dearly. They're my best friends. But yeah, I don't want to work with them. So yeah, I love the way that you kind of distill that down into it. How do we treat people and how do we want to be treated? And that's beautiful.
Jay Owen (20:37.494)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:47.708)
Brass tacks about the agency. Are you guys niched in any kind of way? Was that a key or not to your growth and scalability?
Jay Owen (20:56.718)
Yeah, good question. Everybody asks this question in some ways. I've heard people tell me a thousand times you have to niche down to successfully grow an agency. And I'm like, well, I mean, I've grown mine from $5,000 a year, about $4 million a year, and I like doing it. So I don't know if that's true or not. Now, maybe I'd be at 40 million if I had niched down. I don't know, but also don't care. I like the trajectory of the, I like the variety of the work that we get to do. That said, I think that niching down can often be mis-
kind of misappropriated or confused in that like it means that you have to only serve a particular industry. I think you can niche down in different ways. So for example, you know, we are a story brand certified agency, one of the top ones in the country, which means we focus heavily on messaging on the front. So we believe that when you confuse, you lose and the design builds trust, but words are what sell. And so if I can get those pieces right up front, it's sort of a niching and servicing, you know, we primarily currently are a HubSpot.
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:51.74)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (21:54.41)
agency. We use HubSpot as primary marketing tool, but I'm always open other tools too, but that is kind of a way of niching in. But that said, in general, we have not done what traditionally people would mean by niching, which is picking a vertical, picking an industry and just running after that one. I like the variety of getting to serve a lot of different people. We have, as most people have experienced, had situations where we find ourselves doing a bunch of work in a particular vertical.
whether it's construction or insurance or medical software, we've done all kinds of different, where all of a sudden, naturally you do one and then three more people go, you did theirs, I'd like you to do ours too. And that makes sense, but we're not trying to do it intentionally.
Steve / Agency Outsight (22:37.19)
Yeah, no, I love it. And I think there is a lot to be said about choosing. Do you want to niche down vertically or horizontally? And once you've got those service lines as your area of focus now, you know, size of business. And like you said, there's trends to the biz dev process on who you're working with. So yeah, I love that. I'm a big fan of it. So I always need to kind of ask about it and see how are people leaning into it or not? And what are the upsides or downsides in their trajectory? So appreciate that.
Jay Owen (23:05.07)
What I would say that we have done is parallel to niching in my opinion is we definitely have moved towards productization pretty heavily. So we're not a truly custom agency in that every single project is a totally custom exploration. It's not that. To be fair, almost nobody really is anyway. There has to be a process. There has to be a plan of how you execute, but we definitely have
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:14.918)
Beautiful.
Jay Owen (23:32.75)
gotten a lot better at productizing. Like here's how we do it. Here's what our next steps are. Here's these packages that we offer. They're not templated per se, but the products that we offer and the pricing are, which makes them lot easier to sell, a lot easier to package, a lot easier to repurpose.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:49.528)
and far more profitable than recreating the wheel every single time of we'll figure it out for you and now you're throwing money out the window. Yeah. want to wrap up real quick, throw a couple of random rapid fire questions at you. the first one is if you could swap lives with any celebrity just for a day, who would it be?
Jay Owen (23:51.534)
100%. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Jay Owen (24:06.72)
gosh. celebrity for a day. I don't know. I'm not a big celebrity guy. maybe like a Gordon Ramsey or something. I'd love to like be in like, you know, restaurants and I love good food. Although I'm not really sure I want to actually be the chef. I just want to be the one yelling at people to bring food. So I don't know. I, that's a tough one for me.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:29.116)
All right, all right, cool. What about what's one thing on your bucket list you haven't done yet?
Jay Owen (24:35.118)
Gosh, I have a lot of countries I'd like to go to. Really over the last couple of years, we've started just kind of exploring different places in Europe. And I think Americans in general are, it's expensive. So I get it. It's hard to fly over the ocean, but we also have a lot of beauty to see here in America. I feel like I've had the opportunity to see a lot, most of the landscape, most of the big cities, all that in the, inside the United States. And so my wife and I really spend a lot of time now going, all right, what's the next big country we want to go to? to Italy last year. We're going to Germany this year.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:52.55)
Mm-hmm.
Jay Owen (25:04.897)
in Belgium and just all the cultures, the food, the people, there's just a lot of incredible stuff to see out in the world, a lot of awesome people to meet and so the bucket list is really just continuing to explore all the different countries and landscapes around the world.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:21.68)
Yeah, I love that. I'm a big fan of kind of keeping it here. My fiance wants to travel. She's going to France. She wants to see Europe all over the place. And so I love that. And then finally, what's a piece of agency wisdom that you once ignored but later realized was gold?
Jay Owen (25:35.168)
Getting community. Everybody needs somebody to look up to. Everybody needs somebody to stand beside them. Everybody needs somebody that's looking up to them. And everybody needs somebody that believes in them when they don't believe in themselves. And if you don't have those four people in your life, you are risking more burnout than ever before. Most agency leaders, most entrepreneurs for that matter, end up stressed out and worn out and ready to quit. And if we don't, if we have the right people around us, it changes everything. Get in community, get the right people around you. I should have done it much earlier.
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:04.494)
Love that. Jay, I really appreciate you showing up as your authentic self. And I think that that's just how you show up. I'm grateful for that. Thanks for sharing everything you did so far with all of our listeners. Check out agency builders for their Slack channel, upcoming events, and all the great things that they're doing. Thank you very much. I appreciate you.
Jay Owen (26:21.966)
Thanks, Steve.