Strategies for Rapid Agency Growth: Hype 10's Journey
Tired of guessing? Foxwell Digital Membership connects you with the strategies and support to grow your business.
In this conversation, Max Langlois, founder and CEO of Hype 10, discusses the rapid growth of his performance marketing agency, the strategies behind driving quality leads, and the importance of client retention.
He emphasizes the significance of building strong relationships with clients and referral partners, as well as the innovative approaches Hype 10 is taking to enhance their service offerings, including forecasting and whitelisting.
Max shares valuable lessons learned from his three years in business, including the significance of patience and effective hiring practices. The discussion also touches on future trends in digital marketing, emphasizing the need for brands to focus on profitability and individual brand identity.
Key Takeaways:
Why this one thing is crucial for lead generation. -
How referrals should be a significant portion of new business. -
How these types of services can lead to longer client retention. -
Why you must regularly evaluate this 1 thing for growth. -
How forecasting accuracy can unlock huge value for your clients. -
Why managing this newer social tactic can be an under-appreciated strategy in marketing.
Why you should prioritize this over growth in our current market conditions. -
Where you can be implementing AI and where it should not be replacing humans.
To Learn more about Hype10 head here.
To Learn more about Max you can follow him on X
To learn more about the Foxwell Founders community or to join head here
Full Transcript
Hey guys. Welcome to Foxwell Founders podcast. We are today joined by the founder and owner of Hype 10 agency in New York, Max Langlois. Thanks for coming along. Max has worked with some clients like Dagny Dover, CrossFit, Marine Lair and spent hundreds of millions of dollars throughout his career across multiple performance marketing agencies.
Edwin @ Snappic (02:22.15)
Okay. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (02:49.543)
and it's really something we're gonna dig into today. So Edwin, kick us out with the first question.
Edwin @ Snappic (02:55.486)
So Max, you have grown hype 10 just incredibly in the last couple of years. How are you driving quality leads for your agency?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (03:06.266)
Cool. It's probably not the expected response. are fortunate in that we have grown, like launched the agency three years ago and we have now like 23 employees and we work with like 35 brands currently.
Edwin @ Snappic (03:11.58)
I wanna hear it.
Tris Dyer (03:11.637)
Perfect.
Tris Dyer (03:21.269)
Great.
Edwin @ Snappic (03:26.206)
lot.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (03:27.224)
Yes, we scaled pretty quickly. like to say we're the fastest growing performance marketing agency in the country. I don't think it's actually true, but whatever, like can't be proven wrong. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (03:34.227)
It's close enough. It's as good as true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.
Edwin @ Snappic (03:35.186)
You
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (03:38.874)
But it has basically come down to just building relationships with our clients. We have some great referral partners. I don't do anything in terms of outbound LinkedIn DMs. I'm not big on the content game either. I've dipped my toes into that a little bit on Twitter and got burned because I was probably too honest about an experience that we were having with a client. They ended up firing us. And I was like...
Edwin @ Snappic (03:56.827)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (04:04.989)
What?
Tris Dyer (04:05.799)
That's a shame.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (04:06.97)
Yeah, I was like, I don't know if I'm playing this game properly. So I think like at the crux of it, we have really strong retention and we focus on doing the work properly. And when you do that, it comes, you know, background in the form of introductions, right? To perspective, you know, new brands. So oftentimes it's just coming from like word of mouth and referrals. And yeah, trying to build a good reputation in the space.
Edwin @ Snappic (04:35.846)
And so those referrals, are they coming from the brands that you're doing the work for or are they coming from referral partners? Because it's two different games, right?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (04:42.807)
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. In the early days, I will say like I was very strategic with referral partners and I think like the standard, you know, referral kickback is like 10 % for the first year, right? That's pretty standardized. was like, okay, like this is the, I know that we can do good work, so I'm just going to bump that to 20%, you know, and really incentivize introductions from, you know, well-connected people and naturally, yeah, exactly, right? So that's the response you get from referral partners and...
Edwin @ Snappic (04:54.332)
Yeah. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:02.014)
Woo!
Edwin @ Snappic (05:07.038)
Woo!
Edwin @ Snappic (05:12.275)
Yeah?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (05:12.986)
And so, but what's comical about it was like in those early days we weren't charging that much. So actually like, wasn't that great for them. It would have been better off during 10 % at a larger established agency that was charging more. But that's early days and then.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:21.022)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:26.333)
Okay.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (05:29.594)
Now I would say it's probably like 70 % comes from, you know, our brands on our book of business and 30 % come from those referral partners. And then others just kind of like leads coming through our site. But I oftentimes find that those just close at a lower rate relative to warm introductions and, or it's like a really small brand that like they only have a budget of 5,000 bucks a month. And I'm like, it's not worth it honestly to pursue paid at that point.
Tris Dyer (05:43.369)
Mm-hmm.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:47.486)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (05:57.877)
We're gonna charge you that before you even spend, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make a ton of sense, yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (05:59.58)
And it's, yeah, exactly. yeah, mostly just kind of referrals from our brands that we work with.
Edwin @ Snappic (06:06.428)
And so you're explicitly asking them or do you have a form? Like I wanna dig into the ninja, because our listeners, they wanna know, right? So are you explicitly asking them, do you have a template email that after they have a good month, you hit the send on it? Okay.
Tris Dyer (06:06.473)
nice
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (06:19.396)
Yeah. It's nothing like that. It's just doing good work. thankfully, they introduce us. There's no kickback for them or anything like that. We've had conversations around trying to maybe incentivize it further by giving them a percentage kickback. no, right now, it's just like, thankfully, building good relationships with them. And they want us to succeed. And I think there's also like,
Edwin @ Snappic (06:30.8)
Okay.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (06:46.202)
Different clients have different POVs on this. Some that I'm very close with, they almost don't want to introduce us to more brands because they want us to be them and be the number one priority and so on and so forth. I think one thing that has been helpful, which feels like it's not as common as one would think, is asking clients for introductions to their investors. If things are going well, and of the poor
Edwin @ Snappic (06:56.488)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (06:58.133)
We'll answer your question.
Edwin @ Snappic (07:01.79)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (07:16.508)
for this venture capital fund or private equity fund or whatever. If things are going well, ask for an introduction to some of their primary investors. And then that enables kind of an additional layer of introduction to portcodes from that venture capitalist or otherwise. That has been a pretty big unlock for us.
Edwin @ Snappic (07:25.106)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (07:36.478)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (07:36.597)
Nice, nice, that makes sense. And so you're saying that the connection with it, so is it all connection through you or do you have people in your agency that are also building that connection? Because I mean, I think we've grown not quite the stratospheric growth that you have, but we've seen as we grow, I found that less people are connected with me and more connected with our senior people. Have you tried to template that out to the senior people, how to keep that connection or how do you do it?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (08:03.096)
Yeah, I think it leans a little bit heavier on my connections at this point. I would love to enable that further in some of our other leadership team members, but I don't actually run any accounts at this point. So like a large part of my job is just actually like going and meeting people, you know, and doing this stuff and just talking all day. So that's kind of the role that I'm meant to play at this point in our trajectory and our growth.
Edwin @ Snappic (08:23.126)
Ha
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (08:33.038)
That being said, yeah, there are definitely some introductions that come by way of brands that I haven't really spoken to in six months. And it's because the team is doing great work, et cetera. So it's a little bit of both, but I am definitely spending a lot of my time and energy thinking about how to continue to grow. And that comes by way of naturally having strong retention and then enabling conversations to unfold with the prospective brands.
Tris Dyer (08:41.749)
Hmm.
Edwin @ Snappic (09:02.28)
So you brought that up just right now. So retention, right? So part of the equation is bringing them in and then the second part of the equation is retaining them. And so tell me what's on your mind, like what is moving the needle for you with keeping people there, keeping people happy with you?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (09:09.956)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (09:19.326)
Yeah, I have been told even with like brands I think like number one is is be trying to be holistic in your pursuit and not in the eyes of a Client just being the guys that run the Facebook ads or the guys that do creative or the guys that you know Do Google ads for you, right? If you are siloed into just being like the media buyer, you know as an example then
Edwin @ Snappic (09:44.562)
Mm-hmm.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (09:46.126)
then you're probably not considered to be all that valuable of a partner because it's a highly commoditized service offering at this point. So I think from day one setting expectations that you're really going to step outside of the scope of work, help as much as you can, really be thoughtful in terms of the recommendations outside of just day-to-day management of media spend. So I think that's number one. And then always be...
Consistently, I would say like every three to six months we are evaluating like our best practices in our playbooks and trying to stay ahead of the bell curve, if you will, in terms of the trajectory of the industry. And that comes by way of like different things that we are enabling now. Like the tool that we're probably most excited about, like one of our newer employees is just like amazing at forecasting.
Edwin @ Snappic (10:38.611)
Hey.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (10:39.098)
and started to build out these growth models. And it's like, it's his passion project and we're slowly rolling it out across our book of business. And the eight brands that we have enabled for thus far in the past three months, we've been able to forecast within 1 % of accuracy. And so it's like, this is massive. This is a huge opportunity for us. So yeah, doing things that are ancillarily related to the day to day, but can have a massive...
Edwin @ Snappic (10:55.55)
Whoa.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (11:09.462)
impact on the perception of the relationship and the value that you're providing to the brand.
Tris Dyer (11:13.747)
And so with that then, so you're bringing that in, because that's a huge value add for like anybody there. Like if I'm, you know, I've run a business, if we can predict within 1%, I may not like the numbers, I like the fact that the numbers are there. But I mean, from that point of view, there's two angles, there two questions I have. Do you upsell that in there? Do you say, hey, this is gonna cost you an extra thousand bucks a month, 2,000 bucks a month, whatever, to have this as a plugin? Or do you just say, hey, we're all gonna win with this?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (11:23.406)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (11:40.942)
Yeah, we thus far have been baking it in. We have not been up charging it, but it's also been almost like a pilot program at this point where we're validating it. We had a conversation about this last week with like leadership team.
Tris Dyer (11:47.7)
Mmm.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (11:55.006)
And we're thinking through the efficacy of like, do we want to make this into a SaaS solution fully? So it's not only available for like our brands, but then also we can sell it to the general ecosystem at large. Or do we want to just, to your point, charge an extra 2000 bucks a month for this service to be tacked on? We don't have like data scientists on our team. And I think that that would, if we went that route, I would probably want to formalize it with actual, a division that is specifically like fully invested into that.
that for right now it's just like you get this in tandem with working with us on paid media and creative as an example.
Tris Dyer (12:25.237)
Mm.
Tris Dyer (12:31.493)
as part of that thing of like helping brands across not just on Facebook or whatever. Interesting. I suppose then the other question I suppose is like with the 1 % accuracy and you must have some sort of kind of what are you looking at to get that? I mean look, I'm not looking for everything or is there kind of four or five things that you're kind of going, well if you haven't got this and you haven't got this, we can't predict this at all. Do you have that? No certain numbers?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (12:34.638)
Yeah. Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (12:47.258)
Thank
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (12:54.521)
Yeah.
I mean, the more history the brand has, the easier it is, right? To understand the seasonality impacts. But basically, it's just like building out a full P &L retroactively and then cohorting out past acquisitions on a three-year basis plus. And then you have like, you have all the data you need there, right? And then it wraps up into basically an understanding of contribution margin on day one of the acquisition, on three months after the acquisition for that cohort, and then one year after.
Tris Dyer (13:10.101)
Hmm.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (13:25.228)
because it really depends on what the brand is going for. If they're a subscription-focused brand, then they probably shouldn't be optimizing for a contribution on day one. They should be optimizing for a contribution one year after. So we customize it based off of the needs of the business and what they're looking for. I think also there's this notion that...
Edwin @ Snappic (13:32.321)
No.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (13:42.7)
you should be optimizing for the most, the highest point on the bell curve for contribution margin on day one. And that really like number one depends on the vertical, but then secondarily, it's also like that could limit your growth to a certain degree. And so you might actually want to push a little bit further on the bell curve, knowing that, okay, I'm still going to be at, you know, a desirable contribution margin may not be the most output of my dollars, but this is in my best interest because maybe I have competitors that are going to cut
on to this opportunity and I need to move a little bit faster, right, as an example.
Tris Dyer (14:15.957)
Okay, and so just with that then, like you're saying first purchase profitable isn't really the way to go, certainly with a subscription, but other things as well, because some people swear by it, and this is like a hot take that they're like, first purchase, you have to make money or you're dust.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (14:28.184)
Yeah. Yeah. This is my other issue with like the ecosystem is like, and like Twitter and content in general, it's just like, it depends how much money do you have in the bank? Right? Like how quickly do you have to move to try to be kind of the largest player in your particular vertical, right? Et cetera. I think definitely with like venture leaving the space for the most part across
Tris Dyer (14:34.869)
Yeah, absolutely.
Tris Dyer (14:39.209)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (14:55.47)
the vast majority of the verticals that play in this space. There definitely needs to be a reprioritization of profitability rather than growth over everything else. But yeah, just like it fully depends on your business and what you're looking to achieve.
Edwin @ Snappic (15:12.507)
So let's talk about that. So you're saying there needs to be a little bit of reprioritization. Tell me, where do you believe that, not brands, but where do you believe agencies are under-investing, like in regards to operations? Like, there something that you're seeing working right now that maybe not everybody is aware of?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (15:23.482)
you
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (15:34.836)
I would say like something that doesn't get enough credit is like whitelisting. I feel like it's often times people are like we should whitelist and then the buck stops there and it's like why not?
Edwin @ Snappic (15:40.497)
Okay.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (15:49.188)
part of the playbook be like, have 10 creators, all of which we can whitelist from. And like that is a massive thing that we can pursue on a consistent basis. I oftentimes will like talk to prospective brands and I'll be like, do you guys do whitelisting? They're like, well, we did it with like one or two creators and it didn't really hit for us, right? And it's too small of a sample size to unequivocally say, you know, whether or this pursuit is in your best interest. the number one benefit there is like,
the auction dynamics and the delivery costs change because it's not the brand's page that you're running it from. then secondarily as well, like there's an additional layer of social proof there. And I think what people get wrong is it does not have to be an influencer. Like I run ads from my page all the time for like my air dose or otherwise.
Tris Dyer (16:34.857)
Hmm.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (16:40.79)
It's funny to see the DMs that you get from like old high school friends that think you become like a D list actor. That's like a side conversation to be had there. yeah, you don't need these people to necessarily have a massive following. It's quite literally just having the social proof and an additional lever that you can pull from.
Edwin @ Snappic (16:46.75)
Hahaha
Edwin @ Snappic (17:01.018)
And what's the performance differential that you're seeing? Just to sort of peg a general number to it.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (17:06.892)
Yeah.
Like it depends, right? Like I would say something along the lines of like 10%, you know, superior NCPAs. But that's if you're like really have like a library of it coming to fruition, right? Not going to come from, you know, one or two creators. It's going to be like, if you have five or six, you know, that you have an actual like work stream with, and these are content creators that you trust and, you know, or that you're close with them in terms of the creative strategist working with them in locks ride. But yeah, it's a massive needle mover. And I think it should be
Edwin @ Snappic (17:19.655)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (17:24.807)
Okay.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (17:39.02)
part of basically every brand's playbook, especially if you started to reach a point at which you're seeing diminishing returns in terms of rolling reach. So if you're seeing that your rolling reach on a monthly basis is like sub, let's call it like 10%, you can get some additional reach by actually having those additional pages to run from. Because it's a slightly different preference of the consumer that maybe you have yet to optimize towards.
Edwin @ Snappic (17:52.06)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (18:08.531)
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of someone else saying you're cool and you saying you're cool. I kind of think. Yeah, I like it. Just shifting gears a bit then to looking more like 10 and looking how you're building that out. Like you've grown, as you say, you've started three years ago and you're 25 people do you say now? 23, Jesus. Like what's the biggest differentiator for you? Obviously doing good work. I get that. That's the cop out. Like do good work, you get more people, it grows. But what's the thing? What's the like, what made you guys grow so quickly?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (18:11.66)
Yeah, yeah exactly.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (18:22.874)
23.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (18:29.966)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (18:37.233)
And how do you keep growing? Because it seems like you guys are on a big trajectory right now.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (18:39.002)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's like staying ahead of...
I think we were early to thinking about things holistically. I will say that. And we are in right now, if I'm being honest with myself, at a point where now everyone's starting to talk about where your CAC needs to be, where your MER needs to be in relation for the holistic business. So I think that we had an early differentiation there in terms of actually thinking about profitability on behalf of clients. And now we're figuring out what those
Tris Dyer (18:50.837)
Mm.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (19:17.296)
next differentiators are going to be. This financial modeling process, I think it's going to be at the forefront of that and in tandem with that, like I said, like the white listing stuff because we're seeing such success with it. And it's not something that all agencies are prioritizing as much as they should. I think like those two elements are going to be a big enabler. The other thing that we're starting to do is actually do full production shoots here in New York. We're super excited about.
Tris Dyer (19:33.631)
Yeah, makes sense.
Edwin @ Snappic (19:41.79)
Whoa.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (19:44.856)
that is another differentiator and we're doing it really cost effectively. So like we can do a shoot that where we can generate like 50 or 60, know, ad units and it's only like, you know, five, six K, right? So.
Tris Dyer (19:56.917)
reason.
Edwin @ Snappic (19:57.018)
in New York City.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (19:58.562)
In New York, yeah, I would like, is it going to be a profit machine for us in the early days? Absolutely not. But if we have a 10 % margin on that shoot, I'm perfectly fine with that because we have percentages of vendors, retainers, right? And if we can enable the content production to afford us to scale, right, that investment is well worth it, as an example. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (20:09.531)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (20:16.725)
Absolutely, it makes a ton of sense. So the question was, we do something similar and we're seeing good effect from it, especially when you're stepping up spends. And I know a couple of guys in the Foxwell founders are talking a lot about AI and how they build that out. I guess, are you using AI to iterate on any of those creatives? How are you using AI in Hive 10?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (20:32.441)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (20:38.496)
Yeah, the creative strategists are the ones that are leveraging it the most right now. And basically we have this like...
process of like scraping ad comments, uploading post purchase survey responses, you know, reviews being the last one. I don't think it's like all that different relative to what others are doing right now, right? It's just like trying to get qualitative insights and leveraging AI to spit out like the five most frequent things that are, you know, coming up in these conversations that are being had from potential customers. It's another area, right? Where like to the point of like different
Tris Dyer (21:03.711)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (21:19.26)
I think now like that used to be quite differentiated and now it's become the status quo and and and like we're excited about it naturally and I think like AI is naturally here to stay but it's not going to differentiate you enough relative to your competition and also I would be wary of informing potential brands as to leveraging AI because in the back of their mind they might say like like we want a business and
Tris Dyer (21:20.341)
you
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (21:49.102)
the point of contact made reference to the fact that we were actually selected because the other agency in question was talking a lot about how they use AI for X, and Z, and they didn't love that.
Tris Dyer (21:59.605)
They didn't like that. They were like, it's a bit unsafe. We don't really want to put our brands into AI. We want to be real AI. Real intelligence, I suppose, is the other way. Nice.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (22:01.944)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think there's just like this perception of it, right? It's like, well, I'm hiring you, not like, it's not the AI system, right? I could do that myself potentially, yeah.
Tris Dyer (22:14.771)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (22:17.502)
So now you've been doing this for three years, you have some more stories, have some scars, so to say. What do know now that you wish that you'd like to tell yourself when you first start?
Tris Dyer (22:24.373)
You
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (22:34.49)
Ooh, patience. And yeah, I'll expand on it. Okay, so I like in relative terms, like I'm very content with the growth that we have seen, but like first like two years, was like, we're talking like 150, 180 % year on year growth. And then our growth has slowed a little bit this year and.
Edwin @ Snappic (22:39.134)
Tell me more.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:00.51)
Surely.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (23:01.486)
Yeah, and that's only natural, but I had a certain revenue number that I thought was going to happen in year three of the business. I think there are challenges that arise every single day, and it is a practice in patience because consistently needing to remind yourself things are going well. Don't get ahead of yourself.
just because like when you have 23 employees, you know, working on multiple different work streams, et cetera, like shit is gonna go wrong. And I think that in the early days of running an agency, you have your hands in every single aspect of it. And you need to like relinquish some of that control in order to enable growth. And that takes patience, you know, because.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:37.757)
sure.
Tris Dyer (23:54.997)
my God, preach.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (23:57.912)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:58.206)
I would say that takes a couple glasses of wine as well.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (24:01.466)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (24:01.907)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (24:06.063)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (24:07.346)
It's a tough one. then so just in terms of the motivation, because obviously you're hiring a lot of people to 23 people is pretty quick. Do you have like certain hiring processes you go through or is it a certain type of person you get? And the real question is, how have you fucked up hiring before?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (24:17.05)
Yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (24:21.89)
Yeah. So what's really funny is like before I brought on Alex, our COO, my success rate on hires was, let me put it, every single person that we've laid off, I hired.
Edwin @ Snappic (24:34.758)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (24:35.583)
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (24:37.304)
So Alex came on and revamped our entire protocols there in terms of like interview questions. This person handles the first call, this person handles the second call. And it's like, first call is just like personality and like trying to dig into that and hear the list of questions and you take notes during it. And then it moves on to the second round and then there's an assessment, so on and so forth. Before it was kind of just like, I would just vibe with the person and like, yeah, like.
Tris Dyer (24:47.829)
Hmm.
Tris Dyer (25:02.751)
You cool? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (25:02.778)
Come and join us. And of course, that was foolhardy. So yeah, the process there has been heavily improved just by bringing in somebody who's recognized that there was a hole there. And his record now, since he came on, like, think we've only had one person that was hired. That didn't work out. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (25:07.647)
Ha ha ha.
Tris Dyer (25:26.901)
That's amazing. Hey, it's not gonna be perfect every time. That's amazing. And they're all helping you grow. Everyone's motivated in the right place. There's no kind of, you know, having to work out incentive schemes or any of that kind of stuff. It's all there. It's all the right people.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (25:38.072)
Yeah, then, yeah, and to your question as well, like how we've approached it is basically like leadership and for the most part, we've hired entry-level talent and just like train them up. Yeah. And because you have kind of the person that can lead that development. I think if you're going to pursue that.
Tris Dyer (25:51.797)
Nice.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (26:00.724)
spend the time necessary to enable their success. You can't just expect them to come in and crush it from day one, right? And
Tris Dyer (26:05.557)
Mm-hmm.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (26:10.546)
And again, back to patients, like don't expect them to naturally jump into accounts on day one because that's not what you want to be providing as an agency as well. So like when an entry level person straight out of college joins us, they're basically, it's a two month long course that they take, which is like Loom videos of myself are like head of creative, right? Like walking through every single, you know, step of the ecosystem. And during that process, they're just joining calls, taking notes.
Tris Dyer (26:18.111)
Yeah, true.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (26:40.38)
and then starting to build ads and that's it. And then it's like, okay, now they've gotten six months after that, now it's time for you to take on a small account and you'll still have an executive sponsor that's there. If any questions that come up that you don't know quite how to handle, so on and so forth. So, yeah.
Tris Dyer (27:01.941)
Yeah, nice, I like that. And so just as you know, as you're going through that, suppose, you know, the question I'm asking myself is like, what happens next year? know, where obviously you're building those people up and you're going through it. Like, are we talking a complete shift in the digital landscape? Are you guys going to move to more kind of consultancy based focus? is it going to like, does AI take over the buying and everything else? And these guys just do everything. Where do you see, not necessarily Hive 10, but the industry going in 2025?
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (27:31.14)
Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I think...
Tris Dyer (27:32.917)
Nice existential question, apologies.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (27:44.378)
I think like it's already happening, like re-shifting the focus of on profitability is definitely very top of mind as as venture has kind of left the ecosystem for the most part. There are a lot of brands that are struggling, right? Like I can sit here and puff my chest and be like, Hype 10 has never had any issues with brands, but like, of course we have, right? And it's a very challenging ecosystem right now.
Tris Dyer (27:56.311)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (28:01.205)
was great.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (28:14.594)
So I think that brands are taking a much longer time to make a decision on an agency, whereas before in the early days it was like you pitched them on the audit and at the end of the call they'd be like, when can we start? Right? And that doesn't happen anymore.
Now it's like, okay, like we're talking with like 10 others and then we'll get back to you. That's like a month goes by and like, no, we're like two months later. They're like, okay, let's hop on another call, right? Yeah. And, and, I think that's emblematic of everyone is really watching the dollars in which they're in, where they're investing and people didn't really negotiate on our fees as often as they are now. So I think like,
Tris Dyer (28:40.693)
What's happening here, yeah.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (28:58.422)
everyone is focusing on their bottom line. And I think that that will continue into 2025. And in terms of just like media buying and AI enablement, so on and so forth, I think, I hope that brands start to...
pay a little bit less attention to what others are doing and start to think as an individual brand themselves and what do we want to, how do we want to talk to potential customers, what's special about us, and maybe listen a little bit less to the noise in the ecosystem. That's my hope and aspiration. Probably won't happen, but man can do it.
Edwin @ Snappic (29:36.658)
Mine as well. I hope that all the time.
Tris Dyer (29:41.405)
Yeah. It's a prayer for every night. Just conscious of time. Edwin, do you to wrap up or do you have any questions? Sorry, Max, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. It's so raw. It's so exactly what you're thinking. So thank you.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (29:43.555)
I do.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (29:50.874)
for sure. Thank you.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (29:55.47)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (29:56.126)
No, I'm good on questions. Maybe I have like an off the record question, but we can do that after we stop recording.
Tris Dyer (29:59.285)
Good luck.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (30:03.194)
Great guys, I really appreciate you having me on and yeah, this is fun if you ever need
Tris Dyer (30:10.345)
Nice, we'll just do a wrap. do like a finish thing, like for the people who listen that far. Go for it everyone.
Max Langlois (HYPE10) (30:16.471)
No.
Edwin @ Snappic (30:16.606)
Cool. So at the end, I'll do a little rap. I'll say, I'm Edwin, Triss will go, I'm Triss. And then you'd be like, I'm Max. And then let's see you next time. All right, guys, that is it for this episode. We had Max, he gave us all the keys, all the keys to the incredible hyper growth that he's been experiencing with hype 10. He's talked to us about retention, about getting new leads, everything, everything.
Tris Dyer (30:27.315)
Yeah, peace out.
Edwin @ Snappic (30:47.048)
I'll see you next time guys. shit. I know, I know, I know. It's my fault, it's my fault. Alright, alright guys, that's it for this week's episode. We've had a banger of an episode. Max walked us through how he gets leads, how he has retention, just all the keys guys. I'll see you guys next time. I'm Edwin.