Scaling from solo to agency with Kristina Bartold-Sorgota

Lex: Are you thinking about scaling your solo practice into a team? Or maybe you're already running an agency and you're hitting some growing pains. Either way, you're going to love today's guest, Kristina Bartold-Sorgota. Kristina is the CEO and co-founder of The Social Snippet based out of Ontario, Canada.

Kristina and her partner Maria run a cross-functional team of content editors, designers, engagement specialists. And what's interesting to me about how they run the social snippet is the emphasis they put on building community. Their focus is not about pumping out a bunch of posts, but on who they can bring together in physical or digital rooms. Kristina and I talked about the formation of the agency, how they get clients, what they do to onboard new team members, and how to have a healthier relationship with social media.

Let's get into it. I'm Lex Roman, and this is the Low Energy Leads Show.

Real quick, I'm running a series on networking for introverts. It will run all through September. We're talking about systems, places, and conversation. If you have a tip about how to network as an introvert, check the show notes for how to contribute.

Lex: So Kristina, as you know, I like to dive into the origin story of businesses. I want you to take us back to the beginning of the social snippet. Can you talk about your first business and how that led to the creation of the social snippet?

Kristina: I had a nine to five and I was working feverishly over there and the pandemic hit, and so I found myself with a lot of free time and I had all these unused, untapped skills. I don't know a single entrepreneur at that time. I don't know anybody who owns their own business. I've never, I am on my honeymoon. I'm listening to Jenna Kutcher. I don't know how this woman got in my ears and all of a sudden I'm inspired to start my own business. And so at the time, a lot of my work was in personal development coaching. I was doing Myers-Briggs for folks, a lot of leadership development. That's what my background's kind of in. And so during Covid, people had a ton of spare time, and so they were looking for things to do. So I would run online workshops. I called myself personal development coach.

I got a life coaching certification. I did Myers-Briggs for folks. I took on one-on-one clients and every single one of my clients would leave with a side hustle. So this was a whole thing. I always had side hustles and they would leave with side hustles, and I just didn't put two and two together. So my now business partner, Maria, was my virtual assistant at the time, and we were doing my social, and really what we were focusing on was building this really bomb community, mostly of women who were interested in personal development. So I would run stuff, it would sell out, I would run a workshop, people would come. It was just like we were building in this momentum. And while that was happening, I had been doing social media strategy for years on the side. It was a gift of mine. I didn't know that this was something I had a lot of limiting around, is this something I could do full time because I have a master's degree?

Is that what I should be spending my time doing? I thought I had this career in mind that career has died since, but something new was born. And so I went to Maria and I had this vision and I said, what do you think about us maybe starting a social media business? And Maria was like, no, absolutely not. Yeah, and this is going to go on my TED Talk for sure. But she was like, absolutely not. There's not enough impact there for me. I don't want to sit around on Canva and make graphics. I want to do impactful work. And I sat with that and I was like, oh God, I can't do this alone. Can't do graphics, so I don't know how I'm going to do this. And I went back to her shortly after and we had a friend who was shutting down her social media business, and I was like, this kind of feels like a sign.

And this friend was like, I think you should take these clients. We said, okay. And we actually realized that that was our most tremendous opportunity to make impact was working with small business owners to be able to market some of their dreams, helping people bring some of these things to life and helping them build communities that they're really proud of. So since then, it's been about two and a half years. We have 60 clients, and now we offer podcasting as well. So we've really grown, which has been such a gift. But yeah, that's kind of how we got started.

Lex: You had such a quick start. I mean, that is such a short timeline to be as successful as y'all have been. Are you able to identify any of the magic sauce that made that so fast for you in terms of getting clients, even with your personal development work, going into having a business owner who's shutting down and is have all my clients is an amazing, amazing stroke of luck, but even before that, you're getting a lot of traction. Can you identify why that is, aside from your magnetic personality

Kristina: Stop. And just to give you, to be transparent, I'll be transparent. The amount of clients this person gave us was two. So it's not like this was like I inherited a 50 person agency over here. It was like we had two denture clinics that we still work with and love so hard. I always tell everybody, one of my spiel lines is I buy something from all my clients except the denture clinics. That's a long-term investment. But yeah, so honestly what I think it was Lex was we were so willing to meet people. And I think that that's something that people forget when building community is they expect they show up on Instagram and they expect their followers to come to them, and they're expecting people are just be ready to buy and they're just going to be throwing money at them. We did a lot of free stuff.

We spoke to a lot of people. We offered free consults in every mastermind, every workshop we were in, we just showed up consistently meeting new people and pouring into them. And sometimes that turned into something great and sometimes it turned into nothing, and that's okay too. But really what we were doing was just building no and trust with people in our network. I'm really proud to say yes, we have 60 a hundred percent on referral. So other than those two clients we inherited, everybody else has been somebody we've gotten from somebody else who's been in our orbit, which has been such a gift. But I think it's because we show up consistently and we pour into the people around us. And why I think it's important I say that is because there's this school of thought people have, it's an old sales thing where they're like, oh, I heard this saying.

It's like, don't spill your jelly beans in the lobby. You don't want to show people too much because you don't want to give away too much stuff. Do I think people should be doing free social media management for other people? No. No. I don't think that. But I think there is this line of being able to show up and tell someone how you could provide value in their business or how you provide value generally, there's a lot of magic there that builds that trust with people. And so I'm always give your secrets away, talk about things, show people how awesome you are. And so I would say that's been our secret sauce has been us being able to show up consistently and being able to just talk about what we're doing and how we're doing that.

Lex: I agree with all of that. However, I will say I feel like I meet a lot of people who are doing that and it is not paying off the way that it worked for y'all. I'm curious how you feel about the seeds that you have sown, because one theory I have about this is that perhaps you and maybe Maria have sown those seeds of no trust deeply before you started, which you were able to leverage in this business. You're nodding so can you talk about

Kristina: That? Yeah, so this is also part of the story that I left out here, not on purpose, not to be sneaky, but is that actually when we started the social snippet, I had a number, probably four of my personal development clients hire us for social, the side hustles I'd helped them create. All of a sudden I was doing the social for them, but it was because I had built that no and trust before. And I really believe Lex, this is like maybe you won't agree with this. So I'll say it, it's provocative. Maybe people like to work with people at the core, people like to work with people they like and who they trust. And it's like when you have a client that works with you and they're so happy, I'm sure you've experienced this tons of times, Lex, because you're great at what you do.

I am a hundred percent sure that someone's come to you and been like, oh, Lex, you've helped me so much with this. Could you do this for me? Do you also do this? And your services can start to expand or you create some great power partners or these types of things. But it's like we build these, this rapport with people about being good, and so it starts to translate into other things. It's like you eat the Big Mac, so you trust the McChicken, right? You're like, I'm going to eat that. Right? That went right for it. So I think that's what it was for us too, is that we had been building community. We had great relationships with people, but again, lax, I will tell you I didn't know a lot of entrepreneurs.

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Lex: I think building that trust over the years, it compounds over time and it starts to sort of snowball down the hill with you as you continue on in your business. But I do think that it is not as easy to get right as we would want to believe. And so I think that you had built a foundational layer with the kinds of people that you had been investing and pouring into as you said, and that I think is a major key to highlight for our listener because it's possible to give value to people that doesn't pay off for you.

Kristina: I a hundred percent agree. The other thing I was going to say too is clients aren't just clients are clients. So it's not just money in the door kind of thing. So I have early on, I'm going to say this very honestly, early on we worked with clients that weren't aligned. It was early and we would take any, it would be like, you give me money, I do anything. You want me to do this for $400? Of course, of course, no problem. And because everybody gets caught in that, I don't think that there's a lot of people that won't, but what you need to spend the time early on figuring out is who is that? And this sounds so basic, you're going to be like the ideal client avatar, this woman coming back for me. But who is your ideal client and doesn't need to be My ideal client is I love working with women.

I love working with entrepreneurial women, but I will only work with coaches. It doesn't even need to be that niche down. You just need to figure out who you're interested in working with and then figuring out how to get in those people's orbit. So that's something that I think people forget about networking is that it's not enough. So for example, I had never done any local networking because I never had never done any until probably six months ago because I had this perception of it. I was like, oh, people locally don't have money. American the money, I had this thing, it was fake. It was fake Lex. But I was like, oh, because I had had a few local clients that had burned me a little with that where they had created helped me create this narrative that wasn't true about what it meant to work with people in our community. I will say some of our highest paying clients are from our community, but it wasn't about them being local, but it was like I needed to find out where the people who saw the value in social media management were willing to outsource, were excited about good quality content, weren't just looking for things to be up on a page, wanted to build community. Those were the people I needed to find. And as soon as I found those people, those people introduced me to more people like them.

Lex: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think I want to point out another magic thought that you shared. The way that you're indexing on your ideal client is not demographics. You shared a couple demographics, but you shared a lot. I heard a lot of behaviors. This is how they see their work. This is how they see community. This is why they would want to work with us rather than a different social media agency, a different strategist. I think seeing your audience that way more behaviorally will also help you find them and connect with them. I think that's a big key for what you're doing too. I

Kristina: Totally agree. And I took all the business courses when we started. I told you I was in the Janet Crutcher world, so I did them all. And every single one starts with that little stick figure and you're like, oh, this is Jennifer. Jennifer's 35, and she loves to read Harry Potter. And I'm like, that's awesome, but not helpful to where I'm at because I'm not going to hang out at Hogwarts world and pick up clients. But what is actually really helpful, what we realized, and we early on got onto this was actually what's so important for us with clients is that they're collaborative. That is my number one, is I, I don't even calling myself a service provider because it's actually partnership. You can't be successful on social and never log on. You can't build a good community. So we need you to work on building your community and let us support you doing that. It has to be a partnership. But we were finding that a lot of the non-aligned clients for us where people that would be like, do this. I'm never logging on again.

Lex: So insightful about the collaborative piece versus the just hands-off piece. And I think that's something that a lot of folks miss when they're getting clients in the door that they're like, oh, these are not my ideal clients. I'm not having the projects that I want. Being more aware of that is really key to attracting more of those clients and being able to say, Hey, are you interested in being collaborative? If not, let's not just even talk about this. I'll send you over to my other friend.

Kristina: And that's hard though. Lex, I know probably people who are listening to this, there's probably some early stage folks and there's people there who are listening to this who are like, I could never turn down a client. I would never, and I'm promising you, this is from the bottom. I actually can't guarantee this. But from the bottom of my own heart and my experience is that when you turn away those types of clients that usually typically make space for other things and you aren't holding onto these people for money, but actually for they're the right fit. They're somebody who are going to add value to you. They're someone who are going to be an amazing referral partner, and you would rather do an exceptional job for someone than have a bad client who if it doesn't work out, you could get well. You know what I mean? It could get messy. So rather than just going for what is easy, sometimes we have to make those hard choices.

Lex: Yes. So this brings me to something I wanted to ask you about because you run an agency with a pretty substantial team. I do have some folks who are probably listening who are in a scale point with their agency and they're thinking about how do I both fill the pipeline but also make sure that it's quality clients that are a match? How do you think about that balance of enough work, but team retention style work?

Kristina: What is really interesting, I think about almost our last piece of our conversation about how we discuss an ideal client is that because my ideal clients are a very specific type of person, typically our freelancers love working with them. So we have a team, I'll tell you honestly, we have a team of almost 25, and then we have about seven people that work for us almost full-time. And I have one payroll employee, there's me and Maria, and then my payroll play. Laurena incredible. But we have lots of folks working in and out of our business, which is awesome. And I actually think for those of you who are thinking about owning agencies, I had a lot of rub on that. I really wanted full-time employees. What I'm used to managing, and I find freelancers being freelancers and often because that's the type of lifestyle they live, they work for a number of people, they get to take on projects they like.

That's been my experience. But what's been really interesting is because we typically bring on clients who are good people, good eggs, they're kind, and they're excited and they're collaborative. And our clients are also a little niche in the sense that often they're not people who know a ton about social, they're pretty hands off. They've marketed and scaled their businesses in other ways. We don't work with a ton of new business owners. They're so grateful. They're so grateful. And so it's like even if we work with a client who sells rugs, we work with a client who denture clinics, we work with all different types, but because the people are so good, it's like, and I vetted these people for my people. That's been the key to our success.

Lex: How do you think about scaling you and Maria and your ethos through the team members, particularly with freelancers who are not full-time? How do you think about conveying sort of the social snippets way of working? So

Kristina: We do quite a bit of training. That's a big piece of it. So I would never let anybody work with a client until they've actually worked on our accounts. So we see from them early on, are you a strong writer? Are you great with graphics? What's your attitude in the one-on-one meeting with us? These types of things. And we've had to let people go at that stage too, where it's not a match and we pay them for every moment they've worked with us. I think what's really important when you're bringing freelancers on is that often I know what it's like to scale the agency. It's expensive. It's expensive to pay people, but you need to pay people to train them and it pays off so much. So we have a three hour training, and yes, it's a hundred dollars every time someone does this training, but I would rather them do it and bill me for and not be a good fit. And it be like, we're good. Then it's so much more expensive to lose a client down the road unhappy.

Lex: When did you and Maria know it was time to start building the team and growing the team? What was the moment?

Kristina: So this is not going to be as sexy of an answer as I think you're hoping, but it happened immediately because we got two clients and we started working probably that June on content. So we worked on that June on content, and then by the end of August we have eight clients. So already it was not manageable. It wasn't manageable for us to be doing together anymore. So then we started to kind of split where we're not working on clients together anymore, we're individually working on 'em, and then by we hire somebody to work for us kind of part-time that September. So it was a quick turnaround, but we made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes in terms of hiring. We would overpay people. That was something too that you have to be careful with, which sounds so contrary to everything else I've said where I'm like, pay people, namaste.

We all love working together. Yes, a hundred percent, but you don't need to pay people $50 an hour. That might not be the right move. Or depending on where you're at asking, okay, you want to make your projects profitable. Some of our projects weren't profitable anymore because we were paying so much for other people. So looking at those numbers, always reevaluating what that looked like. So we had our first kind of freelancer that September, and then we were bigger by January we probably had three or four, and then we've kind of grown since then again, and then now we're above 20. But again, we've had people leave, we've had people where it's not a good fit. We've had people where we're not a good fit for 'em, all that stuff, and it's all learning. It's people work, which is the best and the hardest type of work, I believe.

Lex: Yeah, it really is. Did you always set out to create an agency? It seems like this is in your blood fostering people.

Kristina: I'm a people person, so that's always been kind my gifting. I think my master's background leadership, I conflict resolution, so I've always managed people. That's what I did prior was I managed teams. So I love managing people. So I knew I was never always going to do the work, but I will say it is hard to give up some of the stuff that you love doing in your business as you move up. I love social strategy even like we were talking about Instagram and I was like, let's get on a call. I want to talk about this because I love talking to people about their social media strategy. And what's also hard, and you'll find this too for you agency folks, is when you're selling, people want to work with you. They don't know about the magic of your team. They're not bought into your team the way you're bought into your team.

So finding that balance of being able to, I don't know. I almost sometimes have to not bring my skills down by any means, but I'm not set up to take on clients. I personally can't. I would perish. Unfortunately, that's the season I'm in. I'm being a goner, but I love my team and my team does such a great job, so how do I talk about them and amplify their skills when I'm doing a sales call, when I have a prospect, that kind of thing. So yeah, it's like switching from being the doer to being the coach, which I love. But also not everyone needs to have an agency and it's okay to be a freelancer.

Lex: Okay. You mentioned social media strategy and people's relationship. You love talking with people about their social media strategy. You are one of the few people I trust to talk about social media strategy with, as I mentioned too, because I feel like there's so many people that are bought into social media in a way that's like zombie land situation where I don't know, they just watch too many meta webinars or something, and they're just like, here's what you do. And you, Christina, I think are both really passionate about social media, but you use it in such an intelligent way that I think is future proof really rare. Can you talk about your approach to social? How do you think about it when it comes to your business?

Kristina: I think really social media is about community. And so it's funny, whenever I think about myself and I have to give myself a title, I'm always like, am I a social media manager? Because I just feel like I'm a community builder. Social media is about community, bringing your community together. And the reason why I say that and growing your community, the reason I say that is because a lot of times people will outsource to a social media team and they're expecting virality. They're like, I want 10 million followers. I know somebody who has 60,000 followers but can't sell a $20 product. So that's not a good r o i if you are not able to, that's not an ideal state. Ideal state is I have people in my network who have 500 followers and sell out every single thing that they do, and it's because they're nourishing that community. So really my philosophy on being on socials, it's about being social. It's about showing up consistently, connecting with new followers, connecting with existing followers and trying to funnel them into something that you're doing. And it doesn't have to be, I was going to say a scammy like, Hey, join this. Get in my van.

It doesn't need to be that way. I ask you not to invite people in your van from Instagram. I think you will get deleted. But it has to be about best intentions, building community in a really positive way and making those connections. And so I think really focusing on building your community because actually, Lex, you said this on my podcast, and people love this, which is your best referral sources are your clients that you already have the best people you can born into, the people you already know. And so it's the same on social. I started a business, an online business, and I don't always recommend this, but I started with my Instagram account that I had been using as a personal account, and I could do a whole thing about this. I won't today, but so friends and family were following me. That was my existing audience. That was the first few people to buy from me. And so that is the power of community is no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, when you pour into those people, no matter what platform you're on, you'll see success.

Lex: And I think one of the traps people fall into is they go for volume. To your point earlier about virality and follower count, they go for volume. And this is I think maybe a little bit built into the way these platforms have been designed because ironically, all these platforms have referral mechanisms, and that's why they're follow all your friends and here's all the people you should be inviting here and things like that. How do you stay focused on the community you've already built rather than always chasing the strangers? How do you do that?

Kristina: I think the big thing is just, and the sounds basic, but it's nurturing them as much as you can. So asking them what do they want from you and providing that. So that's a big thing. If you're a expert in lead gen, going on your Instagram stories and saying, Hey, I want to see how I can pour back into you. What are you guys wondering most about? And then do a podcast episode on that. Do a webinar show up in that way. Another is the piece. I'm engaging with them in any way that you can. And the other is I really try to funnel people from my social into my email list because email list is like, I'm sure you've done an episode on this. I'm positive that you are on the email list thing, but emails are such an amazing way for you to own your peeps.

And so how can you pour into them writing them a weekly email? We started doing this thing called the Weekly Snippet, where basically we write an overview of a few blog posts we have, if there's something going on for us, whatever, we send this out. And there's people who will tell me they're like, that is an email I'll never unsubscribe to. I love the updates. Oh my gosh, it's my life goal to come to one of your brunches. I'm so excited. I'm like, this is so great. It takes me no time. And people feel invested, and I always ask, Hey, I read every single one of these emails, so if you want to hit a response, head a response up, and I'm happy to respond back probably at one a week of someone just engaging and I engage back. That means so much to people. So yeah, I think as much as you can do and try to open that line of communication,

Lex: Staying focused on the people that are already showing up back, right, already replying and saying, oh, okay, I can deepen a relationship here rather than like, okay, nice. Glad you're here. Okay, onto the next. Right. And so that brings us to your shift of, I guess a recent shift. I didn't know this, of doing more work in person, doing the brunches, doing more events, going to the Chamber of Commerce. What brought that on the online or the offline community building?

Kristina: So for me, it was very much around the fact that I wasn't, I was trying to create the room I didn't see, so I was going to in-person things that were filled with lots of men. It was very old school, very h shaky, just not the way I've been doing business. So it was just not for me. But then shortly after that, I had this idea. I was like, would it be cool if we could just get a few women together for brunch? I find women respond to each other differently when there's no men there. And we started to do this, and now they've become this little success where people are coming together and we're doing it monthly and they sell out pretty quick usually. And people are so excited about connecting. But what's been amazing has been seeing these women connect with each other

Lex: It's kind of rare. I mean, don't you agree there aren't that many online entrepreneurs who are doing local community building. Do you see that from others?

Kristina: Yeah. I think it is rare, and I think if you're in a community where you don't see it, do some Googling, poke around. But if you're in a community, don't see it. It's the sign that you need to create it.

Lex: Kristina, if you could give one tip to our listener about how to connect with their ideal community to build that community, what would your one tip be?

Kristina: I would say don't worry about focusing on every platform and focus on the platform that brings you the most leads and the most joy.

Lex: We forgot to mention actually that the entire reason that this podcast exists is because of Kristina and Jess Milanes. So I was really hesitant to make this podcast, but Kristina convinced me, and it was really challenging. Initially, I was like, I'm not going to do a podcast where Kristina was like, okay, Lex. So we got off the phone, and then two days later I was like, here's my podcast.

Kristina: I know. I've never seen someone turn something around like that. That's Kristina Bartold energy. She was like, no, I'll not. There's no way. It's too much work. And then she was like, hi, launching my podcast. Welcome to the Low Energy Lead show. And I was like, what the heck? So yeah, but you're such an amazing resource to your community, so getting in people's ears is a no brainer.

Lex: Thank you so much for being on the show.

Kristina: Absolutely. My pleasure. And yeah, I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks.

Lex: Kristina also hosts her own podcast called Build Your Digital Community, where she interviews all kinds of community builders and business owners. If you liked our interview, you'll definitely find her show useful. I really appreciate how Kristina is so people-centric from reframing social media as community building to the way she fosters her own team. She knew that she excelled at managing people and empowering them. Uncovering that about yourself, where you shine and where you need support is key to growing a successful company.

For more episodes like this one, check out my interview with Dana Publicover. Dana runs a growth marketing firm based in Germany, and we talked about her many iterations of offers and audience, and how the need for a team emerged. It's a really insightful interview. I get tons of rave reviews about it. So go check that out.

Until next time, keep your energy low until the value will be high.