Why Most Marketing Agencies Fail to Deliver: The Inside Story with Behdad Jamshidi

You’re stuck in the agency hire/fire cycle, right? It feels like you’re throwing months—even years—of your business growth down the drain just trying to find an agency that actually knows what they’re doing.

Why is it so hard? Because most marketing agencies don’t understand business, and most businesses don't understand marketing. You’re putting people in the same meeting who don't even speak the same language!

Every single agency tells you they can do everything. That’s a massive lie.

Here's the truth, according to someone who used to hate doing 80-hour websites on the weekend: Only 11% of marketing agencies are actually good at one to three things. The other 89%? They’re "not really good at anything." And they’re also usually really good at convincing you of whatever they need to convince you of!

You don't need one magic-bullet agency. Most businesses actually need two to five different agencies to support their growth. Finding one good partner is hard enough—finding 2 to 5 on your own is literally impossible without the right network.

In this video, you'll hear from a former engineer who became a marketing broker after talking to over 1,093 marketing agencies and experts. He only works with the top 11%. Here are some shocking truths you'll learn that will save your business years:

• What really happens when you work with big agencies (and who's doing the actual work, hint: it's not who you think).
• Why it costs you two to three years of business growth every time you try and fail with a new agency.
• The number one issue that causes good agency relationships to fail, and the proportional response that actually fixes it.

What if you could skip the frustration and get connected with vetted partners right now? What if you could stop wasting six months on every bad hire? Watch the video NOW to learn how to shortcut the process and finally get the right partners for your next stage of growth.

Transcript with Punctuation and Grammar Fixes

Behdad Jamshidi (00:00): We don't know how much time we have left on Earth. I don't say this morbidly; I just say it so that I'm aware of how important life is. I can't wait until I'm 50 before I do the stuff I want to do. I've got to do them now while I have the energy to do it, while my body is capable of doing certain things. The business should be serving the life that I want to run, and if it's not, then I have to re-evaluate.

Jason Montoya (00:20): Welcome to an Inspirational People episode on the Share Life podcast. I'm Jason Scott Montoya, and in this conversation, I'm speaking with Behdad Jamshidi. Behdad, say hello. He started a company called C Jam, the Marketing Connector, after realizing that most companies don't know how to evaluate the value of a marketing agency or assess their own needs.

Behdad Jamshidi (00:29): Hello there.

Jason Montoya (00:40): Since every business is different, not only in their needs but where they are in their growth process, it isn't a one-size-fits-all. This is the first time Behdad and I have met, so he probably doesn't know a lot about my story. I wanted to just mention one thing because you might be interested: I owned a marketing agency for about seven years, from 2007 to 2014. I shifted in 2014 from owning a marketing company to being a freelancer. I do some similar consulting and creative work, but I don't want to build an agency anymore. I've been in that agency world, and I actually work with a lot of agencies. There's a lot of cool stuff in that arena; it's a fun industry to be involved in. So I'll throw that out there. Behdad, tell us about you. Where do you come from? What's your story, and how did you get to where you are today?

Behdad Jamshidi (01:26): It's fun when people have agency experience and background because we can relate to a lot of stuff. My quick background: I started out as an engineer. I wasn't even in marketing before getting into this space. I did electronics engineering, but I worked for a company called TELUS up in Canada, similar to Verizon in the States. I worked with a lot of mid-sized companies, anywhere from about 50 to 1,000 employees, understanding what was going on from a C-level and IT perspective and then building out technology roadmaps. For example, how would a company like Lush go from A to B to C when it came to bringing all of their retail locations together? So, that's what I did full-time for almost 10 years at Telus.

Jason Montoya (01:35): Yeah, and what type of engineer? Okay. Okay.

Jason Montoya (02:03): And were you self-taught? Did you go to school? Did you just happen to figure it out while you were on the job?

Behdad Jamshidi (02:08): No, I definitely went to school for engineering. But the cool part about engineering is that it teaches you how to learn really effectively and solve problems. That's kind of how I got into it. When I worked at TELUS, I did a whole bunch of different roles too. I used to run an innovation center, and I used to work with outside plant engineers, doing a lot of the technical stuff. But I always knew that I wanted to be a sales engineer because it was the midpoint between business and technology and bridging that together.

Jason Montoya (02:34): Yeah, yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (02:37): Which is kind of interesting because when you look at what I do now, I basically became a marketing broker. I started building up websites, Google Ads, and SEO initially about seven years ago. But I got to a point where I hated doing 80-hour websites on the weekend. It just wasn't fun. So I started looking for marketing agencies.

Jason Montoya (02:50): Yeah. Was it the 80 hours or the website? Yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (02:55): It was both. You know when you work full-time as a senior sales engineer, you're working all week, and then you come home and you're working all weekend on the websites, but then your customer is just like, "I need to change this color," or "I'm not happy with this." And you're like, "I don't really need to do this for a couple of extra thousand bucks on the weekend. I get paid pretty well." So when I started passing work off to marketing agencies, I started realizing most marketing agencies didn't understand business, and most businesses didn't understand marketing.

Jason Montoya (03:09): Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (03:25): You put people in the same meeting, and they don't speak the same language. Every marketing agency says they can do everything, but they're only good at one to three things. Only 11% of them are only good at one to three things, and 89% of them are not really good at anything.

Jason Montoya (03:38): Yeah, and they are also usually really good at convincing you of whatever they need to convince you of. Yeah, yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (03:44): That's exactly it. The one service they do is going to solve every problem that you have. So yeah, that's kind of what guided me down this road of becoming this marketing broker. And I've talked to 1,093 marketing agencies and experts now, and I work with about 11%.

Jason Montoya (03:57): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I'm a freelancer who—this is to give you an example of just how the agency world can work—there was a New York agency that outsourced to an Atlanta agency that outsourced it to me. But a lot of times, the agency, they're just finding the talent, they're putting the pieces together, they're building the team, right? And there's a lot of value that could be in that if you just need to get something done or depending on the situation.

Behdad Jamshidi (04:12): Oh, my God.

Jason Montoya (04:25): So, but yeah, it's an interesting world for sure.

Behdad Jamshidi (04:28): That's actually super funny because I always knew large agencies would use other agencies, but I didn't know the other layer. You're going like three layers deep, which is kind of funny. Yeah, and it's interesting because when you do that, I'm okay with agencies using other partners, like having contractors and stuff that they used before because, cool, you use a resource that you know works, that's good work, and they're typically integrated into your system. But what a lot of businesses don't understand is when they're using people that they've never used before on a project, and therefore, you don't actually know what's going to be the outcome of it. That's when it gets a little shady.

Jason Montoya (04:34): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (05:00): Yeah. Now, I will say from the agency's point of view, if they're a good agency, they should be doing a level of quality control to mitigate any risk that they're using. But yeah, that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to happen, but that should be. A good agency is that they're actually more of a quality control mechanism than anything. So, tell us, did you grow up with an engineer's mind? How did that happen?

Behdad Jamshidi (05:32): Yeah, well, when you grow up in an immigrant family, you have three things to choose from: you've got the doctor, lawyer, or engineer side of things. I knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer because I don't like reading a lot of stuff all the time, and a doctor took way too long, so I went down the engineering path, which I think was actually the right path because that's how my brain works. It just works very logically, and I see pieces, I see processes. I've done tons of personality testing, yeah, like all of them.

Jason Montoya (05:39): Okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. Have you done any kind of personality testing before? Okay. Have you done Big Five or Myers-Briggs or?

Behdad Jamshidi (05:59): I've done Myers-Briggs, I've done Strength Finders, I've done the DISC assessment, like all those. So I'm like in the top, yeah, in the top right-hand corner, visionary, thinking of the big picture, not like detailed like most engineers are. So, but yeah.

Jason Montoya (06:04): Okay. Okay. Do you remember where you fall on those? Okay, okay, got it. And is that part of what makes you a good bridge? A lot of technical people, they don't even know how to talk to other people from a social standpoint. But at the same time, you can have someone so social, they have no idea what they're talking about technically, and so they'd say all this garbage or nonsense. And you've kind of slid into that middle zone. Is that what I'm hearing?

Behdad Jamshidi (06:24): Yeah, the middle zone is where I like playing. My whole zone of genius is getting to about 80% understanding of things, and then the next 20% takes years and years of time to be an expert. So I'm really good at talking to the experts and being like, "Hey, break this down for me so that I can go explain this to my customer." And so yeah, I love that part, that part of being a bridge. And I think I'm just naturally curious, so I really enjoy learning all these different concepts and topics. Where I get disinterested is when it gets to the point where it's like, "Oh, now you've got to go to all the like minutiae of stuff," and I'm like, "No, I'd rather go learn something else," right?

Jason Montoya (07:06): Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that because I got my degree, my bachelor's in media and animation, which is like 3D animation, you know, Toy Story, you know? And what I came to realize is I liked more of the storytelling and the direction and the artistic initiative more than like the technical, like modeling it and animating the character. I wanted to work with someone that did that. And so...

Behdad Jamshidi (07:06): Hmm.

Jason Montoya (07:34): I can relate to you on that front.

Behdad Jamshidi (07:36): Yeah, we're on the same page. It's interesting because I never thought I would find something that I'm really, really passionate about going deep on, but I found recently that human connection is the thing where I'm like, "I want to understand this past that 80%."

Jason Montoya (07:46): Yeah. Is one of your strengths, by any chance, under connectedness? Okay.

Behdad Jamshidi (07:52): Yeah, it is. I remember the other one was like activator. Like I can get things started pretty fast, and then connection is another big one. But essentially, my superpower is just the ability to connect with people, understand people, and then bring people together. It's all around connection. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (07:56): Okay. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So tell us, lean into that a little bit more in terms of, okay, you're an immigrant, you come into this foreign land. I have a small version of that. I grew up in Arizona, and I moved to Atlanta, and we left everyone we knew and started a new life. And that was very, very difficult in like every possible way I could think of. But I could imagine going to another country would be like a whole other level of that. Tell us about that experience for you.

Behdad Jamshidi (08:39): Yeah, I mean, my parents were immigrants. They moved to Toronto. I was born in Toronto, and then I moved when I was one to Vancouver. We didn't grow up having a ton of money. We actually grew up in social housing where you pay 30% of whatever you make to have homes. But living in that environment was actually quite lovely because I had so many friends. It was like a townhouse area growing up, so I had friends that I could play baseball and hockey and basketball and all this stuff with. So it was really cool growing up in that environment. But then, for me, where my connectedness comes from was I was very protected as a child. I wasn't allowed to hang out with a lot of my friends until grade 12. I either played soccer or I was at home or playing video games. And the way that I would connect with people would be through MSN Messenger, for example. And the whole thing around that was I'd have to connect with people by understanding who they are, what they're struggling with, and trying to support them and help them. And so that's how we'd connect with people behind the computer screen. And so as I got older and I started getting to go out and hanging out with people, I just knew how to connect with people and understand people a little bit deeper because I was never the person that would just be part of one group. I wasn't part of like the cool kids or the guys that did, you know, math or whatever. I just would find the people that I liked that I had similar values to and build relationships with them regardless of what group they were in. And so that kind of followed me up throughout life where I'm always just looking for the people I really connect with value-wise and then connect deeper with them on that sense.

Jason Montoya (09:15): Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And what would be some of those values?

Behdad Jamshidi (10:06): For me, it's just like people that are growth-minded. You can tell they're not locked into one way of thinking. If you can bring up new information to them, they shift and change, or people who have thought a little bit deeper about life, rather than just being super reactionary and being like, "I always do this," they actually question, "Why do I always do this?" You know, those types of things, and people that are just respectful to others. You get a certain energy from people. And when you find those people—I just had a call before this with someone where I was like, "Dude, we're connecting on values and beliefs and what matters to us"—those are where you build more deeper connections. Yeah, so I'm actually building—I've already kind of built this something what I call amplified relationships where it's self-to-self connection. When you build self-to-self connection with someone, you actually amplify your relationship by a multitude of three. And then I have all this other stuff that I'm talking about too, but when I start sharing that with the world, there's going to be a whole different way of how people think about the relationships that they have in life and what matters.

Jason Montoya (10:56): Okay.

Behdad Jamshidi (11:01): I think when I start sharing that with the world, there's going to be a whole different way of how people think about the relationships that they have in life and what matters.

Jason Montoya (11:07): Yeah, where do your values come from?

Behdad Jamshidi (11:10): My values come from all aspects of life: from what my parents gave me, what you learn globally, what you learn from society. I have five core values that I go by: connectedness and love. Impact is a huge one for me. Mastery is also a big one for me, just mastering internal self. These are just the things that I want to explore more of. What I consider values is the things that you want to experience more in life. So, for example, if my value is connection and love, I want to experience more of that in life. If I want to experience mastery, I want to get more of that in life, so mastery around self and discipline. So that's why I spend a lot of money on the emotional intelligence and self-mastery side of things a lot.

Jason Montoya (11:51): Yeah, well, love and mastery are two of my core values as well, so we have intersected there. So, well, there's kind of a bunch of layers, similar to you. We inherit things from our upbringing, but then we kind of get to a point where we have to sort of self... we have to choose those values, right? And so, you know, moving across the country to Arizona was a big transition for me.

Behdad Jamshidi (11:56): Cool. Where'd yours come from?

Jason Montoya (12:21): And so things went into chaos and the hellscape of the chaos, and kind of realizing, "Okay, my way is not working." And so, I've got to get grounded, right? And so my faith is a part of that journey. It was like, "Okay, just praying, like, 'God, my way's not working, show me yours.'" Sort of working through that exercise and realizing that as a person that was being sort of—think of a ping-pong ball that's just getting bounced around—I was just being reactive like you were talking about. And the values were kind of like these stakes in the sand: "This is a stake, I've got to like, this is what matters to me. These other things don't." And so, "I'm going to drive a stake in the ground here and a stake here and a stake there." And so those values came out of that process. And then I kind of went through a revisit of them several years later, I tweaked a couple, because I think I had... it was excellence was the value, and then I actually changed it to mastery. And then, and I had presence as a value, and I changed it to mindfulness. So I kind of had some evolution, you know, tweaking them. But that's the short, random, meandering version of the answer to your question.

Behdad Jamshidi (13:31): That's cool, yeah, and I love the iteration on them because I do think they change over time, like slightly, right? Just the little slight tweaks of the words actually really do shift what they are. And the other cool thing that I found out as I'm figuring out my values is—and you can play around with this stuff on ChatGPT too and get a little insight—you can be like, "You know, what do you think my top five values are?" And then you can be like, "Cool, what were the other five values that were next in line?" Right, because most people think of their top ones, but it's like there's a whole bunch of secondary ones kind of hiding there. Because as you get more insights into the different value systems, like then you look at, my wife, for example, what her values are, like, where are they aligning in terms of what's most important, right? Another big value of mine is freedom. Before I used to call it certainty because I wanted certainty in life, but I realized once you get certainty in life, life becomes boring because nothing is new anymore, and you know what's happening. And so we don't truly want certainty even though we believe we do. And so now for me, it's like, I look for freedom. I just want the freedom of time and space to think and do the things that I want to focus on. And so they shift over time as you learn more about yourself.

Jason Montoya (13:48): Yeah. Bye. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Jason Montoya (14:50): Yeah, yeah. And I think from the freedom one, I resonate with in the sense of as a society—and really I kind of think of freedom as two forms: there's the healthy form, which is a responsible form of freedom, and then the unhealthy, which is a tyrannical form of freedom, which is, "I can do whatever I want regardless of consequences," so it's an irresponsible freedom. Because if you get power, then you can force people to do what you want, and you can do what you want without accountability. And so there's an interesting dynamic there as it comes to living in a community and a society that I think relates to the freedom angle there.

Behdad Jamshidi (15:11): Mm-hmm.

Behdad Jamshidi (15:31): That's an interesting way of looking at freedom. For me, even when I look at freedom, I just want to have the time and space to think and do the things that I want to do, that is not going to be a hindrance to the people around me, but it's more having the time to think on these concepts and share new learnings and insights. I get excited. My learning is very selfish initially because I'm like, "I just want to learn this stuff for myself and integrate it into myself." And then once I learn it, I get super excited to want to share with others because I'm like, "Cool, you know how long it took me to figure this out? It took me like four years. But let me kind of give you an insight into it so that, yeah, you have to go through the experiential learning yourself, but at least you know that this is the end state that you might come up and learn yourself as well." So I get super excited about that stuff.

Jason Montoya (15:39): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (16:10): Yeah, yeah, and I think that the sharing is an interesting dynamic because my personal mission statement is to share life. That's the name of the podcast. And so it's a mutual thing of giving and receiving. It's giving and receiving, right?

Behdad Jamshidi (16:19): Yes, yes, 100%.

Jason Montoya (16:29): Yeah. So, as an immigrant, what would you want people that are natives to understand about what it means to be an immigrant that would help them be a more complete person?

Behdad Jamshidi (16:40): Ask that question again. That's a good question, but I want to make sure I guide it.

Jason Montoya (16:42): As an immigrant, what would you tell a native person, someone that hasn't gone through that experience? What would you want them to understand about being an immigrant that they may not understand or appreciate because they haven't gone through that experience to learn those same lessons?

Behdad Jamshidi (17:01): Yeah, it's a hard one because when you're an immigrant, your family goes through pretty hard times to get to where they live. My parents have been... my dad's been shot at. He's had to call under different passports to try to get out of a country that's not very safe, at least at the time, and they've gone through... yeah, before he moved to Toronto, exactly, and a whole bunch of other things. When you look at their lives, you're like, "Holy, what they went through was crazy." And so clearly there's a lot of trauma and stuff that they go through, which then generally gets passed on to your kids, that thinking, that survival mechanism. So a lot of immigrants are in a very survival mode. That's why they work so hard. They see that their parents have gone through really, really hard times, and so they want to build stability. And so for their kids, yeah, they're just like, "We just want to give them a better life than what they had before."

Jason Montoya (17:22): That was before he moved to Toronto? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And often for their kids, right? Yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (17:56): And at home, you're also learning different languages. The way you speak at home is different than when you speak at school, and it takes time to learn that stuff, and even just the cultural differences and just being more respectful of them, and teaching kids to be more respectful of them. Back in the day, when I was in elementary school, I would throw out my sandwiches because they were different. They were just Persian food, which is actually super delicious. Now I'm like, "How did I throw out all that amazing food?" But when you're a kid...

Jason Montoya (18:18): Yeah, yeah. Yeah, bring it my way, bring it my way.

Behdad Jamshidi (18:25): Yeah, exactly. But when you're a kid and you're being made fun of, you're throwing your food out. You're not eating it because it makes you different. So all we want to do essentially is to fit in and fit into cultures. And that's just some sense of coming from an immigrant family. But at the same time, it's also what's made me work really hard, have grit, understand different parts of the world, have different languages I can pull on to explain things. There are so many beautiful things about being an immigrant. Ultimately, I love my country. I'm not really connected with Iran. My parents are Persian, so I'm not connected with Iran. I'm connected to Canada because that's where I was born and that's the culture I lived in, right? So, yeah.

Jason Montoya (18:58): Yeah. Yeah. What about your parents? Do they still feel connected?

Behdad Jamshidi (19:04): They're connected because there's some family there, but they've been here for 36 years now. It's home, it's 100% home. Can't really live anywhere else.

Jason Montoya (19:10): So it's home to them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is there any sense of, like, did they feel any sense of responsibility for the—I don't know if the country is the right word—but for the people that they left behind? How does that play out in their minds for immigrants?

Behdad Jamshidi (19:29): Yeah, like they want to support their families as much as they can, right? So my dad actually came from a farming area. He was a farmer, his family's farmers. He ended up working three different gas station jobs growing up. And then when we had my second brother, he then went back to school to get his accounting license, and then he ran like a solopreneur accounting business for the last like 30 years, you know what I mean? And so he sends money back home and stuff. You know, when you have like a poor mindset, it also kind of keeps you there because you're trying to support everyone else to bring everyone else up, but you haven't really taken care of yourself. And so a lot of that happens. But I mean, he sends money to support his family back home and stuff like that. So they're connected in that way. But yeah, you lose ties as well. Like I'd love to go back to Iran and visit it. I visited it when I was 13.

Jason Montoya (19:35): Hmm. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (20:02): Wow.

Behdad Jamshidi (20:18): So a very long time ago.

Jason Montoya (20:18): Do you remember it?

Behdad Jamshidi (20:19): I do remember it. Yeah, very kind people, a lot of amazing food, so much history and architecture. Iran is one of the coolest places to visit in the world, I think. It's unfortunate it's going through whatever it's going through right now, but I'm hoping that one day it kind of gets through it so that I can go visit it and take some friends with me and be like, "Look at how many cool things we have here."

Jason Montoya (20:21): Yeah. Yeah, so there's an interesting dynamic you brought up there, which, you know, my father—so I'm half Mexican, so on my dad's side—and my grandmother, my father's grandma, we were in this little city in Arizona called Flagstaff, and she was Mexican, and her husband had started a business, and they became successful. And they tried to kind of manage that dynamic of continuing to be involved in their community and trying to help their community and trying to lift them up. But in a weird way, it also created a division because that community then felt betrayed, like, "You've integrated in a way that makes you different than us." They always had to navigate that tension. Was that a similar one that they had to deal with?

Behdad Jamshidi (21:36): That's interesting. I'm not sure how my parents dance. My mom dealt with some hard stuff between being in Canada, being the Canadian mother and that kind of stuff. There's a whole situation there. On my dad's side, there probably was, but he doesn't express himself as much. Once again, your parents, if they're immigrants, I'm not sure about you, they didn't get as much time to spend on the emotional intelligence stuff because they had to build food, shelter, safety for us, right? And so there's not talking poorly on it, it's just they didn't have as much time to think about the emotional intelligence aspects of it. So they don't really share as much of the hardship, right, because they want to protect their kids about it. So what, yeah.

Jason Montoya (22:02): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's how my grandmother was. She really wanted to protect them, although in some ways she would actually hurt them. She just was doing it in a way that was motivated by thinking that she was helping them.

Behdad Jamshidi (22:21): Yes. Yeah, that's the exact situation where it's now it's like, "Hey, we're a family. If you're going through hard times, you can share it with us. We're adults now, and we can all deal with things together." And I think that's what I miss in my current family dynamic. We're very close. We all love each other, but it's like, hard times... it's like, you know, for example, my dad doesn't feel comfortable sharing with the family because he's like, "I need help, potentially." You know what I mean? And that's tough because you're like, "I want to be there in support." Whereas he's like, "I want to protect my family." It's like, "Yeah, but we can help each other." Yeah.

Jason Montoya (22:55): Yeah, so there's a dynamic that is very difficult, which is changing generational patterns for the better. It's hard to move forward when these things are sort of instilled in us as we grow up and in a lot of social ways. So how have you kind of shifted or pivoted your story to kind of embrace the good that they gave you, but also to adapt into something even better?

Behdad Jamshidi (23:22): Yeah, man, I've been working on this for 11 to 12 years. I've done a lot of stuff. Where it kind of triggered was when I was about 22, 23, where I took a course called Landmark at the time. I took two levels of that course, but the first level was like, I was out of college at that point, just out of college at that point.

Jason Montoya (23:37): Was it in college or on the side?

Behdad Jamshidi (23:47): No, it was one of those courses you take outside of school. It was a course around just really understanding the stories that you created in life and how they affect who you are today. That was the first time I kind of came across that concept and was like, "I've got a whole bunch of stories that are running and making me very reactive in life." And that got me super interested. So I started reading a whole bunch of books on like emotional intelligence. I started taking conflict resolution courses, mediation courses. I started seeing it.

Jason Montoya (24:11): Wow. Were there pressing problems in your life that you were trying to deal with, or was it just a curiosity thing? Yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (24:16): No, it was curiosity. I just got so interested because I was like, "Okay, if I found that these stories were ruining my life, what other stories are there that I don't know?" And so I've been seeing a counselor for 11 years now, like once a month. When I first started, it was like, "What are you here to solve?" "I don't know. I'm just here to like talk and figure out like what's going on internally." I had no idea. And I think as I've done that, I've gotten very, very good at understanding my emotions, where things come from, how to pivot and shift. Now I'm building on that foundational knowledge, which is really cool. So I feel like I'm quite a good place mentally to deal with a lot of stuff, especially when you run a business. Uncertainty is what you live in. Before, certainty was my value, so it's like the exact opposite side. But now, when I sit in uncertainty, I'm comfortable being in it, and I'm like, "I'll figure things out. This is just the world that we live in."

Jason Montoya (24:26): Mm.

Jason Montoya (25:02): Yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (25:13): Things are always going to be uncertain because things are always changing. And so I try to share that knowledge or at least that growth that I'm having by sharing my experiences with others in my family and things like that and watch them grow and shift out of their own different beliefs. And I'm just excited that I'm starting to pick up and getting better. And I know some things are just going to take time. You have to be a certain age to understand certain lessons, I think. But I'm preparing myself so that I can pick up those lessons as early as I possibly can so I can reap the dividends of it, and then when I reap the dividends of it, I share it with others.

Jason Montoya (25:28): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. So is there anything dramatically different about Canada for us Americans that have never really lived there or been there other than like small visits?

Behdad Jamshidi (26:00): Yeah, that's fair. That's very fair. I mean, I haven't lived in the US either, but I've been to the US a lot. I think Canadians are just pretty polite. Also, Americans are super nice too. I don't know why people say things. Man, I met some amazing people in New Orleans and in LA and stuff. Everyone just is nice, and I think essentially everyone is just like, we're all very similar. Some things that I think Americans don't know: it's cold in the winter in certain parts of Canada, but in Vancouver, it's not that cold. We don't live in igloos, like something that I kind of hear sometimes makes me chuckle and laugh. And yeah, I mean, we're really cool. If you visit Canada and you go to like Montreal or Toronto or Vancouver, you're going to have a good time. And we're a little bit more, when it comes to like business, we're a little bit more reserved in terms of, I feel like in the US, when you do business, it's very more transactional. It's like, "Hey, I'll give you a shot. We'll do it. We'll try it," and then you'll cut people really fast. Whereas in Canada, it takes a little bit more effort to build the relationship, and then we're more afraid to spend money. So there's those kind of nuances and differences. And we're pretty like—

Jason Montoya (27:04): You...

Behdad Jamshidi (27:08): I mean, things are shifting society-wise, but we're very multicultural, and we love that aspect. I love the amount of food that I have up here that's from so many different parts of the world, right? That's super cool to me. So yeah, we're just like a weird little melting pot. We're quite large in landmass size, same as the US, so you'll just get every type of culture on all sides.

Jason Montoya (27:16): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, when you think about living better, what do you think about that? What does that phrase mean to you?

Behdad Jamshidi (27:39): What a good question, man. I like these deep questions. I put a lot of thought into this. So for me, living better is like, I always ask the question, like, "When I'm 80 years old and I look back on life, what is the path of least regret that I'm going to have?" And I ask this very actively. So it's not the easiest path. Usually, it's the hardest path that you want to take to have least regret. So for me, I'm always asking, "What matters to me?" And I know it's not money. I got to a place in my business where it's making good money. It's doing what it needs to do. And I know the answer to what I want to do in the future, what I want to do when I grow up, is not make more money, because I've seen a lot of people not be happy with that path. What I do see people happy with is when they ask what they truly want to do in life. And so for me, asking that question over the last two and a half, three years as the business has kind of been building and growing, was that I really want to dive into human connection and human relationships and learn about that while having the time to spend time with my wife and taking the trips and building memory dividends, which I got from the book, Die with Zero. So it's just really having this truly balanced life where it's like you take care of your physical, your mental health, you're hanging out with your family and really caring about that. You have something that you're building towards and that you're excited about because financial freedom is really not that exciting if you're sitting on a couch and playing video games. Life will get boring pretty fast. You have to have something that you're passionate about. And if you don't know that right now, just start asking the question, "What do I like doing? What makes me passionate?" And over the course of time—it took me two and a half to three years, where over the course of three months, things started clicking for me, and I was like, "Oh, this is the thing that I'm doing next." But you have to be aware of asking that question to find it.

Jason Montoya (29:15): Hmm. Yeah, yeah, so I think that's good to know. I just did a video on my YouTube channel where I was talking about, "If someone you love is dying, go see them now before it's too late." And I kind of unwrap that, but one of the things I talk about is the key is to live a life where if you do miss that moment, you've had so many moments with them, it doesn't matter, right? And that's what I think I'm hearing from you.

Behdad Jamshidi (29:43): Yeah, 100%, yeah. Like I always want to hang out with my mom, see my dad. That's why we moved back from the Netherlands. That was one of the big reasons. I was like, "They're getting older. I want to build more memories with them," because it's beautiful. That's... I've been doing this exercise every morning. It's a priming exercise, and a part of the priming exercise is grabbing memories of your past, your present, and your future and just holding them and stacking them on each other. Man, it's so cool when you're like, "Oh, I used to live in the Netherlands, and I have so many different experiences from Poland and this place and that place." And that's cool to remember. And then I'm like, "Oh, I've got these relationships, and I can pull on those." Honestly, I was like, "This is the coolest part of having all these experiences and having all these relationships is being able to pull on these memories," which I don't think we do enough.

Jason Montoya (29:49): Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (30:27): Yeah, yeah. There's a—somewhere around here—but in my second book, I talk about a framework I talk about called IDEMA, I-D-E-M-A, which is... it's every idea and project goes through this cycle, right? And so there's kind of these layers that kind of get added to it. And so the memory piece is interesting. One, because our memory is a layering type of memory. So if you ever have to, like, remember... if you ever, as you go through the layers, you kind of remember more and more. That makes sense. They're like triggers for the next memory. And then... what was the other thing I was going to say? I lost my train of thought there. But anyway, I'll come back to it when I remember it. So, all right, so living better is you just have this inclination, I guess, to grow, a growth mindset, like you said, and you like to find people that have that growth mindset. How do you explain where that came from?

Behdad Jamshidi (31:16): Okay, sounds good.

Behdad Jamshidi (31:34): I'm not sure where it came from. I feel like I've always kind of been this way where I always just like doing a lot of different things. Even as a kid, I played every single sport. I really enjoyed learning about the different sports and playing with my friends. And as I've gotten older, I think the grabbing of knowledge was initially like, "Hey, there's more certainty." When you know more things, you have more certainty in how things will play out. So I think part of that is like fulfilling that certainty aspect. And then I think another part of it is honestly just like, it's almost like a significance thing too. It's like, when people talk about something, I can connect with them on it. Now though, the growth and learning is like me just enjoying the process of the stuff that I get to learn and grab. And I'm realizing, because I've done so much learning—I read... I had a goal back when I was working full-time to read like 60 books in five years. I was like, "What? A book a month is pretty cool. Let's see if I can do that." I finished that in like 3.5 years. But I didn't realize that the outcome of that was that I could actually now talk about so many random things with anyone. So if someone wanted to talk about feedback and how to give good feedback, I could talk about that. You want to go talk about trees and how they're all interconnected in the world? I could talk about any topic because I've read so many books on all these different topics. So now looking back, I go, "Oh, all of these experiences that I have and the things that I'm pulling internally are things that I can use to connect with people." That's the beauty of it, because now I can talk with people and they'll say something, I'm like, "I can connect with that." "You've been to Europe? I've been to this, this, this. Have you seen this? Have you done that?" Like, it just gives you more things to connect with humans on. And essentially, the more interesting, I guess, you become as a human, the more you can actually attract others to connect with you. And so I think it might fundamentally all be like the need and want for me to want to like connect and love the people around me and be loved by people around me. I think that's probably where the underlying layer comes from.

Jason Montoya (32:57): Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (33:27): Yeah, and you reminded me of what I forgot now. So thank you for helping. So this IDEMA framework—it's Idea, Discover, Execute, Maintain, Audit—and there are these five stages. And there were five stages of every idea, but I realized my business went through those stages as an entity. And so when I actually ended up having my marketing agency about seven years, and I shut it down, and then I kind of became a freelancer, and I was talking to this agency, and this is kind of where it connects to what you're saying, is they were telling me about just the state of their business and what things were going on. And I was like, so using this framework, I was exactly where you were at this point in my journey. And I could kind of like zone into that moment or that stage and then to be able to relate to the situation that they were facing, and also see—kind of see things as they were seeing it—but also see things that maybe that were their blind spots to what was coming, but they didn't know was coming. Does that make sense?

Behdad Jamshidi (34:25): Mm-hmm.

Behdad Jamshidi (34:28): Yeah, no, 100% makes sense because you're actually able to connect with the experience that they're going through, and you're actually going even deeper into the layer because you're going to know the thoughts, the emotions, the things that they're going through, and you're going to connect with that human at a much deeper level because you have the experience.

Jason Montoya (34:36): Yes, yeah, yeah. And so there's something about, and one of the things that I felt, and I don't know if you feel this way, I've lived a lot of life in a short amount of time. Like the seven years of my marketing agency, it felt like when it was unfolding like decades of time compared to how it feels now. But I just went through so many experiences. Me and my wife got married, we moved across the country, first time I lived away from my parents, first time I lived in another place, started a business, went to college, you know, like all in a weekend, you know? And so it was very hard. So I don't recommend it, but it compacted a lot of experiences in a short amount of time. And I don't know, do you feel that way as well or?

Behdad Jamshidi (35:22): Yeah, yeah, especially when, like when I left my full-time job, and my wife got into her master's program that year. So we went from three jobs, right? Like so I had my business, I was doing engineering, she was working as a lawyer. We went from three jobs down to one job, which was my business. Everything relied on me. And then at the same time, interest rates went up, so a lot of businesses started struggling with all their loans. And so you start seeing churn, and I was like, "Oh man, I just left my full-time job." We're about to move internationally in four or five months to another part of the world. So like literally unhinging from all the family and friends and an entirely new network. I have to support my wife throughout this next year and a half to two years. No kids. Man, that would have taken me way over the edge probably, right? Like that was the one piece missing out of all of it. And so, yeah, it's a lot of stuff to learn and grow. The amount of journaling and reflection that I did that year and a half was crazy. Plus, I got to pick up on all these experiences. Like, we've been to over 55 different European cities at this point. I did a bunch of international travel back and forth. I'm not one of those, like, I'm at the point where I'm like, "I'm traveling too much." Like, it's not like I'm not traveling at all. I think I'm traveling too much. I need to find a way to like balance it out, because every time I travel, the momentum of my team turns down. But like, like you said, these are all ways of learning, and it was hard, but the amount of learning and the growth that comes from it on the other end, like you get to pull on all those experiences, and I would never change it for any amount of money or like being comfortable. That's what I'm learning. And thanks to my wife, she puts me on my comfort zone quite often. That being an uncertainty and being... it allows for you to become more of a confident human. You just become way more confident in who you are and what you're able to deal with. What I could only, what I could manage with my business, you know, six years ago, pales in comparison to what I can deal with now. And I know, like, as you move up and your business grows, you become more resilient to harder problems. But it's a really cool self-discovery aspect.

Jason Montoya (35:42): Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, do you have kids too or no kids? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (37:22): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so on the work side, what does it mean to work better?

Behdad Jamshidi (37:33): Yeah, for me, I think I have a pretty good balance. I found a good balance where I'm like, "This is the amount of work that I like to do. This is the type of customers I like to work with." I'm always trying to figure out new ways, and I'm finding that I need to simplify more often. But I'm kind of in a stage of growing my personal brand. The business is the business, and so a lot of things are running with that. I'm adding the personal brand aspect, so I am working more than I normally would work, but I also realize that that's a part of the stage that I'm in. For me, working better really just comes down to what you're trying to achieve, right, and why you're trying to achieve it. So not just like, "I'm trying to achieve my business to grow to $20 million or $30 million." That's not really a cool goal for me. But if you tell me like why you're doing that and why that actually matters outside of like, "I want to have a better car or a better home or whatever," right? Once you know that—so for me, it's like, I want to build a business where I get most of my time back. I get to travel, I get to explore, and I do something that I'm passionate about, something I'm excited about doing, and I make a difference. The way that I balance my business and day out is like, "Cool, I don't want to work past like 3:30 or 4:00. I want to be able to hit the gym twice a week at least and play some soccer, and I want to be able to hang out with my wife and my family and kids." No, I don't have kids, my family. You said you put kids in my head. Dangerous, dude, that's dangerous, dude. No, no kids. But yeah, that's what it means to me. It's funny because I just wrote a post today. I don't want to just work to work. I want to work and enjoy life while I can have it because I'm also seeing... I read two books when I was a bit—yeah, during that 60 book thing—I read two books that really shifted how I approach work and life. One was called Chasing Daylight, and it's basically the essence was the KPMG CEO. He's in his 50s. He was told he has three brain tumors before he could even ever retire, and he was then gone in four months, and he wrote a book between the time that he got told and the time that he passed away. And that book, plus a couple others around that type of topic, made me realize we don't know how much time we have left on Earth. And I don't say this morbidly, I just say it so that I'm aware of how important life is. And I can't wait till I'm 50 before I do the stuff I want to retire. I've got to do them now while I have the energy to do it, while I can do certain things my body is capable of doing it. So long-winded answer really is like the business should be serving the life that I want to run, and if it's not, then I have to re-evaluate.

Jason Montoya (38:50): Oh, is there something you're going to make an announcement here?

Jason Montoya (40:02): Yeah. So in your situation, the business is doing that. What is the personal brand, once you've built it? What is it giving you? What's the extra thing it's giving you or adding to your formula?

Behdad Jamshidi (40:13): Yeah. So I got this concept of like push and pull. Certain things you need to push forward, and then certain things are going to pull you forward. So right now for me, C Jam is like the push, right? Like I'm pushing the business forward, moving forward, connecting businesses to marketing agencies. But there is this pull, and usually if you're more in tune with who I am, the more I kind of get these pull messages, like this intuition of like, "This is what I should be focusing on. This is I should be putting energy into as well." And so the amplified relationships, the personal brand side of things, on like how to build deep connections within 10 minutes—that's the pull. That's the stuff that's like, I'm spending the time to uncover. I built frameworks. I'm adding numbers to basically people's relationships. You can literally have a number that says like, "Here's my amplification score, and here's the efficiency that's happening between the two relationships. Do I want to go deeper?" And what I was just saying like, I don't know what the end state of that looks like. I've kind of been in business long enough where I'm like, even if I think the end state's going to look like, it's going to be entirely different. So I'm just going to let life kind of tell me what the next state is. So for example, I randomly got a speaking opportunity to come speak on amplified relationships next week. So, cool. All right. Keynote needs to get done. Let's get this thing finished. The branding's all done. I'm excited. I'm going to go November 6th and share all these concepts and talks around it. And so now that I have that, my next step is going to be, "Cool, I have a network. I'm going to go reach out to everyone and be like, 'Hey, I've got a topic that I no one's ever seen before in terms of like the frameworks and the things that I'm building up. Who has a stage that I can actually speak on?'" And start going down that route. And then as the ideas formulate over the next little bit, there's going to be a book probably around it too. Because I'm going to be like, "Cool, as the concepts are solidifying, I'm like 90% of the way there. Writing a book will get me 100% of the way there," because I have to now explain it to an audience and just see where it goes from there. Maybe someone's like, "Hey, I need you to do a workshop on this for my sales team," or whatever it is, because they need their teams to work better. I'm just going to follow what makes sense at that point. And worst-case scenario for me, it's cool. "This guy talks on amplified relationships and connecting humans together. What does he do for his business?" "He connects businesses to marketing agencies." That's just such an interesting lineage. So now I have this push and pull mechanism in my life where I'm like super excited to do this, and I'm pushing this forward. It just gives me more energy.

Jason Montoya (41:27): Yeah.

Jason Montoya (42:32): Okay, so for you, it's about energizing and motivating you. I guess I kind of think of it like here's a thing, your business, you've created and conquered, and you're maintaining it. And now there's this mountain you see on the horizon, and you want to climb it and see what's up there.

Behdad Jamshidi (42:50): Yeah, exactly. And that mountain is one that is fueled by passion. And the passion was uncovered from doing the connection stuff. Because that's basically it. It's like, "What's your superpower?" "I'm really good at connecting with people." "Why? How?" And then I got this from Perry Marshall. He's like, "Behdad, you're trying to uncover the stuff that you know you know, but you haven't really set the time to think about it." And I was like, "Yeah." So I spent a little bit of time thinking about it. I'm like, all of a sudden, I have all these models that I've built out. And it's like, and when I'm talking to people about it, they're like, "Oh, wow, I've never thought about my relationship with someone that way or the way that I think about that." And I'm like, "Cool, now I'm giving them another tool on how to build a deeper relationship with their wife, or maybe build a deeper relationship with their employees or that senior member in their team." I think a lot of people, when they talk about human connection, they either talk about it in terms of a business sense or a personal relationship sense. No one goes, "Actually, it doesn't matter. Everything is a relationship, and if you know how to build deep connection, you can build deep connection across anyone you want to really connect with." And you'll also get to pick up on, "Why couldn't I connect with this person? What's missing there?" You'll be able to be like, "That's why." And so therefore, I have to wait for them to potentially get more interested in a certain topic or understand more about themself. For example, one thing that I talk about is like, let's say you have a scale of self-understanding from zero to 100. Zero is someone who's never really thought about anything, that's very reactionary. 100 is like Socrates, like the philosopher Socrates, or like Viktor Frankl. Those types of guys that have gone through some pretty hard life things and ended up on the other end with happiness, right? Like, what they find contentment. And so if I consider myself, let's say like a 55% self-awareness, because I've done, you know, 11 years of therapy, blah, I'm not nowhere near the 100% scale. But then if I say I'm talking to someone that has a 10% understanding of self, right? There's about 45 levels of disconnect. So, like, I'll say something, but because they haven't done the internal work to self-understand their values, their beliefs, it's just going to go over their head. And I'm not going to be able to connect with that person on a deeper level. And that concept works on everything. It works in business, for example, about the level of business understanding that you had, your example you shared, right? Like, "I ran an agency, I know what it was like inside and out of it." So like you have an understanding of, let's say, 60 or 70% out of 100 of running an agency, and they're at like a 40%. So you're going to understand them at their 40%, and you're going to help guide them on that next 30% that they're missing, the corners they're missing and that kind of stuff. So anyways, this is kind of the stuff that I'm talking about so that it gives people an insight of like, "Oh, if I really want to connect with my wife, and my wife loves art, and I hate art, maybe I need to spend a little bit of time and get my understanding to a 10 or 20%, and she's at a 70." So at least I have a foundation of understanding her deeper in what she loves and building a deeper connection there. Anyways, I got really excited about this stuff.

Jason Montoya (42:55): Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (43:55): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (45:39): Yeah.

Jason Montoya (45:42): Yeah, I'm trying to think of an example that I can throw out there, but the one that comes to mind is racing, like NASCAR. I think just watching cars drive around in circles doesn't seem all that exciting. But I think if you actually understand everything that's going on and how it works and how the cars are made and the driving and all of these places, then you can actually appreciate what's happening and actually be excited about it, right? And so, but when you don't have that, and you're just like watching people drive cars in circles, it just doesn't, you know. So I think there's something there that came to mind when you were talking about.

Behdad Jamshidi (46:24): Yeah, that's interesting. It's like the more you understand about the actual thing, the more joy you have watching that thing. I totally relate to that, especially when I watch soccer, for example, because I know the mentality it takes to pass that ball the way that they pass it, the moves they make. That finish, why did they miss that? "Oh, I know exactly why they missed that." Like there's so many little nuances you learn because you're in that. And then if someone else understands those nuances too, that connection is deeper within that node, right?

Jason Montoya (46:32): Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, and you can appreciate it and get excited about it or share it. So where does mentoring play a part in all of this? What's the role of mentoring, and how has it helped you as a person, or how do you look at it?

Behdad Jamshidi (46:53): Yeah, mentoring has been so key for my personal growth. So I have three different mentors, and I got this from a very young age when I came to my career because in TELUS, they always taught like, "You need to have a mentor regardless of what you're doing." Very intentional. So from that, as soon as I started in the workforce, I was like, "Oh, I had a mentor," and then it just became a thing that I would look for.

Jason Montoya (47:17): So they're very intentional about it.

Behdad Jamshidi (47:26): So even when I was running my business, I was like, "Who is my mentor? Who do I find to be a mentor for me?" And luckily, I have three amazing mentors. Whenever I need to reach out to them, talk to them, they all think differently. And so it's been very useful for me. In terms of giving back, in terms of mentorship, I still think I personally have a lot to learn, but I always try to share my experience and mentor people around me when they ask for it or if they look for my advice or anything of that nature. I don't formally do it yet, but I think, I mean, I'm still in my 30s. I think I'm going to get to a point when I hit kind of like my 40s where I'm like, "This is where I want to fully start mentoring back and giving back to the people that are really like..." One of my life goals is—like I'm considered kind of, for lack of a better term, like a super connector in the marketing space—but becoming a super connector and just knowing a lot of different people. So one of the things I want to be doing down the road when I'm mentoring people or like I believe in someone that's doing something really cool is to really unlock doors for them because of the people that I can either connect them with or thought patterns I can shift for them or things that can help them along the path. So I definitely think that's going to be a big part of my life a little bit later and giving them a lot back.

Jason Montoya (48:36): Yeah. And I guess when you think about... I guess, yeah, it's kind of interesting when you're talking about, we talk about you being an immigrant and having to transplant. Do you think there's anything unique about just that type of experience that mentoring has—there's a unique aspect of mentoring as it relates to being an immigrant?

Behdad Jamshidi (48:58): I never thought about it like that, but I'm sure that I'm going to be able to connect with people that do have that mindset more, like the people that have the scarcity mindset, for example, around money and things like that. So I've been working on that to getting into more of an abundant mindset, and I think I've shifted it quite a bit. So probably in that area, I'd probably be able to help. Where I think I would do a lot of my mentoring is when I see someone that is doing the hard work. They're doing, they have like the deep aspect, and they just need someone to help support along the way. Like if I can see, if I add a little bit of energy here, and it becomes an exponential return for that person, that's where I kind of look for it. Or when someone's like, you know, they've got like a little wall they're banging their head against, and like, if I can get them through this wall, their life just changes. That's the kind of stuff that I get super excited about. So whenever I'm in like networking events and talking to people, I'm always paying attention, and I'm like, "This person has a ton of potential, but there's like this thing holding them back." It's because I've done a lot of my own self-work that I can catch things. So that's kind of answering your question. I think on the immigrant front, probably because I can connect with them and see where their mindset and stuff is at, but really where I would put most of my energy is where like, I'm getting that exponential return in my time for that person and knowing that they can achieve a lot just because I can, I can get them through something.

Jason Montoya (49:04): Okay, yeah. Hmm.

Jason Montoya (49:57): Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. How do you navigate the situation where you see that? You see their potential, you know what they could become, but they are just not going to move towards that potential? They are locked and loaded into their whatever, their reality is, not their potential.

Behdad Jamshidi (50:31): Yeah, so for me it's like I'll plant seeds, and I'll say, "Look, I'll be very upfront with you. I think you're blocked on something, and I'd love to help you whenever you're ready to get down that road. Just know the door is open," right? Like, you just leave the door open for people, and then certain people will get to a point where they go, "I'm tired of staying where I am." You know, like people, a lot of people think they want like happiness and joy and stuff, but they're afraid to actually have it, and so they stick in what they're comfortable with. Yeah, it's a self-sabotage, but it's also like the emotional home that they're comfortable in, right? Like they might be emotionally comfortable being in anxiety and stress because that's the only way they can see the world and feel that they can work on certainty, for example. But if someone goes like...

Jason Montoya (50:34): Hmm.

Jason Montoya (51:02): Yeah, self-sabotage and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So they want something more than they want that thing, essentially. Yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (51:20): Yeah, they want certainty more than they want the happiness. "At least anxiety and stress, I know what this world looks like. But if I go become happy, what happens then? Will I get accepted? Will people say certain things? Will I lose that happiness?" Right? People are afraid of losing it. It's like, "Okay, at least you could have it and experience it, and if you lose it, you'll find another way back to it." So, yeah.

Jason Montoya (51:24): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Although I think sometimes, yeah, they say the enemy of great is good. So essentially, if you've got something good, why give that up for the potential of great? But if you've never experienced the great, you don't really know how great great is, right? When I shut down my company, I think that definitely encapsulates that idea. I left something that was good. I liked the team. I liked the rework we were doing. We shut down something that was good, and it was very difficult. And I just couldn't have, I didn't even imagine the great on the other side of it as a... like, it was almost like, "Okay, now I've got to go back into fair," you know? I had to go down a level, and I actually went up a level. And I was like, "Wow, I should have done this maybe a little earlier." Yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi (52:27): This usually happens with change. Because you have a more awareness of what you like and you don't like, and so you'll avoid the pitfalls you ran into before.

Jason Montoya (52:32): Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you think about stories? How have real and fictional stories or narratives shaped you as a person?

Behdad Jamshidi (52:45): I love this question. This is such a good question. I mean, stories are everything. As I get older, I start realizing more and more the greatest leaders in the world are amazing storytellers. Cause it, yeah.

Jason Montoya (52:56): Yeah, have you ever read this? I just pulled this out of my—this is Team of Rivals about Lincoln. If you check out the movie, he is just a good example of what you're describing where he's just telling story after story. But the movie just does a really good job. So someone got me this book, which is what the movie's based on, and I pulled it out. I haven't read it yet, but I got on my list, so.

Behdad Jamshidi (53:04): No, no, I have not. Cool, okay, I will watch the movie. Cool, I'll add this movie to my list. That's amazing. Yeah, I think the greatest leaders in the world are the best storytellers. And so I've been spending more time trying to understand story structure and how I can tell stories. I'm an engineer, I'm not a writer of things, but I've been writing content for a long time now, and I'm constantly trying to be like, "How do I get to be better at storytelling?" And when it comes to books, originally I would just be more into, you know, the self-help books and get like the information. And then I started realizing how important the stories are in the books because they're what bypass your ego and allow you to actually understand the emotion and bring all that stuff up. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (53:43): Hmm.

Jason Montoya (53:58): Yeah, that's an interesting thing, because I have this metaphor, this parable that I developed years ago called The Island Story. And that was something we discovered was when we would share it with people, their guards, when you tell people a story, their guard went down, you go into the gate, and you could talk about things that they would have been never have talked about, right? So dive in deeper into that idea of like how stories pass by, you said, bypass the ego.

Behdad Jamshidi (54:27): Yeah, at least that's my understanding of it. It just goes into the childlike brain of yours where you're like, "Just like the story." So messages start going through. Why do you think when you go to these events, people are telling stories one after another? They're telling your story because it's how they get the emotions in you to roll up. And then when they do that, you move and you make a different action. You see yourself in the story. You put yourself in that place. So your imagination starts playing. So I find it super interesting, and one of the best books that I've read, the stories, like The Midnight Library, that book was super impactful. It gave me two or three core concepts that I would have never gotten just by reading it. But experiencing it and going through that emotional roller coaster through the story, it really made an impression on me and stuck.

Jason Montoya (54:51): Hmm.

Jason Montoya (55:07): Yeah, yeah, that's cool. What about systems? How do you think about systems and utilize them?

Behdad Jamshidi (55:21): Yeah, the engineering brain is all about systems and doing things. So I look at my business, and I go like, "How have I been able to do so many things at once?" And a lot of it's because I've built systems around it, and I build people to help me with those systems. And so, but I'm not at 100% either. Systems are all constantly changing and evolving, and they need to be fixed and improved on. So everything I do is I try to think about, "How do I make this into a system that works and it feels authentic to me?" So it doesn't just feel like I'm adding AI into it and a bunch of like, you know, mid-level copywriting is sent to everyone. I try to find systems that feel good to me and feel authentic to me and that they work. Like for example, one system that I run in my business is that I have a copywriting chief. Once every two months, jump on a call with me for an hour. I will tell eight different stories or highlights, and she'll literally take the recording and transcript, organize it. Then my fractional CMO will take it, do one pass read-through, upload it, and then my web developer and email admin will then put it up into a different newsletter so I can send out weekly newsletters, right? So that's like a system where I spend 30 minutes to an hour to get eight emails done, and I have a system of team to do more of it. It's the same thing on the social media side, right? So whenever I'm writing social media content, it's me. Like I want it to be my content. And so originally the process was I would write content every two weeks, 10 pieces of content, pass it to my team through a ClickUp. They would post it, and it would be done, but it's all my content. Now what I'm starting to do is I'm starting to voice-note my content into my fractional CMO and say, "Hey, this is the post that I want to go up. Here's kind of the structure." They'll take the structure, organize it, and then post it. And so for me, it's like building these systems that work for me, and as my business evolves, I find different ways of adding different systems and processes to it.

Jason Montoya (57:13): So system, like you're talking about, is really good for one, getting stuff done, but it also for scaling at a level that an individual cannot. What would you say to the entrepreneur that is not in that system mode? They're in the hero mode of, "I'm the guy who helps get projects done." Maybe they do, but they're in that non-system-oriented leadership approach. What would you tell them about why they should switch to a system-oriented leadership approach?

Behdad Jamshidi (57:41): Yeah, life is not going to be very fun for you down the road. It's not going to be that exciting because all you're going to be doing is nothing moves forward without you. And that's like one of the worst feelings. One of the best feelings is when things move forward without you, when your team comes and goes, "Hey, we just finished this," or, "This is done." I'm like, "Cool. All my stuff is being done." And I just went and took a month off in China and Korea, and my marketing did not go anywhere. Like my team was taking care of stuff, right? So you hear a lot of people have trouble with like BD. And they're like, "Oh, whenever I start doing the work, BD suffers. And whenever I start doing business development, you know, get trying to get customers, my work suffers." It's like, if you don't want to fall in that cycle, you have to build systems, and you've got to build processes and start looking at the things that you're like, "Man, if you're putting in data entry and you can hire someone for $10 an hour, we all know this. You're charging, you know, if you're a freelancer, you're charging $100 an hour above usually. But if you're charging more than $10 an hour and you're doing data entry, it's a waste of time." Get someone to do that work for you. Go focus on the higher-end activities so that you can afford to do the bigger things and allow your business to grow. Like for me, I charge $500 an hour for consulting. So if I want to hire someone for a month, and I'm paying them a thousand bucks to do 160 hours of work, I'm essentially trading an hour of my time in costs, right, or two hours for essentially 160 hours. How much more can I—even if that person is efficient to 60 or 70%—I'm still getting so many hours back for my time, which is what has allowed my business to at least be where it is and where it's grown to, and for me to at least take time off. I travel a lot, so whenever people see my email stuff, like, "Where in the world, Behdad?" It's like, "I'm traveling to this thing," or, "I'm meeting people, I'm connecting with people," because that's what brings value to my business.

Jason Montoya (57:52): Hmm.

Jason Montoya (59:31): Yeah, yeah, and I think, you know, one thing I would encourage people to just, if you don't have someone, to just ask yourself, "What could AI, generative AI, ChatGPT, or Google Gemini, what could I give it? What's something I'm doing that's just time-consuming that could be done by AI in a much quicker way to allow me to not have to do that thing and be able to do other things, right?" And so there's a way for all of us to do that. And I think figure out the thing you like to do most, and then put your focus on that, and then figure out ways to build the system around all the other pieces. So, anything else on the system side of things?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:00:11): Not that comes to me. One of the biggest things that the mistakes that I made on the system front is like not choosing the right technology from the front just because I want to get things done. So one of my biggest things now is like make sure that the technology that you want to go into will scale with your business. And if it doesn't, at least knowing when it will stop scaling to the business because you have to make migrations and changes, and that slows the business down, right? So make sure when you're choosing like a CRM or a project management system or whatever it is, try to choose the best that will allow you to scale to the furthest before you having to make any changes down the road.

Jason Montoya (1:00:45): Yeah, cool. Are there any other words of wisdom that you wanted to share that we haven't yet got to before we jump into what you're doing and how people can work with you?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:00:58): Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is on human connection. It's one of the most important things for business and on the personal side. So whenever you're working with people, everyone is human. Try to connect with them deeply, especially when you're trying to work with, you know, partners, whether even if you're hiring a marketing agency and you're trying to work with the right marketing partners. Building that connection human-wise will get you so much further than using those relationships transactionally. And in those specific scenarios, I've seen marketing agencies go above and beyond for the customers they love because they just have a good connection with them. So I just wanted to highlight that.

Jason Montoya (1:01:27): Hmm. Yeah, so if someone is interested in working with you, like who's a good fit and what's the problem they're having?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:01:39): Yeah, typically the people that work with me are between that like three and thirty million dollar range in business. They've gotten to a point where they're like, "Our marketing doesn't seem like it's working anymore," or, "I'm looking for very specific partners to turn on other channels." Like so it might be SEO or paid ads or influencer marketing, or maybe the brand has gotten to a point where it hasn't—like the messaging is not tied in or dialed in for the next stage of growth. Literally any part of marketing is kind of where I help support making those connections. And I work with all different types of businesses. I've got e-coms, service, manufacturing, app-based customers. It's all in one place because I just built a crazy network at this point that I can find what I need to find.

Jason Montoya (1:02:18): Yeah, so what does an engagement look like and how does that play out?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:02:22): Yeah, so typically I just do a business discovery session. So we go about 30 minutes to an hour, understanding the business, where you are, what you're trying to get to, the employees and the resources you have internally, who you're using, what the budget is. And then based on that, I'll make a plan and be like, "Based on what you're telling me, here's kind of how I focus on this, and these are the type of partners that I would be looking for." And once we're on the same page, then I have an engagement fee. It's not very expensive, but you can engage on me, and then I build out an email list for basically, "Here's your website partner, here's your paid ads partner, here's the person you would use for influencer marketing." And then you get to interview them yourself and decide who you want to hire if there's the right fit there. And that's essentially how my service works.

Jason Montoya (1:03:04): Okay. And why should someone work with you versus just trying to figure it out on their own?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:03:09): Yeah, I have to meet 15 agencies before I find one that I like, and I know most business owners talk to maybe two before they hire someone. So I've done a lot of the hard work of finding the partners that actually know what they're doing, and I've used them before for different customers of mine, so I know the fit makes a lot more sense. And most businesses think they need one marketing agency to solve their problems, but typically it's two to five different agencies that need to be used. And finding one partner is hard enough. Trying to find two to five that are good on the first try is literally impossible without having the right network. So that's kind of where I help, and that's the value that I bring.

Jason Montoya (1:03:16): Yeah.

Jason Montoya (1:03:44): Okay, cool. And what about location? Do you work just with companies in Canada, the United States, other places?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:03:52): Yeah, I work with companies in the US, Europe, and in Canada, so it's all over the place. And my partners range all over the world too, because I'm always looking for the best anywhere it is. Typically, my partners who are also on the agency side are from the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, that type of thing. But yeah, there's no geographical requirement there. I don't do much work in Asia or any of that kind of stuff, so that's not our fit, or Africa, for example.

Jason Montoya (1:04:15): Yeah. If someone does engage with you, they pick some of these agencies and start working with them and then they have any kind of issues. Do you engage in those situations at all?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:04:25): Yeah, so I'm always on the parallel of my customers, so I always want to make sure the relationship is passed off to the agency and they're being taken care of there. But if my customers come to me and say, "Hey, it's not working, I want to look at this," I'm always there to help support. And there's been times where I've engaged on the agency, got customers a new account manager or something along those lines that saved the relationship, which is kind of funny because sometimes you have customers like, "I don't like the account manager." I'm like, "Have you asked for a new one?" Like, "No." And then they ask for a new one, and the engagement's fine, and they're working together for like two plus years. So it's little small things like that where I also can help support on, for things that people just might not even think about. Exactly, yeah.

Jason Montoya (1:04:54): Okay. Proportional response to the problem. It's actually fixing the problem. Yeah. Yeah. So what... why is there such demand for this that you have an entire business to be able to do this?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:05:14): Man, that's a very deep question because there's hundreds of thousands of marketing agencies. Every single one says they do everything, but they don't, and they all do it at such different levels. And so essentially, when you look at like a business, a business is growing to a certain point. Like, so a business, if you're at zero to 500K, that's different than a business that's from 500K to 3 million, from 3 million to 10 million. And as your business grows, you need different partners' support, right? And so as you go through that, one, most businesses don't have a marketing network. They might have other business networks, and people might refer stuff, but that person being referred might only be good for that type of business or that kind of stage. And those agencies also change over time. So if someone used them three years ago, they're a totally different agency three years later sometimes, right? Like they might have different products and services. And so it's really hard for a business to even have the network to find the right agencies. And then they also don't vet enough people. Like which business has time to go through like 15 different marketing agencies? None, right? So for example, one of my customers I was just working with wanted a HubSpot agency. I got 30 different referrals of different HubSpot agencies within my network, and I literally put them through a form. And then I met with 12 of them, like 12 of the best ones. And then I'm just going to get my customer, "Here are the three that you need to talk to." Tell me another service you can pay $1,000 to to get started with and get that kind of filtering process. It just saves you so much time and headache. And what most businesses don't realize, on top of it all, if it takes you three to five tries to find one agency, every single time you hire an agency, it's six months of: three months of onboarding, you work with them, you realize they don't work, you have to fire them, then do it again, then do it again. You're wasting two to three years of your time, of your business potentially growing, trying to find a partner that fits. So I can keep going, but those are some of the reasons why people would use me.

Jason Montoya (1:06:00): Mm.

Jason Montoya (1:07:04): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. How can people connect with you? Where are you writing stuff with your voice memos?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:07:14): You're going to find me on LinkedIn. So under Behdad Jamshidi, you'll find me on LinkedIn. I post stuff on my Facebook, and I have Instagram as well. And then if you ever want to get in contact with my business, it's at www.cjammarketing.com. And if you go to the bottom, there's a whole resource section down there, like questions you should be asking agencies, price benchmarks. It's a whole bunch of stuff that businesses can get for free down there as well and use it for their vetting of their agencies.

Jason Montoya (1:07:38): Okay, and anything else you want to throw out there?

Behdad Jamshidi (1:07:42): That's it. I love the questions that you ask. I love the depth that you go through, and I really enjoyed being on here.

Jason Montoya (1:07:47): Awesome. Well, this has been another episode of the Share Life Podcast. I'm Jason Scott Montoya. We'll see you on the next one.

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