. 
Molly Lopez is a successful entrepreneur and owner of Hite Miami, formerly known as Sparo. She shares the story of her journey from working at an agency to founding her own digital marketing firm and growing it to a seven-figure business in less than three years. Learn what changed her mindset from “I can barely survive working at an agency” to “Maybe I’ll start my own.”
HOW I WORK, EPISODE 44 WITH Molly Lopez
Molly and Josh dive into the importance of finding the right business partner, the benefits and drawbacks of niching in the agency industry, and the significance of building a positive company culture. Molly emphasizes leading with kindness, maintaining open communication, and creating a work-life balance for her team.
She also highlights the role of mental health in the entrepreneurial journey and the importance of seeking support and avoiding the comparison trap on social media. Her story rings especially true if you’re an entrepreneur or aspiring to start your own business. Plus:
- What was the final straw? The thing that pushed her to start her own business
- Her Four Values: Be Kind, Be Honest, Pick Up The Phone, and Work to Live – Don’t Live to Work
- Entrepreneur Mental Health: Speaking with vulnerability, honesty, and asking for help
Learn more about Molly Lopez and Sparo: https://www.sparomarketing.com/
Explore more content from leaders in the SaaS marketing community on our podcast. Or visit our blog to find more digital marketing tips and ideas.
Want to learn more about Augurian? Listen to our core values or reach out to speak with an Augur today about your marketing strategy and digital advertising performance.
TRANSCRIPTION: HOW I WORK, EPISODE 44 (Molly Lopez)
Josh Becerra:
Hi everybody, this is Josh Becerra. Welcome to this next episode of How I Work. I’m super excited to have my guest today, Molly Lopez. Molly is a nationally recognized, technology forward, digital marketing expert. More than 12 years of experience working in social media, content marketing, paid digital advertising, SEO and more. Molly, you founded your own digital marketing agency in 2019 with the mission of bringing big agency marketing services to companies for more efficient prices. I love that. And after scaling that agency to seven figures in under three years, you made the decision to merge with Hite Digital and are now the owner partner of Hite Miami office. Welcome to the show.
Molly Lopez:
Thank you so much, Josh. I’m so excited to be here and having an awesome conversation with another agency owner.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, yeah, well, let’s get right into it. So yeah, you and I both built agencies. So tell listeners a little bit about that story. I kind of recapped it quickly, but what did you do prior to starting your agency? And then what made you decide to jump in and build your own?
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, so it’s funny and whenever I tell this story, I use this anecdote because I think that, either maybe I was delusional or my coworkers always used to ask me like, hey, when are you gonna start your own agency? Or even some of my clients when I worked in other agencies and kind of an OG agency gal, I’ve been in the agency game for a long time. If you’re in the agency world, you know that it’s a grind, it’s long hours, it’s super competitive, it’s fast paced. It can really wear you out fast. And so I would always say, I can barely survive working in an agency, let alone owning one. I will never start my own agency.
Josh Becerra:
Right.
Molly Lopez:
So be careful what you put out into the universe because, you know, fast forward and voila, here I am. So. Um, the process for me honestly came about because I had sort of hit a ceiling at the agency that I was at. I knew that I wasn’t happy in my role anymore. And, you know, I was burning the candle at both ends working 70 hours a week.
Josh Becerra:
Oh my gosh.
Molly Lopez:
And, you know, I thought about going in house somewhere doing the corporate thing, you know, taking on a director or VP role. You know, a big corporation and it just didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t think I wanted to kind of slow down that much at that point in my career. And as I was sitting at my desk one day, I kind of just had the thought, you know, if I could just service one client, just one of the clients in my portfolio, you know, of seven or eight clients that I was managing at the time, I could support myself and I could do everything that I’m doing right now, you know, in this big fancy agency office from my couch with my laptop and that’s really all that I would need. And so it was kind of my light bulb moment where I realized, yeah, like, if I’m going to work so hard and do this thing that I love to do, like, why not do it for myself? And a couple months later, I ventured out on my own and my agency, which is now Hite, formerly known as Sparo, was born.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. And you know, It takes a lot to make that step, but you did it. And obviously were successful at it. You know, I think it’s a, I cringe kind of every time I hear people say they work 70 hour weeks and things like that. At Augurian, you know, our agency, we are definitely not on that train. I think that’s like a recipe for disaster. But there’s a lot of things I want to touch on with you about building strong, sustainable, scalable, agencies. So one of the things you and I talked about was whether you bring on business partners or you don’t. So let’s start with your thoughts on how you wrestled with that question a little bit.
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, definitely. So early on in my journey as an agency owner, I started kind of scanning the horizon for potential business partners. I realized really fast that it was really lonely to be a business owner and be a solo business owner. And as much as I could talk to my friends, many of them entrepreneurs in their own right, as much as I could talk to my husband or my mom about the struggles that I was going through trying to build this agency. At the end of the day, it’s such a unique beast, a marketing agency. I was really isolated and didn’t feel that I had other agency owners to go to for advice. Both of the agencies that I had worked at previously, even though I left on… fairly good terms with my bosses, they both kind of viewed me now as their competition. And so it wasn’t really like, you know, it was amicable, but not in the sense that I viewed them kind of as mentors who could kind of take me under their wing. So I think just kind of out of my sense of loneliness and like, I want somebody to do this with because I you know, I want a teammate.
I started looking for business partners and I actually met a guy in my MBA program at the time who ended up coming on to be my first business partner. He stayed on with us for about a year, but he didn’t come from an agency background. He came from an in-house marketing background. It was just really a huge jump for him to go from being an in-house marketer to not only being in the agency world, but being an owner and building an agency. it really just wasn’t the right fit. And that was a hard lesson for me. We actually ended up having to kind of sit down with him and tell him that we needed to let him go, which I felt absolutely terrible about it, especially because I had a personal relationship with this guy as well. He was a friend. He just wasn’t the right partner for me as a founder and to build my agency.
And I think, you know, I had initially based the partnership off of, oh, you work in marketing, you’re super nice, we get along so well, like you’re in between jobs right now, I’m desperate for some help and some companionship on this entrepreneur journey, like, hey, come do this thing with me. But yeah, it didn’t end up working out.
A little bit later on, I had another friend who did have an agency background, who is actually still one of my best friends to this day. And she was also kind of in between jobs during COVID and, uh, you know, my other partner had just left and I was like, Hey, you know, come on in. We have this void. Like I really actually need somebody like you. and you know, I’ll give you equity if you, you know, do X, Y, and Z and kind of come on in the COO role. And she did a fantastic job and she was certainly qualified for the role. But after about, I think, six or seven months, you know, she came to me and kind of had a conversation of, hey, I love what you’re doing here, but this is not really what I want to be doing. And she actually ended up going into big tech.
So after that, I had kind of brought on and then paid out and let go of two partners. I really had to kind of sit down with myself and realize that finding a business partner is not as simple as I’m looking for a good analogy here, finding someone to play tennis with on the weekends. It is really when you’re committing to building a business, you’re committing a… a huge amount of your life, your time, your money, your energy. And for you as a founder, it’s your baby and it’s your vision and you’re going to be 110% committed to it. And I think that, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, but I think it’s really hard to find someone after you’ve already started something who is going to come in and rally behind you with the same amount of gusto and commitment that a partner should have in a business.
Versus like, you know, it’s different, I think, if it’s like, you know, two or three people that have the idea collectively at the same time and kind of like start from the same place. Like I think that’s a little bit easier to kind of build synchronicity with.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. Yeah, my experience with partnership has been a little bit different in that, like, I don’t know, it kind of defies convention a little bit, but basically, uh, two of my best friends from my childhood. So Colin, I knew I’ve known since we were five years old and Zach, since we were seven, we all decided to get into business together. Not even as an agency, we did a startup first and that startup failed. Colin was like I think there’s something to this digital marketing thing and this was back in like 2008 and and so we kind of taught ourselves how to do it and just kind of hustled for clients and figured it out and started growing and so it came from a place of like real like relationship and trust and kind of we just made this commitment to one another that we just wanted to do things together companies together and so that’s been able to sustain us, you know, as partners and over the years we’ve brought in other people, you know, to on the team and to participate at a partner level but… But I think that thread still holds true, it’s like it’s really about deep, meaningful relationships and doing things together.
So my experience is probably a little bit weird and out of the ordinary and unique when it comes to partners. But I appreciate hearing your experience. And I do believe that it is really hard. And finding people who have the same level of commitment and gusto, as you said, is not easy. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about niching. So I was actually in a LinkedIn thread and I put my own thoughts in there. Somebody was asking like what do you think about niching or not niching? So I’d be curious about your thoughts on that when it comes to agency. You know do you niche? Do you not niche? What’s your experience been?
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, this is such a hot topic and I feel that most of the agency like gurus out there will all say the same thing and say, you know, niche, niche, niche, niche to scale. If you’re niched down, it’s easier to grow. And there’s a lot of truth to that. But there’s also good arguments to be made on the other side of the fence. So in my past life as an agency gal, I’ve been a fan of the agency. worked for a niche agency that was niched down and focused exclusively on consumer products. And then I also worked for an agency that didn’t have a niche and was very diverse in terms of its industry focus. So when I founded Sparo, honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to niche or not. And I became diversified pretty quickly, just purely out of necessity and you know, the opportunistic mindset that I had when I started out. I was getting referrals from people who had healthcare practices and then I was getting referrals from people who owned hair salons.
So I had experience in a wide variety of industries. So I was familiar with many different types of things, which kind of allowed me to parlay that into, oh yeah, of course we can help you with this and we can help you with that. So I was actually talking a couple of months ago with a pretty well-known agency founder who’s scaled his agency. I’m not sure to what in gross revenue, but it’s a nationally recognized agency. And he has not niched down, they are multi-industry. And the analogy that he used to explain to me was, you know, I kind of view it a little bit like investing, right? You want to have a diversified portfolio so that if real estate tanks, your stocks are still good and vice versa.
And I think, you know, especially here in South Florida, we experienced that during the pandemic where a lot of agency owners that I know here are niched down into the hospitality space. There’s cruise lines, hotels, tourism is massive here. And during the pandemic, as soon as tourism shut down, these agencies… had to lay people off and yada yada. Whereas we grew during the pandemic. And I think that that was beneficial to us. So we’ve stayed diversified. We certainly have industries that we like and that we gravitate towards and that we focus our kind of proactive business development efforts on. But nine times out of 10, we are not going to turn a client away because of their industry. We’re pretty well equipped to handle just about anything that you can throw at us. So it’s served us well to be diversified.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, that’s been my experience too. Like when we got into COVID, there were some other agencies here in the Twin Cities that were really focused on like trade shows or what have you. And because of our kind of diversity of clients, we were, we weathered it and actually grew as well, right? So, I think there’s things to be said for both, but, uh, we haven’t had a lot of trouble growing, even though we don’t have, even though we don’t have a niche. So another topic is I know we’re both super passionate about talent and attracting the right talent, building trust with our teams, retaining our teams. Tell me like what is it about talent that you’re so passionate about? What have you done to ensure that you have that great agency culture?
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, such a good question. So I think that it helped me tremendously having the perspective of somebody who had worked at multiple agencies. So I had all types of supervisors, all types of bosses, two very different work cultures, both of which had some pros and some cons. So I had kind of a clear idea of what I didn’t want to do and what I did want to do with my own agency and what I wanted that culture to look like. And you mentioned like the 70 hour work weeks and you know, that’s something that I still experience from time to time as the founder and the agency owner, but I would never let it stand for, you know, one of my employees to put that kind of time into my business. Like that is. I strongly agree with you and feel that like that is an owner’s level of commitment. If you’re not getting paid as an owner, I would never expect you to put that much time into the business. So we kind of had four core values that we aligned around that I have truly tried to incorporate into the agency culture.
The first one is to be kind, which unfortunately has not always been my experience with coworkers or clients in my past agencies. So we have kind of a strict no-assholery policy and I have fired clients before for harassing my team members. I have let other team members go for that policy. So it’s very strict because I feel those kinds of things create negativity very quickly. So “Be kind” is one of our values.
Honesty is the only policy. We’re extremely transparent. One thing that I do with my team is on a monthly basis, we have a meeting to review all of our financials together. The team can see exactly how much of the company’s revenue is going to salaries versus office space versus manager salaries, which is not something that I ever had at my previous agencies. It was just kind of very hush hush and in the dark.
Our other value is… pick up the phone. So basically, just keep it an open line of communication. You know, if you have an issue or frustration, like come to me, come to your manager, go to whoever the person is. So we are really big on communication.
And the last one is work to live, don’t live to work. So again, going back to work life balance, you know, I definitely feel that our experience as humans is so much more than, you know, what we do Monday through Friday and really try to instill that in my team. I’m not friends with any of them on social media. You know, if you want to tell me about your weekend, great. But you know, there’s a lot of company cultures, I think that stress like, oh, we’re a family and we’re all best friends. And like, while that intention is good, right? It’s like, no, you know, we’re not your family. Like we’re your co-workers, we’re gonna be friends, that’s fine, but like you have a real family outside of work, like that’s your family, that’s where your first obligation is, like that’s where your real life as a human being is. You’re not going to be at this company forever, so yeah, those four principles are what we’ve tried to build our culture on.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, I love that. I spent a number of years in South America. And one of the things, one of the big learnings that I came back with looking at like the way that that culture operates and the way the culture in the US operates is, yeah, people down there kind of work to live. They work, they have a career, but it isn’t what is their identity or what defines them. And they just use the money that they make from work and have a lot of fun with their friends and family and like are dedicated to that as a resource. Whereas here you get a lot more of this kind of living for your work and your career is your entire identity and like all of everything is so wrapped up and like the success of where we are in our career. So totally aligned with a lot of that.
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, yeah, that’s so true. I always think about that and I noticed that too when I travel is, you know, for us in the US, even like at a networking event or, you know, you meet someone on the train or wherever, the first question you normally ask is, well, what do you do? You know, like, what do you do for work? And that’s not the first question, you know, in other countries that they’ll ask you about. It’s like one of the… last things they care about. They don’t care if you’re a stockbroker or the garbage man. And it’s really refreshing. And so that’s something I’ve noticed as well going to my husband’s actually from Guatemala, so Latin America or even European countries, I feel like Italy, Spain, they have much more of that like balanced type of culture. And I’ve tried to check myself a little bit more in those situations instead of jumping right to, oh yeah, tell me what you do for work.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, business, business, business.
Molly Lopez:
Asking, what are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing? Like, you know, what movies have you seen lately? It is anything trying to retrain my brain because we’re so in that mindset.
Josh Becerra:
I know. Yeah, it is. It is definitely a mindset and it takes practice and a shift and like dedication to try to pull yourself out of that. I’ve experienced it that way, too. So lastly, you know, we alluded to this a little bit earlier in the conversation, but running agencies can take a toll on you as an entrepreneur. So do you have any advice, like strategies or habits that you use to kind of sustain yourself or maintain your mental health when you’re kind of in this.
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, wine and Prozac. But in all seriousness, it is really demanding, right? Like what I said before I started my agency kind of was true. It’s hard to work in an agency and it’s even harder to run one. Now you’re not only trying to keep all your clients happy, you’re trying to keep your team happy, you’re trying to keep the lights on. You’re trying to provide for yourself. You’re trying to, it’s just, it’s a million different hats. One thing that really helped me is after about a year, I started looking into finding a therapist, coach type person who specialized in working with entrepreneurs. And I was really lucky. I found an amazing woman here in Florida who specializes in mental health therapy for specifically entrepreneurs. So even though she herself wasn’t an agency owner, she had dedicated her practice to working with unique challenges that entrepreneurs have. And so it was extremely helpful to kind of have somebody truly for the first time.
I feel like I could talk to someone who really understood what the weight of running a business felt like on my shoulders. And that was a really, really helpful thing for me, especially kind of during those first couple of years for sure. And definitely I’m not perfect now, but definitely in a much better place with it.
I think the other things that helped me are one, I think social media is so great. Obviously, we’re digital marketers. We have to be on these platforms. We love it, right? We’re running ads, we’re doing all these things. You know, I’m probably spending hours a day on the platform. But I think social media can also be a really toxic place for entrepreneurs, where maybe, you know, you’re seeing other people posting about how they had, you know, a million dollar sales day or, you know, doubled their revenue this year. And, you know, people aren’t shy about kind of putting their best of the best stuff
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, the hustle culture of entrepreneurism is super toxic.
Molly Lopez:
Exactly. And I think that it’s a big temptation to kind of compare where you’re at with other people and think like, oh, wow, well, that guy only started two years ago and already he has a business that’s twice as big as mine. And you kind of can put yourself down in a sense or feel less than. So I think it’s important to kind of stay in your lane and try to put blinders on as much as possible. And like you said, right? Create a life for yourself. What is your ultimate goal with the business? And it’s not going to be what the person next to you is trying to build or the person on the internet. It’s what you’re trying to build. And so really kind of having that you versus you mentality and not being distracted or discouraged by what else you’re seeing out there I think is really important.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your answer. You know, like a high degree of vulnerability and just sincerity in talking about that. I definitely have experienced a lot of those things as well. And I do think that, you know, it’s good to kind of remind yourself that just like you know, social media can be toxic for, you know, body image and other things. This hustle culture of entrepreneurism that exists, you know, it’s kind of fake. Like, yeah, maybe those things do happen. But those people also might be really like, you know, hurting inside. They may have other issues that’s just not coming to the forefront. So it’s great that we as agency owners can talk about the fact that this is hard and that sometimes we do need help and it’s okay to like to ask for that help and we don’t always have to pretend like we’re perfect. I continue I make mistakes every single day and all I try to do is own them in front of the team and do a better job, get up and do a better job the next day. It’s all we can really do is have that grace with ourselves. So anyway I appreciate your answer.
Molly Lopez:
Yeah, absolutely. And the funny thing is that I feel that that actually builds, you know, being able to be vulnerable or like owning your mistakes to your team. It actually builds more trust in the long run. You know, a lot of times we think like, oh my gosh, they’re going to think that their boss is a total mess or… you know, their boss doesn’t know what’s going on and then they’re going to feel insecure, like lose trust. And honestly, I’ve found like every time I’ve kind of done that and come to the plate and been like, this is on me, guys, I’ve really messed this up. I almost feel like the team has leaned more. And you know, it ended up building more trust where I was concerned, you know, that it would make them distrust me because they’re not gonna have that. perception of me as perfect anymore, but in reality, they were able to see me more as just, oh, you know, a human and someone who’s going to be honest with me and I feel included and I feel, you know, like, like on the same level. So.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, yeah, totally. I love all of that. So I think that’s a good place for us to end, you know. talking about just kind of the fact that in the end, agency owners are also humans. And, you know, we have our own insecurities. We have our own kind of hangups. We have our own heartbreaks and, um, and that’s okay. Like we can own that. And we can also like because we’re willing to kind of own that and share that, you know, we can build trusting, you know, great, strong teams and the people who don’t like that about us, those are the a-holes, right? Those are the people who we don’t want on our teams anyway. So I’ve really appreciated this time. It’s been a great conversation, Molly. Thanks for being here today.
Molly Lopez:
Yes, no, thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, it’s so fun to meet and connect with other awesome people in this space that are building as well and understand the journey. So thanks for opening up this space for me to join you. It’s been awesome.
Josh Becerra:
Thanks so much. All right, everybody, that’s it for this episode of How I Work, thanks, bye.
