Meet mike & aj
Agency pioneers on a mission
Meet the Founders of Agency Coach
Mike started his agency in 2003 as a 22-year-old with a passion for web and digital marketing. Since then, he has grown it from a one-person operation to a team of 20+. He is dedicated to his clients and committed to constant improvement. He wants to help his clients realize their potential and take control of their lives through Agency Coach's business knowledge and systems. He believes in transparency and collaboration.
After 8 years in a corporate position at Intuit, AJ took a role at Anchor Wave, a local agency co-owned with Mike Schmidt. At Anchor Wave, they worked directly with small business owners and saw their strategies make a clear impact on their businesses. This motivated them to go all in on their clients and their business.
Over the past 18 years, Mike and AJ have grown Anchor Wave into a successful agency. However, they felt called to do more. They expanded their impact by teaching their strategies to agencies in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia, helping small businesses globally. Teaching others has motivated their own growth, allowing them the freedom to focus on coaching others to achieve the same success.
Our Shared Journey
The moments that defined us
What we Believe...
Clients and money are abundant; your business should run without you. You should be paid for your value, not your time. Focus on recurring revenue and helping others to achieve your goals. Think big from day one.
- Build your business today how you want it to be in the future
- The #1 thing you can invest in is yourself…strive to go to bed every day a better person than you were in the morning when you woke up
- Time is finite, money is not. If you want to grow fast look for opportunities to buy back your time by learning shortcuts from others who have already figured it out
Want To Know More About The Agency That we Founded?
We have a team of 20 that are dedicated to helping you reach your goals.
mike's
story
1993
A Website for a High School?
I co-founded my high school’s web team. A totally rouge and foreign concept. A website for a high school?
1996
MSNBC Site of the Night
Recognized as something unique, the newly launched MSNBC show “The Site” featured my work in their “Site of the Night” segment.
2000
The Magic Library hits 25,000 Users
I built a site to learn magic tricks from real magicians and ended up learning Perl and PHP… trading one hobby, for a brand new love.
2003
My Agency is Born
Shortly before graduating from college, I started Anchor Wave Internet Solutions out of the bedroom of the house I was renting.
aj's
story
1999
Welcome to Corporate America
I got a job at Intuit doing technical support for Quickbooks.
2000
Rounded corners with images, not CSS
Worked swing shift 1-10. Call volume was low and there was nothing to do. The guy next to me was building websites so I asked if he’d teach me. This was straight HTML with tables…a time before CSS.
2001
Webmaster without the title
Started building internal websites for teams at Intuit. These were low priority for IT and would never be created but really helped teams communicate and collaborate. This was not my job, but I began getting more and more requests and my manager would lend me out to other teams.
2006
He’s A Web Guy He Can Do It
Since I was known as a web guy and in a management position, Intuit asked me to take on a new initiative…growing their online communities. I eventually went on to manage the online communities for QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax. This is where I began learning about Digital Marketing to grow our communities. In 2 years our team was able to grow a 20,000 member community into a thriving 250,000 member social network that connected small businesses and accountants.
mike's
story
1993
A Website for a High School?
I co-founded my high school’s web team. A totally rouge and foreign concept. A website for a high school?
1996
MSNBC Site of the Night
Recognized as something unique, the newly launched MSNBC show “The Site” featured my work in their “Site of the Night” segment.
2000
The Magic Library hits 25,000 Users
I built a site to learn magic tricks from real magicians and ended up learning Perl and PHP… trading one hobby, for a brand new love.
2003
My Agency is Born
Shortly before graduating from college, I started Anchor Wave Internet Solutions out of the bedroom of the house I was renting.
2007
Struggle: Doing it the Hard Way
Trading my time for money; and struggling each month to keep it all together. Employees, contractors… all my responsibility to keep afloat.
2008
Joining Forces
Mike's and AJ's roads finally crossed in 2008 when AJ became a Web Strategist at Anchor Wave and the synergy was immediately apparent. They are working as a dynamic duo since.
2009
First Million Dollar Year
Hard work was paying off but it was killing me. Fighting every month to make more money flow in and struggling with a revolving door of employees. It was hard to find time to celebrate.
2013
The Hybrid Agency Model: A Recurring Revenue Breakthrough
Sell it once, get paid forever. Recurring revenue based on services that were highly leveraged dawned a brand new direction for my agency.
2014
A Growing Team
Stability as result of recurring revenue changed the pace of life and allowed us to invest in our team and stop the constant churn of team members.
2017
Agency mastermind is Born
Our years of trials and experiments have lead us to build our own amazing agency and now Agency Mastermind is here to help others learn from our experience.
2019
Agency Mastermind becomes Agency Coach
To create alignment and instant clarity about what we do, Agency Mastermind rebrands as Agency Coach.
now
A Bright Future
Agency Coach is constantly innovating and finding new ways to help our community take leaps forward in their businesses and lives.
aj's
story
1999
Welcome to Corporate America
I began a career at Intuit doing technical support for Quickbooks.
2000
Rounded corners with images, not CSS
Worked swing shift 1am-10am. Call volume was low and there was nothing to do. The guy next to me was building websites so I asked if he’d teach me. This was straight HTML with tables…a time before CSS.
2001
Webmaster without the title
Started building internal websites for teams at Intuit. These were low priority for IT and would never be created but really helped teams communicate and collaborate. This was not my job, but I began getting more and more requests and my manager would lend me out to other teams.
2004
Promoted to Manager, still doing internal sites
I was promoted to a new position where I was managing a team of 20 tier 3 support reps. I was also still asked to do site after site for teams that needed them.
2006
He’s a web guy he can do it
Since I was known as a web guy and in a management position, Intuit asked me to take on a new initiative…growing their online communities. I eventually went on to manage the online communities for QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax. This is where I began learning about Digital Marketing to grow our communities. In 2 years our team was able to grow a 20,000 member community into a thriving 250,000 member social network that connected small businesses and accountants.
2008
Called for more
Burned out on the corporate life I wanted to work more closely with the people we served. Took a job as a Web Strategist at Anchor Wave.
2011
A match made in heaven
Mike and I work extremely well together and compliment each others’ strengths and weaknesses. After helping Mike triple our agency in as many years he asked me to become his business partner.
2015
What is a funnel?
Mike and I attend Traffic & Conversions Summit and fall in love with sales funnels and automating parts of our business. We enter high level mastermind groups with Digital Marketer and Russell Brunson.
2016
The Value Ladder for Agencies
We discover that the best initial step in an agency value ladder is review management. It’s easy to implement, gets quick results and builds the trust required to ascend to higher ticket services.
2017
Let’s show others
Agency Mastermind is born. Our success with reviews encouraged us to share it with others. We released an online course and it was a huge success. We’ve now enrolled 2,000+ students through this course and had begun taken steps toward becoming industry thought leaders.
now
A Bright Future
We finally recognized that our job at Anchor Wave was done. We had slayed all the dragons and were ready for the next challenges that await us. All of our hard work had resulted in what we’ve always wanted…to own and agency, not a job. We now had the time and financial freedom to choose to stop working in the day to day operations with our agency. We decide to pursue Agency Coach full time…launching additional courses and our own mastermind to help others achieve their freedom as well.
