Inspiring Conversations with Tony Olson of 2 Percent Agency

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tony Olson.

Hi Tony, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I am from Ames, Iowa, but I was drawn to KC to play golf at UMKC. I fell in love with the city and never left. My passion for business developed in college. My passion for people led to my interest in the restaurant business. I loved interacting with so many different people and seeing them leave happy. Over 21 years, I owned and ran 9 restaurants in the Kansas City area. My amazing wife, Kelly, joined me on this journey. As we are down to one restaurant, Neighborhood Cafe in Lees Summit, we still love serving the community through food and service. We now have 3 amazing boys: Abe, 8; Max, 5, and Joey, 3. We have our hands as full as ever!

In 2018, I started a networking group that would shape the next phase of my professional life. Referral Madness was founded to help some friends and family get their new careers off the ground. I knew I loved everything business, but I found my true passion in assisting others to grow. This new realization led to coaching, consulting, and developing our networking group to chapters all over Kansas City, with hundreds of businesses working together to help each other. I now literally get to go wherever the excitement and momentum are heading. Partnering in new businesses, diving into a single business to help that owner scale, build marketing systems for others, or working through mindset coaching with a client. I am so excited to see who I will meet next and how we will work together and help each other. What a fun season this is becoming. I truly do love connecting and building relationships with other business owners all over the city.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I can talk for days about the challenges I have encountered along this journey. Indeed, you always learn more through your failures than from your successes. So, I have learned a lot. After much reflection on my professional career and personal life up to this point, the common theme that I have learned is that there are things you can’t control. I could overcome anything. I could overcome a bad location, a bad system, a bad culture, or tough employees. I could, for a time. I realized that if I had a team to lean on, I was limiting myself in all these areas. If I would have been more open to others and what they have been through, I could have saved myself from making those same mistakes. I truly needed to get out of my way. I am now open to feedback and crave others’ understanding of what I am going through. I can learn something new from almost everyone I meet, which has improved me. Above all, I have realized that I must give up control to God. Putting this ultimate realization into practice has been difficult, but it has been the most rewarding thing for me and my family.

I appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about 2 Percent Agency?
This is a business that we just officially launched this year, and we are super excited about its potential. Through coaching and working with many businesses, we realized that there is a big need in most businesses to complete or implement the complete sales funnel. This is something that most businesses avoid, like the plague. They combine parts of this customer journey with many software, spreadsheets, and systems. It’s so easy to get stuck or sidetracked along the way, and we, as business owners, end up settling for a partial system. We aim to fix that. The best CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is one you use! So we put those basic things together for you and turn it on. That final 2% can be the hardest to complete. We help you get over the finish line and implement! Do you have a system to manage your clients fully, and do you use it? If the answer is no, please reach out!

What do you think about happiness?
Family, outdoors, golf, basketball, adventure, business. All for the relationships! I love people and how we all connect. Activities that bring people together in a common goal are the most rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.referralmadness.com
• Facebook: @referralmadnesskc