How To Remove Yourself From Day to Day Client Work

One of the questions I got asked in a recent self running agency Implementation Group monthly call where we have up to 30 agency owners get together and solve some of their key challenges was around how much time they should be spending working on their business plan. And of course the answer is different for each agency. But roughly speaking I told the group that they should be spending around about 30% of their time on I. E. About one and a half days a week. Now a few people said yep, they do invest that or they can invest that. But also quite a few more said that there was absolutely no way that they could currently invest that much time because they're still so hands on with client work. So in today's podcast I want to talk all about how to start removing yourself from the day to day client work. So let's get on with the Show. I'm Rob DaCosta and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels during the ups and the downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. How do I remove myself from day to day client work is a question that lots of agency owners often ask me. They know that they should be focusing on other areas such as the future direction of their agency, the strategy, winning new clients, running their agency, and so on. But they are so entrenched on the day to day client work they just don't have any time to do that. So they see these other activities as almost extra activities if they ever have any time. And that is not a good way to run your agency. And obviously there's going to be an iceberg up ahead that you can't see and before long you're going to hit it and you're going to be in challenging times. You see for every reason why the agency owner is that really entrepreneurial person that got their agency to where it is today. They can easily also become the bottleneck to growth because everything still sits on their shoulders. And of course all clients want them to be working on their account and are not happy when they try to delegate to somebody else. So then that's the question I want to answer today. And I'm going to do that by sharing with you nine ideas and nine tips. So let's start with tip number one which is all about having a clear vision. Because as I said, if you don't have A clear vision, you're going to be taking one step forward and one step back. You're going to be at the mercy of external factors and you're going to feel like you have very little control. And of course, when we lose control, that leads to stress. So one of the first things you need to do is have a clear vision that shows you when you're going to make decisions such as hiring people or investing in new systems and processes. So it's super important that you have a vision and that you allocate time every, every month to delivering that vision. Now, I've spoken about vision many times before, so let me just quickly remind you that you need to have a vision which might be for the next year. You need to take that vision and break it down into strategies which will probably be quarterly. And then you need to take those quarterly strategies and break them down into monthly plans. And then you take those monthly plans and put them into your diary. And that is the way that you take small bites towards delivering the biggest vision, the bigger picture vision. So that's my first tip, which is have a vision. And of course you need to have time to focus on reviewing and implementing that vision. It's not good enough just to work on your vision on an away day once a year and then say to everybody, right, come on, let's go and deliver it. And then you never look at that vision again because that is a surefire way of making yourself feel bad, basically because you failed to deliver that vision. So you have to keep looking at it and of course keep, keep updating it based on what you know today that you didn't know yesterday. So step number two, tip number two is hire as soon as you possibly can. The quicker you can get people that you can delegate work and get it off your shoulders and get it down to other people, the quicker you're going to be able to have time to focus on the future of your agency. So you want to be hiring. And again, the vision will tell you what the metrics need to look like in your agency to make that decision with confidence and clarity to hire that person. Now, what we talk about, hiring in this day and age, it can mean a number of things. It can mean, first of all, getting yourself a VA that can be based anywhere that can take some of the admin tasks off your shoulders. It can then look like hiring a freelancer so that you can get some of that day to day client work off your plate and onto the freelancer. And then of course, you want to know at what point do you switch from using a freelancer to bringing that role in house? Because it will always be more cost effective and more efficient for you to have the role in house. I'm not going to go into it now, but it's very difficult to build your agency solely using freelancers. Not impossible, but very difficult. So tip number two is hire as soon as you possibly can. And then tip number three is hire the best you can possibly afford. Yeah, you might start off with a va, but just really get the best you can afford and get them to do as many tasks as possible. So when you're hiring, get the best person you can and don't be afraid of someone that might be nipping at your heels that's going to challenge you. As long as you can manage that they are the best people that you can possibly hire. Because if you hire someone that's less than capable, you're going to switch from spending your time delivering the client work to spending your time managing that employee. So you want people that are self sufficient, take responsibility and when they say yes to a task, you're confident that they are going to get it done. So that is tip number three, which is hire the best person you can possibly afford. Now tip number four, which goes hand in hand with two and three, is that once you've got this person, you need to be a great delegator. And I think by definition a lot of entrepreneurs are not very good delegators because they run this belief that no one will do it as well as them or it's quicker for them to do it themselves. So you need to learn to delegate. And you can download a free guide from my website on the nine steps to effective delegation. And this is stuff that I teach all my private clients. There's nine steps that, that you want to go through to be a really excellent delegator and to know that once you've got a task off your plate, you're confident it will be done on time and to the level that you expect. So that's tip number four, which is learn to be a good delegator. So, moving on, if you want clients to be less dependent on you and not to always expect you to work on their account, then you really need to focus almost from day one of building your brand and building that as a brand rather than the individual. So you want your brand to be known for doing great creative work. You don't want your brand to be known as you. So that's something that you can really start off from day one, like Choosing the name of your agency, the language that you use, rather than talking the first person, you talk in the third person. So rather than I can do this for you, you talk about we can do this for you. So you really want to focus on building the brand away from the individual so that when clients buy your services, they're buying the brand they're not expecting to buy you. So that's tip number five. And tip number six really goes hand in hand with that, which is that you need to train your clients. Now, training your clients always sounds like a really strange thing to say, but you have to train your clients to understand that whoever's working on the account, they need to trust you, that you've put the best person for the job onto that account. You need to train your clients to have realistic boundaries so that they are not always trying to get hold of you at strange times of the day. You also need to train your clients about who the right person they should go to. Good. Because if you don't, they're always going to defer to you because they think you know, they can get to the top, then they're going to get the best answer. But you need to train your clients to understand. Look, if, if you talk to Jane rather than me, you're going to get a much more hands on instant response than if you come to me. So you need to train your clients about the right people to talk to as well. So work really hard about building your brand, which is tip five and then tip six is training your clients to expect to talk to the best person for the job and that they trust you will allocate that right person for them. And tip number seven kind of goes hand in hand with that, which is that therefore you need to be less available to your clients. Don't run this mindset that if you don't jump the minute the client asks you to jump, then they will dislike you and leave you, because that isn't true. So you need to be less available. And of course that means then you've got time to focus on what you do best. And what you do best will be driving the agency forward, focusing on strategy, business development and all that kind of stuff. But if you're totally entrenched in client work on the client service hamster Wheel of Doom, then you will never have time to focus on the things that only you can do that you do best. So part of that is being less available. So what you want to do is you want to start ring fencing time in your diary where you almost See that time as a really important meeting, which of course is non moveable. And then when you schedule that time, know exactly what you're going to do to fill that time before you get to that time slot. Because if you've just got time in your diary that says, okay, on a Wednesday afternoon, I'm going to focus on strategy. And you get to Wednesday afternoon and you've got loads of things on your to do list and because you're not really sure what you're going to do with that strategy time, you just get rid of it and you focus on the client tasks on your to do list. So rather than that happening, giving yourself the best chance to ensure that you do actually do the time you've blocked out in your diary, you want to know exactly what you're going to do. So if you've scheduled Wednesday afternoon to work on strategy, then maybe from 1 to 2pm you're writing three emails that are going to be sent out and then 2 to 3 you're writing a proposal and 3 to 4 you're working on a workshop that you're going to deliver and so on. So schedule your time in your diary and therefore you will be less available to do the client stuff that they're trying desperately to want you on their account because you haven't trained them very well. Okay, so that's tip number seven, which is be less available. Okay, Tip number eight is all about building a really solid foundation and infrastructure that will enable your agency to grow and isn't just fit for purpose today, but will work in the future as well. So that means putting systems and processes, documenting your standard operating procedures and so on. So what you really want to be doing is putting the systems in today that will be fit for purpose for tomorrow. And that means as you add new people into your agency, the systems that you've got will still work and that they can quickly adopt them. And that means that the customer will get a consistent experience. Whether you're working on the account Jane is or Fred is. So. So I would really encourage you to think about the systems and processes that you need to put in place. Now, by that I mean software systems, but I also mean documented systems. And one of those documented systems is your standard operating procedures. So this documents like, how do you work with your client when you're setting up a new campaign for a client? What does that look like when you're writing a brief or a proposal or an outline of a strategy for a client? What do they look like if you spend the time documenting Them, which I know can be really tedious, they will have huge benefits for you. And a lot of my clients do this and indeed I've done it for myself. So I documented all the things that I outsource to my VA team and that means that them getting up to speed is so much quicker than it would be. And there's. I've also part of those standard operating procedures is I've shot quick tutorial videos so people can watch them and I use Loom L o O M to do that. So check out that you can get it for free. And it's a great screen recording piece of software that then gives you a URL link because it's cloud based that you can then share that video. So document your standard operating procedures so that when you slot someone new into your business, they can follow those and that means that the client will have a consistent experience and that perhaps tip number eight is perhaps the most important, maybe the most boring, but also the most important tip. If you want to grow your agency and you want to have all the clients not demanding you to work on their account and you want to step off the client service hamster wheel of doom so that you can focus on the future of your agency. So that's tip number eight, which is build systems and processes and consistent standard operating procedures for the agency that you want to be in the future in order to grow in a pain free way to become that agency. My last tip, tip number nine is that it's super important that you develop an entrepreneurial mindset when you are running your agency and you need to have that entrepreneurial mindset from day one. Don't have like the freelancer mindset because you will be stuck as a freelancer forevermore. But have the entrepreneurial mindset. And let's just dig into what I mean by that. So an entrepreneurial mindset is someone that has a clear vision. They are spending time working on that vision, as we've just talked about. They're fantastic at delegating because they recognize they need to empower other people in their business, whether that be freelancers, remote workers or in house staff. They are really good at standing in other people's shoes, their team shoes, their client shoes, their partner shoes, and building really good emotional intelligence and empathy. And they are really willing to get out of their comfort zone. And that's super important because if you want to apply steps one to nine, you have to get out of your comfort zone because your comfort zone might be delivering client work or your comfort zone might be hanging on to control of everything. And if you do that, you're going to attain this one person freelancer mindset and you will never get work off your plate and you will never grow and going hand in hand with that. The entrepreneurial mindset person also is really open minded. They listen to other people, they are willing to do things differently if other people have ideas that are not theirs and they are definitely wanting to keep learning. And again, if you hire the best people you possibly can, then you're going to learn off them as well as them learning off you. So there you go. In a really sort of 10 minutes, there's my nine ideas and tips of things that you need to do so that you can remove yourself from the day to day client work, step off the client service hamster wheel of doom and have enough time to focus on the future of your agency. So really quickly recap. Number one is having a clear vision. Number two is hire as soon as you possibly can. And number three is hire the best people that you can afford and don't be afraid of being challenged. Number four is learn to be an excellent delegator to get work off your plate. Number five is make sure you're building your brand and not your brand as an individual so the clients buying the brand. And number six is learn to train your clients to get good boundaries and manage their expectations. Number seven is be less available to your clients and allocate time to focus on your strategy and your vision. Number eight is build robust systems and processes and document your standard operating procedures for the agency that you want to be in the future. And finally, number nine is develop an entrepreneurial mindset. So if you focus on those nine steps, those nine strategies, then you are going to start to have your clients expect you to be on their account and you'll start to delegate work to other people. So I hope you found that really quick fire episode of the podcast or the video really useful. And if you did, please make sure you've hit subscribe. Please consider leaving a review, especially on Apple Podcasts because the algorithm will show the podcast to more people. And of course I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.