Staying In Control Of The Direction Of Your Agency

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts last week, which is Amy Porterfield's online Marketing Made Easy and she was talking about an experiment that her business has been doing to move the whole organization of about 20 staff down to a four day working week without losing any revenues in their business and indeed ensuring that they met their ambitious growth targets. It was really interesting to hear about the positive and negative aspects of the experiment, the things that they've had to change, moving all their meetings down to a maximum of 30 minutes rather than an hour or more, and indeed whether they will keep doing this after the 90 day experiment is up. Now it got me thinking back to the concepts of the self running agency that I've been talking about and teaching for the last couple of years and the importance of making sure that we are running an agency on our own terms and not just chasing the next shiny new object or the next revenue tier because that's what we feel we should be doing to be successful. We're surrounded by stories of super successful entrepreneurs who make it sound so easy and have supposedly made their millions and then they're trying to tempt you to strive for the same thing. It's almost as if if we don't aspire to that, we are failing. It's crazy when you say out loud, right? And it seems to take you so far away from the key reasons of why you would start your own business in the first place. So in this episode of the podcast I want to remind us about that, but I also want to share my story of some of the things that I'm doing to make sure I'm running my business on my own terms. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added Interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob Da Costa. I'm not sure where this is instilled in us, but it's almost as if we don't aspire to grow our agency by say 20% year on year, then we're not being successful and indeed others, but perhaps more ourselves if I'm honest. Judge our success based on this growth. But that might well not be what you want. You might want to create a lifestyle business and focus on maximizing profits, or you might want to focus on being a social enterprise and making a difference in your community. There's a whole myriad of reasons why we run our own agencies and why we started our own agencies, and it's super important that we stay connected with that mission and we create a vision every year so that we know we're headed in the right direction, rather than just being pulled by external factors or by the things that we tell ourselves we should be doing. The problem is, as I mentioned in the introduction, is that we're bombarded with social media posts and ads of Instagram people standing in front of expensive yachts that probably aren't even theirs, telling us how they've built their agency and how they can help you do the same. But it's important to remember that this might not be what you want. And growth in a financial sense doesn't always equal success. Let's face it, if you were growing your revenues, but you were hating what you were doing, and you get really stressed and working long hours and perhaps even getting physically ill, then would you deem that a success? I know I certainly wouldn't. And sometimes, you know, we have to learn that lesson the hard way by going down that route to get to a certain point where we say, no, Having more money isn't necessarily the thing that makes me happy. So, in the spirit of openness and sharing, I want to talk about some of the conscious choices that I'm making in my business and my life as we are coming out of the pandemic. And I'm sharing this in the hope that it might inspire you, but also give you permission to reconnect with the why. Like, why did you start your agency? Where do you want to be? And how can you do it on your own terms? Because, let's face it, one of the reasons we start our own business is because we want control. But we're not careful and we're not making these conscious decisions and choices. Then suddenly, one day we can wake up working for this monster that we've created and having a much harder boss, that is ourselves, than we've ever had in any kind of job that we had in the past. So, anyway, so here are some of the things that I am doing and choices that I am consciously making. So, first of prior to lockdown and the pandemic, I would spend probably three or four days a week traveling to head to clients in London on the train, or driving up the motorway or even getting on a plane. And it was super ineffective use of my time because let's say I was taking a train into London, which would take me an hour and a half, and then I would perhaps coach one or two clients, and then I would come back on a very crowded train where I'm probably standing up most of the way for another hour and a half, and. And that would be my day. Whereas the pandemic forced, of course, us all online. And now I do my meetings by zoom. And that means that I could possibly do three, four, even five meetings or coaching sessions in a day if I chose to. So I've made the conscious decision to not go back to that face to face coaching life, because I think coaching online you can actually be more effective because you can do shorter sessions and more frequent sessions. I have a couple of exceptions to that where I will travel to a client because they're either very local or because I really need to be sitting face to face. So for example, if I was doing some strategy work with a client for the day, it would be very difficult for both of us to concentrate that long online. So I would then go and sit with them. But that's probably the exception and not the rule. And it probably happens once every two or three months rather than two or three times a week. So that's my first conscious choice I'm making, not to go back to doing face to face coaching. Now, prior to the start of the pandemic, and indeed at the start of the pandemic, I used to spend every January, February of each year in warmer climes, typically in Cape Town. And of course the pandemic has paid for that. In fact, I only just got back in 2020 before lockdown happened. So I was fortunate to not be stuck in South Africa during the start of lockdown. But having done this two or three times now, it's really shown me that I can completely viably go to another country and spend an extended period of time. So I'm not just there on holiday and actually get into the rhythm of working. And of course, one of the great things about South Africa is not only is it their summer in January, February, but also they only have a two hour time difference to the uk, so that really makes the working day viable. You can rent pretty cheap Airbnbs out there. It's the cost of living is much lower than the uk, so that is something that I aspire to do every year. But of course, as I said, the pandemic has put pay to that. But that will be something I'll be doing again. But in the meantime, I find myself sort of marking time and waiting for this fictitious point in the future when we might be allowed to travel again. And then I realized that I'm doing exactly what I outlined in the introduction and exactly what I advise my clients not to do, which is to wait for some point in the future when you think everything will be better and forget to live your life right now and enjoy the journey. So, you know, when we're talking about vision, sometimes clients tell me that when they hit this milestone, things will be great in their business. But of course it might take them a year or so to get there and they don't think about that journey. So I want to encourage my clients and myself to make sure I'm focused on the journey and not just the destination. Now, of course, right now there are lots of constraints on us, so I can't go and spend my time abroad. But another thing that I've been working towards is becoming more of a digital nomad, which is a term that, you know, lots of 20 year old Instagrammers band around while they live their lives on a moped in Bali. But as I said, I've proven for the last few years that I can work in a different country and be just as efficient and continue to serve my clients and my audience when I'm sitting at my desk in the UK or sitting at a desk in Cape Town. And now we are taking one step further because we've just purchased a motorhome and whilst I'm not quite ready to become a socks and crocs wearer, I am excited to be able to find some beautiful places in the UK and then hopefully in the near future in Europe where I can travel, explore and work. And, you know, technology really does make this easy and possible to do now because you can get great mobile wi fi setups, you can get solar panels and all that kind of stuff. So I can run my computers and record these podcasts and edit videos and all that stuff whilst being in different locations. So I haven't taken delivery as I record this podcast, but we're just about to. So we've been busy researching all the tech that I'm going to need, like mobile wi fi and off grid energy solutions such as solar panels and lithium batteries and all that kind of gubbings. And who knew that there was a whole world of tech and terminology to learn? And right now I'm revisiting my physics A level by reminding myself the difference between amps, watts and volts. Now, by the time you listen to this episode, I will have been away for the first few weekends. So if you want to know how I got on, just reach out to me and I'll let you know. So that's a really exciting project and new adventure for us. And, you know, I have no idea what the outcome will be. I might hate it, although we've done a few weekends before, but I'M hoping that I will enjoy it and I can explore parts of the UK that I haven't seen and do it in a pretty inexpensive way. Now the next thing that I have been working on because I've made lots of mistakes with this, is getting my kind of team structure in place. So I've tried various virtual assistants. I've tried using a virtual assistant to organize my diary, someone else to do my audio podcast editing, someone for video editing, someone for copywriting, and it's been really difficult to project manage and they've been really different qualities. So sometimes I find myself trying to delegate and then having to rewrite it and telling myself those stories like it's quicker to do it myself. So I finally got a structure in place that is really working. So I'm working with a VA company and my main point of contact is the project manager there. And then they have a team of people that have specialist skills. So they have someone who is really good at creating artwork for social media, someone who is good at editing audio for podcasts, someone else who's great for video editing, and someone who is good for writing content. And I'm only dealing with the project manager and then she is managing all these other people. And so far that is working well and that is enabling me to pump out a lot more content and also for me to be able to focus on my superpower, which is creating the content, not necessarily editing this podcast or writing the show notes. So if you are a freelance person or one person agency, then really think about how you can delegate to a team of people, even if they're just virtual people that you hire. For a few hours a week, I'm going to be recording more about my VA structure and I'm going to actually interview my VA on a future episode. So look out for that because like I said, I think I've got this concept of having a project manager and then a public publisher and editor working well for me. So I want to share that with you. So that's what I'm doing in 2021 to take control of how I run my business. As I said, I think I was starting to fall foul of this idea that when the world opens, I'll be able to start doing things I used to do and pick up where I left off. And I think many of us felt that that would start to happen at the beginning of 2021. But here we are halfway through the year and whilst the vaccination is rolling out well in the uk, things haven't really changed in terms of being open and traveling. And to be honest, most countries are not opening their doors to us right now. So rather than continue to mark time and wait for some notional point in the future, I'm creating the kind of working environment that I want based on the constraints that exist right now. And who knows what the future holds. But this whole situation reminds us to live more in the present. And I guess that sort of the theme of my podcast today, which is to stop marking time and waiting for things to happen in the future, but take control of them now and realize that you have choices and you can make whatever you want happen. And remember that success isn't determined by you growing your revenues 20% year on year on year on year. And so make sure you stay connected to the reason why you run your agency. So I hope this episode has given you some food for thought, and if so, please make sure that you leave a review. I would be eternally grateful. Hit the subscribe button to make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, and I'll be back with you next week for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.