Business Processes For Creative Agencies

We're using AI to kind of pre fill a lot of the answers to the questions that we're going to be asking so that we can effectively. What we do is we show the client, hey, here's what we think. And we want them to go, yeah, that's great. We agree. Because otherwise, if you've got a blank screen that you're trying to fill in during a workshop, you can get stuck very quickly. So AI has been a real game changer for us over the last sort of 12 to 18 months in that respect.

Today I'm joined by a little bit of a legend in the agency coaching space. I've got Troy Dean. He leads a community called Agency Mavericks, which is a collective of digital creatives, and he helps them build the business of their dreams so that they can do more of what they love. Now, I've known Troy for years. We used to work out of the same co working space, shared a video studio and just really enjoyed watching him and his business scale to the worldwide business that it is today. He's a lover of systems and a longtime supporter of System Hub and Systemology. He was there at its birth when it was just a twinkle in my eye. So I couldn't think of anyone better to really explore best practice processes for creative agencies and really dig into, well, what does it take to build a successful agency? So maybe first things first. Just like to welcome you to the call, Troy.

Thank you for having me, Dave. It's a pleasure to be here.

Awesome. Let's dive straight in. I'd love to know.

Who, like we're going to work on the critical client flow and going through that process, uncover the best practice processes for the agency owners. If we were to try and think of the person listening to this, who this would be ideal for, who would that be?

Yeah, so small to medium agency.

You know, selling marketing services to other businesses. Right. So web design, SEO. The traditional ones are web design, SEO, ppc, ad agency. But then there's a whole bunch of agencies on the periphery as well that do like content marketing, video marketing. We have some video production agencies, we have podcast agencies, funnel agencies. So anyone who's providing marketing services to other businesses and the sort of sweet spot is anyone sort of really between 305, 300 grand and 5 mil in annual revenue.

And you know, Australia, New Zealand, US, Canada, UK, Europe, that's, you know, Thailand, that's kind of where our agencies sit. Larger agencies tend to be problematic because.

And I mean this with all respect, but they're usually too.

Wedded to their processes to implement any change. And. Yeah, and, and the typical process for an agency is, you know, do a whole bunch of free discovery stuff with a client, write lengthy proposals or RFPs or whatever, do big presentations, pitches, try and win the business. Right. And so that's not what we're going to talk about today because that's what sort of the larger. And as a. And the reason I know this, just for a bit of context, is I spent years as a voiceover artist, as you know, and so I would be in studios with people from publicist Mojo and, you know, Clementine and, you know, ddbo, like, you know, all the, you know, Jaywalk Thompson, all the biggest agencies on the planet. I've worked with them as a voiceover artist and I kind of, I've seen the inside of how those agencies work just from talking to people in studios and at networking events. And I've also worked inside a building with an agency. I rented an office space inside. Inside another agency at one point, and I saw how they work. And so a lot of that has actually informed the frameworks and the processes that we now teach smaller agencies, because those smaller agencies tend to be a bit more nimble and a bit more agile.

And when you say smaller, what's that sweet spot in sort of staff or head.

Yeah, anywhere from sort of 3 to 20. That's kind of like. Yeah, kind of the sweet spot of the agencies that we mentor.

Yeah, perfect. All right, well, let's think in terms of critical client flow for that client. And oftentimes a lot of the times when I do critical client flows with the businesses themselves, we always start off by talking about, well, let's capture what you're currently doing, not what you would like to be doing, and we'll look to make that part repeatable. Whereas we're going to do this a little bit differently because you. You've seen into thousands of agencies, so you know what best practice is. So that's where I'd love to kind of really dive into. Sure.

All right. So thinking in terms of one of those agencies.

I know because having seen a lot of your work, you start off by helping those clients get very clear on who their ideal client is. What would be an example for this that we could say their ideal target is that they would be focusing in on. Yeah.

So we've got the two agencies come to mind. One that specializes in allied health professionals. So they're SEO, ad agency for allied health. Another one that's a email marketing agency for E commerce. So they just do kind of email marketing flows for Ecom. But really, yeah.

The just to touch on what you said before is like, you know, let's capture what you're currently doing and make it repeatable. That's the problem with most agencies is that what they're currently doing is not repeatable because what they currently do with a lot, and this is true for a lot of service based businesses, they just rely on word of mouth and referrals.

Yeah.

And it's usually comes down to the founder or the founders or the partners in the business that their personal and professional network is what brings in the clients. And that's not repeatable and it's not scalable. It'll get you so far. But you know, at some point the word of mouth stops, the referrals dry up, one of the partners leaves the business and then you know, all of a sudden you're in trouble. I've seen it happen with agencies that are just starting out to multiple seven figure a year agencies. I've seen the same problem happen with just relying on word of mouth referrals in your personal network.

Yeah. Well, if we go for the allied health maybe example.

What would be the first product or service that they would want to sell that agency selling into an allied health business? Like where do people normally get started?

Well, so the, the cl. The allied health professional. So let's talk about, you know, the physio, the chiro, the osteo, the dentist, the cosmetic surgeon. Right. Anyone who's really, you know, not a GP basically. Right. And, and really not, not really so much specialists either. But those, the health professionals that they're called allied health professionals, they kind of sit around the periphery of, of the medical space and they, what they want is more appointments. Right. And so what they're doing is they're coming to an agency typically looking for more traffic.

Yes.

And so the agencies, traditionally the agencies will be offering, and I'll explain why, because part of our process is that the agencies end up with a new product that they sell on the front end. But traditionally the agencies will be selling SEO or AdWords to that client. Right.

But part of our process and what we advocate is that what they should be selling is a digital roadmap, which Effectively is a 12 month digital strategic plan for how that health professional is going to use digital over the next 12 months to help them achieve their business goals. So that's really the first product. It's not what the client comes for, by the way. The client doesn't turn up and go, hey, I need digital strategy. But this is what we advocate. The agency actually sells. And the agencies that we're having the most success with are the ones that are selling the digital roadmap to begin with, because that then allows you to write sort of 12 months to three years worth of business for yourself.

Yeah, I love this because this is focusing in on what, you know, works and doesn't work. So I'll go for the digital roadmap. And then as we continue down this thought exercise, and you mentioned some things that, you know, most of them will rely on word of mouth.

Yeah.

But as far as other traffic sources or ways that these agencies, if they're firing on all cylinders and they've gone through agency mavericks and they've learned the processes that you run, what are some of the key ways that they'd be driving traffic to get the attention of the allied health target client?

Yeah, well, so there's. There's three big buckets of ways that you can capture attention. And I'm going to talk specifically about digital here because. Just because it's a leveraged way of capturing traffic. Right. So there's like, you know, there's. You can go to business networking events. Right. You can go to bni, you can go to trade fairs. That's great. But for most of the time, you'll get more leverage out of using digital strategy to get attention. Right. So, yeah, because, you know, you go to a trade fair and you might, you know, be able to talk to, you know, 50 people across a couple of days, even though there might be 300 people there or 400 people that you can't speak to 400 people unless you're a speaker, which is a whole other conversation. So you can pay for eyeballs, you can get it organically, or you can rent it. Right. Or pay or partner. So the three ways that we talk about are, you know, SEO and or. And content marketing falls under organic. Pay for it is just, you know, ads and renting, it is partnerships. And when I say renting, and I don't, I don't mean renting a list from someone and emailing them. I mean.

Maybe renting is the wrong word, but partnering with someone who has the same kind of target audience as you and then creating something of mutual value so that everyone benefits from that partnership. Right. So it's not 100% organic because you might be paying the partner a cut or there might be some agreement with the partner that, you know, if I create some value for your audience, you're going to create some value for My audience, it's not a straight up paid audience because you're still relying on you and the partner to create something valuable. So you're not just running ads. Right. So, but typically ads, SEO and content marketing and partnerships are the three ways that you will create more attention for what it is you're doing.

Yeah. And if someone you know is coming to work with you guys, which is there one that you will start before the others, or does it just depend on the situation and what the agency already has access to?

It does depend on the resources available. So it's part of our, part of our kind of triage process is we have this thing called growth acronym. And so part of the R stands for resources. Right. So what resources do you have available? So if you have an email list, for example, and you have a bit of a LinkedIn following, we would suggest that you use that before you start paying for ads. Because, you know, there's always money in the banana stand. Right. So, like, there's always money in your existing audience. And then what we want to try and do is we want to try and find a campaign, a message, a call to action that works organically. When I say organically, I mean we're not paying for eyeballs. It works on LinkedIn and your email list or, you know, maybe you've got a big following in a couple of Facebook groups or whatever. So if we find something that works there and actually gets people to raise their hand and talk to your sales team, then what we might do is take that campaign, take that message, take that call to action, and put some money behind it into a paid advertising campaign. And then we also might look at who are the obvious partners that we could partner with around this. So in my world, for example, I've done partnerships over the years with all the guys that run the proposal software platforms, a lot of hosting companies, because they have large audiences of the exact people that I want to talk to. Right. So here's a piece of content, here's a message, here's a call to action that's working organically. Let's put some ads behind it. Let's go and share that with our partners as well. The reason I like testing things organically is because it's free. There's really nothing to lose. We can test stuff through social and email campaigns fairly quickly and get fairly immediate feedback as to what's working and what's not.

Yeah, perfect. So for this particular example, let's say with the Allied Health, they might start off getting some content out there that Speaks to their target audience and getting the content out there might be on LinkedIn or whatever to try and get under the nose of those people. Then whatever works. Then we roll that into paid. What with the partnership? Something like an allied health. I know you gave some examples. For you, what would you imagine further allied health space might be?

Yeah, so, you know, for example, there's the. My wife's a clinical psychologist and she belongs to two organizations, ahpra, which is the Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Authority, I think is what it stands for, the ape, which is kind of covers all health practitioners. So AHPRA is a really good one for allied health. And then she also belongs to the aps, which is the Australian Psychological Society, which is specific for. For that. And so like, you know, the chiropractors and the physios and the naturopaths, they all have their own industry body.

Yeah.

And those industry bodies, a lot of them still send out quarterly magazines in the post, or they have new email newsletters or they have blogs, some have podcasts, some have YouTube channels. So they're always looking for good, good talent, as I call it. People that can turn up, present some content, be super helpful, super valuable, and not expect to be able to pitch the audience. Right. That's the goal with a partnership, is just add so much value to the partner that it just comes back in spades. So I'd be looking at those industry bodies and those industry associations.

Yep. And then once that attention's been grabbed, generally, how does the inquiry come in? Are we just talking through, like, website, filling out forms, picking up phones, combination of all of the above. Yeah.

So there's two. There's two ways that someone can put their hand up and express interest. The obvious is to download a free resource, also known as a lead magnet. So that's, you know, the obvious one. I mean, we've got a whole bunch of lead magnets in our business that we give away and so do most of our clients.

Now, a lead magnet, by the way, can be, for example, if you have a, you know, one of our most successful agencies, their lead magnet is getting on the phone with a client and doing a competitor analysis and showing the physio, hey, here are all your competitors for, you know, physiotherapy in Box Hill. And here you are, and you're, you know, just at the top of page two. But all your competitors are on page one. And in order for us to get you on a page one, here's what we need to do. They literally show the gap between where the client is and where the competitors are. And then they just start listing out here are all the things that you need to do in order to get onto Page One and compete with your competitors. And they give them the checklist. They basically show them the, the, they show them inside their project management system and go, you know, if we were to work together, this is their lead magnet. If we were to work together, this is what we would do. You can have this record the zoom call, take it away, do it yourself, or of course, you can hire us to do it for you. Right. Your conversion rate's pretty high because, you know, they've just shown the client what the plan is. So the other, which is, that's a very customized, specific lead magnet. The other is, you know, the other version of that is just a generic kind of checklist of all the things you need to do to try and get onto Page One, or all the things you need to do before you launch an ad campaign on Google. Like, here's a checklist and a deep dive in how to set up your Google Ads account. Right. So that's, that's that example. The other form of inquiry is just to schedule a call with the team. And that, you know, book a call is the, that's where most of our agencies are sort of leaning towards, is just, you know, book a call with the team. Some of our agencies don't even bother with a free resource because, you know, the thing you've got to remember is that if you give away free resource, you're attracting people who want free information. Now, yes, it does position you as an authority and it does lead to more sales inquiries. But you just have to understand that 95% of people who download a free resource are never going to want to talk to you on the phone. They're just going to download a PDF, it's going to collect digital dust on their hard drive. They're not going to do anything with it. They're just, you know, drunk thumbs on Facebook opting in for whatever, and they're not actually a real prospect. So as long as you understand that, you go, great, we're happy to give away a lead magnet. We only want 5% of the people that download it to bubble up as a genuine inquiry. And that's okay. We're happy to play the numbers game. Some agencies are just like, nah, not don't want to do that. If you want to talk to us, just book a call.

Yep. And then, so with that one, there might be some sort of bit in here with the Qualification. Yeah. To decide who.

Yeah. So what, so what, what the, what you know, most of our agencies are doing is if they do have a lead magnet, the thank you page for the lead magnet is a video and a, you know, a form to fill in and book a call. Right. Or in fact what it will be is a video with a form. And then once they get through the qualification form, the third page will be a calendar page to book a call. So there might even be, you know, in a lot of cases, certainly in our case and in a lot of the agencies that we mentor is there's a qualification form between, there's basically a three page funnel, lead magnet qualification form and then your schedule calendar page.

Yep.

And then what you can do is you just take the lead magnet off the front of that funnel and have a two page funnel where it's just book a call, you know, qualification form, book. Of course, effectively you can drive traffic to either of those funnels. Just depends on, you know, the problem. The problem with lead magnets is they, they're good to position you as an authority, but you then just end up with a bunch of leads that you want to try and reach out to. And I can tell you like the, you know, we make 100 phone calls a day and we might be lucky to talk to two people who would, you know, so it's like at some point you go, well, this is just a waste of time. We're just going to send everyone to the qualification form. So our ads at the moment, I can tell you go straight to our qualification form. They don't go to a lead magnet. Our organic marketing goes to a lead magnet.

Oh, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick, but you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now. I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video.

Yeah, perfect. That makes sense. And then they'll have that call. And again we go back thinking about our allied health person or the agency selling to Allied Health for the digital roadmap after a call's been booked and then they, they run that strategy session or are you getting them to, to pay or do they have to pay to book in for a digital roadmap? Or how does that work?

Yeah, so, so they book a call.

Yep.

And then that call that they have is what we call a triage call. So we're really just, I mean, even though people might fill in a qualification form, what we know is that people don't always tell the truth in a qualification form. People also, people don't tell the truth in a client intake form. And they go and see a doctor or a psychologist either. Right. They just, for whatever reason, people get fruity about telling the truth in forms. But when you're on a call with someone and you start asking the right questions, then they'll start telling you the truth. And so the purpose of that triage call is to determine whether or not the client is a good fit.

Yeah.

Right. And if they are a good fit, then, then the agency will pitch a digital roadmap workshop straight off that triage call. Right. It's like, well, if we're going to work together, this is how we work. We run a digital roadmap workshop for every new client. We map out a 12 month strategy, we give you that strategy, you've paid for it, you own it, you can go and shop that around to other agencies, you can do it yourself, you can do it if you want with it, because you've paid for it, you own it. If you want us to help you implement it, we can have a conversation about what that looks like. And there are, you know, some risk reversal strategies that you can employ to help people get over the hump of doing the digital roadmap workshop. Because typically it's not what clients are expecting. Right? Clients are just expecting that you're going to send me a proposal for SEO or ads. And the reason we don't do that is because that's what the clients expect and that's what every agency does. And so we have a different approach, which is a more, you know, direct like and also kind of almost poking fun at that old, old way of doing things. Like, you know, yeah, why would I send you a proposal that you're not going to read? And then I'm going to email you 100,000 times to try and get you to respond like, we don't do that anymore if we're going to work together, you know, you're hiring professional here. So if we're going to work together, we need, it's like hiring financial planner, financial planners don't send you proposals. They put together a financial plan and they charge you four and a half grand for it. And then what you do with it is up to you. Right. But at least you've got clarity on what the expert has told you you should do in order to achieve your outcomes.

Yeah. So does that mean after the triage call, here's the link to purchase your.

100%, we sell them the digital roadmap off the triage call. We then we then run the digital roadmap session and then.

Off. There's a couple of. There's a couple of things that happen before the triage call too, which I'll come back to in a second, but just at a high level. Once they've bought the. Once they've bought the digital roadmap workshop, we then run the digital roadmap workshop. And then off the back of the digital roadmap workshop, we present our recommendations. Right. So the digital roadmap workshop, you could really put in onboarding, Right. That we're really. What we're doing there is we're onboarding the client through the digital roadmap workshop. We understand, we ask a lot of questions in that digital roadmap workshop. We collect a lot of intel, we then go back, spend a couple of days piecing the recommendations together, then we go back and present the recommendations and at that point we upgrade the client into a growth plan or a small project or we part ways. Right. Depending on the relationship with the client. There's plenty of agencies who run a digital roadmap for client and then go, we're not the right droids for you. Here's your strategy. You've paid for it, but we don't really want to work with you because, you know, for a whole bunch of.

Reasons, it's almost like. And just because of the way that I've set this up as the product being the digital road app.

Sure.

It's almost like you run the triage call, we sell them into the, you know, here's the link to purchase. And yeah, there's probably something that goes on in the background. I'm imagining for that agency where they're potentially sending out their questionnaire or adding them to their project management, a little bit of a setup for them to kind of have all the project stuff they need and then, yeah, run, if I'm understanding correctly, then they run the digital roadmap session.

And then off the back of that. So I probably need to move this around a little bit because there's the, the running of the session. And then there's the preparing of the roadmap. Yeah. And then the presenting of the roadmap.

That's right. Yeah. And there, there is a bunch of. So what happens? Let me just fill in some gaps for you.

Yeah.

If I think about the. The physiotherapist who has been on a call with the agency and they've said, okay, this is a good idea we're going to do, there's two things I want to mention here I think are important. A lot of agencies resist this idea of selling a digital roadmap because it's new. They're like, oh, well, I can't do that. Who's going to pay for a digital roadmap? Right.

Yeah.

And so the two risk reversal strategies I think are worth mentioning is that are working really well. Is. And mind you, and I'm just going to say this because I know a lot of people have this kind of limiting belief that, oh, well, this won't work for me because I sell this service and I operate out of an office in this suburb and it won't work. Right. So this is working for web design, SEO, ads, video marketing agencies, content marketing agencies, funnel agencies, branding agencies, graphic design agencies, and, you know, copywriting agency. Any type of agency that's working in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Canada, North America, the uk, Europe. So if any agency is listening to this and they're kind of resisting, just invite them to kind of park their belief system for a second and just try this. Because the agency, the reason this works so well is when you're selling a digital roadmap on the front end, it's easier to convert that because typically you're selling it for maybe, you know, 1500 or a couple of grand. Right. It's easier to sell that than it is a $15,000 project or a $3,000 a month retainer. Right. So your conversion rate's typically higher on the front end. And then what happens is really where the rubber hits the road is that the agencies that are using digital roadmaps are converting an average of 85% from digital roadmap into an ongoing recurring revenue growth plan package. Right. And that's the magic because obviously the client's already got some skin in the game and they appreciate that you understand their business better than anyone because you've been through the digital roadmap session with them and these are your recommendations. So the two risk reversal strategies to get the client over the line is one is to say, I know this might be a new process for you but we're so confident in it that, that if you invest in the digital roadmap and then decide to work with us, we'll credit your investment in the roadmap against the first month of working with us. Right?

Yeah.

And the second one is the no brainer, which is really the, you know, the hormozy kind of offer is if at the end of this process, you think it's been a complete waste of time, we'll refund your money and you can keep the plan that we come up with. Now, we've never had anyone come back to us and say that they've had a client ask for a refund. Right. Because the process is so valuable that at the end of it, the client has so much clarity, they know exactly what needs to be done, that no one's ever come back and said, well, that was a waste of time. But there's just two risk reversal strategies you can use to get clients over the line. And so then in between.

Booking the triage call and actually buying the digital roadmap, we use long form content in there. We use, you know, podcast episode, YouTube video, or case study to.

Kind of indoctrinate the client. So, you know, the. And this is something that you and I talked about a long time ago when you were working with the pool guy, and the pool guy made a bunch of videos. But, well, you know, how much does it cost to put a pool in your backyard? He's like, well, it depends. And, you know, made all these videos, answering all these questions. By the time he turned up to the house, the couple are like, oh, my God, it's John from the pool company. And he was a celebrity, right? Because you've been watching the videos. That's the power of long form content. And so when someone books in a call to speak with the team, in between them booking in and you having the call with the client, if there's one piece of long form content you can send them. When I say long form, really anything over 10 minutes, if there's some piece of content you can send them, that explains a little bit about what you do, preferably with the person that they're going to have the call with presenting that information on a video, and then by the time the person turns up on the zoom call or in person, if you're meeting people in person, they're way more likely to be comfortable with you because they've experienced a bit of your personality, right? Yeah, the same thing when they buy the digital roadmap session, in between that and and them doing the digital roadmap session. Right. I know you might think, well, they're a customer now, I don't have to do anything. But if you can send them a case study on, hey, here's a psychologist we work with in, you know, Redfern and gee, that'd be a job, wouldn't it, being a psychologist in Redfern. And you know, here's the case study of what happened. Right. And so not only again are they seeing more of you, but they're actually seeing how your process works for other people. So by the time they turn up to actually have the session, they're more engaged in the process. All of these things just create a really beautiful client experience so that whatever you suggest to the client seems like the next logical step for the client to take. And it, you know, typically what happens is it just smooths out your conversion rates along. Along the way.

Yes. Yeah, I think that makes sense. So if we do the triage call, there's some sort of communication that follow up with some long form content.

Yep.

Somewhere in there they're going to make that purchase. Yeah. Then you're going to run the roadmap session itself.

Yeah.

And off the back of that you're going to put together whatever the digital roadmap is and then we present that.

Correct.

There are bits that I might have missed in there or.

Nuance.

Yeah. I mean, there's again, after running the digital roadmap session, before going and presenting your recommendations, there are some touch points. We're using AI quite a bit these days. To one, to summarize what we've learned during the roadmap session and to come up with an executive summary that we send to the client before we go back and present our recommendations. The reason we do that is because if you imagine, you know, I own a large physiotherapy clinic and I've got, you know, eight physios working for me and I've gone through this digital roadmap process with an agency and then all of a sudden and I'm very busy. Right. And I've got two kids and, you know, it's very hectic life. And then two days later I turn up and the agency's like, great. Remember that workshop we ran last week? Oh yeah, I remember. I mean, I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone the workshop we ran last week. And then they're making all these recommendations and saying it's going to cost me five grand a month. I'm like, hang on A second, I got to catch up here. So the executive summary in advance is just another touch point that shows them that you've got your act together and you know what you're doing, but also pre frames what we're going to be talking about on the recommendation session and also kind of pre frames it. Well, by this stage they know that this is not, they're not dealing with a freelancer here on Fiverr, right. They're dealing with a professional agency and this is probably going to cost a bit more than they might have originally anticipated. So we're kind of just pre framing their expectations. Now. We're using AI to help us do that. We're also using AI a lot to kind of help us pre fill the delivery of the digital roadmap. Because again, part of what you want to do is when you're sitting in front of, you know, a busy business owner and you're asking them about the vision of the company and what's happening over the next 12 months and their values and what all this kind of stuff that you want to weave into a campaign or a strategy for them. A lot of the times they can't answer those questions right because they're like, well, I've got eight therapists out there and I'm managing, you know, a thousand active clients and I've got the bank on the phone and I'm trying to buy this property in my self managed super fund and I'm, you know, Porsche have rung me to tell me my car's going to land in a couple of months. I've got a lot going on, you know what I mean? These are real examples by the way. And so we're using AI to kind of pre fill a lot of the answers to the questions that we're going to be asking so that we can effectively. What we do is we show the client, hey, here's what we think and we want them to go, yeah, that's great. We agree because otherwise if you've got a blank screen that you're trying to fill in during a workshop, you can get stuck very quickly. So AI has been a real game changer for us over the last sort of 12 to 18 months in that respect.

Are there any other spots where you've found AI helps in like no doubt you probably using it all the way through. But you obviously mentioned the executive summary area, the, you know, the prep for the digital roadmap. Are there any other obvious ones that jump out to you where you're just like, oh, you know, I really Helped re engineer this part of the process.

Yeah, I mean content. Content. I mean, you know, I just want to talk about video for a second right? Because.

You know what? Amazing. I mean, you and I are video guys, right? But like 95 of people I talk to, like, well, you know, I, I can't make video, right? I, I, I, that I just can't make video. And I have to remind them that we're on Zoom and their camera's on and we're recording it. So guess what? You're already making video.

Yeah.

Right. You just got to publish it now. You know, I firmly believe, as do you, that the fastest way to build trust with a prospect and turn them into a client is to sit in a room with them, look him in the eye, shake their hand and tell them you're going to do the right thing and you understand their problem and you've got a solution. A lot of the time that's not possible because of where we live and post Covid it's a remote world. So the, you know, second best way to do that is to hang out on Zoom and, and kind of try and feel that energy with someone. But before you do that, the next best way is to make a video and publish it and try and connect with people through, you know, video marketing. And so the good thing about making a video is if you make one video a week about one specific thing that you can help your target audience with and then use AI, of which there are countless AI tools you can use to turn that video into audio. Show notes, a blog post, you know, half a dozen social posts, an email newsletter, like within half an hour you've got your content done for a week. You can even use AI to write the script for the video if you like. And if you really hate the sound of your own voice and the look of your own face, you can even use an AI avatar to present the thing, right? I wouldn't suggest doing that. I would suggest that you present the video for the reasons we've already spoken about. So yeah, I mean, you and I used to spend hours of our lives producing video and editing video and you know, doing all this stuff. And then I come along and it's just saving us, you know, a couple of days a week from, from in the post production process.

And what I love, and it was the same with so many parts of business process is another one where I sit there and I go, it was worth it before when you didn't have the AI tools and it took more investment in time, money and Energy to do the thing, and it was worth it then. So now with AI, where it's taking a fraction of that time, you. You're crazy not to be investing in creating this type of content and sharing it. And I feel the same way around process, Process to a certain extent. Historically had a lot of heavy lifting to get things documented out and all that. Now you just do it in a breeze.

And it was worth it before, so.

You just be crazy not to do it now.

Yeah, that's right.

I'd love. In the tail end of this, having a look at the critical client flow we just mapped here. Typically, where are the hot spots for where agency owners struggle the most or when you work with them, you just go. This spot here has the biggest hole quite frequently.

Is there anything?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, the top, right? Yeah, yeah. Like everyone. If you look at this screen now, that top left square. Word of mouth, right? Like, yeah, everyone's hanging out there and everyone's. And I, you know, because, you know, I follow that. I follow a couple of guys in the. In the music space and.

There'S. There are. I've had this conversation with so many guitar teachers over the years, like, oh, you can't make money online teaching guitar because you can learn it all on YouTube. Right. Well, I could point you to a handful of guitar players who are making seven figures a year teaching guitar online because they've built massive audiences by giving away free content on YouTube. Right. Rhett Shulls, the one that comes to mind, Marty whatever his name is, is another one. These guys publish so much free content, they've managed to get out of their own way long enough now. Probably easier for musicians because we're born performers, so we just. We just want to get in front of a camera. They've given away so much free content over the years and built such a big audience that they put out a course for 50 bucks and they'll make a couple of hundred thousand dollars because they've got such a big following, because they've given so much free content away to the community and they've been so helpful that the community feels almost compelled to reciprocate and give them the 50 bucks for the course that they've put out, which in a lot of cases is just a curated playlist of the YouTube videos that you can already get for free. Right?

Yeah.

So a lot of them will have a Patreon account where you pay five bucks a month just to support them. Paul Davids is a guy out of. I think he's from The Netherlands, who I've learned so much about guitar playing from him and now I pay five bucks a month to be in his pat. I don't even know what I get for it doesn't matter. I'm happy to give him 60 bucks a year so that he can keep doing it, right? So the point I'm trying to make is most people will just hang out in the word of mouth square because they're too scared to publish a piece of content and position themselves as someone who knows what they're talking about because they're too self conscious that other people are going to go, oh, you don't know what you're talking about, right? So here's the rule. The only opinion that matters is the opinion of the customers who are paying you money, right? And if you want more of them, publishing free content on the Internet and being helpful to your target audience is the way to get more of them. Even if you're running ads, you still need content for your ad campaigns, right? So just get into the habit of publishing a piece of content at least once a week that is helpful for your target audience. If you're stuck with what to say, go and ask ChatGPT, right? You'll have endless amounts. You'll never run out of ideas. If you don't have any ideas for content, the truth is you're just too scared to publish something and so you're making excuses. So that's the first place. The second place is that people get hung up on this. Well, I've got to write a proposal. I've got to have a call with a client, right? The client's going to suck all my intellectual property out of my head and get my best ideas for free. And, and then they're going to ask me for a proposal and I have to give them a proposal because that's what the client wants. And I can tell you something, when you go to the GP or a medical professional, you don't get to negotiate on their process, right? You don't get to say, well, you know, doc, can you send me a proposal? No. I can remove your kidney stones or you can go home in pain. It's up to you. I don't care either way. You're the one with the kidney stones, right? So you don't get to negotiate with them on their business process because they are the authority. And so I'm not sure at what point digital marketers and web designers and service providers decided that we would let our clients dictate our business process to us. It was a decision that was made a long time ago. But enough is enough. You don't have to write proposals. You can say to a client, we don't write proposals. They're a waste of time. What we do is we run a digital roadmap workshop for every client. We map out a strategy for the next 12 months. It's going to help you get closer to your goals. You. You pay for it. If you want us to implement it, we can have that conversation. You don't want us to implement it. You own it because you've paid for it. That's how we work. If you don't want to work like that, that's fine. You rang me, remember? You respond to that piece of content I put out. You're the one with the problem, not me. So, you know, that's what I like.

Most about what you've got here and we've gone through. The critical client flow is you've actually solved quite a lot of the problems that digital agencies have just in this. Like that automatically overcomes the proposal problem.

Correct.

We're not doing it that way. We run a triage call and then we tell you, you need to order your digital roadmap session.

That's right. So you're. So your critical client flow template in sales has too many boxes, you know.

Yes.

And that. And you're right, you're right. It has that many boxes because that's what most people do. And really, this happened during COVID where we had this revelation was like, you just don't have to work that hard, you know, to get someone to sign on. You just have to have a bit more of a direct conversation with them and be confident in your abilities to help them. And so we actually try and remove steps from the critical client flow that are unnecessary.

Yeah, yeah. I absolutely love that. And this is an example of an optimized process, which for a lot of people. And it's almost like you're the shortcut for agency owners going through, firstly figuring out what do they do and then capturing that and trying to make it repeatable and then try and optimize, which is the last stage in systemology. You obviously work very closely with a lot of digital agency owners over many years. So you now go, well, here's the optimized process.

That's right. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have a short attention span too, so.

That's right.

I just want to go straight for the shortcut all the time.

Yeah. That's the only way to do it. I know the shortcut will be for people to go to Agency Mavericks. I'll pop a link through to the website. Is that the best place for them to get on top of your work?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Agencymavericks.com yeah, yeah, easy.

Well, huge thank you for your time, Troy.

Always. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.