Scaling A Marketing Automation Agency - Case Study

If you really want your business to scale and give you the lifestyle that you deserve as business owners, you've got there's no ifs, buts or maybes. This is the path.

Hello, it's David Jennings from Systemology and I'd love to shine a spotlight on some of our clients and colleagues businesses and we get a chance to talk about building systems culture and what it takes and today I'm joined by Tim Hyde from winmoreclients.com and maybe just to start Tim know if you can tell us a little bit about yourself, your business, what you do and we can go from there.

Thanks Dave. It's great to be great to be here. Win more clients is probably one of those accidental businesses, right? I had gotten out of working in it, project management, government and on the side my side gig was actually built a social media site in the late 90s and ran that for 14 years and then you know, sold that and thought what am I going to do when I grow up? And then I think one morning about 3am I'd been doing this consulting work for about eight months. I thought what am I going to call this thing that I'm doing right. And then literally 3:00am, 3:15 in the morning, woke up, ran into the office and said oh why don't I just call it what I do for people love it. All right. And then strangely I've got on and midwell clients. The domain wasn't, you know, the business name wasn't registered, the domain wasn't taken. I'm like madly credit card out at 3 o' clock in the morning buying his domain. I thought you know this is what I'm going to call this thing so but what do we, we do a lot of is around systemization and automation of customer acquisition. Customer acquisition process. Right. So how do you can attract, convert and keep clients? We do a little work with CRM and automation of that marketing and sales process.

I know a lot of it's one of those things with the. The name systemology and system is quite a broad topic and sometimes I have to kind of spell out the distinction between the two because system could be. Is that a software system or system? Is that a documented process or is that so for you guys? I know you deal a lot in the marketing automation so you help set up a lot of the tech side of things. Is that my understanding correct?

Yeah, it is, it is But I think the thing about you know when we look at systems and systemology as I guess as a, as a concept, right. You Know, it's just about creating a repeatable process, right? A repeatable outcome. A bit like a, I think you mentioned in the book, right, it's a bit like, you know, making a cake. If you don't have a recipe, you're going to produce a different cake each time. But if you follow a recipe, you should get close to the same results each time. And I think one of the things that I've learned in business over 44 years now, it's starting to show my age, that, you know, the more predictably we can produce a result, the more predictable, controllable this chaos that we have in our business actually becomes. And you know, it gives us a great deal of comfort and assurance that if we know we can produce a predictable result each time, not only for our customers, gives them, you know, some assurance, but for us as well, we can start to have more control about where we're going with it. Right. And you know, when we have that, things like scale and profits and everything start to become inevitable.

Yeah. I love as well, when I chat with someone like yourself where they're in marketing, yet they have a really strong appreciation for systems and processes because sometimes the misconception that systems remove creativity. Yet I think for a high functioning marketing team and to have really solid marketing processes, like you said, that makes it predictable and reliable. Like that's really what you need in business to have that good lead flow. With that in mind, do you see yourself as a systems person? Like, do you go, that's me. Or do you go, I'm not really a systems person. I'm always curious.

I, I do, I, I think, you know, if I reflect back on, on all the, on my entrepreneurial journey and I didn't come from a business family, right? Mum's a teacher and Dad's an egg scientist. I, you know, my first mentor was Uncle Scrooge, right? My Uncle Scrooge. Golden book. As a six year old, I thought this is fun, right? You know, business as a, as a kid and as a teenager was just fun, right? You know, we just tried stuff and it was a bit of an experiment and you kind of like, you know, you made some money, you got to go and spend it on lollies at the local shops, suites at the local shops, you know, and you could just blow it on whatever you wanted to sort of blow it on without really any sort of thought about mortgages and kids and school fees and, you know, bills and all that sort of other stuff that sort of came along with it. But sort of as an adult. You know, when I started, I guess, maturing my thinking, the thing that I, that I continually noticed that stressed business owners out was not knowing where the next client comes from. And I presented to a group of business owners last night and that was almost the universal sort of fear. It's like, I don't know where my next client is coming from. I don't know where my next clients coming from. You know, I don't know where my next paycheck is. And, and you and I have both been in the position where you've, you've had that yourself, right? You're like, oh my God, I've got to dig in, dig, you know, dip into the piggy bank to pay the staff tomorrow. And it's super stressful. Right. And so, you know, when we look at systems, and particularly sort of sales and marketing systems, which I think are potentially the most important to focus on almost to start with, is if we can create some predictability around how do we get our next client, we can start to actually make more informed decisions about what else we're going to do elsewhere in the business. And just to pull something out of the book, that idea of that critical client flow, how do I find, how do I attract, how do I convert and how do I deliver, take the money from a client and then obviously go from that, how do I consistently deliver to that. That's probably almost, I think if you get that nailed down, the rest can be in a bit of a mess. Right. And I've seen it before. I've seen, you know, surveys, you know, what's the most important thing to have as a business owner? Right? It's not mindset. It's not, you know, getting the right people on. It's not all this other stuff. It's your ability to attract, convert and keep a client. You've got a business, then everything else can be a bit of a mess. Right. But you've actually got a business at that stage.

Yeah, I know. I love the way you nailed that. So you're, I mean, you've now recognized that. Another way that I've seen it with a lot of business owners, where once you've been in business over a period of time, you start to appreciate systems and processes more. How have you started to kind of implement some of these ideas of systems thinking into your business and like, how have you gone getting the team on board? Because that's, you know, the. Once you being bitten by the bug and you see it, is there a way that, or anything that you can think about that you've done to develop a systems culture in with more clients.

Yeah. I think the first thing, you know, to answer the first part of the question there, you know, my realization is sort of come look probably over a bit of time, but, you know, particularly recently to go, you know, what is the purpose of this thing that I'm creating? Right.

Yeah.

Is it to create a job for myself or is it to create a business for myself? Now, I was quite fortunate enough to recently be able to spend a bit of time in France for the Rugby World cup, which was amazing, you know, and had covert as well. My wife over the last couple years has had quite a few health issues as well, which has required me to sort of step out of the business. And. And I think, you know, those lifestyle things that we. Let's be real, right? We go into business to give us the lifestyle. Right. The lifestyle is not the thing we fit around the business. Right. The business, its purpose is to serve the lifestyle. And whether that's because you need to spend time with loved ones or want to spend time with loved ones, as the case may be, or want to go and do, you know, fun things like bugger off to rugby for a couple of weeks and each, you know, croissant and drink wine, whatever the purpose is, the more systemized your business is, the more likely it is that you can take that. I have a job, you know, I own a job. Hat off and move into. This thing exists independently of me. Yes. You know, someone or something else can run this business. Right. And that's where I think the combination of. Of technology systems and people systems, you know. Yeah. Really combine very tightly to be able to deliver that. Right. In terms of the second part of that question, you know, in terms of how do you sort of get your team on board with it? I think there's two things that. That I've noticed that have worked for us. A is really embedding that into your recruitment process.

Yeah.

You know, ask the question, what is a system that you use to do xyz. Right. You know, and you can actually, you know, if you've got a. If you're hiring someone as a, you know, as an EA to manage your inbox. Right. Ask that question as part of your interview process and say, what's a system that you use or have used in the past to achieve this outcome for, you know, previous employers? All right, if you've got a salesperson you're hiring, ask what is the system that you use? You know, describe the system, describe your approach on how to do that. And if they don't have a system or haven't used a system before, you've got to find any system that you try and impose is going to. You're going to have, I guess, a harder time of it. But I think the other part of that is systems are only as good as the people who follow them. All the technology and doing that iterative process. And people will embrace it when they see benefit in it, but probably not before. Before they'll push back.

Yes. Yeah.

But when I see benefit in. In doing it. Right. So I kind of have it, you know, this visual in my head about, you know, the sort of, you know, how government build typically footpaths. You know, the footpath follows the curvature of the road and it goes right to the corner and sort of stuff. And, you know, there's always this dirt track that cuts the corner.

Right.

You've got to build your systems around human behavior.

Yeah.

So understand what the human behavior is in achieving the outcome and build your system around that. Don't just try and take people off on a different path for the sake of taking people on a different path.

Yeah, yeah. I think, like, you touched on some really key insights, and I love the way that you had the distinction between human systems and then software systems and then this idea that the. I mean, the purpose of a system is to help your highest performers deliver at their highest possible performance. So if you're telling them that, you.

Know, you, you we're going to introduce.

Bureaucracy and red tape and you have to go around this corner and you have to do that, then that just frustrates great team members. I'm curious to know, because you know a lot about the software side of the systems, how do you think about where the two overlap? Like, do you do a lot of the analog thinking first before you move to. Then. Great. Well, now let's get the software piece right after you. You know, what the human bit is or how do you think about it, particularly in the space that you work?

I think. Yeah, it's a good question. I probably do it more intrinsically now, having done it more than a thousand times in just about every industry that you can imagine. I think it's a little bit of both. It's. It's understanding what your technology is capable of. You have to have an idea of that. Right. But then coming out also from that human design perspective. Right. What is the, you know, what is my. What are my people doing? And they may not necessarily be doing the right thing, but you've got to look at how does the technology enhance what my, what the outcome I wanted to achieve. It's not, you know, how do I shoehorn my human processing to what my technology can do, it's how can it enhance. And that's probably a really key sort of part of what we need to look at. You know, there's, there's, there's, you know, we need to know almost from both ends, right. And, and find this intersecting in the middle between the two. Right. So technology is there not to replace people, it's there to enhance the output of, of people.

Right.

And obviously there's a massive conversation going on right now about AI, you know, and no, AI I don't think is artificial intelligence, is augmented intelligence. We need to be starting to think about it like that. Right. How can I use these tools to enhance my productivity? Not necessarily replace or shoehorn my productivity.

Yes. And similar. Because I'd love to get your perspectives on how you think about this because you're almost like a subject matter expert on this particular piece. One of the things we talk about in systemology as step one for a lot of people is just make what you're currently doing repeatable. And it's not, doesn't have to be world class. You can get tremendous wins just by making it repeatable. Once you've got a baseline, then you engage the expert who then potentially looks to re engineer that chunk now knowing, well, this is what you're doing as your baseline. And I can see that now I can re engineer your process and get significantly better outcomes with what I know with my expertise in an area. I don't know if you get any thoughts on that.

And yeah, look, yeah, it is a very iterative process. Right. You know, no one built the Taj Mahal. You know, first go out, you just learn to put a mud on bricks and made some tool into and then you kind of refined that process. And even, you know, even when we look at building an automated system, even when we take a process, you know, that hasn't been documented, you know, look at how do we create a system around that and then look to how do we automate it, you know, there's no point automating a process that's broken. And so yes, you know, you're just going to accelerate your demise if that's the case. So if you're sending the wrong stuff, you'll continue to send the wrong stuff. You'll just do it faster. Really Understanding what is the outcome I need to create from this process is absolutely critical and does That I think you've got to be, look at this sort of thing. Right. You know, does it enhance or detract from the customer experience? You know, so coming back to, you know, I guess from a, from a sales and marketing perspective, does it enhance or does it detract from the customer experience? So automation can be used to automate a manual task. Right. To remind someone to do something like make a phone call. Okay. As much as send an email. But we want to look at, you know, what is the thing that is a, you know, does it add to the customer experience? Does it need to be timely? Right. And how often do we do it? Right. So automation for automation's sake doesn't work for anybody. Does it enhance or detract from the customer experience? And you know, in, in, in the relationship that you're trying to build from them. Right. And I, one example I use quite often is, you know, movie tickets. Right. Movie tickets are entirely automated process. Now you go online, you buy your tickets, they turn up on your phone or in your email inbox, you know, a couple of seconds later. Right. Can you imagine if that wasn't an automated process and you'd go online, you'd buy your tickets and it go to someone in the Office 7pm at night for an 8:30 movie and like, oh, they're closed up for the day, we'll send those tickets tomorrow morning.

Yeah, yeah, right.

It just would, yeah, it just wouldn't work. Right. So automation in this context by automatically sending you tickets actually enhances the customer experience because we're really timely. It happens a lot, right?

Yes.

Because lots of people buy Mozi tickets.

Yes.

Yeah, I think something like, something like say, you know, if you've got an account management process where you touch base with your clients once a year. Right. Well maybe it's not a very frequent process. You might not have a thousand clients, you might only have 10 or 20. Right. So an automated process to remind your account manager to say, hey, it's been 12 months or it's been six months since you spoke to this person, it's time to schedule a call with them. Here's their phone number.

Yep.

You know, we're looking at a process by which enhances the customer experience but needs a personal touch.

Yes. Yeah. And I love, you know, and I can't help myself because I look through the lens of systemology all the time that effectively the critical client flow is identifying the dream client, the primary product or service that you're selling to them and then you map that linear journey. The first step is just to make it repeatable because most small business struggles with repeatability. The last step in systemology is optimized, which is then we try and pick some of the metrics from the critical client flow, which is effectively that client experience from start to finish and, you know, attracting all the way through to delivery. And then we can start to look to improve that by adding in some of these layers that you're talking about and re engineering components. I know we had a chat just before we hit record and you're kind of walking me through some things in systemology. I'm curious if there were any big insights that you picked up or anything where you were like, ah, you know, hearing it the distinction that way because I mean, you already had a really deep understanding of customer experience and a lot of the automation just with all of your experience. And I'm wondering if there are any particular parts that spoke to you.

Yeah, I think, look, to me, it all comes from. I mean, I did it at uni, right. So we did a lot of coding and this was sort of back before the Internet was a thing. And I remember, you know, the guys and I were, you know, living in a sort of dorm room. We'd sort of print out this sort of code on the dot matrix paper, you know, that was all sort of perforated. You'd lay it down the sort of the hallway or through the lounge room and you get out with a red pen into sort of line one, line two, line three, and then you're trying to find the broken bit of code.

Yeah.

And if you remember, you know, back 20 or, you know, 20 or so years ago, you know, the Microsoft blue screen of death, Right. All it was was, it was, it was just a bit of code, right, that got to a point in the code where it didn't understand the instructions on what to do next.

Yeah.

Right. Now, luckily, we don't have too much of that anymore because code is much better and compilers much faster in doing that. But it got to this point where it broke. Now, if we look at our business, it's the same thing, right? We have this, you know, the critical client flow that the customer journey, we take people through at some point, you know, if we haven't, you know, that code in producing the same outcome, each time breaks, your customer disappears, you're left wondering what's going on, right? And then you try and repeat the process again. And so, you know, if we look at our business like just a piece of code, a piece of code is just that When I do this, this happens.

Yeah.

Right. When I pick up a book, I turn the pages until I get to the end. When I move my mouse on the screen, when I move it right, I get a predictable outcome. Okay, imagine that. Imagine if you get on the car and you turn the wheel to the right and suddenly it started going backwards. But the next time you turn the wheel to the right, it goes left. And the next time you turn the wheel to the right, it goes right. You're like, there's no way in hell I'm driving this car. All right? Yeah. So, you know, that system is all just about producing that, you know, outcome consistently each time. And I think that, you know, for me, you know, the big takeaways from, from systemology is, is around that, you know, well, if I've got a critical client flow, I should be able to get a repeatable outcome. And that repeatable outcome is two things. Right. One, it's an outcome that my customer is happy about and two, it's an outcome that I'm happy about. Right. That's profitable every time I do it, you know, I know if I get a client, it makes me this much money. Happy days.

Yeah. You know, I think a big part of what we also do is I want to create the picture in the head of the business owner that this is possible without them in the picture. Because oftentimes a lot of business owners will be able to deliver the critical client flow, but they're the ones and pre identifying the critical client flow. They're effectively the ones that are filling in the gaps. When you get the blue screen of death and something breaks, they then step in. And the whole idea is how do we simplify to a point where we can make this happen without key person dependency which then goes, oh, this is possible. And now what happens if I spread this throughout my entire organization? And I think that's the idea. That's a bit of a. Yeah, I.

Think, obviously depends on, you know, when you pick it up. Right. You know, if you. Yes, you and a virtual. Guess what? Right. You know, you probably. Right. You're probably the subject matter expert. Right. And you're at the end of the systems champion. You know, if you're a bigger organization. Absolutely. I think that, you know, we can't lose sight of the fact that we got in business, you know, to run a business, not to have a job. And look, if you're still at I have a job stage and many people are, that's okay. But if you ever want to be able to step Away from this thing and as you say, you know, increase the value, increase sort of, you know, probability that you can create the same result. We've got to start doing some of this stuff now. Whether you're the subject matter expert and the system champion to start with, fine. But, you know, the quicker we can get rid of those hats, the quicker the business starts to serve us. Not us serving the business.

Yeah, I can tell how sort of deeply you've got this because it's kind of in your DNA. Even before systemology, just with all of your systems background. And then really that's kind of helped to surface some of the, the thinking sort of in the tail end. I don't know if there's, you know, thinking about applying systemology to your business. If you've got any stories or any wins or aha moments or things that happen with the team as you're starting to deploy some of this thinking where you like, oh, you know, something happened here and it was a big win. Because that kind of helps to inspire someone who's maybe listening to this.

And yeah, look, a couple, couple of things sort of come to mind. First one is, you know, start small, right? I mean, there's easy stuff to systemize, right? You know, your staff member onboarding process, right. Your Christmas leave process. I mean, those are almost universal to every business. Yeah, they're going to be the same regardless. I think the big, the big wins really come when you start to systemize what it is that your business delivers to a customer. And just getting some of that stuff down is probably one of the really big ones. I think the other thing there is it's okay to up get it wrong a few times and that's okay. But I think when you start to work on it, I have this, again, I'm a very visual person, so I have this picture in my mind about this black, black box that is business, right? You know, customers come in one side, profit comes out the other, right? And largely when you start your business, you're in the box, right? It's dark, it's grimy, there's lots of cogs and gears that gets, you know, that chew you up. The more you can get out of that and work on the box, right? You know, which is effectively on those systems, the more likely you are to be able to produce the outcomes, right? So the more likely you are to produce profit for yourself and the more likely the arter you can produce customer outcomes that leads to more customers going in, you know, and, and we should be able to just Sort of reach our hand into the box occasionally and go, you know, that cog is a bit worn out. I want to put a new one in. Or that one's, you know, not quite greased enough. So I'm going to put a new one and, you know, add a bit of grease there. And it's only when we start to create those systems around stuff that we can kind of start to get visibility about what's working and what's not working. Now, that might be a process in your business, right? It might be a. Might even be a team member in your business, you know, but it's only when we start to shine a light on those things, we go, what are you actually doing here? You know, and how can this be the most effective and optimum, you know, and efficient, you know, at producing that thing that I need you to produce? But, you know, it is scary, right? People get threatened by this, but actually makes people's jobs easier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then once they recognize that, also it makes it easier for them to get on board. Once you've got the team on board, is it possible that you could have gone and just had the holiday that you did for the. It was the rugby, wasn't it? Was it rugby? Yeah. Would that. Can you do that sort of thing without solid systems and processes in place? Like, I feel like that. Yeah. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll let. I'll let you answer that question, but yeah, yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

Look, I think it's always critical to step away, right. Even without systems in place.

Yes. Yeah.

It's actually a good exercise. And I think this, you know, terrifies business owners to think, oh, my God, I can't possibly step away because my business will break. Okay. And you know what? It bloody should, right? Because it, you know, the thing that, that I've been doing over last week with my team is actually going back and reviewing and saying, well, what did break? Right. Yeah. Where did you need me to do something that I wasn't available for?

Right.

So it's actually a good exercise, I think, to start taking time out of your business to. To see and see what breaks, Right. So, you know, do you lose customers? Do, you know, do things get held up? Do projects come to a screeching halt because, you know, they don't have authorization? So, you know, whatever it happens to be, it actually starts to tell you where there's dependencies on you and. Or other people in the business. If you don't take them out from time to time.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I feel like you've shared some nuggets of wisdom all the way through and talked about the real world application of systemology. I know if people are looking for more clients and they want to do it predictably, they can go to winmoreclients.com and find out a little bit more about you guys. You're very systems driven. I don't know if there's any final things you want to wrap up on, but yeah, really appreciate your insights today.

Look, I think the thing is we just got to start, right? If you really want your business to scale and give you the lifestyle that you deserve as business owners, you've got there's no ifs, buts, or maybes. This is the part.