The #1 Way to Grow Your Agency Faster: Likeminded Peers

We have a group coaching program which is designed to help you grow and it will be yours truly actually answering questions around growing your agency. So we talked about growing a— building a Launch Pad business and then growing it and then thinking about where you can invest the money afterwards or just continue to grow it into a great cash flow business. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about cash flows. We will talk about hiring people. We'll talk about culture. We'll talk about how you should think about investing, how you should think about taxation, all these different things. All these nuances that wouldn't be covered in a simple course. 4 years ago when I brought on our— so I keep talking about the integrator, but when the integrator came in, I told him my goal was to be out of the day-to-day on the agency. So I think everyone's goal right now here should be to be out of the day-to-day. So what does that mean? I think it's different for everyone. So I'll just use me as an example. I think to be out of the day-to-day of the agency, I need to make a certain amount. So maybe it's $200,000 a year, right? Um, and if, As long as my expenses are covered and I'm out of the day-to-day and I've hired that integrator, then I can start to move on and do other things, right? So, you know, I've talked about this with Neil when we were recording last week, and then we realized, sure, you know, him and I, we can talk about the latest marketing tactics all the time, but, you know, at the end of the day, it just comes down to hiring really good people. And, you know, for him, he used to be really cheap. He didn't want to pay for people. Now he's paying, you know, $400,000, $500,000, $600,000. I'm not saying you guys need to do that yet, but he's willing to shell out the dough, right? So, Even right now for this integrator, let's say, you know, you need to pay a little higher than market rate to bring on this person. It's so worth it because, A, again, cover your expenses, bring on someone that can run the day-to-day, and then you can go focus on other opportunities. And then you just watch everything scale. And by the way, this all comes down to process again, right? You look at hiring processes, you read the book Who. So I'll drop that in chat, but it gives you a hiring process to follow. It tells you scorecards you need to be putting in. So, you know, and then you start to be really methodical about this. And you as the CEO, you're the visionary, at least you kind of have a cursory understanding of this. And then your integrator will be the one that's going to implement it. You'll be like, hey, look, I read this, I read this, I want to do this. Like books like EOS, Scaling Up, Who, they all have— I like stealing templates, right? Because they've already done it. They've proven it. And I just need someone to go out there and deploy it. And once they deploy it, then I feel like the machine is working because, you know, if someone gets fired or someone gets sick or whatever, fine. The machine keeps working, next one up, right? Even with the hiring process right now, I'm always like, I tell people like, we should always be recruiting because by the time you start to recruit, this is a big problem with agencies. It's too late because agencies, people, they're putting out fires all the time. But if you don't think about the future, if you don't think about what's not urgent, important, then you're just constantly in this hamster wheel. So you got to figure out how you can make it an anti-hamster wheel. So here's what I think you guys both need for starters. It's kind of a hybrid between an executive assistant and a project manager. So I recommend this service called Belay Solutions because you can buy a block of hours and you can increase and you can go up and down. So belaysolutions.com, they have a pretty good system where they get you high-quality VAs. And they're based in the United States. And my assistant right now is— and I'm actually very hard to work with. And this one, I call it the EA graveyard. There's a lot of EAs that end up that just don't make it. She comes from a military background, so she can take the heat when I bring it. And she's great. And we just had a one-on-one right before this, and we're just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, everything's getting done. So I think to start with an EA, maybe you get 5 to 10 hours of— you get a block of work. That's a great place to start. And I actually want to show you guys something right now. Here's how you guys got to think about how you guys do your work. It's completely a mindset shift because, um, if you look at my screen right now, can you guys see it? Yeah. Cool. So here's the deal. You got to look at your— you got to define the time that you're spending. Okay. Like, what are my $10,000 an hour tasks? What are my $1,000 an hour tasks? What's the $100 an hour task? What's a $10 an hour task? So if you're able to define it that way, And then categorize the stuff you're working on, you're going to realize that you got to get the $10 an hour tasks off your plate. First of all, you got to delegate this stuff, right? So that stuff goes to your executive assistant, goes to your project manager. Um, and you know, both of you might be doing paid ads. You could make the argument that right after you hire your executive assistant, you got to find someone that can do the work because then you got to focus more on sales. You got to start thinking about every quarter, How can I take things off my plate? How can I take 15% of things off my plate? Because if you think, you know, you're the hero and you can do everything on your own, you're not going to be able to scale that way. Because I used to think, you know, back in the day, I was like, man, you know what? I'm better than everyone as a marketer. I should do all the work. But then you got to prospect, you got to send the invoices, and then you lose the client. You got to go chase new clients. And then you're doing the work again and you're stuck in this cycle. And I call it agency hell. And you're just, it's not worth doing that. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think so. I would say there's a balancing act right now because, you know, you're at the stage where it's like, it's, you know, people would be taking a big risk to kind of come from, you know, big company. And by the way, usually big company is not a fit for you because they're used to a lot of resources. You probably want people that are a little more scrappier right now. You're probably not going to get as lucky, you know, I'm saying, oh yeah, you know, go hire people that are smarter than you. In many cases, you're kind of just looking for people that can get the job done right now. And whoever goes from point A, takes you from point A to point B, might not necessarily be point B to point C. Constantly reinforce that. And just remember, don't make the Eric mistake. You have to fire quickly. Once you feel like they're starting to stall out, get rid of them. So I would say here, take a look at this. I might not be answering your question directly. So can you guys see my screen? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So you see this right here, high performer. So a lot of people say hire A players, B players, C players, whatever. I have these window washers coming right by me. I'm going to wave at them in a second. But, you know, A players would be— it's not just one definition. You have high performers, top 10% talent, and then you— these are overall top 10%, right? But A1 is promotable. like 2 levels. So this might be my director of marketing, for example. And A3 is a great fit for the role, right? So now that you have this defined, I would just look at all the employees that you have or contractors as well and think about, okay, who is actually promotable 1 level or 2 levels? I think you're kind of defining who they are. And then who has potential. So for example, we, we have people on our team that, you know, given the right training, given, you know, the right manager, they could probably level up, but they're just unable to right now. And then you have people that are disappointing. So once you start to get more and more out of the business, or you're able to work on the business and hopefully above the business at a certain point, you want to think of, you're constantly just thinking about incentives. 'Cause right now I'm thinking about incentives, right? This is the software company we're about to buy. How do I incentivize the founders to stay on? What can I put in place? For example, You know, there are certain people on the team that might get 5% profit sharing, or if they hit certain, if they, you know, get Single Grain's affiliate revenue to a certain point, they can make profit sharing up to like $50 grand or $100 grand or so. So once you give them the right target, they're going to do everything they can to work towards that. And if they want to start their own business, I support that, by the way. It's an easy way. Like when people have side things going on, I encourage it. And sometimes I try to support where I can because whatever learnings they have, it translates over back into the business. And if it does well, more power to them. I encourage them to go do their own thing because I still think that's the best deal. So I always mention it to people like, you should be trying to start your own thing. And I always support you versus me. I got fired when I tried to start my own thing when I was like 25 years old. Hey, before we go, I got something really special for you. If you are looking to grow a consulting business, which can be a agency business, it can be a coaching business, or it could be any type of service-based business. All you have to do is click on the link in the comment or in the description. We've got a link for you to check out how to build that type of business, because this is the type of business that is considered a launchpad business. It can build the lifestyle of your dreams, and it can even take you beyond that. It can build an empire of your dreams as well. So just click on the link again, it's in the comments or in the description, and we will see you inside.