How to Build Your Agency Using Proven Strategies and Existing Results

Hello, this is Gray MacKenzie, and before we get started with today's interview, I want to quickly thank our sponsor for this episode, textexpander. You know I'm all about standardizing processes and working efficiently. Well, TextExpander helps agency teams do both from an efficiency perspective. TextExpander saves me personally a couple of hours worth of typing each month. And when you magnify that across our growing team, the time saving adds up. And this is the cool part that I didn't anticipate when I first started using Text expansion tools seven or eight years ago. TextExpander keeps our messaging consistently on point with the right spelling, language and formatting. So we've been able to eliminate a ton of simple mistakes and copy paste mix ups by rolling out textexpander across the team. I've actually got a video that'll be up on our YouTube shortly with a bunch of my favorite use cases. But for now, I want you to head to textexpander.com podcast and you get to lock in a 20% year one discount for all Agency Journey listeners. Again, thanks to Texas Banner, both for their sponsorship and the impact they've had on our team. Now let's get to today's interview. All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is your host, Gray MacKenzie. This week I've got the privilege of bringing on Mandy Ellefson, who is, believe it or not, the CEO of Hands off CEO. But Mandy has promised to be hands on in this interview today. Mandy, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Greg.

I'm excited to chat you and I got connected here not not super long ago and just kind of comparing notes in terms of how we approach the agency space. There's just a ton of overlap between our Agency Freedom Manifesto that Andrew, my business partner and I wrote back in the day a couple years ago and the way that you're approaching things. So I'm super excited for this conversation to walk through what you all are up to. But for anybody who hasn't come across Hands Off CEO yet, can you give kind of the quick overview of what that business model looks like and how it functions?

Sure. So, hands off CEO. We work with consulting agency CEOs and their operations managers to be able to get to really scale a multimillion dollar agency that can run without the CEO and to really generate profitable growth that gives the CEO freedom, that gives them the ability to even exit one day if they want and gives their team a lot of opportunities for leadership and just generally creates a business that Changes the world.

Yeah, you do that primarily and I don't know we can go as deep or as high level into this as well, but primarily through a year long program as the first step.

Yes. Our main flagship program is called Scale to Freedom and we work with our clients for a year to start, but really most of our clients stay for multiple years because we keep bringing them to the next level. And every new level brings a whole new set of challenges and they're good quality challenges, but there's just so much opportunity when you scale the right way, when you take the right steps in the right order. So yeah, that's how we, I mean, in a nutshell, to answer your question.

Well, that sequencing is what I wanted to dig into here to start is I think we both kind of align on some of the main problems that agencies need to overcome. And I'm curious about some of the order that we go through in that. Obviously back to our days building an agency, it's like figure out what an offer is, go sell it once, figure out how to deliver it, go sell it multiple times, go figure out how to deliver it at scale. You know, was that even the right offer or not becomes a really important question that many agencies just kind of accidentally wind up with whatever offer seem to stick the most in the moment. And sometimes it's very intentional, sometimes it's not. So I think with how your program is structured, I think that would be a helpful way to help guide some of the conversation here. But as you see it kind of what are those big obstacles in an agency's journey that they need to get over and what's the right sequence to attack those in?

Right. So what we find is that agencies, the agency owners are often, you know, they're oftentimes experts in the marketing, space, sales, space operations, finance. There's all sorts of different areas that they could be an expert in. And generally the challenge isn't that they don't know what to do. The challenge is, is how do I actually do it and in what order. And the order we find is very. Because that's the difference between whether you can actually execute on what you know you need to do versus whether you just stay stuck. And what, what I mean by stuck is that it's not necessarily a. It's not like that the business is like, like disintegrating or anything. What stuck looks like is generating more growth. And the more growth you generate, the more the CEO is tied into the business. So really gets into a point where the CEO can kind of become A victim of their own success. I don't know if you've seen that for sure.

Yeah, there have been, there have been phases of our business where I felt that as well, not just seeing it.

Yeah, we definitely have too. Right. So it's looking at like, well, what is the right step at this right time? So to ask, you know, you asked me so, like, what is the journey that we take our, our clients through for this, this, for this first year? And it, it really depends because it depends on what the biggest challenge and struggle is. Because one, all the clients we work with, they're going to be dealing with two primary challenges and there's going to be one that's rearing its ugly head a little bit more. So it's either we are totally at capacity and we need, we need to open up more capacity to be able to bring in more, more, more sales and more growth. And in fact, we might not even be able to think about growth right now because we are so completely buckled down. That's the one extreme. And then the other side is, is like, well, you know, we're having some, some challenges with, with capacity. We're really busy, but we need more of the right sales and oftentimes it's like we need more of the right sales to generate the cash then. And we need more of the right cash to hire the right people to be able to actually fulfill the work. So it's kind of like this catch 22 chicken before the egg problem where you need more cash to hire the right people and, but you need more clients to be able to do that. So it's easier, it's really challenging. And the way that a lot of CEOs solve this is by just working more right to be, to be able to keep it sustainable. But the challenge is, is that, that, that will get you farther, but it doesn't. It just kicks the can down the line and it doesn't actually solve the problem and in fact traps the company that the CEO more. So we take a look at what that biggest challenge is and which one, which one needs to be solved first.

What you just said seems to me like that should be the flagship insight to go to market in your business. Like you absolutely can keep increasing how many hours you work to overcome a lot of the shortcomings. Say we don't have the cash because there's all these problems and the reward for that is more problem, bigger problems that just keep coming. It's a cycle that doesn't, doesn't end by itself. So that makes A ton of sense where. So if we've got the agency who's struggling, we don't have the right fit clients right now or there's not enough of those sales coming in. What's the starting point to solve that problem?

Yeah, I think one. First, first the thing is, I think a lot of agencies don't realize that they have the wrong kind of clients in or maybe they see, okay, we have some of these top clients that are amazing to work with. Um, and if they sit down and think about it for a while, it might be like that'd be nice to have more of those type of clients. But a lot of the challenges that we see in like the ability to deliver an operational challenges are actually sales problems. And this is something that if you go in and you focus on all these like popular scaling models which like have their place, but they have some things that are missing for consulting agencies. And the thing is, is that more systems isn't going to fix the problem if the root problem is, is that you have the wrong type of clients and that you're not charging enough and the, and there's not a big enough outcome to really focus your, your, your team on operationalizing. So and, and if you don't have a big enough outcome, then what will happen is, is that sure, you might be able to systematize your business, but then you become your shop that can't really deliver results. And then what happens is that instead of having your pricing increase, which is what we'd like to see to be able to have more profitable, more profitable growth, you actually experience pricing erosion, which is really devastating in this economy. Right. Because with inflation right now, what we're, what, what you make this year versus what you made last year for your revenue, it's not the same. We have had our dollar is. It has been eroding and more than, more than is reported. So we're all seeing, we're all seeing the pressures of that on top of that, you know, the pressure of rising, rising, rising prices with our hiring, with, with our staffing and that there's so much competition for good, good quality team. So I'm kind of going off on a different kind of a little tangent here. But it, but it, but it's all these things are. And to be able to solve challenges around capacity, we have to actually see how they're all connected.

Right there's the golden ticket is like the offer that you feel confident in and believe in and that you like internally and that resonates with the marketplace and that You've got the capacity to deliver on and do consistently and profitably for the agencies where the offer is not right right now, or they don't have the right fit clients, how do you move past that? Or what's the process that you take people through to figure out how do we get that offer right, so that we're getting the right fit clients in the door?

Yeah. So first of all, we're making an assumption, I'm going to be making an assumption with this answer that the agency owners we're talking about have good results. They've gotten great. They have great case studies from clients. If you don't have that yet, that's what you need to focus on and do whatever it takes and including working for free to get those client case studies. I'm not necessarily saying working for free, but I'm just saying do whatever it takes. And I'll tell you, like, in 14 years that I've been in business with this business and before, I have worked for free to be able to generate case studies. And that's how we got started. Right. So, so, so then, so looking at your case studies, looking at, you know, what, under what conditions can we deliver our best work? So we're looking at, you know, is it B2B? Is it B2C? Is a larger ticket, is a smaller ticket, Are we doing more volume? Is there a particular channel we're really good at? And within that channel, are there specific businesses that do better in this channel? And what type of clients have we really enjoyed doing work with? And this can, this, this can be one of that, that factor of like, you know, maybe you have, have done exceptional work in nonprofit space right now. Can you, can you be able to, to deliver consistent results in that industry? And consistent results? Not like, not. We're not talking clicks and compressions impressions. I'm talking like, can you actually help them generate, you know, $5 million of extra donations? Like, that's just an example. Right. And then if that's the target, if that's the market you, you've had a lot of good results for, but maybe you can't. You're like, well, you know, what is an adjacent market that has some similarities to that that we could target and be able to deliver even better results for. So those are the things that we're looking at. And it's not an easy answer. And this is something that I spend a good 10 years developing this system around, because when I had a branding and web design agency, I had tried to niche down, I had tried to do all those things that I was, that you hear the gurus tell you need to do. But I just couldn't figure out how to actually do that. And so I've spent about a decade plus figuring out that the fine tuning this process, since this used to take. And the process from the perspective of what is it going to take for us to double our pricing? What will it take to be able to double our pricing and also have the length of engagement like a year plus? That's what I started and looking looked at. And it used to take us about six months to implement this with our clients and now we can do it in three to four weeks. So it's not, there's a lot of variables that go into it and it's not an easy thing to do. I know this because we've taken well over 100 agencies through this process. I mean, I've lost count, but I can give you some examples if you'd like. That would be helpful.

Yeah, that might be a helpful way for people to kind of wrap their heads around, hey, what does right fit offer look like?

Right. So here I'll give you an example of Mark Arnold and he has a marketing agency that is focusing in the banking industry. So he already has a niche, which is great, right? Not, not all of our clients we've worked with actually have a niche. A lot of times they're working with a lot of different types of businesses but have done excellent work. They're just looking at where to focus. So Mark had already had good results within the banking space, was already an industry expert in that space. But what was happening is, is they would be selling these smaller packages. Everybody loves this idea of these. Like just sell a smaller package, right? And then just get at your foot in the door. And like, yes, on one hand that, that makes sense kind of, but it really makes sense if, like, let's just face it, I'm just going to say it, and this is a little bit controversial, but if you suck at sales and you have to do smaller, smaller packages to be able to get your foot in the door, why not instead just make a bigger offer, make a really bold offer and get better at selling? That's, that's what I would say. But the thing is, is that oftentimes you don't even have to be that good at selling if your offer is really good. So what we did with Mark is we looked at how could we make this offer even sexier. So we looked at what is this pathway, what this journey can you take banks on and small, small banks and credit unions and what is this bigger outcome that you could promise for them? So we went through lots of resistance. I don't know if I can do that, you know, and just going back and forth. And then we really got to this point where this, this outcome that like was a stretch, but he could feel confident, yes, we can deliver this. So instead of selling these 10,000, 20,000, $30,000 packages that he would be very involved in because he had to upsell to them to the next stage stage and to the next stage and the next stage, so he would sell these little packages individually. And instead we went deeper, but wider. And what I mean by that is we went deeper into a specific kind of client within that space that he could, they could deliver the very best results for it. And we've made a bigger package. So now they're selling 100 to a two to a hundred to $125,000 packages. And what's really cool about this is that one of the biggest challenges to scaling for Mark is that he was so involved in the delivery. Now increasing their pricing and selling for a longer term package has actually made it easier for him to step back, which is a little bit of a paradox, isn't it?

So what, what's the rationale behind that?

The rationale behind that is that when he was selling these smaller packages and he would have to be very involved in it to keep the client happy so that they could then go and sell the next thing and then the next thing and the next thing. That was one of the things. Now if you're putting together a whole growth program and you're anticipating what the client wants and being proactive, like it's really about being proactive and seeing ahead what could we actually create for this business. And when you're doing that, then you can put that plan in place and then you can have your team execute it. And then it's more about. Then if the client says, well, I want to talk with you, Mark. Just like, well, you know, our specialist is focusing on this. This is our plan. Do you want this outcome? It's really more about getting the outcome than it is about talking to the CEO, which is like that safety blanket if there's not an outcome.

Right. This is a little bit of a false dichotomy question, but do you feel like your expertise, Mandy, is more in kind of this framework that you've developed is more around repackaging what an agency is already good at or about actually fundamentally tweaking what they're delivering or changing up what they're actually delivering to clients?

It's both. It's both. So really what it is, is it's looking at how could we expand the work that we're doing to really create world class results. So the way that most agencies scale is, is they scale based on like, how can we simplify our deliverables? And that doesn't necessarily scale quality though. So we want to be looking at it oftentimes results in cookie cutter services like I was mentioning before. So what we want to do is raise the bar and say, who can we deliver the very best world class results for now? How can we expand that and make it even bigger? So this is an uncomfortable process. And, but, but, I mean, but are, but you know, are you willing to go through an uncomfortable process for three to four weeks to be able to have an offer that you basically can create a wait list for? Right. Like a lot of our clients will create wait lists. So, and this is just a small piece of the work that we do even just, just to like have the right offer that is easier to sell so you can have a salesperson helping you that is easier to deliver. Because if you have a really standardized package then you still, it still needs some customization. So I'm not saying like this is going to be just you have to operationalize it in a way that you can add some customization that doesn't, you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time though. So this allows you to operationalize it. So it also increases your net profit, increases your gross profit because you can charge more. You know, in Mark's example, he was charging 600% more. But on the low end, we're looking at doubling price points in most of the agencies that we're working with.

Okay, that makes sense. Are you also tweaking? We say bold. Some things that come into my mind right away are we're adding in a guarantee or we're adding in an element where revenue is tied to perform to performance potentially, or hey, here's the target that we have and we're going to adjust our scope each month to get there. Is that, or are those things elements of what that great offer looks like, or are you able to accomplish this without those items?

Both. And it just depends on how, how much new business, the, how busy they already are. So in Mark's case, what happens a lot of times as they start out with the guarantee? Because it's, it's like that, it's that crutch that helps Them get better at making the offers.

Yep.

Right. And this is how our business did it too. We had a 5x ROI 100 happiness guarantee. We've been doing that for so long though, and it's been working so long we don't need it anymore. But I mean, why, why would we stop? It's, it's not really a huge risk for us and it works. So we're not going to stop doing it. But a lot of our clients, they'll just drop it after a while. They just don't even need to need it. So. And in some industries, a guarantee is not, it's really a, not a good idea because it just doesn't fit the culture of that. So and so, and some of our clients that are really busy already and they're, they're not the majority of client of agencies that come to us are actually, they really have a lot of capacity issues. So we're talking a lot about these offers here and like for sponsors, for an agency owner who's thinking, oh my gosh, like, I mean, thinking about the offers and the sales right now. I can't even think about that right now. Yeah, I'm like working 60, 80 hours a week right now. There's, there's, I can't even thinking about that. So I mean, we could talk about what to do in that circumstance first, if that would be useful for your audience.

Yeah. So from just from the name Hands off CEO, the first picture that I have when you say, hey, we're running a capacity problems is that the first thing we're going to go do is hire a virtual assistant or an executive assistant or some type of assistant. But I'm sure that's not the, that's not the full picture.

Could be Right.

Walk through how we solve those problems and what's the order of operations.

All right. Yeah. The first thing is just to look at like what resources do you already have? And you know, our biggest goal is to actually free up the CEO immediately to be able to sit so that they can get their head screwed on straight and they can actually see, they can actually see in front of them. Because what happens is that we start working, you know, we're 40 hours per week and then things get a little bit tighter and then you end up working 45 to 50 to 60 and before you know it, you're working 60, 70 hours per week. You didn't realize it probably getting a similar output at those amount of hours if you were working below. But you're, you're stuck in this cycle and you have to be able to break that cycle. So what that's the very first thing that we walk our clients through is this find time now process. And what we do, we actually guarantee to find them 10 extra hours per week. So a little over a day a week to focus on growth. Because if you can't see, you don't have the, the bandwidth to even think, then there's, there's no way you're going to be able to grow your company or even just get sanity. So, so we find a few tweaks that to free them up. And a lot of times it's not like yes, hiring can be, is very powerful but that doesn't, that doesn't immediately help it. In fact, hiring actually makes it worse at first. Right. Because you have to do the training, onboarding, all of that. Right. So the first thing that we look at is like what are some, you know, without going through the whole like process because it's kind of boring to be going through it right now. But that piece, it's all about looking at what those like those quick wins, they will immediately free up that time and that's going to be different for every business. And some of it comes from things you're eliminating some of the things. Some of it comes from reducing meeting time, for example, and delegating off to someone else. But one of the biggest things that we see is actually being able to let go and delegate ownership within the team that they already have so that, that rate. Because a lot of times what happens is that they're holding onto things because they can't trust their. So we look at what are those things that they, what needs to be in place for them to let go of that and safely know that it's going to be taken care of. So those are the things right there. And account management is a huge one that's going to be at least 10 to 20 hours per week. So a lot of agencies, they'll be out of most of account manage but maybe there's just a little bit left or they're still in project management. So that's, that can be another piece. So sometimes the team member can take more of that over. Sometimes it's getting in a temporary resource. We have a lot of temporary resources we refer our clients to that immediately can free that up for them. Anyway. There's, there's a lot more of those things. But, but, but every CEO is doing it has at least 10 extra hours to, to if they, if they're at a certain place in the Business. I mean we're not talking about brand new companies, but at a certain place, if you have a team, there's all sorts of ways to be able to free up capacity for yourself. And, and oftentimes it just starts with really getting clear on what you're committed to and aligning your actions with that.

Right, right. That makes a lot of sense, I think. So once we, we talk a little bit about the offer, we talked about kind of freeing up some of the capacity and getting through the squeeze that people are facing there. I'm curious about kind of once we move past the offers there. Right on the sales front, if we talk about putting that we're taking 10 hours and we're reallocating it back to growth. And this is tied into something I mentioned. I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that you're seeing as trends in agencies right now. So maybe this is not necessarily trends, but trends of the highest performing agencies. Where are you seeing the best bang for the buck in terms of reallocating those 10 hours back into growing the business?

Yeah. Where to focus on the biggest results. So the more direct the channels the better. So that, that, that and that's going to, this, this also is going to be a dependent. It depends and it depends on what you already have working. So any channels you already have that are working, it's going to be going and looking at how do we make this work better? Yep, it's, it's looking at, you know, your existing clients and saying hey, hey, could we move them into this new growth program? That's, you know, it's, it's looking at past clients and say hey, we've got this new thing coming up. Can we, can we share more about this? It's going through your reaching out to referral partners and clients and asking for referrals and inviting them into, you know, one of my favorite things is called this an executive briefing. And we, we use, we, we do an executive briefing regularly in our business for, for agencies to learn, you know, what are, what are the five exits to be able to get to a hundred thousand dollars a month in profits. And they, and that's a really a great opportunity for people to make referrals to you to come to this educational event. It's no pitch and it's just an opportunity for you to attract the right prospects in and then they, they come from a place of, they come to a place where they're, they can actually learn more about the challenge that they have and your ways of doing it, and it's a really a great way to, to bring in the right type of prospects.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

In a very hands on way too though. I mean this, this is a very interactive format where you can, you can, you can have a lot of impact.

Right.

And, but, but it's not a, it's not an intense like salesy type of thing for a prospect.

Right. You mentioned to me suspect really they're.

Not even prospects at that point.

True. What, how frequently do you, you mentioned to me running these executive briefings? What's your frequency of running those on an annual basis right now?

So it's, we have gone between doing a couple a month. Sometimes we do weekly. Just depends on the amount of people that we have coming to them. One of the things that can be advantageous, doing them more frequently will get, you'll get better at. That's one thing. You'll get better at them. Right. And that can, that can be a real, that could be a real dedication factor. Right. So it depends on the volume though. I'll, I'll just say that it depends and there's a lot of different formats for it. We also do an annual planning event that is kind of similar to that, but it's like it's several hours instead of our executive briefing, we do, we run it for about 45 to 50 minutes. So it's. And then it leaves some time for question and answer, but that answer your question, Greg?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think that's helpful. I was trying to figure out in your experience is that kind of like we're doing this once a month, once a quarter, once a week. So that's helpful that maybe a couple of times a month, I think. Yeah, yeah. I think people can kind of mix.

It just depends. I, it depends on how. It depends on what stage you're at in your company too, and, and how ready you are for new business.

Yeah.

But if you don't have the lead flow, I think doing it monthly is a good idea.

Right.

But. And it's a. Lights a fire under your butt to go generate some leads to get in there. Right.

Get some, get some people in. That's awesome. Well, I mentioned kind of trends in agencies first. You know, four months of this year as the time that we're recording this year in early May 2022. What are the things you kind of hinted at some of the challenges from inflation earlier, but what are you seeing kind of as trends, both positive or negative in the agency space here as we open up the first quarter plus of 2022.

So we have, this has been something that we've been facing for a long time. But commoditization is a big challenge. Globalization and commoditization is a big challenge. And, and looking at that meaning that you know, if, if you are just providing the hands work as an agency, you're going to very quickly find that there are lots of great companies in Eastern Europe, in the Philippines and India, you know, all over the world that will are willing to do the hands work for a whole lot less. So what we're, what we're seeing that the companies that are the agencies that are doing the best are the ones that are, that have their own strategic approach that's proven that has, that is based on results and based on case studies and that is really focused more on an outcome which is going to be the brain's work and the hands work too by the way. And those are the companies that we're seeing that are, that sell themselves into capacity all day long. And we have a lot of data to back this up too because we know that the companies that are coming to us, we already, we have, we can. They have a number of characteristics in common. The ones that are the busiest and that that are running into like you know, we have clients that are booked out for three months. Like we can't start them for three months.

Yep. I think that's a good. This is. David Baker has his idea of the two rooms. I like your kind of wording of hands working brains work like that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think the other huge challenge that you face is just the macroeconomic situation going on. If it's really just hands on implementation, if there's not enough margin created or enough value created by the work that you're doing, it's really hard to keep up. In an environment like, like this you're really getting squeezed.

Exactly. And here's the thing is, is that we're. Automation is far outpacing. It's so quickly. I am blown away at some of the tools that I see that will create in five minutes what you can create with no skills and pass off to an assistant. Something that I know that you could go and have an agency do for 20 hours plus. And we have to be looking at where are we adding value and will tools will cheaper labor be able to outpace what we're doing and replace it?

Right.

And here's the thing though is that what we are the best at in. I'm just going to Say, you know, Canada, the us, uk, Australia, and, you know, and more of our Western societies. What we're really good at is, is the thinking work and is the. Is the creativity. And not creativity for creative sake. It's creativity to solving problems that actually will be able to generate the results that your clients want.

Yeah.

And to really get them to that, to an elevated place. And that's the, that's the kind of work that you can, you can charge an infinite amount for just depending on the kind of results that you can create, depending on the kind of value you can create.

Right. Speaking of creatively solving problems, I always like to ask people, like, what's the next. What are the next problems you're solving for? Hands off CEO or kind of what's the vision for the future of.

Right.

Of what the company looks like?

Yeah. So hands off CEO. We've been around for 10 years now, and for a lot of the first years, we were working just strictly with CEOs and they were dealing with their team. We didn't touch it. And in the past few years we have been working more with their operations teams, just partly because it's just like we just get tired of them not implementing fast enough. And finally we just said, get out of the way. We're just going to come in here and help you with that. And that actually came from, you know, our program director started doing that and we looked at this and we're like, do we want to start this whole other side of our program? This is going to add all sorts of complexity to our business to do this. But like, we tested it and we decided, yes, this is the right thing to do. This adds a ton of value. So we have what we call an operations academy, where we are training operations managers to actually run the business for the CEO and doing that as like a sidecar to our scale to freedom. So scale to freedom is really like two programs in one. It's one for the CEO to be able to get the right offer in place, to get the right systems in place, to get the, get the right mindset in place to scale. I mean, like, you really. They really take something to let go. It really does. And then the operations managers, they need to really learn the leadership for like, how do they be able to take. Take over? How do they be able to. To. To be three steps ahead of the CEO? How do they be able to anticipate those problems? They. How do they be able to. To be able to innovate and create new systems as the company is growing and Scaling so the CEO doesn't have to constantly come in there to do that. Like they're leading that, they're leading the team. And when we're really building that, the growth that, that we're building a person in the company who can help grow the company. So that's something that is, is exciting that we have been continuing to develop and, and developing programs that, that ultimately teach them the skills to, to really become a CEO. Really. It's like those are the skills that they have to have to be, to be able to be a CEO, but to be able to hire them at the right level, where they're not afraid to roll up their sleeves, where they're not. They're going to actually get in there and do the work. Whereas if you hire the CEO in your company too early, they're coming in, they want to manage, they're like, wait, wait, I don't do that work. Right. So, so it can be the wrong person for the stage of the company. And I see a lot of agencies make that mistake. So what we've done is just like help them, give them the development for the person that they need at that level so that the company can grow a lot faster. So that's something that we've seen that has made such a huge difference. And the companies that are, that are adding millions of dollars a year, they're the ones who are getting, that are, that are the most plugged into our operations academy with their team.

Okay, that's awesome. Yeah. I think we've, what we do implementing ClickUp for agencies and you've got a. Who's designing the system and building the system. Here's one set of training, here's a separate set of training that everybody in the org is going to go through. The farther along we go. I think we've, we're, we've got a lot of similarities in terms of what we're seeing is, hey, inside that everybody else, there's a lot of different buckets of, here's someone who's an account manager. Like their needs are going to look a little bit different than this person's, but they don't need the whole picture. So there's got to be a track built specifically for them. And so a lot of that track development makes sense similar to what you're building out where it was just the CEO, now it's the next role. So that's awesome to hear. Well, this has been a blast.

I love what you guys do with ClickUp. I love it. That makes such a big difference for agencies to be able to have that all built out. It's really incredible work that you guys do.

Yeah. It's all these. All these pieces fit together. This is what you and I talked about was we're really focused on that. What happens in client services and delivery and operations. Our best clients. And when we tell people you're not a fit is often because they don't have the first thing figured out. They don't have the offer. They don't have the sales funnel. Take advantage of it. So love what. Love what you guys are building. The. The site is handsoffceo.com Mandy. Anywhere else. We should point people, though.

Yeah. Well, if you go to handsofceo.com you can download our ultimate roadmap to scaling your consulting agency. As I was talking about that executive briefing earlier, if you want to come to our executive briefing, see what that's about. It's five exits to be able to scale to $100,000 per month in profits and really how to. How to exit your company and sell it down the line if you ever want to. But yes. So handsofco.com forward slash, briefing. You can go and sign up for one of our next briefings if you. If you would like to attend.

That's awesome. I just pulled that up right now. I don't think I've been on this page before. Perfect. Well, I appreciate you sharing, sharing that one as well, and appreciate time coming on if you're willing to share. Thanks for. Thanks for joining us today, Mandy.

It's my pleasure. Thanks so much, Gray.