How to Repackage Agency By-Products and Leverage Them as Assets for Profit and Fun

Hey, what's going on, guys? This is Gray. I am here with Andrew, who I'll introduce in just a second for another edition of the Agency Business show here on the Agency Journey. Feed and stream. Live in Agency Journey. Insiders hope that you are having a good week. That agency life is still rolling along. And today we're continuing in our series on the Agency Freedom Manifesto. It's been really fun. We're getting close to the end. There's 10 points in the manifesto, zenpilot.com manifesto, you can find it. But today's the ninth one. Like I mentioned, we're getting close to the end here. We're talking about building assets and dimmer. You've got a much, much different title to the show notes that you started putting together for this before we went live.

Yes, sir.

Give us. Hit us with your title here.

We're talking about how to repackage agency byproducts and leverage them as assets for profit and function. And it's profit and fun, not fun and profit, because profit is more. Or fun is more fun when there's profit involved.

So my head is spinning already. We're ready to rock and roll. I like it. So it's been a couple days since our last one went live here. And in the manifesto last time we talked about leading, not following client demands and everything. What's cool about the manifesto, to toot my own horn here, is just the way that everything kind of feeds off of itself. So we talked about the point of the whole business. We talked about the agency business model, making hard decisions that make other decisions easier. And then everything's kind of stemmed from that initial positioning down to what does the sales process looks like, look like? How do you get paid for what you know, not just what you can do?

Yep.

Then where do things go for there? So this is more. This isn't only related to client delivery, but this is largely based around what you do in the actual. So now we're past your positioning, your prospecting, your marketing, your sales. And primarily what we're talking about, though not exclusively, is in your actual client delivery and operations of the agency. How do you take those byproducts of all that servicing that you're doing and leverage those as assets for profit and fun, as you very clearly pointed out, instead of fun and profit. So let's talk about how to do that, because this is something, I guess, to set the stage. This comes up pretty frequently in talking. I feel like there's a ton of agency owners. I know that there's a Ton of agency owners who've thought about this, we're making all this stuff. There's ways I could see packaging it in the path to clearly profiting off of that, off of the assets that they see developing or actually leveraging those assets. It has been, I think, the main challenge. It's not, I don't think we need to convince people that there's assets there to be had, at least from my conversations, as much as that there's a way to actually use that value that you're creating. So tell me why you disagree and then we'll go from there.

Yeah. First of all, I think most agency owners live on a treadmill. So they're so focused on completing deliverable lists for every client that, that there's no capacity to think objectively about what they're doing like on that specific client, much less on the agency as a whole. So the agency owners I talk to every day, what they want is they want their team to have more capacity to just think creatively on the client accounts that they're working on. So this whole idea of like having time to work on my business, that's a pipe dream. That's like maybe three or four wins away. It's like I need to figure out a strategy to win here, then figure out a strategy to win here, then figure out a strategy to win here and then I'll have time and space to work on my business. So I don't think that most agencies view the work that they're doing for clients as assets that there is. I think people are sitting on gold mines that they don't even know are there. And if you've got someone that does understand that there are assets, great, you've got to step up. But how do you take those assets that are sitting in the dust and turn those around and actually get some leverage out of them so you can cash in on some of that equity that's sitting there just gathering dust right now.

Right. I don't disagree that a lot of the extent of the assets maybe is lost on them. I feel like most agency owners who I talk to, they realize that there's some pieces that they could that we do this custom development time after time and it's like, well, we should have the framework built out. So I think there's pieces that we recognize as assets. But what you're saying is like this whole scope of what you're doing, there's a more far reaching asset there that you have to uncover. A gold mine, as you termed it.

Oh yes, the Gold is right there. You just have to see it. And that's the problem. Like, the focus is 110% around solving problems for clients. And that's great. You think that that makes them happy. At the very least, it keeps them appeased. That's why we recorded the last episode on leadership. Not just doing what they asked for, but you're solving these problems, then you're moving on to the next problem and solving it, and the next problem solving it. Well, let's take a look back. Let's look at what we've done, what have we accomplished? And we'll start this from case studies. Like, first we work with a client going through the accelerator we want to. When we go through the agency assessment, first thing inside the program, we look at what are your successful client stories in the past, what are the things that you've created, the things that you've built that have helped, that have helped businesses move forward, that have changed the game, that have, like, caused them to build new plants, hire new people? Like, what's the impact that you've had? And then the next question is simply, how do we duplicate that? Instead of like going out and trying to reblaze all of these trails, let's just find one asset, a case study and duplicate it. And just that simple step right there, like, there's a nugget for you right here. Go do that. You'll make more money finding those things that are out there just by taking time to review what's done. We teased this last time about the first step in our process. The way that we lead our agency clients is having them fill out that agency assessment. Just by giving them that space and that capacity, they get value from that. That's the root of our game plan strategy as well. When you walk one of your clients through our game plan process, you give them an asset that they didn't know they needed. That's just time and space to think and discuss internally about where are they, where are they trying to go and what are the obstacles in the way. So the perspective is the first step here and recognizing that you have solved all of these problems that have brought you up to this point. Let's take some time and review the problems that you've solved and figure out, are there other clients that can get value from that?

So you've got a little bit of a framework or step by step process. So the first thing we need to do is see what the value is, have our eyes rebuild the lens so that we can see what the actual value is. I think there's a disconnect there between. I understand, I've got case studies, but I don't know how to go find those clients. And especially when like most agencies, you're operating off of referrals or some inbound leads that are scattered. There's no the ability or the whole system. The infrastructure to go out and acquire customers that look like your last successful client.

Yeah.

Is sorely like it's. The agency space is probably one of the worst spaces for the percentage of businesses that have that template or kind of infrastructure to do that. But once we can see it or see the asset that we have, like how do we capture, how do we see it? I guess. And then how do we start to capture that and profit off of that?

Yep. So I want to start the conversation here with three principles. So these are principles for building assets. And the first principle and a highlight is focus on solving problems. Once you want to leverage your creative capacity to solve a problem, do it once and then never have to go back and solve that same problem again. Because what happens when you go back and you start solving the same problems over and over again? Because first of all, you haven't done it in a while. So I did that for a client six months ago and I can't remember how to do it. I didn't write it down anywhere. I had to go solve it again. You're now eating away your profitability. Or if you solve a problem one day and then I'm left over here, I need to solve that problem today. Because, you know, we're in our own worlds and we don't cross pollinate at all. Focus first on solving a problem once and then capturing how you solved it so you can follow that process over and over again. It takes less bandwidth. Principle number one. Principle number two is share that knowledge. Once you've, once you've solved a problem, capture how you've. You solved that problem in a repeatable way, teach in a repeatable way so that the team knows how to find it. That knowledge is now shared. And then step three is pursue profit. What we mean by that is once you have this problem solved, this knowledge captured, leverage that knowledge gain, increase your profitability over time because you have that in a repeatable place where you're not spending human hours going out and solving it, but it's there to be leveraged. And that means more profit. Because at the end of the day, whether you solve a problem for the first time or it's delivered for the thousandth time, the end client experiences the same thing. They have a solution to their problem. But if you're able to solve it once and then systematize how you deliver the solutions, you don't need to go out and blaze the trail again. You're now more profitable on that account. So those are the three principles there. Before we dig into the how to do you want to dig into any of those or lay out dig any deeper into any of them.

So you said solve the problems once, share the knowledge or document and share the knowledge in a way that is easily transferable and accessible. And then number three, talking about pursuing profit, solving the problem once, I could see being a slightly misunderstood. That doesn't mean that every single time that you solve a problem that's the perfect way to do it. But at least pay attention to what you did. Don't solve that exact same piece the same way, but you can iterate that. You should be iterating on that and improving that in the future. And obviously you want to look first. The first assets I'd look at are the ones that you solved a bunch of times and become much better at solving a hundred percent and don't solve those ones again. So that'd be the one clarification I'd add in there.

And we hear that from our clients all the time is like just the gift of thinking in terms of templates and what that is like. When you go through our program, that's just instilled in you that this is how you function. And so we've talked with one of our clients who that transformed every department of their business while they were going through everything, like we just started thinking how do we template this and everything. And that's great because you now have a new framework for thinking and that allows you to approach every challenge, every situation a little bit differently. So solving problems once is a mindset. Not just like I need to go create documented processes for everything. But no, you're building a presentation, you're saying how can I use this? Again, you're building a contract saying how do I leverage this? Again, you're building a social media post saying how do I change the variables? Create something I can use again and again, everywhere it's applicable.

For sure that makes sense. So as far as how we turn those byproducts into profit generating assets, kind of the next step, what does that look like?

Step one, this is going to beat the dead horse more is standardize your inputs.

I don't think you can say that anymore. By the way, Pete is going to, he's Dead.

The horse is dead. Beat it. The first point is to standardize the inputs. And so what that means is if you're doing different work. So my deliverables are all different for a completely different set of clients. Don't worry about this. This is over your head. Because every single situation is going to be unique because there's too many variables at play. You can't make things repeatable and all of your variables are there. What we need to do is reduce the number of variables and create a standard flow. So we standardize the inputs. That's the type of client that we work with. We standardize the output. That is what we're doing for those clients. That's step one. That's what the last eight points in the manifesto have really been all about, is getting that clarity and that foundation set. Step two then is once you're in that place is to create a central hub for everything. This is typically your project management platform. This is where process and projects come together. So you're telling your team not just what to do, but you're giving them a process on how to do it. You're creating within that hub. Right? Process lives where work is done. That's one of the ten commandments of agency project management that we preach. And so in that central hub, you've got to walk through how to solve these problems. That's where your knowledge base lives. It's right in the same spot where your tasks are assigned, your time is measured, your profitability is gauged, all of it in one central hub. And if it doesn't like, you gotta instill in your team. If you don't put it into the hub, it didn't happen. Because it's easy to look on the floor of a manufacturing facility and see those machines in work three shifts. They're cranking the creative space here. It's harder to see what is all of the input that goes into a client project. If we don't take the time and build the rhythms to capture that inside of a central hub, we as owners have no idea what's going on. We've got no visibility into the operation. So that putting everything in the central hub is the second key to making assets, to creating profit generating assets here. You've got to have a place to put them.

Yeah, I totally agree with both of those. As far as standardizing the inputs. I would definitely just go back to the manifesto, click through, especially on points 3 through 5 and see what we have to say about that. Because that you're totally right. That's got to be. That is the first step. The one clarification is you don't need to wait until all of those are completely standardized. We need to make changes for the future. We don't need to wait for all that. Before you start point number two here, getting that central hub set up and then the next pieces.

Yeah, I will say this though, is that if you start documenting processes today and you haven't standardized your inputs, you're gonna burn out. You're gonna get sucked into the SOP vortex, we call it, where you're obsessing about documenting how you do all of these different things. Like, we work with a HubSpot Platinum Partner. 75 unique deliverables. 75 unique deliverables. It's so much freaking stuff. You're gonna. The wheels are gonna fall off the bus if you start documenting the process for that. Cause just think, Every deliverable has 10 to 15 tasks. Every task has 8 to 12 steps. Every task needs a budgeted time assigned to it, a role assigned to it. Like, you're building a labyrinth of complexity right there. So that's why the process is important, to make sure you prioritize things. But we standardize. We create the central hub with those two pieces in place. The third thing that we do is we automate, systematize, and deploy. And what we're trying to do here is look at the winning process and figure out what can be done without a direct human involvement. Automate, first of all, what are the flows to just take human action out of it? How can we leverage zapier? How can we leverage our marketing automation, our CRM, all of those things, to basically move the project from one point of human touch to the next point of human touch, Several stages in between. Systematize. How can we leverage information gathering forms, communication templates, standardized meeting agendas, all of those things where we're not coming up with new things, we're just leaning on our assets within the operation to power it. And three is deploy. Get it out there so that when you bring on a new client project, you're actually using these things in a cohesive manner. It's not just one and done, but bringing those things to life so that the knowledge that you've captured is disseminated out, the clients can experience it in a systematic way. The team kind of feels that pressure relieved because they're not coming up with new stuff all the time. Like they're actually following the plan and you've got those assets there to support the plan.

Yeah, I think it's really helpful overview of how to get to this point where you're starting to leverage those assets. The one and the key piece to me is like, how do we just, like we talk about business being a series of obstacles to get over, which is like, first, what's my idea? Then how do I get someone to buy it? Then how do I figure out how to deliver it? Then how do I figure out how to sell it at scale? Then how do I figure out how to deliver it at scale? Then how do I figure out how to make money doing this? All these different obstacles that you go over. The same thing to me is true with this line of thinking around building assets, which is like, first, how do I see assets? Second, how do I prioritize? Third, how do I build them? But then the next big piece is like a scale thing here. How do I build the culture of identifying and leveraging these assets that I'm building? Which is like, we're not just building these. Once they get built, we actually use them and then we actually revisit and improve them. So do you have any recommendations around the right way to build this culture? So it's not. We've already got enough crap going on in the day to day. I don't want to spend two hours a day focused on building templates or that kind of thing. Like how do we build this out as a cultural piece? So it's not all on me as the agency owner, but then also so that I still am involved in making sure that this is getting done.

Yeah, well, first, it can't be all about you as a business owner. Like that's going to cause the whole thing to fracture. Because what we're trying to do here is capture human process. Because contrary to popular belief, every agency operates on processes. The processes are just stuck in your head or your team's head. And everyone follows a different process. The challenge is standardizing the process and getting everyone to follow it and keep it updated in that central hub. And so the answer there for the number four is how do we actually get the team to practice this? Well, it's from the start have the team engaged in this process so that everyone is bought in and building the same foundation. When you're standardizing your inputs, when you're creating your central hub, when you're building out your automation, systematizing and deploying each of those stages isn't just the owner putting the framework in place, but it's the core team, it's the delivery team, it's everyone working together with the vision of what the agency is going to be like, of how does this impact me at the end of the day as the team member on the team. But the fourth is probably the most important because we can build a perfect system here, but it doesn't matter unless it's running effectively. And so the fourth step in how to turn these business byproducts into profit generating assets is to meet and review and optimize your proven process. So again, we've standardized the inputs. We've got one process that we're walking our clients through. Once a quarter. We as a core team want to assemble and review that process and figure out how can we optimize that and tighten up those gaps. Is there anything that we're doing manually right now that would be more efficient if we did it automated? On the flip side, anything that's automated right now that we need to bring back and make it human because we're causing stuff to fall through the cracks or it's not having the same vibe with the client as we thought that it would. That goes both ways. But we need to intentionally put this on our calendar. So we're coming back once a quarter and reviewing how. How are these assets being leveraged right now? Are there new ones that have been created that we can leverage? Can we combine everything, delete anything? Like we're obsessing on the fastest path to value for our client. These assets help us get there faster. And at the same time, because we're leveraging assets, we can do it more profitably.

There you go. There's a lot that you just covered what you were talking about though. Like this cannot be solely. At the very beginning of that, you started off talking about how this can't be solely dependent on you as an agency owner. And that leads right into the final point in the manifesto, which we'll talk about shortly. But how do you be an irreplaceable business with a replaceable owner? Like, how do you disseminate enough information and collect and curate information and the right processes like the value and expertise from your team so that this can operate without any one key member being the hold up? There's a whole. There's so much we get into around the identity of the business and your own identity and like the psychology of being an entrepreneur and a business owner, the ways that our greatest strengths ultimately become our greatest weaknesses and hold us back from doing this. But having that system and that end goal is what allows you to ultimately achieve that objective. And I can think of some agency owners who've gone through that process. Um, we've had Marissa Smith on the podcast to talk about what, what it looked like to go through that process. But. But yeah, I think that's a very important piece. Is, is that the end goal? Is that what you ultimately want? Here's a compelling reason why that should be what you ultimately want, which is do you want a business that can make money without you? Do you want an asset or do you want just an avenue that you can, as long as your input is still involved, can make money? And once that is not there, or changes, which it will over time, that'll influence the cash making machine, the profit and the fun. So I think it's really helpful to get an overview of what that, what that looks like. So we won't go any more into the 10th point in the manifesto today. We'll hit on that next time. Is there anything else you want to tackle here in this edition of the Agency Vision Show?

No, I think it's the biggest change that you can activate today is the mindset, how do I solve problems once? How do I share knowledge? How do I pursue profit in all that we do? And view those three principles as building blocks for you. Because you can change your thinking today with your current clients, with your current situation. Whether you're one man, 10 man or 50, you can change the way you think today. So take that home with you.

Awesome. Cool. We'll wrap this up here. You guys can catch all the notes and catch the manifesto. Zenpilot.com manifesto click through to this episode's, uh, one. If you are not yet a member of Agency Journey Insiders, head to agencyjourneyinsiders.com and we'd love to bring you into the group, share what we're learning and what others are learning with you as part of the community. If you need help achieving this in your own business, go to zenpilot.com freedom find out all the details of the Agency Freedom model, which is the better business model that you need, and how our agency accelerator can help you accomplish that. We'd be happy to jump on a quick clarity call and walk through where you are today, what you're trying to achieve and what the path forward is. All right, with that, I will sign off for now. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.