99% Of Your Time As An Agency Owner Should Go To These Three Skills

Curious why some agency owners grow their agency so fast while others barely make any progress at all, even if they start at the exact same time. The difference here always lies in prioritizing and mastering the right set of skills. Instead of being busy, being busy, so many agency owners are trapped in this kind of cycle of busyness where they mistake being busy and working on every single mindless activity with actually being productive and making progress. And the result of that is they waste years and years of their life and years and years of their agency on stuff that's not really relevant. So in this video I'm sharing the three most important skills that skyrocketed my own agency to over 900k per month. And then how you can rearrange your schedule so you can focus on what truly matters, which is these three skills I've heard over and over again from my clients. How much this comes completely revolutionize their time management and overall results inside my coaching programs. So with that being said, let's get to the first of the three skills. And this is YouTube. So YouTube and ads are the most important thing that you can do as an agency owner. Without leads, nothing happens. And a lot of people get stuck under 500k per year because they're constantly trying to balance lead generation with fulfillment. So basically what happens to them is they get clients and then they need to do operations. So they stop their lead gen and focus on fulfillment and then they go and they churn all their clients and they go back and now they have to do Legion and then they don't have enough work for their employees and they have to fire them and then it just never gets out of this cycle and this is a one way trip to disaster. So they get the clients, they focus on the Legion, they but they never get high enough to a revenue where they can hire a team and an operator and maybe even a C suite eventually. That frees up time for them to focus on lead generation full time. So we need to have content and ads to get past the level where we can hire a real operator and eventually that executive team and then our job as the founder and the CEO is only how can I promote the business and get more clients? So what does this look like in action? My most viral video on this channel got me over 200 clients and I was the same person before I posted that video in terms of skills, in terms of knowledge, in terms of experience. But now since I have that video, everyone all of a sudden wants to talk to me. I'm still selling the exact same thing. I, I'm still working with the same set of ideas and philosophies. The only thing different is that I happened to post a YouTube video that did well and that shows you the power of YouTube. It is very similar with paid ads and without ads that are working. There is a real lack of consistency in Legion in general because content goes up and down. You're relying on videos to break out to new audiences and new viewers in order to really grow your top of funnel. But with Legion, you're basically buy or with ads you're basically buying constant attention. So no matter what people are finding out about you, so your ad funnel is going to lead to much, much more consistency. You can have your ads off, for example, or you don't have any ads at all. And then you might think that you're doing something wrong, that no one likes you or that no one cares about you or anything like that. But much like my YouTube video, if you just turn these ads on, you are essentially buying attention and buying traffic and your calendar is going to get booked and booked and booked and booked. So these two skills together are so important and they also work together. The more ad spend you do, the more people will naturally find out about your YouTube and the more YouTube you do, the more people will find your videos, watch them and trust you, and the more profitable that your ads are going to be. So with that being said, like what are the things that we need to learn about in terms of YouTube and in terms of content? So for YouTube, I have a process that I really think that you should follow. So try this for 12 months and see what happens. The first thing we want to do is find 5 to 10 channels in our niche or in a similar niche. So for me, that could be Alex Hermosi, Layla, that could be Jeremy Miner, that could be Dan Martell. Not really in the agency niche, but business niche as a whole. The next we want to do is we want to sort all of their videos in the past 12 months. And we do 12 month cutoffs so that it's kind of recent. They're like stuff that went viral 10 years ago is not really relevant to today. And we want to make videos that are. We want to make a list or spreadsheet of videos that we'll call outlier videos. And what that means is anything that got two times the average views or five times the average views or anything. And we want to note down the those titles and those thumbnails. The next thing we want to do is apply those titles and thumbnails to our niche or our service. So the title of this video was an outlier video in one of the other channels. I follow. And I applied it to an agency. I'm very transparent about that. That's the exact system at play. Why would you just guess when you could go and actually see what's already worked and just build on that? The next thing you want to do is do what I'm doing now. Create a mural board or a slides asset in the format of this video idea. So I'm doing slides right now. I've done Miro board in the past. Both are very good. I'd say you could probably come up with slides faster if you're looking for ease when you're first starting. And then you want to do what I'm doing right now. We want to record a video talking through the asset. I like to do it with bullet points and then just fill in the blanks with my. Let's go. Extensive experience. Once you're done recording, you want to put it through a software called a phonic and that will basically optimize the sound and make the sound quality really good. Even if your microphone setup is terrible, it would be better if you had a great microphone setup, but it's an option for you as well. And then you want to post three times per week and that is going to be great consistency and get you a lot of top of funnel traffic and a lot of nurturing through content without having to dedicate your entire life to it as if you were a YouTuber. For ads, I have a different process here. So the first thing we want to do is get set up and that means setting up a landing page with an offer and a form. Then once they fill out the form, they should be redirected to a thank you page with a vsl, a call scheduler link like calendly and then proof that it works in the form of wins, case studies, testimonials, that kind of thing. Next, we Want to make two 3 minute VSLs for the body of the video ads. One should be a demo of your product and one should be proof. So if you had an e commerce email marketing agency, you know, this is what we would do with your email flows. And then the second one would be here's all of our proof that we're actually a great agency. Then we want to make five different hooks. So these will be 1 second, 2 second, 3 second, 5 seconds, whatever stuff that will grab people's attention in the feed. After that, we want to edit these hooks together with the VSLs we made. So we have two different VSLs and five hooks. So we can make 10 different unique ads if we basically try that in that format. The next step we want to do is run retargeting ads on every platform. So I'd Recommend Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter if you're on Twitter, but the other ones for sure. And then once we get those retargeting audiences down and we're booking calls and it's kind of shown, that's going to resonate a little bit. Then we want to start running cold traffic ads on Facebook and YouTube. So that is what we want to do. And once we are in kind of a rhythm with YouTube and paid ads, basically we are getting those three videos per week and we are starting to scale our ads, the next thing we have to do is spend time creating different systems. So systems are the one main thing that will determine success and failure with an agency. And it's not really success or failure, but more of to what degree will you succeed. Some people will consider a million a month a success, some people will consider 20k per month a success, whatever it is. And you're going to have many different types of systems. Like for example, you'll have a paid ad system with making creative and testing. You'll have a content system with coming up with ideas and recording and posting and writing stuff. You're going to have outreach system with how do you get a list for cold email and how do you respond as fast as possible. You'll have a partnership system with how do I talk to potential white label and referral partners, how do I get on podcasts, that kind of stuff. You're going to have a lead nurturing process with email flows and SMS and that kind of stuff. You'll have a client work process and fulfillment system. You'll have a system to hire and train employees. You'll have a system to track all of your finances. You'll have a system to do a bunch of planning and you'll have a system to track your metrics and some more as well. So what is an example of situation where someone was struggling and then we implemented these systems and then, you know, it really worked well. So I had a client who joined a thousand X leads who came in with a great service and they had great case studies, but they were very much involved in the work and as such they were stuck at about 80k per month. Basically what would happen is he would work hard on a bunch of ads and he would do YouTube and then he would get clients from that, because that's how it works. Then he would stop doing YouTube because he was overwhelmed. And and then his clients would eventually churn, as all clients do, and then he would have to fire and lay people off and then he would start back on YouTube and get more clients again. And then this cycle would just basically repeat over and over and over and over and over again. And it wasn't until I helped him create a system for Legion, you know, training a team, a system for fulfillment so he didn't have to do the work himself. A system to hire and train new employees, and a system for planning all of this stuff and when he's going to work on it, that his business really stabilized. And he went to 250k per month in just a few months after we did this. So he was more consistent with his lead gen and his YouTube and making new ads. He'd cut his churn in half because now he had a lot of checklists, a lot of examples, a lot of sops and processes and actually trained employees to do his work. He had system to hire and train new employees so he could expand his capacity and all was basically well. So that is what we did. And how would you create systems like that for yourself? The five main systems that I think you should focus on first are a system to create five YouTubes and five newsletters per week and do five written posts per day on LinkedIn, on Twitter and Instagram, and you can cross post those. The next one is that a system to create and test at least three new ad creatives every week, let's say on a Monday, and then one landing page test every two weeks. So maybe you make an entirely different landing page, maybe you test the headline. Big results either way. The next system would be a system of checklists, examples, SOPs for every single task and service you provide, all in a big spreadsheet or whatever software you want to use. And those will be really good for consistent quality of work. The next is a system to determine the most important tasks, habits and priorities for each employee. And then having a system, whether that's an email or a text or a Slack workflow, to remind them to do them and in the correct order every single day. And the final one is a system that you can plug and play sales reps into and maintain at least a 30% close rate as you scale. Because a lot of the time the founder, especially if they're getting clients through content, they can be pretty cocky and delusional and say I have a 70% close rate. And that may be true, but only to the warmest traffic, only when the founder himself or herself is the one doing the sales. And if you want to scale, you got to get out of sales. So you need a process and a system that you can basically say, okay, here is the pre call research, here is the overall sales call strategy, here's maybe not a script, but some bullet points, here's the presentation, here are the follow up templates and you can plug them in and have them do it themselves. And those five systems are what I think everybody should work on right away. And once you have all of these systems firing and in place, or in place and then firing, the last thing we need to do is go about training employees. That's the third and most valuable skill. Because if we can train employees to do anything, like we can basically get anything done at scale. And once we solve the lead generation problem in an agency, the number one constraint always becomes how can I hire and train more people? And most people never really make it past this phase in an agency. So for additional context, this is the biggest problem at about 30 to 50k per month depending on your service. And that is where most people get stuck at most agencies who get past like zero. So they get off the ground, die in this revenue range more than any other revenue range. And this is very what I would say, cyclical. And there's all sorts of plateaus at all sorts of revenue levels. But more agency dies at 30 to 50k per month than anywhere else in my opinion. So there are three main things that you can do to train anyone within 14 to 30 days. So at my previous agency I did three things and these three things helped me scale to 75 plus employees. And I probably could have done a lot more than that if I didn't exit the agency. So the first would be an automated onboarding and training system for every role. So in Kajabi is what I used. I had a course with every task laid out. So basically I did this, a different course for every role. So copywriter, designer, landing page builder, CRO specialist, sales rep, appointment setter, account manager. I had a different course with every task laid out. Videos to show them what to do, videos and documents, let's say not everything had a video and then I had three assignments for each role. So an assignment, let's do the landing page builder one, because that's the one. I always say the three most important parts of a landing page are the above, the full design, they're the site speed and then they are the offer. So I had assignments mixed in with the video trainings. So they had to build a perfect above the fold and then they had to optimize the site speed and tagging and stuff to make the site load in 2 seconds or less because that's a very important metric for conversion. And then the third one is how do they create a great offer for X, Y and Z? And that's basically what I did. The next thing you want to do is have daily one on ones for everybody with their manager, whether that's you or whether that's like a director of operations or something for the first 90 days. And these will be 10 minutes or less. Twice per day for five minutes is also good answer questions. Hold them accountable to the standards, hold them accountable to the systems and your culture and that kind of stuff. And then the final thing is we want to have checklists and examples for every single task. So for me, you know, for the landing page is the above the fold section like this? Is the hero image edited like this? Does the hero headline view on two lines or less? Do these three bullet points happen on three lines or less? Like there's no overlap? Is the call to action button, you know, visible above the fold? That kind of stuff. And then we have a list of examples. And is the quality of this comparable to these examples? And if not, ask for help or go fix it type thing. So that is what I did. But how would you learn to apply this to your own agency? So what you'd want to do is to really get good at training a lot of these employees. You'd want to create a kajabi like I did. You'd want to create a course for every role or a section, depending on what kind of tool you use. You don't have to use kajabi. Then you would want to lay out all of the steps for every role, just like I said. So if you're doing a landing page, the steps are okay, the hero section, how to edit the hero image, how to write a hero headline, how to come up with the bullet points, how to do the first section, how to come up with the offer, how to do copywriting, all that kind of stuff. And then you would make a video and document for every role and every step there. Then you would create those three assignments and I like to do three. That typically goes to prove that they are actually learning properly. And then what you want to do is schedule five to 10 minutes of one on one time with their manager for 60 days. I said 90 days before, but 60 to 90 days, just so they get up to speed as fast as possible. We want to make checklists for every deliverable, for every role. Like this is it has to be done. We want to make examples for every role. This has to be done. And then we really want to basically spend all of our time on those three things. And that leads me to my final point in this video. And maybe it's the most important point of all, but how do we have time to do all of this stuff when we have so much more going on in the agency in terms of client work, in terms of meetings, in terms of all of that kind of stuff? And it's a fair question. So what we want to do to wrap up this video is basically, how do I get rid of everything else so I can be focusing on this? So you might be wondering, like, how is this possible? And there are a few things required to make it work. The first is time blocking. The second is identifying the most important tasks. The third is creating training and systems about those tasks. And then the fourth thing is delegating. So what does that look like in the context of a real agency? So at my $900k per month, I lived and died by time blocking and time management. So what I did was I blocked time from 7am to 12pm, which is noon every single day. No one, whether it's a client or employee or anyone else, could actually even contact me. Hour one, I did YouTube. Hour two, I did content, which is newsletter and Twitter posts and LinkedIn and Instagram. Hour three, I worked out because I always wanted to keep up with that. Hours four to eight were spent on my most important thing, and I only had one of those at a time. And when that was completed, something else became the most important thing. Whether that's making training or making systems or doing ads or whatever, whatever the most important thing is at the time, singular focus, five hours per day. Our nine was client stuff that really had to do and you just can't get around. And then hour 10 was making new paid ads. So Brian Tracy has something called the Rule of three, and it goes something like this. In my work with business owners, executives and the staff of companies both large and small, I have discovered a rule of three that is almost completely applicable to work activities. The rule of three declares that if you make a list of everything you do in a week or a month, which might be 20 or 30 activities for the average person, you will find only three of those activities account fully for 90% of the value of all of the work that you do. So what I did was I identified these things that I'm talking this video as the most important things. And then I asked myself, like, who can I do to? Who can I get to do X, Y and Z? Who can I get to do appointment setting or sales calls or talk to the clients or do the work and what do they need to do to do it in terms of how do I need to equip them? Then what I did was I contacted the person and get them what they needed, whether that's training, whether that's access, whether that's permission, whether that's giving them the responsibilities, whether that's a pay increase and they were able to do it. So what do you need to do to ensure that you only have all these skills or all the time to do these skills? We follow this step by step process. Write down everything you did that week and put it all in a spreadsheet. Next, we want to focus for everything that's not one of the three skills in this video. Identify someone who could do it, do a role as well as a name. And it's important to do both. We want to make trainings and SOPs for each of these tasks. We want to set a reminder for the person and add it to their workload and like kind of officially type thing. Then we want to spend the rest of that new time. Maybe we were working eight hours per day before and now we just got rid of six hours per work. Now we have six hours more, four times the total time to work on these three skills. And then we want to repeat this process every single Sunday night. And to wrap up this video, what is going to happen when you only do these three skills over and over again? You are basically going to be extremely, extremely rich. You'll experience growth like never before and it will actually scare you quite a bit. So if you like this video, comment, subscribe and tell me what you think and I will see you in the next one.