Watch me structure a 7 figure agency that runs itself

I'm about to walk you through the exact framework I use to structure my agency to run mostly without me while doing $7 million per year. If you're currently doing $10,000 to $50,000 per month and you've hit the wall where you're working more hours than ever, you can't take time off without revenue dropping, and you know the solution isn't working harder, but rather structuring your business more efficiently, yet there's so many moving parts you don't know where to begin, this video is for you. By the end, you'll have a complete blueprint that not only I used in my agency, but 150 other agency owners have used to hit the 7-figure mark. I'll show you exactly what you need to put in place in all aspects of your business to make scaling to 7 figures inevitable. And if at any point in this video you feel like you want hands-on help from us to go into your business and personally help implement this, then click the first link in the description. Now let's get into it. I want to start by talking about why most agencies do hit a growth ceiling. It really boils down to these 3 things. Number 1 is there's a bottleneck problem, right? The agency owner becomes the constraint in the business. They're handling sales calls, they're handling client relationship management, they're overwhelmed, and they don't have the ability to, to get as much done because they're the bottleneck. The other reason is reactive operations. There's lack of systems to create consistent new client growth or consistent delivery on the deliverables. And so in this feast or famine cycle where it's okay, let's go and focus on getting clients, and then we get some clients, and then we're focused on delivering for those clients, we can't focus on getting the clients anymore. And then 3, probably most importantly, is missing structure, right? Without clear roles, accountability, leadership departments, scaling beyond $50K can become virtually impossible. And really, I believe that the solution isn't working harder, it's implementing the right structure that allows your agency to operate efficiently without your constant involvement. And so that boils down to 3 key pillars. Pillar number 1 is predictable client acquisition. You have to have a process that's running day in and day out to consistently get new clients coming into your world. Pillar number 2 is bulletproof systems and processes so that when we get the clients, we know exactly what needs to get done, how it needs to get done, what it needs to get done by. We've got a system for that. And pillar number 3 is leadership development and structure, which is what does that team need to look like? How do we get those right people in the right seat? What order do we hire in? When you've got that dialed in, you can operate and scale without having to be the key determinant factor in all of the decisions and all of the things that need to be done in order to move things forward. So let's start with the predictable client acquisition system. We call this the Agency Growth System, and it's just a broad visual of the things that you want to be doing daily, the things you want to be doing monthly, and the things you want to be doing quarterly to fill your file, to get prospects raising their hand, to get prospects leaning in, what our sales process looks like in order to get clients to show up to appointments, prepositioned to buy and say yes. And then of course we've got to deliver world-class results. We've got to retain those clients long term. It's over here in the top left-hand corner. The things we need to do daily is we should be doing some type of cold outreach, reaching out to at least 5 prospects every single day. And if we've got a list of prospects where we're like running through instantly or running them through some type of cold outreach platform where we're introducing ourselves to new prospects every single day, growing our reach, growing our distribution, making introductions, seeing if there's a problem that we can solve, should be happening every single day within our agency. We We should also be running paid ads on Facebook and Google, showing up where our prospects are looking, showing up where our ideal prospects may have a need for what we do. We should be retargeting them where once they've expressed any level of interest, either they're on our email list or they've clicked on one of our landing pages or they've engaged in some of our content. They're seeing our ads again and again to bring them into our world. And finally, we need to be putting out content. And as digital marketing agency owners, you have to have a content engine where you're creating long-form and short-form content on a consistent basis. Every day something's being uploaded to the various social media channels to get ourselves out in front of our ideal prospects. Those are the things we want to be doing daily. Now, monthly, there's two key initiatives I would really encourage. If you can just do these two things, you will position yourself as an expert, you will be a thought leader in the industry, and you'll actually be able to get new clients coming in, leaning in, preposition to buy. And so that's every month, do one education-based webinar, workshop, whatever you want to call it. Just show up and create great content for your particular niche on what it is that you do. So it could be how to set up their website for maximum conversion, it could be how to implement marketing automation, it could be how to get your company ranked in search engines and/or AI. It could be how to leverage paid search to get better results. You literally take one of those topics, you show up once a month, you send some emails to promote it, you post about it on social media, and then you show up and you've got some people there live and you create that content. Now, of course, while you're at it, you're going to record it, right? And then the recording of that is going to get loaded up on YouTube and it's going to get syndicated out. And doing that every month gives you a reason to touch your database a number of times, forces you into content creation, and then it creates a lot of assets that you can load up, like, splinter up in a lot of different ways. So one web webinar every single month, and then one podcast every month. That's just you interviewing somebody, maybe a past client, maybe somebody that's crushing it in your industry, maybe a thought leader, coach, consultant in the industry, and you bring them on Zoom, or you bring them on Riverside, or you bring them on Restream, ask them a couple questions. That conversation helps you develop relationships with people that are known in the industry. It helps you develop interesting content that your industry finds valuable. And so those two things, one webinar, one podcast per month, will make you a prolific thought leader, and it can really drive your entire content engine. Quarterly, at least once per quarter, we want to get out to an industry event or trade show or conference. As agency owners, we like to be behind the computer, right, on Zoom. We like to be on Facebook posting stuff. Magic happens, relationships are developed live and in person. We want to find out where our niche is gathering, and we want to say, hey, we want to be there, we want to have a booth, we want the opportunity to potentially speak. Get live and in person at your industry events at least once per quarter. And then every quarter, we want to create at least one client case study, one client that you've worked with that has gotten good results and document it, right? In the form of, hey, here's the client, here's where they were when we started, here are the problems they were looking to solve, here's where they are today, right? Here's how many leads, here's how many sales, here's how much revenue growth, here's where they're coming up, and then here's the strategy, right? Here's what we put in place to make that a reality. So you can record yourself explaining that, you can turn that into a PDF or a Google Doc or something on Notion, and then you can actually interview the client and ask them questions about why they choose you and how life is different and better. Do that once per quarter and you'll be looked at as a prolific expert in your industry. A lot of people can say, hey, this is how you do digital marketing, they can talk the talk, but very few pack that up with real-world client results and case studies. The KPI we're looking at with like all of that activity, the daily, the weekly, the monthly, the quarterly, is 15 strategy sessions per month. If we can get 15 strategy sessions per month and then drive them through a great appointment process, and so I'm going to recommend you set up an appointment funnel where somebody can get warmed up, they can schedule in a time on your calendar, they can see some examples and case studies and show up to the meeting pre-positioned to buy, right? You want a great appointment process and then a great sales process, right? When they meet with you, where you're having a great conversation about where they're at, what their goals are, what they've tried in the past, why making a change right now is important, making it clear that there's a problem that you can solve. Ideally, if you do this right, you should be able to convert at 30% or higher. Feels like a lot of moving parts, but if you can get that dialed in, just the key things daily, key things monthly, key things quarterly, and then you can get 15 strategy sessions per month, appointments, sales calls, and then 30% or higher close ratio, you'll be on pace, assuming a $1,500 to $2,000 a month price point, to grow to 7 figures over a 12 to 24 month window of time. We're an additional 7 figures every single time. And so that's the predictable client acquisition system that we use that has driven us to $7 million per year and that over 150 other agencies are plugging into every single month that have gone to 7 figures, multiple 7 figures and beyond. Pillar 2 then is bulletproof systems and procedures. Once you've got the client acquisition piece humming, we want to make sure that clients can come in and get taken well care of and get great results and not feel like, oh wait, we don't have that figured figured out we haven't solved for that just yet. And on a service delivery perspective, we want a complete project management system in place. This ideally in today's market is typically in ClickUp because ClickUp has so many integrations. You can set up so many different templates. You can set up Gantt charts, you can set up dependencies and accountability for who's doing what. But you, maybe you start something like this in a Google Sheet, right? It's just like, okay, this is what we're gonna do for the client. These are all of the moving parts, right? And you get clear, this is what we wanna get done in the first week. This is what we wanna get done in the second week, all the way through to when their actual campaign is launched, and you'd have two tabs, right? There'd be the launch process and there'd be the ongoing monthly, quarterly activities you do for those clients. And once you've got that all fleshed out and you can mark, okay, this is going to be done by my account manager, this is going to be done by my web dev, this is going to be done by the content team, then you can load that into a system like ClickUp and be able to have a new client set up, have all of those tasks with deadlines clearly visible for you or operations person to check the boxes, to hold the timelines and make sure things get done. So a project management system and then detailed SOPs SOPs or playbooks for every client deliverable. There should be a documented process that says, here's how we build our client websites with visuals, with examples. Here's how we write client copy. Here's how we build authority and citations. Here's how we set up our paid search campaigns. And you want to have those documented SOPs. That way there's clarity for everybody in the organization, whoever sits in that seat. And as you put new people into those roles or somebody leaves, you can still have consistency around the deliverables. And the number 3 is an account management team that handles all client communication. When the client comes on board, a documented onboarding process. Once that onboarding process is done, like how we talk to the client, how we gather the usernames and passwords, how we engage with the client while they're getting set up, and then a process from, okay, I'm responsible now to check in with that client every single month and to show them the results and where we're headed over the next 30 days. Have a team that can handle that communication process and be the liaison between the client and your company, right? So those two, that individual, the account manager, plus the client, are communicating on a monthly basis. If there's an issue, if there's a challenge, if there's something that needs needs to be updated, that account manager goes back to your team and makes sure that it gets done and then communicates that back to the client. Having that in place really gives you a, a great validation for service delivery. In addition to that, we've gotta have a great team communication framework. I like to have most communication via asynchronous communication on a Slack channel. Asynchronous, meaning I can send something, the person when they have time can read it, review it, get back to it. That way we've got 47 full-time employees across the country and across the globe, and we're able to keep communication going in a dynamic fashion where we can have one-to-one, one-to-many communication. In addition to that, you want to have EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System, implemented for organizational clarity. And I could go very long about EOS. Read the book Traction if you haven't read it. Ultimately, EOS is big picture, like what's the vision for the company. Put that into a vision traction organizer so everybody's on the same page. What's 3-year picture? Who's our ideal client? What are the big directional objectives for the organization over the next 3 years, over the next year? Then you also have your leadership leadership team in place with the key leaders and you've got the communication rhythm behind that where you're doing annual planning, quarterly planning, setting goals, rocks, targets, you're also meeting every single week for Level 10s, leadership team Level 10 meetings where there's a very specific 90-minute structure for those conversations. When you have that in place, each of the departments now has a parking lot for when things are gonna get done, how things are gonna get moved forward within the organization. I also like having 15-minute daily huddles for the team. The entire team comes together with the operations coordinator or the account management director. And daily, it's just a quick check-in. What are some wins? What are some stucks? What's your top 3 for the week? All right, go hit the ground running. Everyone knows, all right, this is when we're starting. We're off to hit the ground running in this particular day. And then a monthly all-hands meeting where every single month we come together as an entire organization, all people on Zoom, webcams on, mics enabled. We can share some updates, we can share some wins, we can share some stucks, and we can keep everybody moving within the organization. But it's really important that you don't just hire team and leave them out on an island, whether they're US-based, whether they sit in your office or whether they happen to be across, across the globe as a VA. Treat everybody a team member, get them plugged into a team communication sync process, and you're going to find you get much better outcomes. So number 3 is your leadership development structure. At the very top of this hierarchy is going to be the owner, which works on the business, not in the business. And that's philosophically, you have to decide, I'm not trying to give myself a job, I'm trying to build a business. And so I'm working on the business. I don't necessarily do sales, I don't necessarily do operations, I don't necessarily do any of the account management. I run a business with the people in place to do that. If that's what you're trying to build, then we have to have 4 key leadership positions at a minimum within the organization. Number 1 is a director of operations. That would be someone that owns the deliverables for your clients, right? That's the person in charge of day-to-day. You can call them a COO, you can call them an integrator, you call them a lot of different things, but they're responsible for the actual delivery of the services. When you're small, it might be that person actually does a lot of the work. When you get bigger, like in our case today, we've got an operational director, but beneath them is a web dev lead, and then And there's a content lead, and then there's an SEO lead, and there's a paid search lead. But all of the deliverables come to that individual. He's the person that sits on the leadership team that the owner interfaces. Now, second to that, we've got an account management director. And this would be the person that has bottom line responsibility for client experience, for client retention, for the NPS scores, the relationship results that our clients are having. Again, that account manager— management director is training, leading, and managing the account management team. And there might be one account manager for every 30, 25 to 35 accounts. And so as your company grows, you might have a team of account managers that sit under that account management director. And then you want to have a marketing and sales lead. In, in our agency, we took the marketing lead and we, that's one of my core expertise. So it's one of the last things I let go of. An administrative assistant that can help with marketing strategy, that can help with setting up the webinars, that can help with setting up those podcasts, that can help with the logistical steps that go behind the seen. So you want a marketing lead that's also looking at how much are we spending in marketing, how many opportunities are we getting, what's our average cost per appointment, what's our average cost to acquire a client. Because you as the owner, you're going to get busy, you're not going to have a nice tight pulse on that for your own business. You need to know those metrics. And then fourth would be a sales manager. So somebody that's handling the sales process. Could be just the closer, could be a closer with an appointment setter, could be a whole team that rolls up to sales. But it's the person on your leadership team that has bottom line accountability for— we've got sales and revenue growth, Growth, and they're responsible for accomplishing and driving those outcomes. Now, what's beautiful is when you have these 4 key roles in place, you have an autonomous business, literally a business that can run without you having to do it all yourself, without you having to do any of it actually, because marketing's happening where prospects are getting added to your funnel, sales are being transacted, clients are meeting, they're having their consultative sales conversations, and they're saying yes, credit card form offers, and then it's getting kicked over to operations and account management where they're going to meet with the client, they're going to have those conversations, and the work's going to get done. And That's the leadership infrastructure and/or organizational chart that you want to put in place. And then finally, leadership structure. I think a lot of agencies miss— they'll put these people in place, but they don't have the right structure. Each leader needs to own specific KPIs and scorecards. So key performance indicators and scorecards. And so as an example, the account management director would know what's the average retention rate this month, this quarter, as an annual. What percentage of our clients have we met with over the last 30 days? Which are the clients that are meeting? What's the average metric in terms of green, yellow, or red that our clients are experiencing. And they own those metrics and they're responsible for that. And so you want that for each of the different areas within the company. Weekly team meetings for accountability. So you, if you're the owner of the agency, should be on at least the leadership team meeting every single week where you're meeting with that leadership team, those leaders in each of those key areas within the company. And then those leaders would be meeting with their team, doing a 90-minute level 10 meeting where there's clear structure. This creates clear decision-making authority and more important, innovation, right? You can't be the person driving things forward in terms of your SEO strategy, your paid search strategy. You need people within those departments that are— they're responsible for that outcome and they're responsible for innovation within that aspect of the business. And then we want to have a 90-day onboarding process with every single one of your team leads, with every one of your team members, so that there's massive clarity on what their expectations are and how they can hit the ground running. When properly implemented, your leadership team will innovate and grow the agency without your constant input, allowing you to focus on strategic initiatives that move company forward. Now, you maybe you can't put all these people in place today, right? And sometimes that's the confusing part. It's like, I see the vision, like I see I need all of these key team leaders and I need these sub-team participants within the organization. We've put together what we call a phased team growth chart that just kind of outlines if you're at $20K to $30K, how many employees should you have? What team positions should you fill? All the way through to 7 figures and multiple 7 figures. And so if you'd like to get your hands on that, you can type in phased growth chart and I'd be glad to, to share that with you, help you give you clarity on how How much can you actually invest and who can you start to put in place based on what your MRR, monthly recurring revenue, in the business is today? So a couple next steps here. Number 1, if you're going to do this on your own, what are your current client acquisition process? Do you have a process in place to get new clients coming into your world on a consistent basis? Are you doing the daily, the monthly, the quarterly activities necessary? Number 2, document your core services and SOPs. What is it that you're selling to your clients? Do you have a clearly defined offer or clearly defined growth program? And is it super clear what needs to be done and how you do it within your organization? Documentation and/or videos. Number 3, create your accountability chart for your team. Like, what does the organizational chart look like today? And futurecast. Like, where would you like to see that accountability chart 12 months from now, 3 months from now? Number 4, develop your leadership hiring plan. Like, a lot of agencies will go out and randomly hire. Oh, here, I'm going to hire a marketing person. I'm going to randomly hire an SEO person. Really think about what that leadership team is. They're going to be empowered to hire that team that's going to do the work within their area. Area of expertise. Then number 5, implement EOS or somewhat type of operational framework that you can put in place. Now I've explained a lot, and even though this probably gave you a lot of clarity, there's still more that goes into implementing these strategies in your agency. That's why if you want to take action on this and put what we've talked about here into practice, then you can click the first link in the description and book a free agency acceleration session with us. This will be a low-pressure call where we dive deep into your business and craft a personalized action plan you can put in place to scale to 7 figures. Plus, we'll see if we can to get there even faster. You'll find the link to book your call below. Look forward to talking with you soon.