3:52
Rob DaCosta built a marketing agency to 25 staff, then realized he was the bottleneck. He shares how systemizing operations, clarifying vision, and delegating let him reclaim his time instead of being trapped in the business he created.
Rob DaCosta built a marketing agency to 25 staff, then realized he was the bottleneck. He shares how systemizing operations, clarifying vision, and delegating let him reclaim his time instead of being trapped in the business he created.
I didn't start a business to deal with HR issues and financial issues and quality issues and client issues and personnel issues and all the rest of it. These are strategies that apply to every business. Have a plan, have a clear niche, build your team, get the systems and processes in place, put a succession plan in place. Those are the points that I'm covering in the book. My concerns is that in September 2022, no one had really heard of AI. No one had really heard of ChatGPT.
It's the dream. Have your own agency, your own marketing agency, clients coming to you, all the work, wherever you want, whenever you want, make tons of money. It's a dream that's peddled on the Internet all the time. And yet once people get into it, they find they've lost all control over time. They're on call 24 hours a day. It's not easier than working for some agency. It's actually 10 times harder. Our guest today is an expert on the world of the agency, marketing agencies, advertising, public relations, all aspects of marketing, and he helps other agency owners. He's the author of the Self Running Agency and a master at all aspects of communication, including digital clones, which we'll talk about in a moment. It's my pleasure to bring to the show Rob DaCosta. Rob, how are you today?
Hey TJ. I am great and it's great to be here as well.
How did you get to the point where you realized in your journey that, you know, maybe you were working too hard, you somehow have to systemize things? How did you learn the principles that you espouse in the self running agency?
I think primarily by making all the mistakes. So back in the early 90s, I was decided to start my own agency. I was a marketing manager for a small company and I thought I could do better than the agencies we were trying to hire. So in my arrogant young youth, I left and started my own agency. And over the next 11 years, kind of was by accident, grew that business to 25 staff, making tons and tons of mistakes. And in the end I sold that business. And part of the reason I sold that business, kind of worn down from running it. I, we had this big open plan office and people came, I felt like I had that corner desk and people came to my desk with their wheelbarrows of crap every day and piled it up for me to deal with. And I sat there thinking, hey, this is not why I started a business. I didn't start a business to deal with HR issues and finance issues and quality issues and Client issues and personal issues and all the rest of it. So I then left and retrained and became a coach or I sold the agency and I thought, okay, I need to share all the things, things that I did wrong and the things that I've learned to help people grow a business that they still love and grow a business that they can sort of systemize to the point where they get the flexibility and freedom that they always wanted when they started a business. I find that a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm sure you've found the same thing. They start their business because they want flexibility and they want freedom, both financial freedom and time freedom.
How much freedom did you have with 25 employees and clients expecting you on call 24 hours a day? I'm assuming zero.
Yeah. And part of that is because. Because the other thing that most entrepreneurs want is control and they don't want to let go of control. This is a big lesson I learned. And so flexibility and freedom goes out the window because they still crave control. Actually, what we need to do is let go of control, but putting the systems in place to be confident that things won't fall apart. When we start the book.
The book is the self running agency. Rob, you must have done something right to expand to 25 people. You had to have gotten some major accounts, a major corporate accounts, paying some big money. And yet the assumption everyone has is, oh, wow, you're rich and successful. You have 25. And a lot of people who are maybe advertising geniuses aren't necessarily good at managing a business, managing a people, managing cash flow. It's certainly possible to have 25 employees and be losing money every single month.
Yeah, absolutely.
How do you, how do you help people juggle that? Because growth for growth's sake isn't really a long term prescription for wealth or happiness.
No, absolutely, absolutely. And one, one of the first chapters in the book is all about creating a roadmap and your vision. Because the definition of success isn't growing 20% year on year necessarily. It could be a million things. And one thing I learned is, I mean, we kind of grew organically. We weren't, we never had a grand plan. It just happened. And you know, we were in, at the beginning of that whole tech. We worked in the tech sector in the beginning of that whole tech boom. Now I realize that actually when you have to have a roadmap, because you need to know you're going and you need to make sure that you are really aligned from here with where you're going, both personally and professionally. And it isn't necessarily growing 20% year on year. Some people want a lifestyle business. Some people don't want to employ people at all.
You're Not Being Judged on Your Work Yet: What New Hires Are Really Evaluated On
