Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] The way that we help agencies is we help them grow their authority, productize their shit and scale, right? Grow, package, scale. They're our three pillars and we've got stepping stones within each of them and then we've got beginner, intermediate advanced tactics within each of those. Literally. I'm reading you the checklist right now, so download the checklist and you'll see what pillars of transformation and stepping stones look like.
[00:00:26] Hey, welcome to the Agency our podcast. This is the most helpful podcast on the planet for digital agency owners. We've got a very special episode here today. I am about to go on holidays for a couple of weeks with my family up to the sunshine coast here in Australia and hang out in a pool and get a suntan and relax. And so I just wanted to get this out of my head and out into the world in the hope that it would be helpful. This is everything we know about scaling agencies from zero to seven figures a year. This is the exact checklist that we use when we consult with our agencies who are doing between 300 grand and $4 million a year in revenue. This is the checklist that we literally. This is the checklist that we go through with them. Right? Every time we have a call with our agencies, we open this checklist and we go, where are you up to? What's next? This is exactly the framework that we use to consult with our agencies and help them scale. And so my job today is just to give you this. I'm also going to put a link near the this episode where you can download it. You don't even have to opt in, just download the PDF, follow along and, and you know, start ticking this stuff off. And I promise you, if you tick this off one at a time, you'll look back in a couple of years time and your agency will be completely different. Of course, AI is playing a big part in all of this, so you should be thinking about where you can use AI. But without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, here is my brain dump on the Agency Success checklist. The first category is you need to grow your authority in a way that prospects and people in the marketplace see you as a trusted advisor and a trusted go to resource. Okay? Once you've done that, you need to package up your services into products because growing a custom client service based business is almost impossible. It's the worst fucking business model to try and scale. So you need to productise. And the third thing is you need to scale at some point, otherwise it's you on the tools doing everything and and there's no freedom in that whatsoever. So I'm going to start at the beginning. I'm going to go beginner, intermediate, advanced, let's dive in. So the first thing you need to do, the very first thing that we coach and we help and consult agencies with and we actually do this for them, is if you're just starting out and you need to grow your revenue and grow your client base, is you need to get very clear about who it is you serve. It's called your ideal client profile. By the way, I'm going to stick a link in the description of this video to a checklist that you can download and just follow along because it's all in there. And I promise you, if you just work through this one step at a time and tick this checklist off, you look back at your business in 12 months, two years, three years time, it'll be completely different to how it is now. This is the exact same checklist that we use to consult our clients who pay us between 25 and 50 grand a year. So rule number one, step number one, get super clear on your ideal client profile. Who do you serve, what do they have in common, what problems do they have and how do you solve those problems? Number two is you're going to have 100 conversations in 90 days. If you need more clients, you just got to get on the phone and have 100 conversations in 90 days. I don't care how you do it. Could be zoom, could be door knocking, cold calling, emailing in messenger, in school communities. I don't give a shit how you do it. You need to talk to 100 real people in 90 days. If you do that, your offer and your ICP and everything else will write itself. If you haven't done that, because there's no escaping, just do the fucking work and have a hundred conversations in 90 days. And number three is while you're having those conversations, make sure you set up your sales pipeline in your CRM. We use high level for a whole bunch of reasons I'm not going to bore you with right now. There'll be a link in the description where you can sign up for our free trial. But doesn't matter what you use, I don't care. I'm technology agnostic. I don't give a shit if you've got sticky notes on your wall. Have some system where you know who you've spoken to and where they are in the purchasing journey, okay? So that things don't fall through the cracks. You have 100 conversations in 90 days you are going to close some deals.
[00:04:20] Okay, let's move into the intermediate part of what I'm calling expanding your reach. Just getting in front of more people here, okay? You got to send weekly emails to your list. If you don't have an email list, by the way, like, where the fuck have you been for the last 15 years? An email list is the only asset that you will own. Don't put all your eggs in the Instagram basket or the YouTube basket or, you know, any other basket, LinkedIn, because the algorithm could change. You could be gone overnight. So you have to have an email list of some sort. And I would be emailing them every single week. We email our list every single day. And my three rules for emails are they should be helpful, they should elevate their thinking in some way or shift a belief, and there should be a call to action for them to get on a call. So email your list every week.
[00:05:04] Number two, this is what we call pilot level, right? Intermediate level. Number two is begin multi channel outreach. Okay, so posting stuff on LinkedIn. See who engages on LinkedIn and then send them a message. Posting stuff on Facebook. See who's engaging on Facebook and then send them a message. Hey, thanks for liking my post. What's going on in your world, right? Like, don't be afraid to reach out. Like, if you've built the best product or service in the world, people don't give a shit. They're not going to come and, you know, beat down your door and throw money at you. That's just not the way it works. This is about getting in front of people. So don't be afraid to reach out across at least two channels.
[00:05:40] Number three is develop a client referral program. Hopefully by this point you've got at least one happy client. Ask them for referrals and incentivise them. Pay them a spotter's fee. If you work on recurring revenue, pay them 5% of recurring revenue for anyone they refer for the life of that client.
[00:05:56] If you don't ask for referrals, you won't get them. By the way, the best way to get referrals is to call one of your existing clients and ask them who they would like you to refer to them. Hey, you're a, you know, accountant, you've done great work for us. We built your website, everyone's happy. Who do you want as clients? I might know people in my network. Can I refer people to you? You do that and the law of reciprocity states, and it works that they will start Referring back to you. Okay, now you're kind of in the Top Gun level, right? This is what we call advanced. And again, this is about getting in front of more people. Begin omnipresent marketing. Fastest way to do this. I made a video about this last week called the Trust Engine. It's about how to produce content using AI at scale. There'll be a card here somewhere. Click on that, watch that.
[00:06:39] The fastest way to do this is use AI to make videos. And then out of those videos, you've got audio, you've got a transcript, you've got social posts, you've got a blog post, and you've got a week's worth of emails from one one video. What do you think? I'm making this video right now. What do you think our emails are going to be the week after this video goes live? I'm going to say that again. What do you think our emails are going to be the week after this video goes live?
[00:07:02] They're gonna be about this video, aren't they? Because it's helpful. Hopefully we're shifting your belief and elevate your thinking in some way. You might learn one thing out of this video that's helpful and we're just gonna email our audience about it because we know that our email list is not necessarily watching our YouTube videos.
[00:07:16] Second is develop a scorecard for lead gen. I love this. So we use ScoreApp. You can use AI to vibe code your own solution these days. But ScoreApp's really good out of the box. Just have a series of questions that you would ask a new client. So when we take a new client on board. So these are the series of questions we ask as part of the intake to see it. Make sure we're a good fit. Right? Or a part of your discovery process. Just publish those questions in a survey, get people to go through and answer those questions, and then present them with a scorecard at the end of it and say, hey, you've said you want to be here. You're currently here. There's a gap. We've got some work to do. Do you want our help with that score app? You know, I'm not even going to leave a referral link. Just. I'll put a link down the bottom. Just go check that out. Run by a bunch of really good guys.
[00:07:57] And the ultimate play here is establish a client advisory board. I love this. Because if you're at a point where you're already doing seven figures a year and you've got happy clients and you start asking those clients how can we improve?
[00:08:09] What is it that we can do to add more value and be more valuable to you so that you know we have a longer relationship? Your clients will tell you what they need and at this point, because you value those clients opinions so much, they will also start to refer other clients to you for that upper echelon service that you're offering. All right, let's move to the second part of growing your authority, which is about increasing influence. Because there's no point having an audience if they're not taking the action that you want them to take. So I'm going to go back down to beginner level, right? Again, if you download the checklist, you can play along. I'm just giving you my insights here.
[00:08:42] At cadet level, you need to have an authority website because if you're doing outreach and you're trying to get in front of people, people are going to start to look you up online and they're going to ultimately go to your website at some point. On authority websites, really easy. It can be a one pager at this stage of the game if you're just starting out. But it needs to have your headline, what it is you do, who you help. We help agencies grow without becoming the bottleneck. That's our headline at scale agencymavericks.com which is our authority site, that's where everyone applies to work with us, right? Scale.agencymavericks.com, scale your agency without becoming the bottleneck. That's what we do. We also have a video there. We also have some social proof. We have logos of where we've been featured for credibility.
[00:09:23] And depending on which version of it you're seeing, because we split test it, you might see a breakdown of exactly what it is we do, right? Our unique mechanisms and our workflows and our process.
[00:09:33] Publish at least 10 testimonials or reviews, right? If you don't have 10, that's fine. If you've got two, great, get them and publish them. If you've got five clients that you've worked with and they're happy, you, you should have five testimonials or reviews. And at beginner level, the way that you increase your influence is to begin single channel content. Just choose one channel that you really like, that you can have fun with and that you can be consistent with. If I had to choose one, it'd be YouTube because I fucking love making videos, right? I don't know if anyone else enjoys watching them. I don't really give a shit anymore. I just Love making videos because it's the fastest way for me to get this shit out of my head and into the world. So, so just begin single channel content, intermediate level, pilot level. Here you're going to launch a pillar based lead magnet. What that means is you're going to take your framework and your methodology and what it is you do and usually you can break this down into three pillars. We actually help our clients do this.
[00:10:24] Your three pillars, you're going to pick one pillar that you think the market needs the most and you're going to produce a lead magnet. Whether it's a custom GPT or some kind of checklist or some kind of guide, it's super, super easy to produce interactive tools these days and really useful lead magnets and have one lead magnet that all of your content leads to.
[00:10:44] I mean, our go to lead magnet at the moment is probably gameplan.agencymavericks.com, which is our scorecard. Again, I'll leave a link to that in the description here.
[00:10:53] If you don't have one, just produce a custom GPT which helps your clients get some traction and actually get moving. They're like, holy shit, this is amazing. By the way, if you do build a custom GPT, just make sure you put in the prompt that it should constantly be advertising to get people on a call with you so that you can do it for them.
[00:11:09] Number two, begin multi channel content. So you know, at cadet level beginner, you've got single channel content. Now you should be producing multi channel content. So at least two channels where you're publishing content regularly and start guesting on industry platforms. In other words, start speaking at other people's events. Start going on other people's podcasts. Sorry, sorry, what's that? You don't want to speak at other people's events. You don't want to be on other people's podcasts. You don't want to be a guest on other people's webinars. Oh, booie, I'm sorry, what are you like an introvert or too shy or something? Aye. Okay, I'm kind of playing with you. But I'm also telling you what I think you need to fucking hear, right? People want to follow people that they trust. So sitting behind your computer, tapping away and expecting a thousand people to bust down your door and pay you for a website is just not going to happen.
[00:11:58] Other people already have an audience. Other people have a platform. Just get in front of them and share what you know. Okay, Sorry if I triggered anyone, don't fucking cancel me. I'm just trying to give some tough love here that I think you probably need to hear. So if you're at top gun level, publish your thought leadership. This is a book, a podcast, a YouTube channel. Take what's in here, get it out to the world, publish it as much as you possibly can. You don't need to do this when you're starting out, because when you're starting out, you just need your first 10 clients, right?
[00:12:27] Number two, regular public and virtual speaking. So again, just that whole podcast, speaking on webinars, doing that. Just do that regularly. Do it once a month, do it once every three months, every time you speak on someone else's platform, every time you speak on a podcast, every time you're on someone else's webinar, you've got content there that you can slice and dice up. You can do one podcast episode and have two months worth of content that you can syndicate, right? And secure some strategic partnerships. Have people who serve a similar audience to you that can refer to you. Hey, we've got a bunch of accountants over here that we serve on a daily basis, and we don't have anyone that we can recommend for them to go talk to about AI or content or SEO or whatever it is you do, right?
[00:13:08] All right, so now let's talk about.
[00:13:10] You're expanding your reach, you're getting in front of more people, you're increasing your influence, and people are starting to see you as an authority. What's the sales process?
[00:13:18] How do we convert this audience who know like and trust us into paying clients? Number one is you got to have a compelling offer.
[00:13:27] Kind of ironic that we're going through this process here again, is like revamping our compelling offer because it changes all the time. But you got to have a reason for people to get on a call, right? Hey, we build websites and do SEO. Probably not a reason for people to get on a call. No one gives a shit and they've heard it a million times. We help authors get speaking engagements. We help authors use their book to get speaking and coaching engagements. Huh. That's interesting. How do you actually do that? Well, we build you an authority website. We might do some SEO, we might run some ads, and we get the right people to sign up to your website, read your book, and book you for a speaking or a coaching engagement with some email marketing follow up in the back end, right? But if you explain the shit that you do, people don't care. You have to tell them what they actually want. So. So craft A compelling offer. We're big on this, we're bullish. Sell paid discovery. Sell your first paid discovery workshop. Instead of trying to sell the farm, sell strategy first and then use paid discovery to upgrade that client into a growth plan. That's where your recurring revenue comes from.
[00:14:27] Okay, now if you're at a pilot level, you've got to complete some basic sales training. You just need to know how to handle some objections. You need to know how to communicate, how to listen, how to reframe the conversation. Because at some point you might want to hire someone to do sales for you, right? It's the hardest seat to get the founder out of, but it is possible.
[00:14:46] Automate your sales funnel and that's really again just a high level email and SMS automations so that when people sign up for one of your lead magnets that they're encouraged to book a call. When they sign up for a call, they're encouraged to show up. When they show up and you do the presentation, they're encouraged to buy if they didn't buy on the call. And then make sure that you're tracking the performance of your sales funnel and your sales calls in your CRM. Again, just use high level.
[00:15:12] Now you're at top gun level, right?
[00:15:14] This rounds out. This is the last three things in growing your authority. You're at top gun level. So have a sales team. You don't want to be doing sales because if you're the only one doing sales, you can literally never leave the building because if you do, revenue slows down. You want advanced sales analytics, you want to start measuring things like show up rate, like offer rate. How many times do we offer what it is we do to a person who gets on a call? What's our cost per call? What's our cost per show rate? What's our cost per qualified call? These are advanced sales analytics that you don't need if you're just starting out. And build a self managing sales team that just give you an end of day report every day. They report up to you so you don't have to go chase them. We good? All right, let's move on. The second thing you need to do is now that you've grown your authority, the fact is there'll be more demand for what it is you do. Right? So let's talk about how to package this up into products that are infinitely scalable rather than bespoke custom services that will just kill you. If again, I'm going to start with cadet level. You're a beginner, I'M going to pretend that you've never done this. There's three. Well, there's two types of products and then there's a, what we call the signature system. The two types of products are fire starters. These are audit based products. Paid discovery is a good example. An SEO audit, a brand audit, a website audit. Hey, keyword research, a great example of a fire starter. Hey, there's a problem over here and we need to do some work. We're not actually fixing anything, right? We're just telling the client where the fire is and what work needs to be done.
[00:16:45] So the second type of product is what we call accelerators. These are things that actually fix one thing in the business, right? So doing on page SEO is a great accelerator.
[00:16:55] Auditing their ad account and then launching a new ad campaign. So that's a firestarter and an accelerator doing a web audit and then, you know, fixing the low hanging fruit that's broken on their website. Building a website is not a product. A website is a collection of products. Homepage is a landing page, contact forms, a lead capture page. Testimonials is a social proof page. Blog is thought leadership. It's a collection of products. Right? So firestarters, accelerators. And then the third category here is your signature system, which is basically everything you do for your client, wrapped up in your great client experience. So if you're a beginner, let's talk about firestarters. Sell your first simple audit. Just sell a simple web audit to a client. Use mywebaudit.com, use the prospecting tools in high level and sell an audit to a client. Document that audit product so that your team can do it in the future and then develop a tear sheet for that audit product.
[00:17:50] Ask AI what a tear sheet is. It's basically comes from like old school.
[00:17:54] I used to be a sales rep back in the day and I used to drive around the country and sell shampoo and hairspray to fucking hairdressing salons. True story. And you'd walk in and you'd have a pad with the new product on it and you'd have like a thousand sheets for the month, right? And you'd go, by the way, just, you know, before I leave, here are the details on our new shampoo. And you leave them a tear sheet before they throw you out the door, right? So it's a one pager that explains what's in the product, how much it costs, what they get and who it's for.
[00:18:20] Okay, now you're at sort of intermediate level at pilot level, sell your first paid discovery workshop.
[00:18:26] Sell your first run your first recommendation session. So after paid discovery, we go back to the client and we say, these are our recommendations and, and then we upgrade that paid discovery client into a growth plan. That's basically it. Sell a paid discovery workshop, present your recommendations, upgrade them into a growth plan. Then you're at top gun level. Document your paid discovery process so your team can do it. Your first paid discovery done by the team. So you're completely out of it. We have agencies in our program now who we work with who are not involved in doing paid discovery at all. Their team are doing it and the team should be converting paid discovery at a minimum of 70%.
[00:19:00] So clients who come in, we sell a paid discovery, the team does the paid discovery and at least 70% of those clients upgrade into a growth plan. Right? That's the metric. Now you know your Firestarters are baked in.
[00:19:10] Now let's move on to the products that we're rolling out for clients that actually fix the problem. So the first thing you want to do is choose one service to productise. It's usually the service that you do the most that's not quite documented yet, and the clients will buy without you even having to sell it. So what is the thing that clients come to you for the most? Right. Document that. Choose that one service to productize. Document how it's delivered. AI is your friend here. What do you do at each stage? What do they do at each stage? What do you need from them? How long does each bit take? Document that so you can train a new team member to do it. And by the way, develop a tear sheet for it. Right? Develop a tear sheet for that product. This is not an order. This is now a thing that we're going to do for a client that fixes a problem. So it might be launching a new ad campaign, it might be doing a card abandoned campaign in email, it might be, you know, doing a brand guide for them. We're rolling out brand guides for all of our clients at the moment. I'm building a test sheet to show them exactly what a brand guide is, why they need it, how it works and how they buy it. Okay. And then the team or the AI can actually do it. And then now you're at intermediate level in terms of your, your productizing and your accelerators. So at this point, multiple services are productized. The team can deliver products without you being on the tools and your profit per product is being tracked. You need to know how much it costs you to deliver a product to your client in terms of the hard cost, the fulfillment costs. Right. You also need to know how much it costs you to run your business while you're doing that. That's called your opex. And then you need to know your margin and you need to know how much each product costs the client so that you can sell it at the right price point so that you, so that you can scale without you doing the work and that you're profitable. Now you're at top gun level where all services are productized, the team are delivering everything, and everything is profitable. And we've got agencies who spend two or three hours a day looking at their business, but they are not involved in anything when it comes to client work. And everything is tracking on a CEO dashboard. It's a traffic light system. They know if it's red, yellow or green. Happy days. It's not all rainbows and unicorns. Of course there's always fucking problems that need solving, but they're not in the deliverables and their team are delivering products and it's not a client services business because that's a horrible business to be in.
[00:21:29] Now let's talk about your signature system. Let's go back to beginner cadet level. Right. The first thing with the signature system, the first way to start here is just to list out all of the services that you offer with the benefits that the client receives. So just stick it into AI. Here's everything that we offer our clients. Give us a benefit for each of these services. Right, that's your master list. Then what you want to do is develop each of these into what I call stepping stones. And so a stepping stone might be to get a client from A to B, we need to do xyz. And so the stepping stone is they start here and when they've been working with us for a month, they're now here. Describe that transformation, describe that stepping stone. So we've got a brand guide, we've got brand consistency across social media and all the social media templates are built out and the client's team are using it. Great. So that's a stepping stone. Right? Then what you want to do is develop those stepping stones into what I call pillars of transformation. And this is where you look at everything that you do for clients and you break it down into three pillars.
[00:22:26] By the way, I'm doing this right now. If you download the checklist, you'll see this in action because I'm literally walking you through the stepping stones and our pillars of transformation. The way that we help agencies is we help them grow their authority, productize their shit and scale, right? Grow, package, scale. They're our three pillars and we've got stepping stones within each of them and then we've got beginner, intermediate, advanced tactics within each of those. Literally. I'm reading you the checklist right now. So download the checklist and you'll see what pillars of transformation and stepping stones look like.
[00:22:57] Then you're at pilot level. And what you want to do here is build out a 12 month roadmap that you can go and present to clients after your paid discovery session and say, hey, if we were to work together over the next 12 months, here's everything we would do. These three kind of pillars might be traffic, might be building trust and might be getting, you know, transformation. So hey, we're going to get you a lot of traffic. We're going to help build trust on your website and GMB and your social media profiles and trustpilot and reviews and testimonials and social proof. Then we're going to convert that traffic and transform it into clients or donations or leads or whatever the fuck it is they need, right?
[00:23:30] So map that out in a visual roadmap. Here's everything we do for a client over 12 months. And then what you want to do is here's the big secret on how to document your sops in your agency. I hear this all the time. Agencies want an operating system they can plug into. Here's how to do it. You get your team to document the processes, but what you do first is you document what the gold standard looks like. I'll give you an example. If you're publishing blog posts for a client, here's what the gold standard blog post looks like. All the images have alt text. We have heading subheading, we have bulleted lists, we have an FAQ section at the bottom because we know AI engines love that, right? Here's the gold standard of a blog post. If we're rolling out brand guides for clients, here's the gold standard of a brand guide. It's got to include these components. So everyone we do is measured against the gold standard and then your team will figure out how to get there. You can't figure out how to get there if you don't know what there looks like. So that's what you need to document first and then convert your paid discovery clients into signature system clients. So anyone who comes in for paid discovery, let's upgrade them into a growth plan and convert them into a signature system. Client. That's how clients will hang around for three years and become $100,000 client.
[00:24:43] Now you're at top gun level, you want to have a scorecard. Remember I spoke previously about developing a scorecard for lead gen using scoreapp. Same thing. Have a scorecard for the signature system. Signature system assessment. So run your, your, your scorecard through your signature system and ask client. We ask clients 27 questions before they come on board with us because we know exactly where the gaps are and we know exactly which part of the signature system to dial in first to get them the quickest win and quick wins hook them in. They trust us, they become long term clients. We've got clients have been on our programs for over five years, right? Happily still renewing and paying in full for the next year because we're still adding value. Then the team are delivering the signature system and then of course you as the CEO, the signature system is being, is profitable and you are tracking the profitability of that on your CEO dashboard. That in a nutshell is how you package up your ip. Now let's talk about how you scale.
[00:25:39] So scale all comes down to three things. Automation and AI. Elevating your team and writing the playbook. Right? And again the short version of writing the playbook is to get your team to do it. So if you're a cadet, the first thing you want to do. I'm going to talk about automation. If you're brand new at this, just identify the seven key automations that you need in your agency. Think about marketing, sales, onboarding, delivery, finance, client success. What are the seven key automations? Siri's transcribing this in real time for some reason because I asked her to, obviously. Thanks Siri. What are the seven key automations that you need in your business that are going to improve efficiencies? I'll give you a clue. If you find yourself tapping on the keyboard doing the same thing over and over again, just automate it or give it to AI. Document those automations before you build them. So document the outcome. What's the automation supposed to do? Again? AI is going to be your, your friend here. Mainus.im is off the charts at the moment. It is so good for doing this stuff and then launch your first automation.
[00:26:35] Now you're at a pilot level. All automations are documented. Automations are being reviewed regularly on a, on at least a 90 day basis. You should be reviewing all your automations and the team are owning at least 50% of these automations. Don't automate Shit. And then expect your team to know what's going on. Get your team to automate things and get them to document it at a top gun level. Your team own all the Automations. You don't even know where they are anymore. All relevant automations are live and they're being stress tested at least once every 90 days and the team are just reporting back to you. That's where you need to be. You can't chase your team for this information.
[00:27:08] You'll just drive yourself crazy. You'll burn out and you'll drive them crazy.
[00:27:12] Future org chart. Let's talk about elevating your team. If you're a cadet level, you need to have a future org chart in terms of what your agency looks like in 12 months time. If you haven't got that documented, how do you know who to hire next? Team onboarding needs to be documented and you need to have a job scorecard for every role in the business. Right? And then you hire your first or next team member against the job scorecard. We've got custom GPTs that do this for all of our agencies. It's not hard.
[00:27:39] Hire against the job scorecard. Don't hire based on availability. Hire based on ability and proven track record. And the only question you need to answer when you're hiring someone. Actually there's two questions. Actually there's three. One, do I like you? Are we a cultural fit? Can I hang out with you and talk about life? Two, what are the chances of your success against the job scorecard? And three, do you want to hang around for five years and have a leadership role? If you're answering yes to all of those questions, they're a good hire. Most people hire based on availability, not ability.
[00:28:08] Now you're at pilot level, right? You've got to have a meeting cadence for your team at least once a week. You're checking in with your team to make sure that everyone's cool and everyone's happy. Team communications documented. Do we communicate? And click up. Do we communicate in Slack? Do we shout at each other on WhatsApp? How. How do we communicate? You've got to have a process for that and team are owning the culture. You can't dictate the culture down to the team. The, the team need to build the culture and they need to start documenting. This is what we do Friday afternoons. We just want to hang out on Zoom and just hang shit on each other and chat and maybe high five each other. We need a couple of hours on Zoom every Friday just to connect. Right? Let Your team lead that at top gun level in terms of elevating your team, your team are recruiting new team members, right? You're out of that. Your team are reporting on outcomes and you've got leadership pathways developed so that your team know that, that there's an ascension plan here for them to keep developing. All right? People will leave your organization. Don't care how much you're paying them, they will leave if they feel like there's no opportunity for them to develop.
[00:29:08] Final piece of the puzzle here is documenting the playbook and how you run your agency. If you're at a cadet level, gonna go back to the beginner, identify all the SOPs you need in your agency, right? Again, there's probably a handful. There's probably seven to ten SOPs that you actually need to run your agency. Then the only SOP you need as the agency owner, the only SOP you need is the SOP for creating SOPs. And then you give that to your team and you have your team start to build the SOPs, or you have AI build the SOPs. And you don't need to store them anywhere, just put them in a folder in your AI and give your team access to it. And so if they're stuck, they can search. Hey, I've forgotten how to install Google Tag Manager on a WordPress website. How do we do it these days? Oh, there it is. There. I don't need to click 15 buttons through a Notion dashboard just to find an SOP buried in some fucking folder because someone decided to name it final. Final. Don't touch this. This is the real one, right? Just put it in AI and let AI search do the job at a pilot level. Your team should be building all the SOPs. They're assigned the SOPs. And your CEO dashboard is live. So you know the key metrics and the key numbers that you're looking at every week in the business. And you're running a simple red, yellow, green traffic light system right at top gun level. Your master playbook is published. All of your SOPs at this point are bundled up. By the way, this is kind of. This becomes the book that you might want to write if you're a thought leader, if you want to go down that path. Your SOPs are constantly stress tested, similar to your automations, and your CEO dashboard is completely hands off. So you're not updating anymore. Your team and the automation are doing it and you're just reviewing it.
[00:30:44] That's it. Hey, thanks for listening to the agency. Our podcast and a huge shout out again to our sponsors, E2M for helping us make this possible. Seriously, this podcast wouldn't be possible without their support. And so if you are overwhelmed and you have things in your agency that you know you need to do but you can't because you're overwhelmed with updating WordPress websites or building websites for clients or running SEO campaigns or doing content for clients, then just go and hit up e2m Solutions.com find the page to Agency Mavericks. I think it's just e2m Solutions.com AgencyMavericks and you'll be able to get on a call with them, get a discount for your first month. They will look after you because they love agencies from our community and they will be able to. They are the only trusted white label partner that we recommend to take care of your services for your clients so that you can focus on growing your business. So go and hit up etc and we have a chat.
[00:31:38] All right. Thanks again for listening to the Agency our podcast. Please share this with anyone you think might find it helpful. Subscribe, do all that kind of stuff and I look forward to speaking with you again when I'm back from holidays. Until then, I'm Troy Dean. Let's get to work.
