Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I did find that I was overworking under the veil of like, I'm wanting to grow and I need to just put in this hustle. But I kind of got a bit of advice, asking myself the question, like, what are you avoiding? And it was a lot to do with conversations, relationships. Things were a bit uncomfortable, things that I didn't know what to do, if not that.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Welcome to the Agency, our podcast where we help digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams and their communities. This week we're joined by Simon Kelly, CEO and head of growth at Seriously Good Design. He hasn't noticed that we're well past the number of episodes that he's agreed to co host, so we'll just keep him on until he does. This week we're exploring the beliefs that govern your decisions. Why the way you're doing things is not working, why you're never going to be happy with every single little thing your team does, how you can stop doing all the things you don't like without losing money and a whole lot more. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us.
Before we dive into this episode, we have a very special announcement here. We have just launched an online community for digital agency owners. That's right, I'm talking to you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. If you're listening to this and you own a digital agency and you are selling web design, web development, SEO, digital marketing, content funnels, YouTube growth, podcast, growth branding. If you are selling marketing related services to other businesses, we've just launched a community for you. It's called the agency community. It's $1 to get started. We'll put a link near this episode and in the community. I just did the first live stream this morning where I laid out the roadmap to scale your agency. And every week I'll be going live in that community and I'll be teaching you one thing. In what we call an agency workshop, I'll be teaching you one specific thing every week. Live in that community to help you move the needle wherever you are in the business. If you need to grow your revenue, if you need to package up your growth plans, if you need to hire a team, if you need to figure out your org chart, if you need to figure out your automations, embrace AI, whatever it is you need, if you need to figure out partnership agreements, whatever you need in your agency, I'll be going live every week to teach you one thing from the blueprint, which is really the roadmap on how to scale your agency to the next level. And when I say scale. I mean whatever level you are comfortable with. It could be getting to seven figures, another seven figures. It could be just adding another 300 grand in recurring. It could be getting to 300 grand in recurring. Whatever level you're at is. Okay, come and join us in the community. It's a dollar to get started. I look forward to seeing you in there. I'll put a link near this episode so you can click and come and join us.
Simon Kelly is joining us again on the Agency Hour this week and is making the questions that he wants to ask me. He's making all sorts of assumptions. One, that I know what I'm doing, Two, that I've done the thing that he's asking me about, and three, that I know how to communicate what I've done to him. So this will be fun. Simon Kelly, welcome to the Agency Hour.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks again, mate. It's going to be good to be here. It's going to be a bit of blind leading the blind, I think with this one it is.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Well, I remember when I had Yost on the podcast 150 years ago, before anyone knew who he was. I said, so what do you do when you're not working? He said, would you make an assumption that I'm. That I'm not working? Like he said, I work all the time and I have three children. So apart from that, you know, he's like, why would you assume that when I'm not working, I'm not working, he's. When I'm not working, I'm working. When I'm not with the children, I'm working. When I'm not working, I'm working.
And so I think what I feel like is that you have some questions for me today that you assume that I know the answers to.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: It'll make for an interesting conversation.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Dear, dear me. Yeah, so last week we were talking about vision and how vision is the thing that gets your team aligned.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: And values is. So vision is what, you know, like, well, what are we doing? We're going to go out and we're going to get blind and we're going to get ten pin bowling. Woohoo. Everyone knows what that looks like. We're going to end up in a karaoke bar singing Van Morrison songs to each other. Right. That's the vision. The values are the beliefs that govern our decision making. Right?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: So I have nothing on tomorrow. I can get plastered. I have no responsibilities, no children. I can sleep in all day. Therefore I make decisions to get blotto if I Have to get up in the morning and parent at 7 o' clock. That belief now governs my decisions and chances are I'm not going to get blotto because parenting with a hangover is no fun. For those of you who have done it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
And then so vision and values. And then the mission is, right, let's go and get some tequila shots and throw these balls down the pins and see if we can get a strike.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Right?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: That's actually what we're doing because the vision is we're going to have a great team building, not getting drunk, playing ten pin bowling and going singing karaoke. The values, you know, be kind to each other, don't do yourself too much damage, look after each other, you know, every man counts kind of thing. And then the mission is now, now we're actually going to do the thing that's going to get us closer to the vision and we're going to operate within the values.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Right?
[00:05:06] Speaker B: So that's what we talked about last week, this week, by the way, we didn't talk about Tim, pinball or karaoke last week at all. This week we're talking about, well, what do you want to know this week?
[00:05:18] Speaker A: What do I want to know?
That's to assume I'll be able to find what I want to know. So what was reflecting on last week's episode? During the episode, actually. But If I had 10 seconds to really talk during last week's episode, I might have been able to answer some questions.
So this week.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Oh, touche.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: No, no, not at all. It was fantastic. Value. It's probably better that I just could like just wave here or something.
So it's, it's around being the technician, so the one who knows or thinks they know or assumes they know how to do the thing. So agency owners, business owners, being the one who produces the product, delivers the service, then saying, right, okay, how can I turn this into a company?
Do I hire someone who can do what I do or part of what I do? Or do I hire someone way better than me? Do I codify what I do and then become a teacher? So going from that like single to scale technician to teacher technician to CEO, however, we want to kind of carve that up because that's been something that, that you have done. Like you didn't have a coaching business at one point, right? You now have coaches, you have here, people on the team.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Well, so again, the assumptions, there's a few assumptions here. One is that, you know, first of all let's just.
Just talk about the elephant in the room, right?
First thing is you are never going to be as happy.
I would suggest it's very, very unlikely that you are always going to be happy with what your team, everyone on your team does all of the time.
So let's just call it for what it is. There are always going to be things that your team does where you scratch your head and go, what the actual fuck are you doing? Like, why would you do that? I don't understand. I would never have done it that way.
My way is definitely better. Okay, that is just.
If you started out like, let's talk about Ray Kroc for a second. Right? Ray Kroc didn't know anything about hamburgers except he liked putting them in his face and eating them. And then he discovered the McDonald's brothers who had this conveyor belt kind of system of making hamburgers really fast, right? And I mean, so the story goes, he was, you know, parked in. He was a traveling salesman selling fucking vacuum cleaners or whatever he was trying to sell. And he gets a burger and he's like, that burger was way too quick. It's gonna taste like rubbish. And turns out it tasted amazing. And he's like, how the hell are you doing that? And he peers into the kitchen and sees the conveyor. He knows nothing about burgers, but he understands business and he understands opportunity. So at the age of 56, or whatever he was, he buys into the McDonald's business and the rest is history, right?
So he was never flipping burgers. He was an entrepreneur. He never had to make the transition from flipping burgers to scaling a chain of burger restaurants. He was always about, how do we scale this? You guys have figured out how to make burgers. I'm going to figure out how to scale it. So the assumption that Ray Kroc is the best at making burgers was something that he never had to overcome because he never did it. Okay? So at some point, if you are a technician and what Michael Gerber, for all his flaws, said, of which there are many, said something right once, which was, you know, most businesses start essentially. I'm paraphrasing here, but you know, what he basically said is most businesses start when a technician has a brain fart and decides to become an entrepreneur and thinks they can start a business.
And it's very difficult to go from technician to business owner. However, it's just a decision.
Once you make the decision that I'm no longer a technician, that I'm a business owner, somebody Else has to figure out how to do the technical thing that I was doing. Adam Silverman's done this really well. He was deep in building code, you know, web apps, websites, whatever. He wouldn't know how to log into GitHub these days, right? Because he hasn't done it for that long. He made a decision that.
Because of the. Because the problem with just being a technician is there's no leverage.
You will only get paid while you're clicking the shutter on the camera or punching the keyboard or clicking the mouse. That's what you're getting paid for, right? If you're a graphic designer, you're getting paid to design graphics or build brand books in Canva. If you're a web designer, you're getting paid to build websites in Webflow or WordPress or whatever. If you're a funnel hacker, you're getting paid to do shit in click funnels or high level, right? There's no leverage in that.
It doesn't matter how much you charge. If you're not working, you're not getting paid.
So when you. When you recognize that's a problem that you want to fix. And by the way, most people don't ever want to fix that problem, because with fixing that problem comes a whole new series of headaches and a whole new level of responsibility that most people just don't want, which is fine.
But if you don't want it, don't try, because you just end up overwhelming yourself. Once you make that decision that you want leverage, then you have to think of yourself as a business owner and you have to basically forget yourself as a technician. And that's really hard to do, primarily because being a technician is fun because it's what we know, it's what we're good at, it's what we've been paid for in the past. We enjoy it. And that's his sweet spot. If you look at Icky Guy or you look at, you know, good to great by.
I always forget this guy's name. The guy that wrote Good Great Jim Collins. If you look at Jim Collins, he talks about the hedgehog effect, right? If you look at Icky Guy, the Japanese book, it's based on the same principle, right? The sweet spot says, what are you good at? And what do you enjoy? Well, good to Great, the Hedgehog effect and Icky Guy. The third circle in that Venn diagram is what will the market pay for, Right?
So what are you good at? What do you enjoy? What does the market pay for? And as a technician, you sit right in the middle. I build websites. I love it, I'm good at it. People pay me for it. Why the hell would you want to get out of that? You are literally in flow.
The problem is there's no leverage and you're only getting paid while you're working. So this is the dilemma, right? And this is why most people find it really hard.
Because what you have to do is you have to get out of the middle of that icky Guy Venn diagram, and you have to get into the middle of another one. And to get into the middle of the other one, which is called the entrepreneur, you have to learn how to be an entrepreneur. Because when you start, you are terrible at it. You're terrible at letting go. You're terrible at managing, you're terrible at hiring.
I mean, you've watched me do this. You've watched me micromanage people out the door, right? Saya, what happened? I thought things were going well. Well, you won't let me do my job. You're micromanaging me. So I'm leaving.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: You're not walking out the door properly. That's not how I would do it.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: If it was me, this is how I would quit. Exactly right? I'll put a course together that shows you how to quit. So you have to learn how to be an entrepreneur, right? Initially, you don't enjoy it because you shit at it. And we typically don't enjoy things that we're bad at.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: And you don't like you still, you don't know if anyone's going to pay you for it. Because typically when you become an entrepreneur, you go through a period where you pay all your staff or you pay your contractors. And if there's any leftover, you're lucky, you get paid at the end of the month.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:34] Speaker B: So literally going from being in the sweet spot of a technician to being the sweet spot of an entrepreneur is a complete reinvention of yourself as a person. And your sense of self worth and your value and all of that, your joy, your sense of meaning, all of that needs to be completely unlearned and relearned. And that's why most people don't do it. So I just wanted to park that. I just wanted to give you some context. Is it around, like, why this is a monumental task?
[00:13:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: And it sounds like, it sounds like there's, like there's more reasons for the person who's saying maybe that they want to do it, I want to be a business owner to keep them on the tools because it's more Comfortable because they've got the skills for it already. They've already got momentum, so it's easy to just keep doing what they're already doing rather than be like, well, I'm going to do the transfer and I'm no longer to be good at this anymore. I'm choosing not to do this anymore. I'm now choosing to learn management communication with team. Being the business owner in some way, not knowing how to do the thing, a lot more uncomfortable. So almost every reason to stay as a technician, Correct?
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Now, when you finally land in the sweet spot of being an entrepreneur, the good news is that you don't have to completely let go of all the stuff that you enjoy, right? You can come back and kind of pick and choose when you want to put a technician's hat on and go, oh, well, you know, like, maybe we could do. Maybe we could solve this technical problem. Like, I know Adam Silverman still does this. He will still consult with his team and certain clients to go, maybe we could tackle it from this point of view, right? Or, you know, from a strategy point of view. Simon Major enjoys talking about strategy with clients. At some point you become redundant, though, because at some point you just don't, like, you don't get it anymore, right? Like, Simon Major has no idea how to run an SEO campaign anymore. He understands the strategy, but he literally can't log into the tools and do it. It's been that long. He wouldn't know where to start. So at some point you do become useless. It's like, no, no, no, you don't. It might be fun for me to build a website, but God help us. Like, nobody on the team wants me doing that, right? Because I don't. I literally don't. I mean, I don't know what I'm doing anymore, right? Thomas Amos and I had this conversation recently and he was like, yeah, the world's moved on, mate. We're all doing it in blocks now. And I'm like, really?
[00:14:52] Speaker C: Well, okay.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Jesus. Shit. Can I just, you know, still use the old page builder that I was using a hundred years ago? Well, you can, but if you do, you're on your own. We can't help you with that anymore, right? So at some point you do become useless.
But the, the. I think, to answer your question, once you make a decision that you're a business owner, I think it's a mistake to codify how you do what you do and try and get other people to follow your path, right? If you, If I said you, I want to Run a marathon. And I know you've run. How many marathons have you run now?
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Three.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Three. Okay. So if I said I want to run a marathon, you are great, man. I've got the blueprint on the training regime for how to run a marathon. I said, great. What's the, what's the first thing we're going to do, Simon? Teach me. I'm going to run a. I want to run a marathon. I'll be 52 in September. I've got two kids under the age of eight, right? I'm going to run a marathon for the first time. What's the first thing I have to do?
[00:15:50] Speaker A: The first thing is to look at something in the next 12 months that you can commit to so that there's no turning back.
So that would be the first thing. The next thing is to get a benchmark on where you're running is at this point so we can see what we got to work with easy.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Okay? See?
So neither of those. The benchmark, maybe. See for me, right, I just want to put my shoes on and start running, right? And so the point I'm trying to make is also, you might tell me I have to get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning and go for a 15k run with you before work.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: What is that? Sleep in? What are you talking about, mate?
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Correct. As I said, I got two kids under the age of eight, right? So every moment in bed I cherish. So every moment in bed without the children in the same bed, I cherish.
So the, the point I'm trying to get is if committing to running a marathon, right, is that I'm going to run the marathon and I make the decision internally within my brain, I'm going to run a marathon. I'm running a marathon this year, right? And I make the decision and I make that commitment to myself.
I will find a completely different way to prepare and get across the finish line to you, right? But if I don't make that decision, doesn't matter how many blueprints you give me or how many guided programs you give me, it's not going to happen. I will sabotage it because I haven't made the decision to get across the finish line, right? And to enjoy one of our 0b pale ales at the finish line with our mate Barry, right?
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Barry the Beer Baron.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Barry the Beer Baron. Still waiting for that sponsorship phone call, Barry. So once you make the decision, then I think what, as a business owner, what you need to do is you need to. For me, typically, what has worked better over the years is not micromanaging people into my process, but is saying, this is what a gold medal looks like in your role. This is what you're. This is the outcome that you're responsible for. This is what a gold medal looks like for you.
[00:17:51] Speaker C: Right?
[00:17:52] Speaker B: You tell me how you're going to get there.
You don't have to tell me now over the next few months, tell me, keep communicating with me, train me, Teach me how you're going to get a gold medal.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Max does this really well. And it's been a journey. Max has been here I don't know how long, eight, seven years. Maybe seven or eight years. Really only the last couple of weeks that he's really started to perform now.
Now.
But he's telling. He's constantly telling me what he's doing and what's working.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: I would have no idea how he does half the things he does. I have to ask him sometimes, how do we do this? I want to send an email here. He's like, yep, no worries, blah, blah, blah. And he goes and does it and he tells me what's working and what's not.
Because I'm. My. My headspace is wrapped up in so many other things. I can't possibly be across the detail in how 15 or 16 people do their job.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: And so, so this is so. I think so. I think codifying what you do and getting someone else to follow your process is not the right way to do it. That certainly hasn't worked for me. I think it's the. One of the slowest ways to do it. Unless you are a product business like McDonald's where you're just churning out the same thing over and over again. Yes, we have blueprints on how to do something. We have. We have project plans on how to launch a course. We have project plans on how to run a live event. We have that stuff documented.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: But people in the business are responsible for outcomes. I don't know how Jane does her job as a client success manager or head of client success. I don't know how Johnny does his job as a coach. I don't know how Jana does her job as, you know, admin and client success assistant, or Wendy does her job as finance assistant in the Philippines, or jc, our CFO does his job. I have no idea how he does his job. All I know is that I get information from them that tells me that they're doing their job and that they're working on it and that things are moving in the right direction.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I don't. I can't know the details because if 15 people tell me all the details, my head would explode.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: And if you had to teach them all the details, that would be no good for anyone really.
But, you know, it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you know what the gold medal is for those roles. You're like, yeah, cool. I know what the outcome is that they're trying to achieve here.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, at a high level, I do. But also, I mean, they, the team, I think, are educating me. Certainly Jane and Max, who are probably the two people I spend the most time with because they're in Melbourne and, and to a lesser degree, jc, our finance officer. But Jane and Max certainly are the ones that are telling me, you know, what their gold medal looks like. And, you know, and it's, it's a moving target, but it's, you know, Max is not doing bookkeeping or, you know, spending his life in finance spreadsheets because that's not part of his role. Do you know what I mean? And so, you know, he will tell me what's happening at mavcon from an AV point of view. He will tell me what's happening with our. We were just talking about short videos this morning and how tragic it is really, that short videos outperform. I don't know why we bother making long form videos because shorts outperform everything. And he will tell me when shorts are being posted and what platform we're doing it and what tool we're using to get there. I wouldn't have a friggin clue.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Right?
[00:21:00] Speaker B: So. And if it's not working, he'll kill it. And if it is. So the interesting thing is I found a video the other night on YouTube, came up in my feed. I'm like, oh, this is interesting. So what I do now is I send it to Max, or if something comes up from a sales point of view or a funnel point of view, I send it to Addison and I'll say, hey, is there anything here worth checking out? Max came back and said, yep, that YouTube strategy I was talking about yesterday, that we're, that we're Starting, this new YouTube strategy is based on that video that you just sent me. He said, I watched it the other day and I'm implementing it. So he's a couple of days ahead of me. I'm like, great. I saw the thumbnail, I started watching the video and went, this is interesting, but it's for Max. I don't need to know.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Right?
[00:21:37] Speaker B: These particular Details. Max was already on it. He was ahead of me. So I think, you know, what this requires you to do is to let go of the process. It's like watching your partner cook in the kitchen.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: It's like, jesus, what are you doing? I would never have done it like that. But this is a really nice meal. Thanks, I appreciate it. But that looked really painful and messy and I wouldn't have done it that way. But, hey, go, you. You do you right, you do you kind of thing, right? And just let it go. I'm not the cook anymore. I own the building that the restaurant's in. I don't even own the restaurant. I'm a landlord and the restaurant is leased off me. Do you know what I mean? So I don't really care what the chef does. Just don't poison me, you understand? Like this. That's kind of where my head is these days as a business owner.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And like, this meal is delicious and that's fantastic.
No need to go any further. So great outcome achieved.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Right. And also, maybe I think I could cook it better, but it doesn't matter because my job is to own the building.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Not run the restaurant.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Keep that to yourself because then you'll end up having to be in the kitchen and then.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Correct. That's right.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: You're the one cooking.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Well, that's exactly. That's. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: So. So if this is where things are now, like a bit of a snapshot of, like, we talked a bit about the kind of challenge and the. A mistake a bit is in thinking that you need to codify the most important thing. Sounds like it's making the decision and making that commitment, because everything else follows from there. And you've talked a bit about where you are now. So if we. If someone that's listening, myself included, perhaps, is thinking about, okay, well, like, bridging that gap, like one for you. Like what? Walk us through. Like, what.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: What was that?
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Like, what did you try when maybe you. You thought you made the decision, maybe you did, maybe you didn't, and then you tried some things and, like, where did you kind of go wrong? And what did you.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: There's a couple of big learnings here. And I've got to give a shout out to my friend Nikesh Thikolal from Leads Hook because, you know, he's taught me so much about this over the years.
Mr. X. He's affectionately known as, in our circles, Nick. G' day. If you're watching or listening and he's probably not. And that's fair enough too.
Is that so? First of all, right, I said to him once, if I hire this person, which I think is the right thing to do, but I'm nervous because if I do hire this person in this particular role, what's my job?
And I remember we're in this house in Carlsbad in Southern California. We're out there for a Michael Gerber event, which is a whole other conversation.
And Nick, we're at this Airbnb and Nick was standing on the other side and we're basically masterminding on our own businesses. I was there with Dave Jennings and Mike Rhodes and Nick and myself, and I said, well, if I hire this person, what's my job? And Nick looked at me and he said, your job is to think.
I was like, what?
I reckon it took about three years for that to sink in, right? Said your job is to think.
And okay, so the other lesson, so just park that for a second. The other lesson, because it might take three years to sink in, the other lesson is don't hire on availability, hire on ability.
So if you hire someone because they're available, but they haven't done the job previously and they don't have the runs on the board, then you're going to spend your time working with that person to develop them and train them up and get them to do the job the way you want it done.
Now, the way you want it done is not working, because if it was, you wouldn't be looking to hire someone to do the job, right? Like if you, if you're, if you were the best marketing manager, if you were the best project manager in the world, you should hire a general manager to run your business and you just be the best project manager in the world.
But you're not, you're a hacker to project manager. Which is why, because you're an entrepreneur, you want to run the business.
So you don't you, you're not a world class project manager, so why would you hire someone because they're available and then teach them your half baked project management process?
That's a recipe for disaster, right?
So if, if your job is to think as a business owner and you can't hire based on availability, then here's what I did and I did and fuck it, mate, if I could go back and do this again, I said to my wife last night, actually, if I could go back 10 years, I'll be 52 this year. If I could go back 10 years, knowing what I know now, the thing, I mean, if I could go back 30 years, it's a whole different ball game. But if I could go back 10 years, dude, the things I would have done differently, right?
What I did over time was I gradually got to the point where I was so fed up with doing a particular task in the business that I just crossed it off my list and I said to the team, I'm not doing that anymore. And I don't care how that impacts the business. I don't care if we lose money because I'm not doing that anymore. I'm just not doing it. So someone else has to do it or we just don't do it anymore, right? What I would do now if I went back 10 years is I would make a list of all the things that I don't enjoy, that I'm not excellent at and that don't bring in high value clients, right? If I'm really good at doing this and I'm excellent at it and I really enjoy it, but it doesn't bring in high value clients, I wouldn't do it. I'd cross it off and I'd park it for later, right? If I'm really good at it and it brings in clients, but I don't like doing it. Like for example, sales calls, really good at them, they bring in high value clients. I don't particularly enjoy them, I'd cross it off the list, don't do it. And then you hire people based on their ability to do that job.
[00:27:32] Speaker C: Right?
[00:27:33] Speaker B: And then you spend your time thinking about how you're gonna grow revenue and maintain your profit margin so you can pay everyone to do the shit that you don't wanna do. And ultimately you end up with a business and I'm not there yet, I'm very close.
Ultimately you end up with a business that generates good revenue and good net profit for the business owners or owner at the end of the year and it doesn't require you to be involved in the day to day operations, right?
That's the goal. Because at that point you've got an asset that is generating profit for you as the business owner.
You can either just coast, do something else, start a brewery, follow Dan Norris's footsteps, poor bugger. Or you can sell the thing, right? The problem, so here's the next quantum leap is going from technician to CEO, is going from CEO to business owner, right? Because most businesses that have a board or have shareholders, the CEO is just one part of that decision making and equity share ecosystem, right? Whereas most agencies, the CEO is also the shareholder is also, the board is also the director makes all the decisions.
And the goal of a board, by the way, which is what we kind of operate as a virtual board for our clients. The goal of a board is to protect the business on behalf of the shareholders, to protect the business from poor management.
Which is why a CEO reports to a board every quarter and presents the numbers and says, what's happening? And then the board questions the CEO and advises the CEO on behalf of the shareholders.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Well, in a small business like ours, you typically don't have a board and the CEO is also the shareholder.
So I surround myself with really smart people like our cfo, like other people on the team, like my mentors. Hello, Nick. And I use those guys as a virtual board to hold me accountable so that I don't fuck up my own business and give myself as a shareholder poor dividends and poor performance.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Because you as CEO are also owning the business and also to some extent, managing the business as well.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: So there's multiple danger and it's a bad spot to be in. It's a bad spot to be. Because at the end of the day, if I'm not making enough money out of this business, I've only got myself to blame.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Hard to performance manage that person.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Correct. That's right.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: It's not impossible, but it's a pain in the ass.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: But that's what. But that's what you need, ultimately. That's what you need if you really want true leverage. You need someone to hold you accountable as the CEO.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So just not to get too detailed, but like, just talk about leverage for a moment. So in particular through the lens perhaps of an agency. So when you're solo, you don't have leverage. We don't have. You don't have team leverage, people, capital, I suppose. So that's. That's one thing. So what, what kind of like what leverage is, is going to be the. I don't know, the right level of balance for an agency owner as they're growing.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Sure. So the faster, if you're a solopreneur, the fastest thing to do, the fastest way to build leverage if you're a solopreneur, is to make a list of all the shit that you really don't want to do and that you're not great at, even if you enjoy building websites, if it's. If you're just too slow at it.
[00:31:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: And you know you're too slow at it. Put that on the to don't list. This is the stuff that I don't do anymore. Now the fastest way to do this, and I'm not, this is not me just, you know, gratuitously giving a plug to one of our partners. But the fastest way to get leverage is to take all the shit you don't want to do and give it to a white label outsourced partner like E2M for example. So when I, what I was doing back in the day, I was using a company called Anuva Tech. All they did was SEO, right? I'm still in contact with Hamill. They did a great job. And what I did is I was charging clients, I think I was charging clients 995 bucks a month for an SEO plan and it was costing me 250 bucks a month, right? And I had agency analytics, which at the time was called my SEO tool. I had that set up as a reporting tool. It would email a PDF report every Monday to my clients, which they never read. And, but you know, they knew that I was working on it and that rankings were moving in the right direction and I was making 750 bucks, net profit, clear profit out of each client, right? And that's how I got to 10k a month in recurring, right? Because that was completely leveraged. Someone else was doing the work, I was managing the client relationship and I had an automated reporting engine in the middle, right? So this is the kind of thing that we work with agencies on is like finding those efficiencies. Now if you're a solopreneur, the fastest thing to do is to get all of the repetitive stuff where you're banging keyboards and mouse clicks to build things, get that off your desk and give it to someone like E2M to do all your WordPress care plans, all your WordPress development, your high level builds, building funnels in high level, your SEO, your content writing, just give it to them AI, they've got a fractional AI consulting service now, right? So go and talk to your clients about how they can use AI and then just give the work to someone else. That's the fastest way to build leverage. So now what you've done is you've freed up your time, which is the only finite asset there is. Only finite resource in the world is your time, right? Everything else can be replaced. Money, body parts, most other things can be replaced, right? Except time.
So free up your time and then spend that time thinking about what you want your business to look like in three years time to support your life, right? And you'll very quickly you realize this Time that I've got to think is more valuable than going back to clicking the buttons.
And so then you think about the kind of services that you want to offer and how you can build a team around that, whether it's a white label team, whether it's using automation, whether it's using something like Search Atlas to do all of your AI SEO stuff, whatever it is, right? How do I use tools, technology and people to provide a service for my clients so that I can manage my client relationships, grow my revenue, and then ultimately maybe that's all I do and I get the business to a point where I've got, you know, I'll break down the math for you. 14 clients at 3 grand a month is 500 grand a year in recurring revenue, right? And it might cost you 150 a year in team tools and software to deliver all of that. And you make 350 grand a year and net profit. Fucking happy days. Just stay there. Just do that. Happy days. Buy a house, look after your kids.
[00:34:24] Speaker C: Done. Right?
[00:34:25] Speaker B: And just, just stay there.
Don't go any bigger. Cause going any bigger than that's gonna be a whole other series of headaches, trust me.
[00:34:32] Speaker C: Right?
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Or you might go, how do I get to a seven figure a year agency?
And you could do the same thing with 28 clients. You might have a one account manager working with you. So you might manage half the clients and your account manager might manage the other half. 28 clients, three grand a month. It's a million dollars a year. Even at that point, you should still be able to make 500 grand a year net profit.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: Right?
[00:34:53] Speaker B: And then just stay there, Just do that. You're done right now. If you want to go further than that, well, this is what you should be doing with your time is thinking about.
I see a lot of people trying to grow a business just to prove something to themselves.
Yeah. I would suggest you take up Muay Thai kickboxing instead and use that to prove to yourself that you're not a pussy. Because growing a business is a massive pain in the ass and you know, can cause you all sorts of physical and mental health issues. Right?
And so I'm just, I'm just calling a spade a spade, right? It's a massive pain in the ass. But if you do want to go to the next point and you want to grow a 2, 3, 4, $5 million agency, then it's all about team leverage. Comes from you. Basically, you have to take yourself out of the building. The bigger the business gets, the less you need to Be in the building. Because if, and here's how I know this to be true.
I've done it myself and I've seen plenty of other agency owners do it. You know how to run a $500,000 a year agency. You know how to run a $1 million a year agency. You don't know how to run a 3 million, 4 million, or $5 million a year agency.
And if you want to go from running a $2 million a year agency or a $500,000 a year agency to a $5 million a year agency, it's going to take you a long time because again, you have to get out of your sweet spot of running a $500,000 agency and learn how to get into the middle of the three circle Venn diagram called a $5 million agency. That's going to take a very long time and probably kill most entrepreneurial nerves that you have in your body and you'll be cooked. So the idea would, at that point, you become a shareholder, find someone else to run the thing who's done it before.
That's the fastest way to do it. It's just the way that most people don't want to do it because most people want to keep their hands on the wheel, right? Most people, they go, well, that's great. Now I'm a shareholder of a $5 million a year business and I'm making heaps of money. But what am I fucking doing with my time? I'm bored now.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: I've got to find a hobby and fix those failed friendships that I let go for so many years. How far out? Can't even run.
Oh, God.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: I better build a website, right?
[00:37:11] Speaker B: 100%. This is what happens. This is exactly what happens. People don't know what to do with themselves. Yeah, right.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: I did find that I was overworking under the veil of, like, I'm wanting to grow and I need to just put in this hustle. But I kind of got a bit of advice, asking myself the question, like, what are you avoiding?
And it was a lot to do with conversations, relationships, things were a bit uncomfortable, things that I didn't know what to do. If not that, what are you going to do? And then I started to. It was the decision. It was like, well, okay, this is way out of balance. I'm choosing to like. I had to physically eject myself from house and office to just be out in world, to be like, right, I'm going to sign up for a couple of things. And it happened to be running and marathons and Events and doing things with my friends that may sound really nice, like doing things with your friends, why would that be uncomfortable? But if, yeah, like relationships, things not being exactly perfect, in complete control can feel uncomfortable. I think a lot of, and not just to do the male, female thing, but a lot of males. I looked at my, my parents, actually my, my dad and like the, the friendships that he kind of let go through, working his face off all the time was like, well, what else are you going to do other than work? If that's what you've been doing so much when you, when you don't have the mates to hang out with on the weekend or you're going to go do an event with them or call them up and let's go traveling or something, when that's gone because you've been in career mode, then it's, it's easier to stay in career mode, it's easier to stay in work mode than to be like, right, that was out of balance. This is uncomfortable. I want to repair this because in the next five years I want to have friends, I want to have relationships, I want to have peak life experiences outside of the keyboard.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I know this is a massive gender generalization, but I have witnessed this as well. By and large, you are correct females. And I believe. Well, and I've seen this happen, particularly mums.
[00:39:10] Speaker C: Right?
[00:39:10] Speaker B: And I don't. This is a generalization so please just keep it in your trackies and try not to flame me too much if you listen to this. But mums are really good at having lots of conversations and socializing with other mums, right? Because they are going through the most anxiety provoking experience of a human being's life. Like giving birth and looking after another human being is about as high stakes as it fucking gets, right? So mums are really good at building social networks and males, whether they're dads or not, males are, you know, I think part of it, and again, sorry to be gendered about this, but part of it I think is, you know, thousands of years of our DNA is to go out and kill the pig and bring home the bacon, right? And so part of what we want to do is we want to feel useful. And so working makes us feel good about ourselves, working makes us feel useful. The other thing is that because we're in the knowledge economy now, we're not manufacturing cars anymore and we're not manufacturing, you know, boats or weapons. Most of us work in the knowledge base industry. We get feedback really fast on our work. We do some work and people clap or buy or pay.
[00:40:14] Speaker C: Right?
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Or give us a testimonial. We. And that's addictive. That kind of. That's the icky guy thing. I know I'm good at this because People give me five star reviews within 24 hours of launching the thing. I know I'm good at this because I launched a campaign. We're getting calls booked for less than 50 bucks. I know I'm good at this. I enjoy it, and people will pay me for it. Really hard to get out of that.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Right?
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Unless you realize there's no leverage in it. And then even when you have built something with leverage, again, really hard to take it to the next level because you're above your pay grade. You don't know how to run a $5 million agency because you've never done it. That's gonna take you a fucking long time to unlearn everything you've learned to get it to 2 mil, right?
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah. That's huge. It goes beyond the how to and into the like decision.
What are you avoiding? Like, do you actually want this? Is this really what you want? Or is this a vessel to escape the thing you're uncomfortable with? And that's like, that's. That's getting pretty deep, but you might as well confront that 100%.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. And also, you know, Dan Sullivan. Such a massive fan of Dan Sullivan that it. The how is irrelevant. It's all been done, right? You think you're the first person trying to grow an agency from 2 to 5 mil or 10 mil or whatever? Like if. Fuck. It's been done so many times, it's ridiculous. The decision's already been. It's already been done.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: Right?
[00:41:35] Speaker B: The only question for you or for anyone listening to this is are you prepared to become a new version of yourself and get out of your own way long enough to find the. Who you need to surround yourself with to get to the next level, Right? And the reality is, most people are not prepared to go through that kind of personal growth.
It's massive personal growth. And I can tell you now, relationships change.
Intimate relationships change. Relationships with your family change. You might end up cutting off a bunch of friends you went to school with because they're just not on the fucking same page as you anymore. Because you're evolving and they're not. Or they're evolving in different directions, right? Whatever. You end up vibrating at a different frequency.
And your life changes. For the better or the worse, it just changes. And people are shit scared of change because they feel out of control.
So the question is, you know, are you hungry for that personal growth or are you just happy staying in your comfort zone and staying where you. Where you think it's safe? And, you know, if you're a follower of Seth Godin, what I believe, what he believes, which is the comfort zone, is not the safe zone. It's actually the danger zone.
And so the how doesn't matter. The how doesn't matter. The how does not matter. It's the who. It's the only how that matters is this. How am I going to pay the people I need to help me get this to the next level and stay profitable? That's the only thing you need to figure out as a, as a business owner. And you don't need to figure anything else out because your people will figure all the other shit out.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Love it. Huge. Well, that goes a bit beyond the question that I asked at the beginning, but way more relevant to the conversation, I think, than what my question was. So that's awesome.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Awesome.
Having said all of this, it would be remiss of me not to mention that we have launched a community for agencies.
We will put a link near this podcast. You can come and join for a dollar. Hang out.
I'm. I went live this morning. I'm going live in there every week. I went live this morning and I basically laid out the blueprint of how to scale your agency to whatever point you're comfortable scaling it. There are no rules. There's no right or wrong answer. And every week I'm going live in that community to teach one specific thing that will help you move whatever needle you're trying to move, whether it's revenue, team, processes, automation, whatever it is. And there's a bunch of other agency owners in there, so come and check it out. I go live every week. It's a dollar to join. We'll put the link near the podcast.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: Episode here so that, that dollar to join. That's eight years ago, I think. I don't think it was a very successful campaign for you back then, but that got me into this entire ecosystem of Troy Dean. So I remember, I think if this kind of conversation and content is something you find valuable, then there's. There's more of this tactical stuff as well. But this is the, this is the high leverage kind of thinking to surround yourself with.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks for joining us again, mate.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Dude, my pleasure. Thanks for answering questions with. Yeah, not directly. Appreciate it.
That's super valuable. It's great. Hey, look terrified.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: You look terrified.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: I'm here for it, mate. I'M excellent for it.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Brilliant. Well, I appreciate you being here again. Thanks for joining us on the agency. Where can people reach out and say hi to you? By the way, thanks.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: You can find me on LinkedIn. It's where I'm most active these days. Or jump on and see what we're doing from an agency perspective. SGD.com regularly publishing new content related to web design, SEO, owning an agency and all that.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Cool. Love it. Thanks Simon Kelly.
[00:45:24] Speaker A: Appreciate it.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency, our podcast, and a massive thanks to Simon again for joining us. I'm already looking, looking forward to catching up with him again in person at our next live event, mavcon, which is happening in Bali in a few weeks. It's completely sold out and I cannot wait to go and hang out by the pool, talk about agency life, get a bit of a suntan and have a bit of a chill out for a few days and enjoy some of that wonderful Balinese weather and food and hospitality. Okay folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean and remember, the inventor of Pringles is buried in a Pringles can.
