Defining what agency growth means to you and setting the path to achieve it with Marquel Russell

Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to midsize agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant.

Please welcome your host, drew McClellan. Hey, everybody. Drew McClellan here with the Agency Management Institute this week with another episode of Build a Better Agency. And today we’re going to talk about scale. We’re going to talk about growth. And, you know, one of the conversations that I have with agency owners every day is growth doesn’t always mean bigger.

Growth doesn’t always mean more bodies. Growth doesn’t always mean more locations. Growth can mean what you want it to mean. For many of you, what you really mean when you drill down to it is more money or profit, more AGI, more scalability, more services might be, more, well known. So understanding when we say growth and scale, what do you actually want to grow and what do you actually want to scale.

And that’s what today’s expert, and guest is going to talk about. So Markwell, Russell, is a scale, a business scale expert. He helps businesses grow exponentially, but in a really intentional way. And again, and as he’s going to tell you, it’s not always about more bodies. And in fact, sometimes it’s about less bodies doing more important work.

So, I think it’s going to be a great episode. Get your pencil ready, because I think you’re going to take a lot of notes. And so, without any further ado, let’s welcome him to the show. Markelle, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me, drew. I’m excited to be here. Tell everybody a little bit about your background, how you came to have this expertise.

And then I’m going to dig in and start asking you a million questions. Yeah for sure. So I’m, I’m a, I’m what some may call an entrepreneur supremacist. Right. Like I’ve always been an entrepreneur. Yeah. I’ve always been an entrepreneur. From cutting grass in a neighborhood or taking out trash to in middle schools selling we. Right. I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial.

I started entertainment company doing artist management and club promotions at one point. And when I was in the club one night, which I usually was in the entertainment industry, I actually got introduced to network marketing. So I got invited to a network marketing event, start seeing start a presentation. There was like, hey, all you gotta do is get to and I’ll get to it and I’ll get to.

So I joined this network marketing opportunity. They didn’t really teach marketing in the guys. My crew who I grew up with, they weren’t really interested in that type of stuff. So I was like, okay, how do I figure this out? And I actually was led to the internet. I didn’t know people was making money on the internet and stuff like that.

So I bought a my first e-book online that taught me how to grow my network marketing business without home parties, without home meetings and all these different type of stuff. And that actually led me into direct response marketing and that, I mean, it led me to direct sports marketing and personal development and then I figured to direct the direct response.

Marketing stuff was very fascinating to me. And I just start going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, which the internet normally does, and I saw that other businesses were struggling with lead generation and getting clients, and I found out I had a gift for teaching that simplified these concepts for strategies. And we started a company called Client Attraction University.

And we’ve helped over 3000 businesses automate their marketing systems and so they can actually scale. But I realized that marketing and sales is just one part of scale. You actually need to know operations, teams, systems, processes, adult infrastructure, all that good stuff. So that led us to create a company called Strategic Scale Institute, which is solely around helping businesses build companies that can actually run without a.

Yeah. So that’s that’s I think where we’re going to focus today, this idea of scaling and and how business are business owners can think about their business differently. So one of the conversations I’m having with agency owners all the time is that bigger doesn’t always mean bigger. It doesn’t always mean more butts in seats. It doesn’t always mean more headcount.

So as you think about helping businesses of all kinds scale, talk a little bit about scale means in terms of is it about how many what the headcount is for the staff? Is it about that you’re moving faster? What when you’re looking at a company that is scaling effectively, what are they doing. Yeah. So great question. So I actually so to your point I actually thought their scale at one point more headcount, more top line revenue, bigger events bigger bigger bigger faster faster, faster.

But I realize the strategic scale is really about a multiplication and duplication and replication. Right? You can actually duplicate and multiply what are the 2 or 3 persons dependent on your business model. And so forth. Right. And I was I had that shift. It changed the game for me. So now was like it wasn’t obsessing about top line revenue, but it’s like, okay, how do we optimize for profit or even enterprise value, depending on what we’re looking to grow?

And really, how do we strategically do it with the least amount of team members, with the least amount of output? So we can actually get to the goal that we’re moving towards, whatever that may be in that particular business. So a lot of times I’m looking at those to answer a question, who is strategically scaling? We’re looking at okay, what’s what are we optimizing for.

Right. Because optimize for growth and optimize for profit can be cut to completely different things. Right? I mean, we may be optimizing for time. Time freedom for the CEO. And what they will be doing in that particular business is going to be totally different. If they’re like, okay, when super growth mode versus like stabilization. So we can actually optimize the profit, that doesn’t make sense.

Yeah. So when you’re look when you’re looking at your business and you’re saying, okay, I want to scale in my head. And I think for most business owners, what scale means is I want to get bigger, not necessarily body count wise, but I want to get bigger in terms of sales revenue. But how do you identify what parts of your business can be about that multiplication and replication.

So great question. So, so basically so going back to your question that you guys, it looks like so typically when I’m speaking with a business owner and they’re like I want to I’m at 1 million and I’m looking to get to 5 million right. Yep. And I’m like, all right, cool. So why do you want to get to 5 million.

Is it about just more top notch revenue or what do you really want. Do they say, well, I want to increase my take home salary, right? I want to be making XYZ take home. All right. Cool. We want to create your take home. Do we technically got to get you to 5 million and top line revenue. Is there some things operationally that can be done right.

So a lot of times when I want to dive into the businesses with them, they’re they’re completely overstaffed. For example, and is okay, what are all these people doing. And sometimes they can be so or they can be so in the weeds of the business, they don’t even realize all the people that pay it and which are these inefficient things in the business, they may be paying for softwares that they have been using years.

They maybe have team members who are just under utilized or not being used at all, or just shouldn’t be there, but they they just do more people at the problem. And it was actually a process issue, not a people issue. So now we go in and we optimize for some of this inefficiency in terms of spending on team members or software or whatever.

That actually increases the bottom line profit just right there. And that could also lead to the CEO taking more home versus trying to go from 1 million to 5 million in a matter of a year now. But I want to get to family, for a specific reason that’s there. But it’s like, okay, what’s the real problem we’re solving for?

Is it top my revenue? Is it profit? Is it take home? What exactly does that look like? And then that would help us divide. All right. Do we need to optimize from a team standpoint. Is there a higher that needs to be done. Or is there somebody on a team who just needs to be a little bit in a different seat, or what does that look like?

Or from a market standpoint, it may be like, I would generate all these leads. It may be say, they may say, okay, for us to get to 5 million, we need to generate X amount more leads than we’re currently generating. And what we found is like as we dig into it, we’re like, okay, well you generate this li what happens?

And more than more often than not, they’re like, they don’t really know. And it’s like, what are the different touches? But at generating these leads and the only focus on those who opt in and then buy or book a call in that particular moment. But I don’t have any kind of ecosystem in place to maximize these other Li.

So so the question becomes, do we generate more leads that aren’t being touched, or do we put a system in place so we can focus on lead maximization over lead generation. And again, a lot of profit lives in those specific things. A lot of profit and revenue lives and those specific things, versus focusing on just more and more and more and more and more.

So I would guess that most people I find two things. I’m curious, if you go to one, that people have a revenue goal that’s pretty ego driven, like I want a big round number, I want to be a $5 million agency or $10 million agency or something like that. And two, they’re thinking about profit, but I don’t I think the byproduct of profit is the salary, but I don’t think they’re thinking necessarily of just that.

So when your because what I’m hearing you say is part of the part of the process is going through and first identifying some, some waste that you’ve got team members who are not fully utilized, things like that. But when you think about so, you know, agencies, everything we do for clients is very custom. It is, you know, even if we’re developing a logo or we’re doing a PR campaign, it’s not off the shelf.

It’s not. You do the same thing for everybody. It is very custom to the agency, right, and to the client. So when you’re looking at multiplication and replication for a business like that, that’s not making the same widget over and over and over again. How do you think about multiplication and replication, given that everything you do is kind of custom.

So great question. So I based this. So I give you like a specific example. So we just had an event that we have call a CEO camp. And one of the guys there you know he has and he has an agency a social media marketing agency. And basically we break down these 80 pillars called a predictable scale flywheel.

And for him he was like, okay, I want to grow. But he was like, I’m working with the same thing you just said. I’m working with a lot of different clients. Things aren’t really systemize. Everything is custom. So what? So typically in his particular scenario, in other agencies, we work with is like, all right, cool. Does does it have to be that way or are you open to a different way of going about doing this, for example?

Okay, what did I look like? So one thing we may look like looked at and one thing that may look like is, all right, out of all the different types of clients you work with, who is your ideal client? So after about 24 hours, he gave it a little time and he was like, okay, I really want to focus on attorneys, right?

It was okay, great. So say what is out of all of it? Some things you can possibly sell. Can you streamline and niche down and focus on one thing right now? Look, a lot of business owners have a huge issue with picking one thing, but it’s like, okay, if you were really systemize and create a streamlined process and you sold one specific service, at least got that down in a first, what would that be?

Right? And let’s say, for example, there was like, okay, let’s say, for example, an agency says and we hear this a lot is like, okay, we’re all all inclusive agency. We do websites, we do Facebook ads, we do Google ads, we do logos, we do this, we do that. Okay, great. Well, what is the thing that is the easiest win for your ideal client?

If who are your easy win clients? And let’s just say they say, okay. Well, the thing that we sell to most of is Facebook ads for and we say, okay, Facebook ads for attorneys. Okay, great. So what if it is at least for a season and you just focused on Facebook ads, leads generation or agency owners. So now you can actually create a duplicate or systemize process.

So now you can streamline that process. So now when you get a new client that comes on it’s they’re going through a dedicated process. So I give you an example for us. So we first are teaching marketing it. We were just teach it. Anybody how to generate leads. But what happens if somebody comes in and they got a network marketing business?

Their whole process is different. Somebody comes in, they have a real estate business. Their process is different. So my coach took us out. So a little bit different. So we had to create some custom for everybody. Well we miss down to one ideal client. They sit via the phone. They sell premium price services. Now the process that we built out for them, while there is some nuance, there’s a duplicate of a process.

So either if I’m working with them through this process or if I teach somebody else it, they’re literally going through the same streamline process, just like if someone was going to Chick-Fil-A or something like that, they’re going to they’re going to order of these specific things. And regardless of what they order the process to deliver it, it’s going to be the same thing.

Okay. So it’s not necessarily the deliverable. It is the system or process to get the client their custom deliverable. Exactly. So now it’s a well-oiled machine. So it’s like, hey, if this person let’s say, for example, you got to fire somebody else, somebody get six and somebody dies because your process is streamlined. Now, you can actually plug another person into the process.

They understand the process, and now it goes over and over and again. So now it’s not custom every single time. So in our world, one of the things that I think people get sort of stuck in is, you know, we advertising agencies or marketing agencies, it’s a creative process. And so sometimes employees or even agency owners kind of balk at the idea of a cookie cutter system, if you will, because they want to create something new for each person.

So how do you marry the idea of every client exactly what they need and want, and we want an end for it to be good. I mean, marketing is it’s got to be right. Message. Right. Audience. It it does have to be custom. How do you marry that with the idea of a system or process that gets you to the custom idea, but in standard way, so that everybody can follow it?

Yeah for sure. So so I think so I think it really boils down to okay, how like how do we. Because when you can, when you can create a formulaic process, then it’s like, okay, let’s let’s go back to the ad agency example. So it’s like all right, cool. When we bring somebody on and we do Facebook ads for them, right?

We when we launch ad, we’re going to this is going to be a process. Then this is going to happen. We’re going to let it run for this amount of days based on a run amount. These amount of days, we’re going to get X amount of data. Here’s some baseline KPIs. So let’s say for example doing real estate we don’t want ads for real estate agents.

So now is like all right great. Based on your industry with our target CPO is going to be this target cost per book is going to be there’s our target acquisition is typically normally going to say this amount of time to actually convert somebody from lead to client. And when I can have this conversation with somebody who was a real estate agent, real estate investor or estate agent who’s looking to hire somebody, that actually increases their confidence to actually be okay.

We have a defined process, and we’re not just guessing. Now, this real estate agent, it’s going to be some custom because let’s just say, for example, this real estate agent, they only sell million dollar plus homes, right? So now that’s what we can get creative. We can get creative in terms of their messaging, their design, those specific things.

Right. For this particular person, let’s say another real estate agent, they specifically focus on first time homebuyers. So now of course we can get creative on messaging. The positioning, the colors, all this different type of thing. But in terms of like the actual marketing to get them the result, these individuals can both be confident that we have a divine, defined process where we can actually get unpredictable results, and we got some actual metrics that we can measure based on it.

We’re not guess alone. The process. Okay. Let’s let’s talk a little more about staff. One of the challenges I think in agencies is, and I’m wondering if the having a system and process helps with this. One of the challenges for agencies, all your agency owners say I’m the bottleneck because there are certain things that only I can do well or that my people can get it so far.

Then I have to step in or my leadership has to step in or I have to. I have to provide a lot of direction for my team. So let’s talk a little bit about when you look at helping a business scale. But how do they have to change the way they look at their team in terms of headcount versus self-directed versus, you know, sort of mentorship?

Like talk a little bit about what about that sort of dynamic. Yeah. So I think, drew, the first thing, what I found from working with these CEOs and business owners is their first thing they have to do is like change the way they look at themselves and versus how they look at the team. So what I mean by that is a lot of times they have what I call identity attachment.

So let’s say for example, they started the agency and they’re used to doing their sales calls. They look they used to build in this building all the websites they’re looking to do teamwork. They’re used to doing all that. So now they created this identity around them, doing all these specific things. So now they, they, they have these beliefs like, well, nobody can do it as good as them or.

Right. If I’m if I’m going to take this much time to train somebody, I might as well just do it myself. So they’re going to have all those things, but in reality it speaks to her. It kind of ties back to ego, like you spoke about earlier, that they actually want to hold on to it. And part of the identity is saying, if I let this go, then who am I then?

Because I’m not doing the things anymore, right? So they gotta be willing to shift their identity to that of the business owner and that a CEO, because in the earlier stages, the output of the company is the output of the of the entrepreneur. Right. But as you’re growing and you build a team and systems now the output of the business owner or the CEO is the output of the team.

So I think we have to look at like, okay, how do we basically decentralize everything that’s in our here? And not just teach, not just hop on a long video? I feel like I zoom in like I gotta teach everybody to step by step. But how do we literally systemize and productize everything that we do? So now somebody can come in and they can actually go through a formal training process, and then we can actually get them to implement it, see how they actually perform the thing and be willing to do to detach totally from having to be in the weeds and feel like I have to do it.

That’s the only way it’s going to get done. All right. So I want to ask more about that. But first, let’s take a quick break there and come back and think about how do you decentralize, how do you extract yourself from being pivotal to the business at every step. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back.

Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just want to remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops. And you can see the whole schedule at Agency Management institute.com on the navigation head to how we help. Scroll down and you’ll see workshops. And you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop.

They are all in Denver. And we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody, no matter what it is that you’re struggling with people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check them out and come join us. All right, let’s get back to the show.

All right. We are back with Mark Carl Russell. And we’re talking about scale ING your agency and sort of the idea of paying attention to the things that matter, which is really about how do I how do I replicate things, how do I multiply things as opposed to just adding more bodies? And how do I create a system inside an industry that prides itself appropriately on delivering custom solutions to clients?

So right before the break, we were talking about the idea that sometimes the agency owner or agency leaders kind of cling to being pivotal to the process. And I think even when they say they don’t want to be pivotal to the process, their behavior choices sometimes indicate that to your point, it it feels good to be needed. It feels good to be the smartest person in the room.

It feels good to have the answer. So right before we took a break, you were saying, you know, the key is, is how do you identify and then build a training program that allows your people to be more self-sufficient. So can you talk a little bit about about that? But it’s not just a series of videos, but it’s something bigger and sort of broader than that.

So in your experience and specifically in agencies, what has worked to get the agency owner out of the day to day? Yeah, 100%. So so I give you like a real life example of, of of of our company specifically. So one of the things that we so we actually focused on one was doing our, our marketing consultancy was it was mainly just consulting the marketing.

Right. Consulting and coaching I should say. Yeah. And we actually we at one point we were like, we had this great idea was like, hey, what if we just start an ad agency and we just did it our form because we can get in results faster. And so we started we started an agency. We built that into funnels.

We lost our hats in the whole nine yards. So basically how we did it and we got it to a couple hundred grand a month pretty quickly. And the way we did it was we was like, okay, what does this process look like? Right. And we we built okay, great. So we know they need a funnel. Here’s a specific this specific funnel that they require.

And then we template ties that now now there was a custom design like my group my graphic design guy. He can do his day from a custom custom look standpoint. However the the funnel flow was the same right when there was like, okay, how do we now take the emails? What’s the email sequence? So for example, when they opt in, we know they want to go into a seven day email sequence.

What does that look like? So now it was like okay, here’s the templates of the seven email sequences. This is the flow. Now obviously the messaging and everything is going to be totally different based on a business owner. But this is the the rhythm that we want in these emails. It was all okay, great. Now what’s the third, third part of the process?

The third part of the process is the edits. Now it’s a couple elements of the have we got the ad copy and then we got the creative. And then of course we got a funnel already built out. So now I was like, okay, here’s the formula that we used to write copy that we know is compliant and we know it works.

And then here’s are the top creatives that we know that work. Right. These are the these are the top images. If we want to go over to image and they don’t want to be on video, if they’re okay with video, here’s the video formula. Hey, here’s the typical editing that we go with these videos right now. Again, this is going to be custom based on the business owner in the industry itself.

Or if, however, the formula still works right. And then there’s like all right, now once we’re ready to launch, as I will be the fourth part of the process when it comes to launch, guys, here’s our formula. So for example, we have a formula called the five by five by 25 method. Right. So it’s like we got five assets.

We got to run five ads on the ad level. So we can be testing all of them at the same time. And we got to do $25 per day on each one of them. Right. So now it’s like now I can train the team. So now my funnel guy, he knows. All right, here’s the funnel process. Boom boom boom.

Right person running the ads. Here’s how you actually like I have my guy, my business partner actually, yet never ran ads before. But because we had this thing laid out, he could easily go. We launched the ads with no problem without being an expert, because the formula works and you don’t got to be a brilliant ad person. You just know the formula and we can plug it, plug in that process and now is will defy and systemize.

And still, you know, eight years later, it still works like a well-oiled machine, no matter how many changes the platforms with Facebook and Meta and all that changes, the formula still works. And we can still navigate those specific platform changes. So what about things like strategy and strategic counsel and things that are not based on a tangible output?

How do you how do you replicate or multiply that, or you accept that the outputs of an agency can be replicated, but that strategic counsel, that marketing plan that really does have to be custom. So I think I think the I think the marketing plan, the strategic counsel has to be custom because there are always going to be some nuance depending on the business.

Right. However, I also I also think that that can be systemized. Right. So so let’s say for example, let’s say how. So let’s, let’s just say would we do a marketing. Just stick with marketing. So if somebody wants to come on board and we want to before we get let’s just stay with the way. So let’s say they come on board and we need to figure out who’s their target audience.

What’s the messaging what they sell, crafting all those specific things. So obviously we we have a series of questions or even a questionnaire. Here’s the questions that we’re going to require answers to. Right. So they fill that out. And then some people are going to fill it out thoroughly. Some people aren’t. So now they can actually get on a call with somebody.

And now whatever needs to be dug deeper into they can do that. So now there’s skill sets that will be required for these conversations. But I think all that can still be trained on in terms of like what questions asked and kind of what what that looks like. So again, it’s about creating a process. You know, you’re adding the human element to the process to create a custom solution for a client.

Right. What did you say? And even even if you say, let’s say, for example, let’s say somebody says, okay, this person isn’t as good as me, but let’s say they’re at let’s, let’s say they’re 80% as good as you, right? 75, 80% of you. And now you can train them. There’s some development out. But because out there, because if you’re the brains I love it typically find if somebody is going to do it just like you, they are going to be few and far between.

However, you can find somebody who’s 70 to 80% there, right? And now you can train them for your ways and over time you can get them there. But a lot of times what I found with business, there’s some cases they just don’t want to slow down a little bit to do the necessary training and development, which actually helped us speed up and free up their time in the clients that you work with to build out this, the scale model, what are the where do they trip up?

Where do they get stuck? What? What is the hard part for them? Shifting their mindset to building a business that really does scale. So I love that question. So one. So only these eight pillars on a predictable scale fly. One of the pillars is inner game mastery. The the number one area that I see these business on this trip up is one of the metrics.

So yeah, revenue is great. You know profit is great, cash flow is great. But one of the metrics that we also track is days time off. Right. And when I’m talking to a business owner about time off and they like what do you mean time off? And I’m like actually days where you don’t work in their life. Well, what do you mean days?

I don’t work right. And I’m like, these are days where you’re doing other stuff outside of the office and it’s they can’t wrap their head around. It’s crazy to me and I cannot get it because I was there as well. But it’s like it’s fascinating just to see outside of my body, individuals not being able to wrap their head around the idea of not working in the business, still running.

So I think that’s one of the biggest errors actually, because like one of the things we have our clients do mandatorily is quarterly. They have to take a vacation, right? They have to talk quarterly vacation away from the business, and they can’t even read a business book. Right? You can’t listen to a business podcast. You can’t check in, you can’t check email, you can’t check in on your team and make sure everything is going well.

You actually have to be totally unplugged, because one of the things I showed them is that when your free time multiplies, your income actually multiplies as well. But again, a lot of times it’s a challenge with them wrapping their head around the idea because they’ve been they’re essentially addicted to their output, always having to be involved. And if they’re not working, they feel like the thing is going to fall apart.

So talk a little bit more about the idea. The more time you take off, the more money you make. Because I’m sure several years perked up when you said that. Yeah, because you x because you you literally am. I want my operation to it. So she she affirmed this one time is when you actually have to take off for your business to grow.

Right. And what I mean by you have to take off for your business to grow. Is that you a lot of especially if you’re if you’re if you’re a control freak and you use a micromanager like you don’t, if you’re in the business, you oftentimes aren’t even giving your team members the room to actually grow. Right? So I give an example.

So so one of my first critical hires was a VA. Her name is Bianca. She’s our operations director now. When she came on board as a VA, as a referral, she was like she had one other class before, but she was like she was taken aback by the amount of time that I took to training her. Right. And empower her to, to be self-sufficient.

And now again, she’s operational right now, so she essentially runs the entire company because I was willing to give her that room to grow. Now, here’s the kicker. As she began to build her team underneath her, she had the same challenges being willing to let go because a lot of the identity was into doing the things. However, they shipped her shift, her mentality and her identity from being one that does the thing to actually being one who actually leads the actual team.

So it was a totally different ship, and she was able to do that. She was able to make more money. I could take more time off focus in. And even if it wasn’t take more time off, it was going from Monday through Sunday working to three days. So I got a client named Caruana. She actually she was working seven days a week, making about 40, 50,000 a month, and she was just grinding grind and grinding.

But because she put these things in place and she was willing to let go and empower people to systemize things, you know, now she makes, you know, $5 million a year. She works two and a half to three days per week, compared to seven days a week, because she was willing to let go. And it blows her way out of business, continues to grow as she takes more time off.

What’s the downsides of this? Is there is there more client churn? Is there are sales harder? Does it feel less fulfilling? Like this all sounds great. What? What about it isn’t so great to the business owner? If I’m if I’m the agency owner and I and I, I’m on board, I’m like, yep, I’m going to do all these things.

What parts of it am I not going to like? The downside? Some of the downside is going to be being bought. And now you go in and find something to break in the business because you just feel like you need to do something. So that’s one. Is that another downside, quite frankly, that I’ve seen is like now because you have this free time and you’re not busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.

You actually have a lot of time with yourself and to hear your thoughts, right. And a lot of times as entrepreneurs, a lot of times entrepreneurs got into entrepreneurship as a traumatic response. And a lot of times they’re running from something. So now it’s like, now you, you, you’re not busy. And in a week. So now you literally have to sit with yourself, right.

And do some real deep work. And you can’t escape it by being busy. So I would say those are some of the downs. And now you got to go spend some time with those other ones. So you say you love so much because you said you started as a lot of entrepreneurs. I started a business for freedom. Right.

Well, but then do everything that actually robs them of freedom when they can actually have the freedom that they want to take the kids to school or pick them up or go on vacation, you know, spend more time with their wife or husband. But it’s like, but they’ll find more distractions to kind of pull away from that. But because it just sounds good and I want to build this business freedom.

But when in reality you just you want to build this cage, what now you can just justify I’m just working where I can work it, I said, I wonder why we do that. I mean, you’re right because I think a lot of people do say he started the business for the freedom that it will give me, but they don’t take advantage of the freedom.

In fact, to your point, they actually construct it so they have less freedom. Yeah. Yeah. I think it goes back to I think you nailed it earlier. Like even with the revenue goals, like now I’m like, I’m a guy who at one point I was obsessed with just growth and bigger and faster at arbitrary revenue goals. But when I really zoomed out, it was like, all right, what do I really want?

What do I want to take home for me to take that home? Do I really need to make that amount in the what do I really need to make that? Or based on my take home, what does that business now have to make? And I optimize for that. So now when I’m speaking with a client is basically like, all right, what’s your revenue goal?

Of course, you know, the first time they’ll say, oh, typically a top line revenue goal, right. Super arbitrary. And it’s like, well, why, what do you want to take home? And then they’ll tell me to take home number. And it’s like, all right, great. What what does the business not have to make to get to that take home?

And not only that, not only do you want to take this home, you want to take this home. And what? So they may say, okay, well, I want to take this amount home and take my kids to school in the morning and pick them up from school, or help them with their homework and be able to go to the gym, you know, three times a week and be able to be at church on Sunday and Bible studies on Wednesday and be able to.

And so now we’re optimizing for not just this take home number. We’re optimizing for their take home number. And these other things. So now this is the we making the business. We’re making this decision to optimize moving closer to that versus just being obsessed with more and more and more and more and more, which a lot of times it’s just meaningless.

Yeah. It would be sort of an interesting exercise, actually, to start with the what would you like your ideal life to look like? And then what business do you have to build to give you that, to give you that life? Yeah. Because because it’s crazy. Drew how oftentimes will see like I, I do this I do the same similar exercise and to see okay we recently did and we had this thing called a lifestyle design calculator.

And we literally sat down. It was like, okay, what is your current monthly expenses for a personal site? And let’s lay out what your ideal life is, right? I mean, what is that going to cost you? And you’d be surprised how many people in the room when they actually. And all of a sudden it was like, wow, I’m actually living this already.

But they’re so busy that they don’t even realize that they’re actually living it. Oh, I appreciate it because they like is more I need more and more and more and more and more because social media and society is telling me more and more and more when in reality you already live inside your dream life, you just not even getting to enjoy it because you think that you need more and you already there.

Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is an interesting psychology. You’re absolutely right. So that as we sort of wrap all of this up, listening to all of this and they’re thinking, yeah, I, I want to, I want to build a lean team. I want to have systems and processes. I want to scale through replication to the level that I can, given what we do for our clients.

Where do you suggest they start? I think I would suggest they start you. You really hit it. Really sit down and ask yourself like why? And not from not from not from a, you know, personal like not from a cliche like you got to have a big why but like, why do you really want these things like really sit down and like journal on and be like a why do I want to accomplish those things?

Is it just ego driven or is it to a specific outcome. Right, right. So starting there and then doing the math, like a lot of business owners that I found, they don’t do the math. Like how much do you do really required to make take home right. And then from there now reverse engineer what what I call the minimal viable operation.

But MBO right. How much time do you want to work each week? Right. What do you want to take on? What’s the business have to make for you to take down? Right. And then what’s the minimal team that you actually require to actually do this whole thing off? But literally starting with it. What do you want? Because again, people would say, okay, I want to make 10 million, I want to make 20 million or whatever.

And it is like, well, why? Right. I’ll because my life that and if the organization is bloated and you’re still only making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, you could do, you could you could have the same take on pay for a business. That’s a fifth the size and the hassle and, you know, cost if you thought about it, if to your point, if you reverse engineered it 100%.

What? Because because like you could literally have that take hold now because to your point. But you’re bloated and all that profit, all that margin is being eaten up by game and softwares and stuff like that. That’s usually not even paying attention to it, which is what’s going to get caught up into what people think is scale, just growth, grove growth bigger, bigger, bigger.

But that’s eating into all of your margin and that’s where all your freedom leads. Yeah, yeah. So true, so true. This has been a fascinating conversation. If people want to learn more about you, the work you do, the SEO camps that you hold, where can they find out more information to make it super simple, I put together a page called Scale Made easy.com.

So just scale e made it mad easy eat a s wired.com got a ton of resources on it for you that you can dig into, and whatever your favorite social media platform is. Instagram. Send me a direct message. Let’s connect. But just got to scale. Made easy.com and then you can just tap into a lot of resources that we got to go deep into this material.

Yeah. Awesome. This has been a great conversation. Thanks for being with us today and sharing your expertise and your wisdom. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for having me. You bet. All right, guys, so Marco gave you a lot of things to think about. But if you don’t do anything else, I think being thoughtful and, you know, if you’re listening to this real time, this is going to play, you know, fourth quarter of 24, perfect time to sit and think about what do you want your life to be like in 25, not just your take home pay, but how many days a week you work, where you work, how you work, that kind of work

you do. What are the things that are on your plate that you’d like to get off your plate? Like start, start with designing. You know, I have often said to you that one of the privileges of being an entrepreneur or an agency owner is you get to design your life in a way that employees just don’t get to.

And so many of you don’t take full advantage of that, which I think is really a shame. So perfect timing to think about what is the ideal life that you want to lead. Do you want to work five days a week? Do you want to stop working on weekends? Do you want to take more vacation time? Whatever it may be, design what that is.

Figure out from a dollars and cents point of view, but also a time point of view. What do you have to get to have that life? Well, as Marco said, you may already have it and just not appreciated or know it, but if you don’t have it, what’s the delta? What do you have to do to get to the delta?

Start with the end, and the end should absolutely be. And you’ve heard me talk about this before. It’s why we have that one page, that agency owner life plan. I want your business to support you and the life you want to live. And so start there and then begin to reverse engineer back and figure out all the things that you do that someone else could do with the proper system process, training.

Make that your goal for 25 is, how do I get out from under some of the things that I don’t enjoy doing that other people could do as well as I do, and it would free me up to either spend more of my time where the business really needs me, or more of my time with my family or whatever matters to you.

But it starts with really having a clear visual of what that looks like. So that’s that’s the homework for this week. So take that. Give yourself some time, give yourself some thinking, time to do that. Let it cook in the back of your head and then sit down and and get it on paper, because you know that once it’s on paper, it feels a whole lot more real.

And then share it with somebody. Share it with your your spouse, your partner, your business partner, your leadership team. But share with them what you’re trying to accomplish so they can help you get there. All right. Well, of course, a huge thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. They’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They are a partner for many, many agencies.

They do white label design, dev, PPC, as I’ve told you many times, they’re they’re born out of an army agency. I’ve known for 20 years. They do great work. They also understand how to partner with agencies so that you are profitable when you work with them. It’s not just that you’re the bank running all the money from your client into white label.

There’s money left over for you in this mix. And so it’s a great win win. Get a great deliverable for your client. You’ve got a highly developed and skilled team at your disposal and it’s profitable for you. So check them out at White Label IQ. Com slash EMI. And of course you know I like to wrap every episode with a very sincere thank you.

I am super grateful that you come back and listen every week. I love hearing from you guys. I love hearing what you loved about the episodes. I love hearing how you put them to work. I love hearing from guests that they’ve heard from you and that you’re reaching out to them with more questions. So please keep using this podcast as a great resource.

Come on back. I’m coming back and I hope you do too. So thanks for listening. Watch you soon. That’s all for this episode of Amethyst Build Better Agency podcast. Be sure to visit Agency Management institute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode!