Breaking the Barriers That Prevent Agency Scaling with Trevor McGregor

Danyel McLellan [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency podcast, presented by White Label iq, is packed with insights on how small to mid size agencies are getting things done. Bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan [00:00:38]:
Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Today we’re going to talk about scaling our business and what gets in the way of us really being able to scale. Many of us have a vision of what we want our agencies to look like. But getting from vision to actually doing the work that allows us to scale. And scale might mean something different to all of you. It might mean it might be about size of revenue or AGI, it might be people, it might be impact, it might be all of those things. But there’s a big difference between having a vision for what you want the business to look like and then doing the hard work of getting there. And so we’re going to talk about that today. But before we do that, I want to remind you about our friends at White Label IQ who actually do help agencies scale. And one of the ways they help agencies scale, as the presenting sponsor of this podcast, they certainly help us scale. They help us provide this content for you. But the way they work with agencies is they don’t treat agency clients because remember, all they do is serve agencies. They don’t treat agency clients as transactional or quick hits. They actually help the agency scale the work they do. So they do design, dev and paid media for agencies. They white label that work. But one of the things they do is every agency gets a dedicated account manager and a dedicated project manager. So that’s one of the ways you as an agency can scale is you can take on these bigger projects without feeling like you have to hire humans FTEs on your side. Because for the duration of the project, White Label is going to make sure you have an account manager or a project manager. Then it’s not because they think you need to be babysat. It’s because they know that to really collaborate on a project, they have to invest on their side to make sure that they are helping the project stay on scope and on target and that they’re helping you sort of balloon your team as you need with this project. So they want to help you by making sure they bring the right partners to the table. So to serve you and ultimately your clients, and that’s how they show up as a true partner. So it’s really about not the golden rule. Treat other people how you want to be treated. It’s about the platinum rule. They treat you how you want to be treated. And so you can really designate if you need that account manager, that project manager, both. But you get to design the team on their side that partners with your team to make sure that you have the scale and scope you need to serve your clients well. So they really. They really do live that out every day. So if you want to learn more about them and how they serve agencies, head over to white labeliq.com ami all right, so today’s guest is an expert in helping businesses scale. So he’s got a really interesting career path, a really interesting. His own sort of business success journey is fascinating. He’s had some mentors along the way that you’re going to recognize, some. Some big names that he’s learned from that he’s now brought into his own business, the learnings from those folks, and now he’s serving people like you every day and helping you really get out of your own way to scale your business. So without further ado, I want to welcome Trevor McGregor to the podcast. We have a lot to learn from him, and so let’s jump right in. Trevor, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Trevor McGregor [00:04:16]:
Well, thank you for having me on, Drew. I’m excited to be here.

Drew McLellan [00:04:19]:
Tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you came to do the work you’re doing today.

Trevor McGregor [00:04:24]:
Well, thanks very much. And again, it’s a great story. I am from Canada. You might hear a little bit of a Canadian accent coming from me. And, you know, back in the day, the number one thing we wanted to be was NHL hockey players.

Drew McLellan [00:04:36]:
Sure.

Trevor McGregor [00:04:37]:
So I know that, you know what? We all have dreams as kids, and I had the speed, but I didn’t have the size, so traded in my skates for textbooks, went and studied business, ultimately went through college, went to work in a hospitality company where we did real estate and restaurants. And. And ultimately, at that time, I cut my teeth in the corporate world and I fell in love with people. I fell in love with marketing. I fell in love with sales. I fell in love with operations. And I had this unique opportunity to join the owners of that company in an expansion plan. And that’s where things got really interesting in my story, because I took all of my savings, my cat 401k, I cashed that in. I even convinced my own parents Drew to take out a second six figure mortgage on the family home.

Drew McLellan [00:05:19]:
Oh dear.

Trevor McGregor [00:05:19]:
Because they loved me and they believed in me. And I thought, wow, this is my chance to become rich at a young age. And I put all of that into this expansion plan and it blundered, it failed, it didn’t go very well and ended up losing all of that money. So there I was in my early 30s, I was broke, I gained a ton of weight and it caused a huge rift in my marriage. And what does anybody do when they’re down and out? Well, they seek guidance. And I was talking with a friend and he said, you got to find somebody that can help you out. And I said, I don’t know who it’s going to be. And he said, have you ever thought of hiring a coach? I said, a coach? What’s a coach? I didn’t know what a coach was, I didn’t know how much it costs. But he said, a coach is somebody that can come in, you know, pick you up, dust you off and get you back on your way. And so my back was up against the wall. That’s what I, I did. And thank God for me, I found a coach in Vancouver, Canada that completely revolutionized and changed my life, got me to see a new way of thinking, a new way of behaving and, and in a relatively short amount of time, you know, through really getting out there and being in business and investing in a little bit of real estate and investing in myself, not only did I have a beautiful, you know, cash flowing business and real estate portfolio, but in relatively short amount of time, I made enough money to pay off all of those failed loans. And I’ll throw it over to you because there’s part two to that. But that’s really where I really fell down in business and in life. Got up, picked myself off, thank God for a coach. And that’s really where the story gets really interesting from there.

Drew McLellan [00:06:46]:
Yeah, I can’t even imagine how good it felt to pay that last loan payment and make everything whole and just sort of feel like you really were on fresh, on fresh ground.

Trevor McGregor [00:06:57]:
That’s it.

Drew McLellan [00:06:57]:
Yeah.

Trevor McGregor [00:06:58]:
And that’s really when people started to come to me, Drew, and they said, wow, you’re so passionate about people, you’re so passionate about business, you want to help more people. Did you know that Tony Robbins is hiring part time coaches because he wanted to expand? And I thought, yeah, well, I don’t have any formal coaching credentials, but I’ll throw in a resume. And I did. And what happened was there were 500 applications for 20 spots. 500 applications and I got shortlisted from 500 down to 250, 250 to 100, 100 down to 50. And it’s that time that they’re serious about you potentially becoming a part of the team and you got to go to all their events in the US, read all the books, listen to all the CDs, go to your practicum. And to make a long story short, that’s really when I got the opportunity to go work for the man, the myth, the legend. Yes, Tony Robbins, and for over half a decade become one of his top master platinum coaches, helping small business, medium business, Fortune 500, doctors, lawyers, real estate investors. And it became my passion. And I left Tony in 2017 to open Trevor McGregor Coaching and Trevor McGregor International, where I continue to pour into small business, medium business, large business. But ultimately my claim to fame, and you’ll hear my voice, is raspy, Drew. I’ve done over 45,000 individual coaching sessions and that’s a true statistic and it’s really my jam. I can see myself doing this for another 5, 10, 15 years because I truly believe that it’s the small and medium sized business owner that ultimately has the greatest opportunity to create an unbelievable life of freedom, impact and wealth. And I’ll throw it over to you.

Drew McLellan [00:08:37]:
So I’m curious, I want to dig into the coaching and we’re going to talk a lot about the barriers to scale that agency owners often self erect and kind of get in their own way. I want to spend most of our time there. But I’m curious, you had become successful, you had worked with a coach before Tony Robbins, and then you went through the Tony Robbins curriculum, if you will, to kind of coach the way Tony Robbins wanted you to coach. What was the aha moment for you between, you know, pre and post, Tony, like, what did you take away from the Tony Robbins experience that was different than kind of how you were viewing business or your professional life prior to that experience?

Trevor McGregor [00:09:24]:
Well, it’s such a great question, Drew. Thank you. And it’s really, you know, a couple of things that you’re queuing up in my mind. The very first one is that, you know, it’s not really the strategy that’s going to help the business catapult forward. It’s the psychology, it’s the thinking, it’s the, the beliefs, the values, the rules. And again, you know, I know we’ll go into that a little bit more in a minute, but for me it was really getting a sneak peek behind the curtain of what allowed Tony Robbins to go out there and not only be, you know, one of the best life coaches on the planet, but more of a business strategist.

Drew McLellan [00:09:57]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [00:09:57]:
And I know we’re going to talk about that in a second. So that’s number one. But number two, it was really the difference between the men and the boys and the women and the girls was, you know, who was really, truly, truly willing to fail. Right. Where you know, you’re here and you want to go here, it’s. It doesn’t happen in a straight line. Sometimes you get up, never.

Drew McLellan [00:10:15]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [00:10:16]:
Fall down. There’s like a roller coaster where there’s a loop de loop and you think you’re going to fall out. And it was fascinating to see that the people that had failed are actually the ones that got up, dusted themselves off, kind of like I did in my story, and found a way to keep on keeping on. Right. And there’s a great quote from Even Think and Grow Rich where Napoleon Hill wrote that adversity brings with it the seed of equivalent advantage. And I’ll say it again, adversity brings with it the seed of equivalent advantage. And I didn’t know what it meant fully, but looking back now at my journey, your journey, all of our clients journeys and all of that, I’m telling you, there really is no failure. There’s only feedback. And if you’re running an agency or you’re in business or you’re trying to grow, you’re going to get a lot of feedback. What do you think that’s right.

Drew McLellan [00:11:03]:
You’re absolutely right. And I do think you’re right, that a lot of it is the attitude by which you approach those stumbling blocks, if you will, and being able to look back and go, okay, here’s what I learned from that. Here’s what I’m going to do different. Here’s what humbled me, here’s what taught me the lesson. And I think it is challenging sometimes to be open to that painful learning, right?

Trevor McGregor [00:11:30]:
It is. And it’s painful, right?

Drew McLellan [00:11:31]:
Yeah.

Trevor McGregor [00:11:32]:
And we don’t like going through it. We wish we weren’t going through it. And sometimes it’s a money lesson, sometimes it’s an HR lesson, sometimes it’s a client that’s, you know, really, you know, busting our chops. But I’m telling you, God doesn’t waste the pain that we’re meant to go through what we’re meant to go through, to learn and to become stronger so that we can do it at a higher level. What do you think of that?

Drew McLellan [00:11:53]:
Yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right. I think. I think I. Well, I. I believe that everything we go through is part of the path and part of the learning, and that’s it. I. I think the. I think the successful people that I observe every day are the ones who kind of take their licking, but they also know that you gotta brush yourself off and keep going. And I will say, and this is true, I would say, of almost everybody listening to this podcast, agency owners are the most tenacious group of business people I’ve ever met. Like, you know, they just. You think about how many times they’ve had to reinvent their business. And, you know, we’re in the middle of a huge reinvention right now with how AI is changing the way we approach the work we do. And they ref. They refuse to give up. They just refuse to be knocked out of the ring. And so, you know, I think, again, this conversation is going to be a great one because the audience is perfectly primed to sort of say, okay, I’m here to learn, I’m here to do it better. And certainly. And you and I were talking before we hit the record button. One of the challenges for agency owners is they struggle to scale their business and get out of their own way.

Trevor McGregor [00:13:06]:
That’s correct. That’s correct. And I’ve certainly worked with hundreds of agencies and hundreds of, you know, small, medium, and large marketing firms. Ultimately, where I’m telling you, for the committed, there’s always a way that if you do find yourself having to reinvent yourself, or now you’re faced with AI coming, or now there’s another challenge. You know, we often think that that might close a door, but what it forces the best of the best of the best to do is to open another door. And that’s where we say that, you know, it’s not the beginning, the end of something, it’s the beginning of something new. And you don’t start over. You start with what I call being fresh. You’ve got some business experience, some cash experience, some HR experience, some, you know, operation and deliver. You know, how you’re delivering to the client and to each, you know, client. They all have different beliefs, they have different values, they have different rules. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s the ones that keep on keeping on that find themselves planting that flag at the top of the mountain.

Drew McLellan [00:14:04]:
I also think part of it is I. We hold an event every year called the Build a Better Agency Summit. And in my keynote last year, I Talked about the fact that we have to stop being surprised that things are changing. We have to just recognize that the pace of change is getting faster and faster, and we now are living and operating our businesses in a state of perpetual change. And so the quicker we get over being surprised by it, and we just know that we have to keep evolving and that our businesses are never going to be static, then that’s when we can wrap our arms around it and. And figure out how to leverage that change to our advantage.

Trevor McGregor [00:14:45]:
Well, what I love about you saying that, Drew, is some people do the ostrich approach where they stick their head in the sand, and they’re traditionalists, and they say, God, I wish we could return to the way it was. But, you know, the same things happened for, you know, hundreds of years. When you think about the automobile replacing the horse and buggy, there were people that hated the automobile. There were people that said, you know what? For anyone that drives a car down the street, there’s got to be somebody that walks beside the car holding a red flag so that it doesn’t run into horses and, you know, injure people. Well, you know what? Change is a constant, and you’re either going to be, you know, scared of it, or you’re going to embrace it. And it sounds that, you know, you and I come from a very similar background, where we’ve been on this planet long enough to see, you know, decades of change year over year over year, whether it was the Internet coming or whether it was the mobile phone or whether it’s AI. But I’m telling you, the world is going to look even more different in the next five to 10 years.

Drew McLellan [00:15:39]:
Absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about. In that crazy, constantly changing environment, business owners still aspire to grow stronger, more stable, bigger businesses and bigger, not necessarily more people, but maybe more impact. Right. And so, as you have been coaching business leaders and owners, talk a little bit about what you observed and your beliefs around what gets in the way.

Trevor McGregor [00:16:09]:
You bet. Well, this is my bread and butter, and I love this conversation. So I’ll invite you and I’ll invite the listener to almost take what I call a personal inventory as I go through the five key reasons why agencies fail to scale. So I’ll say it again. The five key reasons why any business fails to scale. And it’s universal, Drew. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to business, doesn’t matter if you’re an intermediate. Immediate. Doesn’t matter if you own your agency for years and years and years. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in Canada, the US, the uk, Australia, New Zealand. This applies to everybody listening. So I’ll go through the meal one by one and then throw it over to you for reflection. Because the very first one and the biggest one is what I call limiting beliefs, right? Number one is limiting beliefs that we think it’s going to be hard to do it, or it’s going to take a lot of money, or it’s going to take a lot of time, or. Or what if it doesn’t work out? Or what if, you know, I go get a loan for my business and I end up, you know, frittering through all of that money. And so it’s the doubts, the fears, the worries, the anxieties, all of that that we focus on instead of what we call the polarity of it working out. And I’ll give you an example of that. Because the three biggest limiting beliefs that we have, you know, are the fear of failure, the fear of criticism, and the fear of not being worthy of success.

Drew McLellan [00:17:27]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [00:17:27]:
And so if we have that doubt, that fear, that worry, and that’s really, you know, how we’re approaching our business, that’s not going to allow us to scale to more impact and more income. So what do we do? Well, we bring in this little tool that I teach called the law of polarity. And the law of polarity is a lot. It’s like the law of gravity. If you jump off the roof of your house, you’re going down. And the law of polarity states that you can’t have failure without what’s on the other side of that, which is potential success.

Drew McLellan [00:17:54]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [00:17:54]:
You can’t have somebody saying that’s a bad idea or criticizing you or calling you out without somebody saying, wow, Drew, that’s an amazing idea. I think that’s brilliant. I’d like to join forces with you. And the third one, that whole thing around self worth, self wealth and self esteem, well, I’m telling you, you got to get rid of that because abundance is your birthright. You’ve got just as much opportunity to go out there as an agency owner and add value and create the life of money, time, freedom and location freedom as anyone else that’s been successful building an agency. But you got to do the work. And the biggest thing that I find people need to do the work on is condition. This three pound mass between their ears called their brain. For success, not failure. What do you think?

Drew McLellan [00:18:37]:
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that it’s interesting though, I think about a lot of agency owners, and I’m curious the five main things that get in our way. Do you believe that all entrepreneurs have all five, or do you believe that some people have three of the five or two of the five or four of the five?

Trevor McGregor [00:18:57]:
That’s a great question. I love your questioning. Because ultimately, you know, I always say different strokes for different folks. Right? Some people are going to have one big one of these five.

Drew McLellan [00:19:06]:
Right?

Trevor McGregor [00:19:07]:
Some are going to have all five of these five. But I’ve never met an entrepreneur that didn’t have the opportunity to improve all of these areas.

Drew McLellan [00:19:14]:
Oh, no doubt.

Trevor McGregor [00:19:14]:
Does that resonate?

Drew McLellan [00:19:15]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Trevor McGregor [00:19:16]:
You bet.

Drew McLellan [00:19:16]:
No doubt.

Trevor McGregor [00:19:17]:
So once we go from number one to number two, Number two is what I call a lack of a strategic plan and vision. Right, A lack of a strategic plan and vision. I mean, where are you at right now? Where do you want to go? And what must happen in what we call the short term, what must happen in the long term? And really, what’s the vision for your business and your agency and your life? Because once we start talking about where you’re at and where you want to go, we can start to reverse engineer it to get you moving in the right steps. And that’s where I think that people have this false belief as well, that they need to see the whole staircase on how to grow the agency instead of really coming back to wherever you are right now and seeing what are the next two or three steps. Because once Drew and Trevor help you get up steps 1, 2 and 3, it will reveal unto you 4, 5, 6 and 7, 8, 9. And that’s ultimately where you really remember that business is a vehicle for growth. And that if we’re going to climb the steps, we’re going to have to build some muscle to keep moving up those steps. But it can be very, very rewarding when you know where you’re at and where you want to go. How would you speak to number two?

Drew McLellan [00:20:23]:
So I’m curious how you would. So I think a lot of agency owners would say to you today, I don’t know where my agency is going to be in three or five years, because I believe that the world is going to be, as we were saying earlier, dramatically different. And so I think I know where I need to be in 18 months or two years, but beyond that, I can’t see above those clouds to see what’s possible there. So do I have to have the ultimate vision, do you think? Or do I have to just know where I want to go next?

Trevor McGregor [00:20:54]:
It’s really about understanding that this is a very actively managed process today. It’s not like you were going to go back in the day and open, you know, a chain of grocery stores or hardware stores where it was really open one, build out the model and then rinse and repeat it, Right? This is about being adaptable and really seeing perhaps a unique opportunity in the marketplace to really do one or two things well and serve that community or serve that client. Right? And so for any advertising agency, and, you know, there’s a ton of different people out there that are probably panicking about will, what got me here, get me there. And that’s where you got to really understand that, you know, being flexible, actively managing that plan, innovating is a big thing where you’ve got to really think about where the puck is going, as Gretzky would say, not where it’s the puck now, but I think for anybody that’s got a passion for people, a passion for sales and marketing, a passion for, you know, really being a bridge or conduit to a client’s dream. If you help enough people go out there and get what they want, they’ll help you get everything you want. But you got to be ready, you know, with your tap dancing shoes on to be able to pivot and change as needed. What do you think, Drew?

Drew McLellan [00:22:03]:
Yeah, well, I, well, I think that agencies are often not on the bleeding edge, but on the leading edge of change. We’ve literally, agencies have created cultural change, technological change, all of that. So with that responsibility or in that role, I do think a lot of times we are moving into an area where we’re not sure what is down the. What’s around the corner. Like, I can see to the corner, but I can’t see around the corner. So I do think to your point, you got to sort of work your way forward, always being ready to go, oh, now I can see around the corner. And now I have to pivot this way or that way. Like I you. That was my point of the keynote was change is constant and we have to keep evolving our business. That’s never going to end. To your point.

Trevor McGregor [00:22:56]:
That’s right.

Drew McLellan [00:22:56]:
I got to keep taking the next step and, and then be looking at, okay, this is going to work for three months, six months, nine months, a year, three years, and then I have to do this shift. Right?

Trevor McGregor [00:23:08]:
That’s it. I love that you’re saying that. And it’s really the analogy for me is like driving. Let’s say you were getting in your car to drive From Denver, Colorado, to New York, and it was nighttime, you would get in your car and you’d have these little things on the front of your car called headlights, right? That might shine a certain distance ahead of you, but you can’t see beyond that. But you also have to have faith and trust that when you drive a couple of miles, your headlights are going to shine in the direction of the curves and the mountains and the bridges and the rivers and all of that. But for anyone that’s defiantly committed, not interested and not committed, but defiantly committed in getting to New York, you can get there.

Drew McLellan [00:23:45]:
Yeah, right. I agree. All right, what’s the third one?

Trevor McGregor [00:23:49]:
The third one, I think, is going to be really near and dear to your heart. I mean, this is really where we talk about number three being a lack of systems for support. Right? A lack of systems for support. We can get rid of your limiting beliefs, Drew, and we can create a plan. But if you’re not creating systems to support that plan, and we’re talking about, you know, methodologies and SOPs and tools and having the right people in the right seats on the bus and really understanding not to be afraid of AI, but leveraging AI to help you go further, faster, this is ultimately what keeps the machine going. And again, for people that create systems, and they do it one time, or the system breaks, or they say, you know what? I’ll do that when I reach a certain level, that’s when disaster happens. Because it’s no differently than, you know, any other part of the car. You need tires, you need a steering wheel, you need gasoline, you know, and you need a radio to keep you company while you’re driving. So at the end of the day, we like to get rid of your limiting beliefs and we create the strategic plan, pardon me. And then we ultimately put in systems for support and really around what I call your zog. And your ZOG is your zone of genius zog. And that is where you’re working on something that you’re really, really, really good at and passionate about. When you start delegating the other things to other people in your organization or on your team, where they’re really good at it or they’re passionate about it. And that’s where I find that a lot of people, you know, when you start to think of hiring people or you start to thinking, well, what if I hire them and train them and they quit? The alternative is, well, what if you hire them and train them and turn them loose in their zone of genius? They not only stay, but they Succeed and you start to really, you know, start really reaching some of those goals and those milestones that you set way back in the day. What do you say, number three?

Drew McLellan [00:25:37]:
I say that. Okay, number one. And number two, everybody was, who was listening was nodding and they were going, got this. Right, Got this. And then when you said this, systems, this is where I think most agency owners get stuck.

Trevor McGregor [00:25:51]:
Okay?

Drew McLellan [00:25:51]:
They’re an agency of 3 people, 5 people, 10 people, 25 people. They are very reactive to clients changing, moving the ball on the field all the time. They are probably dealing with, in some cases, some legacy employees that may not have involved and changed. They’re dealing with some young kids who really don’t know what they’re doing yet, but they were cheap enough that they could hire them to do some of the, some of the lifting and moving of things. And your agency owner is entrenched and sort of straddling that fence of being in the business, which means that it’s challenging for them to focus on their unique job, which nobody else can do but them, which is, you know, again, that innovation and vision, sales, mentorship, growing the team. So this is where I think most agency owners get stuck, is that they struggle to embrace the idea of system and process. They don’t really understand intellectually, they think it’s a great idea. But when it comes to actually creating them and then following them, codifying them, you know, getting them in writing, all of that, that’s where they get stuck. So talk about if this is your Achilles heel, and then we’ll get to 4 and 5. But if this is your Achilles heel, how do you break this barrier so that you can continue to scale?

Trevor McGregor [00:27:22]:
Well, first off, it’s such a great question and we could talk about it for hours, but you have to stop and to kick again, take what I call a personal inventory of your business. What’s working and what’s not working? What is something that you gravitate towards where you are working in and on the business versus instead of delegating that to someone else so you can work on the business. Right? Because at the end of the day, we’re talking about growth and contribution and you’re either growing your business or you’re maintaining your business. So as we start to take this personal inventory, we start to see where you’re, you know, really locking yourself in. We also start to see what they’re afraid to give up because, you know, that old adage kicks in of, number one, I don’t have any money to hire anyone, or number two, I’M the only one that can do it right. Or number three, if I hire someone that’s going to take longer to train them than to just do it myself. And Again, after doing 45,000 coaching sessions, Drew, I’ve heard all the excuses, of course, and that’s where you got to stop the excuse itis. That’s where you really have to ask yourself the old identity question of who do I need to be and show up as to create the systems for support that allow me to optimize and maximize what I want to do. Because I’ll be honest with you, and I talk to business owners all over the US all day, where they’re drowning in tactics, their time starved, they’re not being fulfilled, they’re not increasing the revenues, they’re kowtowing to clients that say, I can’t afford that. Can you reduce your price? And, and they don’t have any boundaries around anything.

Drew McLellan [00:28:56]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [00:28:56]:
So that’s where we come in and we say, all right, we need to create structure, we need to create boundaries, we need to create systems for support that will allow you to really see it through a different lens. And most business owners don’t want to go there, but it’s absolutely paramount that we go there if we’re going to create a business that, you know, you don’t, you know, hate going to and doing to make peanuts, but you’re going to, to really add more value, make more impact and truly make more income. What are you hearing?

Drew McLellan [00:29:24]:
Yeah, I, I, I, this is the conversation I have with coaching clients every single day. And you know, I, I think that again, intellectually, they nod their head. It’s probably the advice they’re giving their clients too. Right. But that’s different than looking in the mirror and going, oh, wait, all right, I’m time starved. Oh wait, I’m caught up in the tactics. I’m doing work that someone else should do all of that. So my question is if, if you have a coaching client who, who acknowledges, yep, that is me, I am stuck in this spot. What are the first couple steps you have them take? Because I would assume that this is a, you know, eat the elephant, one bite at a time sort of situation. What, what are the first couple bites that they have to do to get started to make a change if they really, truly want to scale?

Trevor McGregor [00:30:20]:
Well, you’re really teeing up the ball beautifully for me, Drew, so thank you. And really, I’m going to give them really, the keys to the kingdom here, where we really talk about every single thing boils down to what I call the four S’s. And there’s only four little things that you got to check in with as we start to bite into the apple here. And those four S’s are your state, your story, your standards, and your strategy. So I’ll say it again. Your state, your story, your standards, and your strategies. So to unpack the bite of the apple, the first bite into the apple is your state. And your state really refers to your focus. Are you focused on all the reasons why it won’t work? Are you focused on giving up approval, control, and safety? Are you focused on the money that you’d have to spend? Because I’m telling you, the ability for an entrepreneur or a business owner to skyrocket will be in direct proportion to what they focus on. So the first bite of the apple is. Let’s go in and check you in with your state, right? And what you’re focused on, which then allows us to bring you to number two. And that S is your story. And your story is anything you tell yourself why you can’t have it the way you want or anything that you do to tell yourself lies. And because we tell ourselves lies as business owners, we. We create what we call rationalize. That is, we rationalize all the reasons why we can’t. It’s too much or it’ll take too long or it won’t work out. But once we go in and check on your state and we make that better, and then we absolutely reverse your story by asking better questions, like, you know, what are my beliefs around that? How long have I held that belief? Who gave me that belief? Maybe what belief or story is better for me, given where I want to go? You start to see a new way of thinking. Behaving that then takes us to the third S, which is your standards. Your standards. And Drew, I can tell the quality of a business owner, an agency owner, an entrepreneur by the boundaries and the level of standards that they set for themselves. Because you get what you tolerate. And if you tolerate poor performance or you tolerate, you know, not having your. Your data to make decisions, shame on you. Because it doesn’t have to be that way. Last I checked, we’re in 2026 as we record this. And I’m telling you, it’s ultimately the business owner’s responsibility to be accountable to what needs to happen so that they do raise the bar, so that they draw a new line in the sand. And they don’t shrink when a client says, I need a cheaper price. And they don’t shrink when an employee says, I don’t like the way you’re treating me. And they don’t shrivel up when, but they stick up. They stick out their chest and they say, you know what? Here’s what needs to be true for us to really continue this journey. Or here’s my pricing. I do not go below that because I exceed the value that I offer or whatever it is. But we never, ever, ever get to that 4ths, which I’ll get to in a minute without first changing those first three. You got to change your state, you got to change your story, and you got to change your standards, because only then and then can we get into that fourth S, which is strategy. That is, how are we going to take you from where you are to where you want to be? And that’s really simple because we got to know what you want, we got to know why you want it. What’s the big fat compelling reason why change is a must and not a should? And then really from there, we got to go out there and execute on it. So I know it’s a fire hose, but what do you think of the four S’s that would support number three in changing those systems for support for the better?

Drew McLellan [00:33:50]:
I think it all sounds exactly right, but I think the challenge for most business owners is they are so quagmired in the work that it’s really hard for them to lift their head up and think about and give the time and attention that those four items need for them to be able to make a change.

Trevor McGregor [00:34:12]:
But that’s why we have number four, and you’ve just teed up the ball perfectly for where we’re going.

Drew McLellan [00:34:17]:
We’re going to stop, we’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll talk about number four. As we take a quick pause from our conversation, I want to talk about something that I see agencies struggle with. Hiring mistakes are expensive, especially when you’re expanding your team or thinking about hiring internationally. When agency owners ask me who helps them slow down, get clear, and avoid these mistakes, we often point them to Job Rack. We trust Noel and Job Rack and their approach. I’ve seen how he thinks about hiring and Ami agencies working with him have strong, positive experiences. Because of that, we were happy to welcome Noel and jobrack as a paid sponsor of this show. If you want a smart place to start before your next hire, Noel’s hiring playbook is [email protected] AMI Again, that’s jobrack.com AMI hey, everybody. I know you’re anxious to get back to the show and so am I. But I want to remind you about the premier event for agency owners and leaders that is coming up right around the corner. I am proud of many things we have done at Agency Management Institute, but I’m probably most proud of the Build a Better Agency Summit. I knew there was a need, a hunger for a conference for real small to mid sized agencies. I’m talking five people, 10 people, 100 people, 200 people. Where we can come together and we can learn together. We can share our own experiences. We can have killer keynote speakers, breakout speakers, over 30 different roundtables you can participate in where you’re with a subject matter expert and other agency owners who are challenged with or interested in the same topic. And we have knocked it out of the park. Over 75% of the people who attend one year come back again in a subsequent year. So I know we’re doing a lot right. We would love to have you join us. Head over to agencymanagementinstitute.com and in the upper left corner there’s a tab said Baba Summit. You can register now and I promise you, you have never gone to a conference like this one. So please join us. All right, we are back with Trevor McGregor and we are talking about his coaching experience over the years and the things that keep agency owners and business owners stuck where they cannot scale their business. And for many of you, scale, when you think about scale, you think about, you know, gross revenue or in our world, adjusted gross income or you think about it in terms of butts and seats fte or you think about, in some cases you think about your own personal wealth. But ultimately I believe that scale is about impact. How many other business owners, leaders, lives have you changed? How have you helped your clients grow? How have you helped your family? How have you helped your employees families? Like that’s ultimately the scale that I think most of us care the most about, but we get in our own way and that’s what we’ve been talking about so far in this conversation. So before we took a break, of course we had talked about three of the five things that get in the way of a business owner scaling. And we are just headed to number four. So Trevor, number four.

Trevor McGregor [00:37:37]:
Well, thank you again and again, we’ll recap this, you know, because number one, you’ve got to check in with your beliefs. Number two, you got to create the strategic plan. Number three, you’ve got to lean into systems for support. But it all revolves around number four and five because Number four, Drew, is what I call poor time management. Poor time management. You know as well as I do that we all operate from something called the Rule of 168. Now, if you never heard of the Rule of 168, it means we’ve all got 168 hours a week to do what we need to do. Right? Seven days times 24 hours is 168. Now, yes, we sleep for some of those hours, we eat, we pay the bills, we play with the dog. But really, what are you doing with your time in the business? And I find that most people are running around working on what’s urgent instead of carving out time and protecting time to work on what’s important. Right. And I’ve heard them all excuses. I. Even as an entrepreneur and a solopreneur, and we have many businesses where I wear many different hats, but it’s not the hats I wear. It’s really what hat I’m wearing at the right time for the right reason, so that I can make the business grow, so that I can create more, you know, tools and methodologies and sales and impact so that it comes, you know, a recurring machine. But I find a lot of people are running around putting out fires all day.

Drew McLellan [00:38:58]:
Yep.

Trevor McGregor [00:38:59]:
Right. And if you wear a firefighters hat all day long and you don’t carve out the time or you don’t understand that once that time goes by, you can never get it back. That’s where we need to shine the flashlight on it and not make it good or bad, right or wrong, but really, you know, check in and start to retool it. What do you think, Drew?

Drew McLellan [00:39:16]:
Yeah, I think it is. I think that is the Achilles heel of. Of business owners in general is that there’s always something urgent to do. And so, you know, all four of the things you’ve talked about so far, people are nodding their head. You and I both know they’ve heard them before. The trick is, how do you actually do it? Right? I mean, that’s so knowing that all of us took some time management course where we saw the grid and it was, you know, and all the time was spent in urgent, and nothing was spent in importance. And. And I think every agency owner every day wakes up and goes to work with the goal of doing what’s important, and then they get derailed by their urgent.

Trevor McGregor [00:40:00]:
So absolutely, they.

Drew McLellan [00:40:01]:
They know it’s a problem. They just don’t know how to fix the problem.

Trevor McGregor [00:40:05]:
You bet. And I totally understand and appreciate that because, again, they’re wearing so many hats there’s so many hours in a day. There’s so many calls, text, emails. I get it. But it goes back to really, are you carving out time, you know, for different things? Right. Maybe you’ve got to really do what I call a values hierarchy. And a values hierarchy is you getting crystal clear on what’s truly important in your business in terms of what’s number one, nuts. Number two, what’s number three, what’s number four, and so on. Just like we would in our personal life, like if we go to our personal life. Number me. The number one thing that is important for me is my spirit. Right. Second is my health. Because without, you know, believing that I come from somewhere and I’m going to return to somewhere, what are we doing here? My health is second. My wife is third, my kids are fourth. Right. You know, and then being of contribution and travel and tithing and all of that is all over here. Well, what about in the business? Is it sales? Is it marketing? Is it operations? Is it, you know, you know, something like that? And people sit there and they go, well, it’s all important. And yes, it is. We’re talking about it all competing at micrometer levels. But ultimately, what’s important for you early in the week, what’s important for you later in the week, what’s important for you at the end of the week, what does your different day part look like? What must happen in the mornings so that you get it done. So in the afternoons, when the fires really start burning, you can take care of those too, and still get home on time for dinner with your spouse and your loved ones so that you don’t feel like you’re grinding 80 hours a week to do it. So a lot of the stuff we talk about really comes down to fitting it into green time, which is administration. Dark green time is making money, and gold time is where you’re doing the things that give you an infinite roi. Maybe you’re investing in understanding AI. Maybe you’re, you know, bringing on somebody. Their zone of genius is really going to give you the ability to get eight hours back in a week. Where you might think, yeah, so I get eight hours back in a week. But you forget about the compound effect where if you get eight hours this week and eight hours next week and eight hours the next two weeks, you got 32 hours a month back to do something that’s higher up on the green scale or the gold scale. So I could talk to you at nauseam about this, but this is where people have to get real and get raw with what am I doing with my time.

Drew McLellan [00:42:21]:
So to the people who are listening who are saying, totally get it. Again, intellectually, I get it, but I’m so stuck in doing all the things, I don’t even know how to get an extra 30 minutes. So it’s interesting. We have a. A program called the Sales Momentum Learning Lab, and every week I record a video for those folks. And this week, it was about, look, you’ve got to find two hours a week. That’s all I’m asking for. Two hours a week to focus on nurturing sales opportunities. So, again, this is. This is very raw. Like, I literally just recorded this video. I love it this morning. And so. And I know that when I’m asking them to do that, they’re going, drew, I don’t have. I don’t have two hours. So when you’re working with someone and they’re. They’re saying that to you going, trevor, I get it. I want to do the important things, but I have so many urgent things on my plate that I can’t get out from under them. How do you help them unpack that?

Trevor McGregor [00:43:28]:
Yeah, and we already have, Drew, because we’re going to go back to those four little S words, right? Where’s your focus when it comes to the time you don’t have versus the time you could have if you carved out time and protected that time? Right. Let’s say that your life depended on finding two hours, as almost as if you were going to meet Elon Musk or meet your favorite, you know, I don’t know, Hollywood actor, actress, or you’re going to meet somebody famous that you wanted to meet, that plays a certain sport, you would find time to carve out two hours to go and do that, yet you won’t carve out two hours. So we start telling ourselves, again, rational lies. We rationalize why we can’t, rather than how can we, right. Change the quality of the question. Change the quality of your life. And that’s where I think it’s important for people to do what I call a time audit. You know, if you go back last week, right, and you really, really. And you’re honest with yourself, when you look in the mirror, not only do you answer the question, but you answer it honestly. You’ll go back, and if you really measured what you did and why you did it, and, you know, what came of it, and then you brought it to this new week, and you actually scheduled. And you don’t have to schedule out your whole week perfectly, but you do need to put in the big rocks, right. And then leave a little bit of time for firefighting because fires tend to always come up for small business owners. If you make a 10 or 15 or 20% improvement by doing the time audit and changing the way you’re showing up for the next week, and then that compounds the numbers get exponential when you start to see that even 90 minutes a week and changing the way I’m doing sales or marketing or HR or even reading my dashboards or my metrics, right. That’s when sparks fly and magic happens because you start to get into momentum. And you know as well as I do in business that once you start to get into momentum, you, you tend to stay there. What do you think?

Drew McLellan [00:45:17]:
Yeah, no, I think you’re right. I was just thinking about personally. So my mom has been gone for a while, but the last five years of her life she suffered from dementia and I was her primary caregiver. And so I all of a sudden, and it wasn’t all of a sudden, but I had to very quickly find more time in my day because taking care of someone with dementia is like a part time job. And for a while it was a full time job, right. And so I was running ami. I had my own business. And I had to figure out, to your point, like it wasn’t a Meet a Hollywood Star, but it was something like I had to figure out how to talk to her doctors and do all the things and sit with her and watch Dancing with the Stars and I had to be available for all those things. And I learned very quickly that there was a lot more fluidity in my day than I believed there was. That there really was correct. I did have the ability to re pivot my day and how I spent my time, I was forced to prioritize, you know, in a way that I had no wiggle room around. So she became my must. And then everything else, I had to figure out a new way to work around it. Which was a great lesson for me because I would have been one of those people who said, look, you look at my calendar, there’s no, there’s no wiggle room, right? I’m already working 60 hours a week and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you bet. And yet when faced with that reality, I had to figure it out. And so I think, I think that you’re right that, you know, hopefully for most people it’s not that sort of a forced situation, but when we force ourselves for better reasons, for good business reasons, for good family reasons, to really look at Our schedule there is more control and flexibility than we think.

Trevor McGregor [00:47:03]:
Thousand %, Drew. Thousand percent. And God bless your mom. But it all comes back to your why and it all comes back to your values hierarchy. Taking care of your mom in the later stages was the most important thing that could have been on your list. Where you might have had to get up earlier, you might have had to stay up later to get stuff done. But I go back to that quote that for the committed, there’s always a way. And I work with some of the busiest business owners, doctors, attorneys, agency owners, franchise owners, and again, I’ve, you know, built many successful seven figure businesses where I was the bottleneck too. So as you start to, you know, see what’s urgent and what’s important and where are you bottlenecking and where could somebody do something where, you know, they, you delegate it or you, you know, hand it off. That’s when you start to see through a different lens. So when you think about it, your state, your story and your standards around what you’re doing with time are, you know, a time audit is too hard. Well, maybe now’s a good time to raise your standards and do that time audit. What do you think?

Drew McLellan [00:48:03]:
Yeah, no, I think you’re right again. Where I want to get to in this conversation and we still have number five to get to is all of this is great in theory. How do you begin to put it into practice? But let’s go to five and then five is Drew.

Trevor McGregor [00:48:18]:
Guess what number five is? Five is called putting it into practice.

Drew McLellan [00:48:22]:
Look at that.

Trevor McGregor [00:48:23]:
Called execution.

Drew McLellan [00:48:24]:
I swear to God, just for the listeners to know. I know it sounds like I’m teeing these up like Trevor and I have rehearsed this or I have a script, but I swear to God I didn’t. I knew he had five things, but I didn’t know what the five things were. So I’m just telling you this is just sort of the way the conversation goes. So in case any of you think that this is, that this is predetermined or practiced, it is not. It’s just us having a conversation and probably to your point that we’ve both been around the block long enough that, that we sort of know the path. But anyway, sorry, putting into practice, let’s talk about that number five. All of it’s great if you understand the first four.

Trevor McGregor [00:49:00]:
But number five, yeah, we can get rid of your limiting beliefs, create the plan, create systems to support the plan, optimize your calendar, all of that stuff. But if you’re not out there Taking what I call intelligent and inspired action, you’re fooling yourself. And I like to say intelligent and inspired, where intelligent means smart. Drew. But inspired reminds you that you don’t have to do this. You get to do this right. And running an agency, believe it or not, is a pretty cool job. It’s a pretty cool.

Drew McLellan [00:49:28]:
It’s a privilege. Yeah.

Trevor McGregor [00:49:29]:
When you think of the opportunity for you to share your vision or your zone of genius with someone else, and they go out there and they benefit from it, and they benefit. And the next person, next person, you go to bed feeling pretty fulfilled at night by doing this sort of work. But again, you got to take that intelligent and inspired action. You also have to measure your progress. And I think a lot of business owners are so busy and running around like chickens with their heads cut off that they forget, what are my benchmarks? What are my KPIs? Am I on track? Am I off track? How can I improve this by 5 or 10 or 15%? Not 100%. But it’s the small things, right, that add up to the big things. Tony Robbins used to say, you know, yard by yard, it’s hard, but inch by inch, it’s a cinch. So again, we got to go execute. We got to measure our progress. And then the final part of five is really, who’s keeping you accountable? Right. Who’s holding your feet to the fire so that you do what you say you’re going to do? Because we know the path of least resistance kicks in, or we want to chill out and go watch Netflix, or we’re, you know, doom scrolling on our phone. Well, that’s what average people do. And I find that business owners that don’t want to be average will do the things that average people aren’t willing to do, like go out there and execute, measure progress, hire an accountability coach, hire an accountability partner, or at least, you know, have some level of commitment where they can’t squirm out of it.

Drew McLellan [00:50:54]:
Yeah.

Trevor McGregor [00:50:54]:
So if you really go back to all five, as you get rid of that limiting belief, you get rid of, you know, anything that you haven’t planned, and you start planning it. You start to create systems and put the right seats and the right people on the bus and all that stuff, you optimize your calendar and you commit to doing what’s scheduled, and then you go out there and execute, measure your progress and stay accountable. And I’m telling you, that’s where we can turn decades into days. You don’t have to wait 10 years to build a Better agency. You can build a better agency now by owning your four S’s in terms of your state, your story, your standards, and your strategy.

Drew McLellan [00:51:31]:
Yeah, it’s interesting. So we have, inside the AMI organization, we have peer groups, we have accountability groups for agency owners. And today we had the midpoint. So we meet every six months in person. And today was a midpoint for one of the groups where everybody had to go back to the goals that they set three months ago that in three months they have to have done. And we’re at the midpoint where it’s like, okay, everyone has to go around the horn and tell us where they’re at against their goal. And, you know, I, as I was listening to people talking about, you know, the pivots and the things they’ve had to do. You know, they thought they had a clear vision three months ago. Now they’ve had three months of reality that may have changed their goal a little bit. Some of them are already done with it. Some of them are far away because something else took it. But the ability to your point, the accountability of sitting around a room with other people who know your world and understand what you do, holding you accountable, holding you capable and accountable, we know you can do it, but are you doing it? And if not, have. Being brave enough to say what’s getting in the way? Why aren’t you getting this done? Is powerful. And I think, I do believe that one of our core beliefs is we get smarter, faster because we do it together. Right? And so that accountability factor, whether it’s a coach, whether it’s a peer group, whether it is an accountability buddy that makes sure you. You exercise three times a week, whatever it is, I think we as human beings need that partnership, that accountability, that honest relationship where somebody is willing to go, I think you are capable of more or different or better, and let me help you figure out how to get there. But to your point, this is the standard you asked me to hold you to as your accountability partner. So how do we get you there?

Trevor McGregor [00:53:19]:
Right, that’s exactly it. And I’m telling you, Drew, a high tide lifts all boats. You become who you hang around with. Right? And that’s where as we really, really look to grow to what I call the five freedoms. You know, that level of your state, your story, your standards, and the strategy, and having the accountability around all of that is really what, you know, gets people to, you know, move towards it in droves. And that is, you know, we all want financial freedom, right? Well, if we’re going to have Financial freedom. We got to do the work and we got to add value so that money becomes the byproduct of the value we add. Number two, once we make more money, we can have more time freedom. We can buy back more of our time and hire things out. Right. What I think that people miss the opportunity to do is also create location and lifestyle freedom. That is where you’re not grinding in your business 80 hours a week, but maybe you’re working 40 to 50 to 60 some week and 30 the next and 60 the next. And you don’t make it good or bad, right or wrong. Because I don’t believe in work life balance. I think it’s really.

Drew McLellan [00:54:20]:
Yeah, me too.

Trevor McGregor [00:54:21]:
I’ve said that a million times together.

Drew McLellan [00:54:23]:
Yeah, there’s no such thing. It’s. It’s really about work life blend. Right. How do they blend together?

Trevor McGregor [00:54:28]:
Yeah, love that.

Drew McLellan [00:54:29]:
Yeah.

Trevor McGregor [00:54:30]:
So as we move towards more financial freedom, time freedom, location and lifestyle freedom, numbers four and five to this are really what drive me because number four is impact freedom. It’s really getting to that place where you will no longer go work at W2 or you will no longer work for the government, or you will no longer be a part of a big corporation. But entrepreneurs are the ones that can really go out there and make tremendous impact to make humanity in the world a better place. Right?

Drew McLellan [00:54:57]:
Yeah.

Trevor McGregor [00:54:57]:
And then the fifth and final one is an opportunity for relationship freedom. And that means that you’re getting into better rooms. You’re meeting with Drew, you’re meeting with these, these like minded business owners where once again, you know, a high tide lifts all boats. So at the end of the day, I know it’s a fire hose of the five, you know, things that can really, you know, reinvent you to get you moving in the right direction. It’s the four S’s of your state, your story, your standards and your strategy. And it’s really the five freedoms of financial, time, location, impact, and relationship. But again, you got to ask yourself one question. And that question is, how hungry am I for success? Right. How hungry am I for success? Do I want to settle for an appetizer or always be ordering off the value menu? Or do I want the steak and lobster? Because I’m here to tell you that the universe is, has all of it available for you, but you’ve got to commit to what you want. And the more hungry you are for helping other people, the more hungry you are to make more impact and income. The universe starts to bring you the clients. It brings you the time Management tools. It brings you the new hired that you’ve been looking for. And that’s where I really find that for the committed who apply all of this, that’s where they can, again, absolutely explode the results, make more money, get their time back, and live a life that they truly want to live.

Drew McLellan [00:56:17]:
Yeah, I don’t disagree with anything. So I know that you believe that there is one secret. This is a perfect way for us to wrap up this conversation. One secret that makes business owners rich. And I’m sure by rich, you mean rich in a plethora of ways, yes. But what is the one secret that now you’ve done almost a half a million coaching sessions or almost 50,000 coaching sessions. What is it?

Trevor McGregor [00:56:45]:
You know what? It sounds so cliche, and it sounds like everyone will want to argue this, but it is passion. Yeah, it’s passion. It’s really about you doing something that you love to do. It’s really doing something where, you know, it’s not even feeling like work, but, you know, it feels like a playground. And I’m a big believer, Drew. And this is a huge sound bite I think you and the listener can appreciate is, you know, we’re all. We’ve all been given what I call creative codes by God or by the universe or by source or by infinite intelligence. Call it whatever you want. And that we got to get up every day and be creative. Right? Because ultimately, if we don’t use the creative codes that the universe gave us, we’re going to get into the mundane, the boring, the Groundhog Day, and all of that stuff. So where you get hungry and where you bring your passion and where you unleash your creativity, that’s when sparks fly and magic happens. What do you think?

Drew McLellan [00:57:39]:
Well, I think that, you know, we all know a lot of people who do work because it pays the bills and they have a job. You know, I grew up in a house where my dad desperately wanted to be a veterinarian, but he came from a very poor background, couldn’t afford vet school, was good at math, so ended up becoming a cpa, which he did his whole life. He was very financially successful, but he hated it. It was never fulfilling. It was him being obligated to take care of his family and doing what he thought he needed to do. And the lesson I took from that is that there is no greater, stronger cage than having a career that you hate and can’t get away from or get around. Correct. And so I think that the listeners who own agencies or are leaders in agencies hopefully look in the mirror and recognize that they’re the privileged few. They get to actually do work that inspires them, that they love to do. That’s fun, it’s playful, it’s creative, it’s interesting, it’s challenging. They get to see the impact of their work. There are a lot of people who don’t have jobs that give them any of that. And so, you know, if they have. If they are in that space to your point, they have the passion. It’s just that I think sometimes they get so weighed down with the grind of it all that it’s hard for them to see the passion and they have to find it again to do all the things we’ve been talking about for the last hour, that without the passion fueling, the willingness to do the time audit, the willingness to figure out how to systemize the business, to get out of your own way and not be the bottleneck and all of the things we talked about, the passion is what will fuel that and drive that if they can find it again.

Trevor McGregor [00:59:24]:
Well, I think you’re spot on. And I would also add, and I would stack on top of that, that sometimes you got to step away from the business. You got to go away for the weekend. You got to get into nature, you got to recharge your batteries. You got a journal. You got to ask, what is my. Why? What is driving me in the first place? Because I find that sometimes, you know, we get burnt out, we get stretched. It gets thin. There’s too much month at the end of the money. Right?

Drew McLellan [00:59:49]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [00:59:49]:
At the end of the day, we are exhausted and we go to bed knowing we got to get up and do it all over again. Well, that’s not a cool thing. We want to get up and feel our feet hit the floor instead of saying, oh, God, it’s morning. Your feet hit the floor, and you say, good morning, God. Thank you for giving me another opportunity to serve.

Drew McLellan [01:00:05]:
Right.

Trevor McGregor [01:00:06]:
And we’ve chosen marketing. We’ve chosen being an agency owner. And like you said, there’s a million people that would love a billion people that would love to trade places, given what they’re doing for a living, versus what we get to do for a living.

Drew McLellan [01:00:18]:
Yep. Yeah, that’s for sure. This has been a great conversation, hopefully, Trevor. And I’m hoping what this did was, if nothing else, it reminded everybody that they chose to do this right. We chose this career. If you own the business, that was a conscious choice you made, and you chose it for a reason. And if you’ve lost that passion or You’ve forgotten because it’s been so hard lately, which for I know a lot of you, it has been really hard lately. It is easy to forget why you chose this. And so maybe that’s where you start. Maybe you start by sort of reinvigorating why you did this rather than became a ditch digger or a doctor or some other thing that you didn’t want to do. Why did you do it? What inspires you? What legacy do you want to leave? And to your point, what are you willing to do to get there? What. What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to be disciplined about? Because honestly, everybody listening has the capacity and the capability and the resources to be 5, 10, 15, 20% better. And as you were saying, the minute that starts, it does light a fire, and all of a sudden, 5% better turns into 10% better, turns into 50% better. And pretty soon you’re looking back and going, wow, look at. Look at the journey I’ve been on for the last year. Three years. Five years. And look at where we’re at now. I would have never believed I could be here, but now I’m here. And now I get that I. There’s also a whole new place for me to go to, that if I want to, I can keep moving.

Trevor McGregor [01:01:54]:
Well, Drew, you. You dropped the mic drop there because you use the word inspire or inspiration, and sometimes we get uninspired. You got to go back and you got to read something or listening to listen to something or watch something. And so for me, even as a high performance coach, there’s not a day that goes by that I’m not, you know, reading about some biography or watching a YouTube clip or listening to Tony Robbins or working with not just one coach, but I have two coaches that, you know, fuel my fire and get me moving every single week. So at the end of the day, this is really about, you know, re engaging, reinventing, re enrolling that opportunity to go back and get inspired, you know, just like anyone else. Maybe you’re an Elon Musk fan and you’re, you know, watching him move up and down the mountain, or maybe Richard Branson or Oprah Winfrey or maybe there’s a sports athlete. But for the committed and the people that don’t want to be average and the people that don’t want to be interested and the people that don’t just want to be committed, but for the ones that want to be defiantly committed, there’s always a way.

Drew McLellan [01:02:53]:
Yeah. Awesome. Trevor. Folks, want to learn more about your work? If they want to follow you, get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to. To track you down?

Trevor McGregor [01:03:03]:
Well, thank you so much for having me on the show, Drew, and huge shout out to you. I mean, we could talk for hours. I love how you’re, you know, helping me, you know, support you and the listener with this because it’s obviously something I’m super passionate about. And really, for that reason and for you and the listeners sticking around and hearing me talk at nauseum about all of this, I’ve got a special gift for you, and it’s free of charge. And the way you can that you can get it is to go over my website, which is Trevor McGregor.com forward/agency. That’s Trevor McGregor.com agency. I’ve got my own rich beyond belief mini audio series. And my rich beyond belief mini audio series is what I use with my paid clients. And in terms of some of the tools, the coaching frameworks, the methodologies that can help you to go further faster or turn decades into days. You’ll hear stuff on goal setting, you’ll hear stuff on time management. You’ll hear stuff on, you know, setting up your team for success. And I’m giving it to you free of charge as a way of saying thank you for listening, but also to applying some of the stuff that you’ve learned today. So to get that, go over to Trevor McGregor.com agency and then for anyone else that wants to learn more about how a coaching structure could support them or their agency, myself or my team are offering what we call free discovery calls. And a free discovery call is where we get on Zoom for 45 minutes, either myself or one of the members of my coaching team to really find out, where are you at? Where do you want to go? What’s working, what’s not working? And in 45 minutes, we’ll give you a bunch of insight and add a ton of value. And we’ll also share with you, if it’s a great fit, how we might be able to do some work together. So Again, that’s Trevor McGregor.com, you’ll find a ton of information there to review. And I’m also on all social channels. You’ll find me on LinkedIn, you’ll find me on Insta, you’ll find me on Facebook. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I only work with people that are defiantly committed to going to the next level.

Drew McLellan [01:04:57]:
Yeah, makes great sense. This has been a great conversation. Thanks for being with us today, Trevor. Appreciate it.

Trevor McGregor [01:05:02]:
Well, thank you, and keep up the great work. Drew. Mighty impressive.

Drew McLellan [01:05:05]:
You too. All right, guys, so you know that my belief is every podcast needs to end with some homework. And so Trevor has given you a lot of things to think about, but I want you to go all the way back and ask yourself, why did you choose to start an agency? Or why did. Why did you choose to work in the agency business? What was it about the work that we do that inspired you, that drew you, that caused that your heart to palpitate and to create that passion? I want you to figure that out, and I want you to articulate it. Like, put it down in writing. Like, what was it about the work that you said above all the other things you could do? Because all of you are smart and capable, you could have probably been anything you wanted to be. Maybe I wanted to be a base, a professional baseball player. Trevor wanted to be a hockey player. All right? So there are probably some things in the way of us doing that. But short of that, I know you could have been anything you wanted to be, and this is what you chose. So you chose it for a reason. So I want you to remember what that is, and then I want you to figure out what’s in the way of you waking up every morning fired up about the work you do. That’s the question I want you to solve. Because I think understanding what’s in the way is what starts the cavalcade of activity around the time, tracking and figuring out your state and all the things that Trevor talked to you about. But until you feel that fire in your belly again, until you remember why you chose to do this and why you choose to do this, I think it’s hard to do those things, and I’m not saying they’re not hard even after you have it, but I think it’s damn near impossible until you have that fire in your belly again. So that’s my homework for you today, is I want you to find. I want you to remind yourself why you chose what you chose and why you’ve been doing this for five years or 10 years or 20 years or 40 years. For some of you, why are you still here? What is it about it that is so magnetic that you want to stay near in the orbit that you’re in and what weighs that down enough that you can’t be fueled by that every day and every morning? Okay, that’s your homework. All right, before I let you go, two other things. Do the homework. Two other things. As you know, I am super grateful to our friends at White Label iq. They’re the presenting sponsor of this podcast, have been with us for years. I talked to you about them at the beginning of the show. So I just want to remind you, if you want to learn more about the work they do and how they serve agencies, head over to whitelabeliq.comami because they have a special deal for you. And I just got to tell you, I’ve been doing this for a long time. We’re on. Coming up on episode 600, I think I love these conversations. This is like Trevor was saying, every day you’ve got to find something that inspires you, that you’re still learning. These conversations are one of the greatest fire starters for me that are in my professional world. And I don’t get to do this if you don’t keep listening. If nobody listens, then I don’t get to keep doing this and I lose out on that learning opportunity. So I hope you know how grateful I am that you keep coming back and that we hang out together for an hour every week, which I know is a big commitment on your part. You let me get smarter and better because you keep coming back and hopefully I return the favor by bringing you people like Trevor that also make you a little smarter and a little better as well. But I am grateful. I’m grateful for you. I am grateful for all the emails, all the suggestions, all the requests for guests. I’m grateful for all of it. You helped me make this show good and you helped me make this show valuable for not only you, but frankly, for me, too. So super grateful for that. And guess what? I’m coming back next week, and I hope you will, too. All right. Until then, have a great week and I will see you next week. Thanks for listening.

Drew McLellan [01:09:01]:
That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build better agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.