How extraordinary thinking leads to extraordinary agency growth with Tori Boats

Hey, everybody. Drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long, and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick, hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

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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 a 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.

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here. Guess what? Yep. I am back with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super grateful to be with you. If you’re listening to this in real time, happy New Year. I know it’s coming right around the corner. Excited to share 2025 with you and to help you envision what the future is all about and, and walk it out with you throughout the year with great episodes, great guests, and all the things that we do at a MI. You know, we are, we are here to be of service. We are here to help you grow and to get better and to sustain that growth.

Keep what you have and, and decide what it is you want to be when you grow up and help you get there. So, we’re excited for the new year. We’re excited to spend that time with you and anything we can do to be helpful, we hope that you’ll reach out. Just a reminder, one of the things that we do is we have a live q and a every month. And so we, we promote it through the newsletter, we promote it in the Facebook group, but it’s really just us live on Zoom. Sometimes we’ll talk or teach for maybe 10 minutes, but it’s 10 minutes of teaching, and then it’s 50 minutes of just answering whatever questions you have on whatever topic you have. So it could be employees, it could be new business, it could be a system or process.

It could be a tool. It could be how are other agencies solving this problem? Or, I’m struggling with this, this, what would you do? Or whatever it is. I wanna buy an agency, I wanna sell my agency. Whatever it may be. We are, we are live, we are there for an hour just to answer your questions, and we’re happy to field whatever questions you may have. So please keep an eye out in the newsletter, in the Facebook group for us to announce the dates of that q and a so that you know when it is and you can join us. So we would love to have you do that. All right. Lemme tell you a little bit about our guest is perfect timing with us coming on onto the new year to have Tori Botes on the show with us.

So Tori has an expertise in thinking through how do we think differently to get to exponential growth. So her whole idea is sort of creative intelligence and exponential thinking leads to exponential growth. And she has a very interesting twist and spin on how we should think about our business in terms of, you know, as agency owners, we’re often burdened with the day-to-day, and how do we push that aside and begin to think bigger about our business and where we want it to be, and, and more importantly how we want it to show up in the world. And so I think you’re gonna really enjoy her and her wisdom.

And so without further ado, let’s welcome her to the show. Tori, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Well, excited to be here.

So tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you had, how you came to have this knowledge about how you help company founders and owners sort of pivot the business a little bit. Talk a little bit about your background for us.

Well, I kind of just landed in my first business. It was me being in technology and learning how to win contracts in the government and thinking, well, I could do that. I’m 20.

Right?

If they can do that, I could do that. So I started that business right off the back of the, the type of work I was doing, made some relationships happen, and my first contract was off and running and I was 25. So I didn’t have a lot of experience knowing anything about business. Right. You know, some 10 years later I find myself running 75 employees and a whole host of, I had 15 people in my back office running the back of the business. And, you know, I just had to go through learning how to run that type of business, how to win, you know, $5 million contracts. And that didn’t start on day one.

So a lot of lessons learned. I cashed outta that business and went into my second technology business, not wanting to start over from scratch, not wanting to feel like I had to do all that suffering again. So it was really, really scary. And then I realized that I was mentoring a lot of other businesses that were starting, that had never run businesses before in all kinds of industries. Not just technology, but interior design or CPA firms, smaller outfits, folks that were doing their own creative work. Yeah. And they were trying to hire their first team. Yeah. And I just found that I really enjoyed that side of what I could bring to the table, that knowledge, and I decided to go full force into that type of work.

And what were some, what was the big, at what point did you go, I know something they need to know?

You know, I think it was more a real genuine unhappiness with the business I was in. And you know, I often say I left a million dollars on the table and I did, when I walked away from my business, you know, that was a multimillion dollar endeavor, and I knew how to grow that type of business. I knew how to make it successful, but I wasn’t happy. You know, I, I guess I felt like I wasn’t doing the work I was meant to be doing. So I’ve been on this long soul searching journey of trying to figure out what do I love? What am I good at? And it came to speak speaking. So I’m like, well, okay, I, I think I’ll speak on stage and share what I know.

And I just wanted to connect with people emotionally, which is strange for the logical brain that I have. And I wanted to move people and inspire people to feel like I felt in that moment, which was truly inspired to just feel free, you know? And my business tied me down so badly, and I had to learn how to build systems and to delegate and to free myself from that, to give me this space to explore before I, you know, I, I wasn’t just gonna shut it down and jump off a cliff, right? It didn’t feel responsible to me. And, you know, that’s kind of how I found that freedom to figure out what I really wanted.

And eventually the speaking led me back to working with company owners and helping them find that spark of inspiration to grow and the perseverance to do so that came so naturally to me. They didn’t always have that or have that confidence to figure it out on their own. And it just kind of fuels me.

So what gets in the way of that spark? What, what I, I think you’re right. I think a lot of business owners and certainly agency owners, that folks listening, there’s a lot of fatigue in business ownership. And then certainly as we’ve gone through COVI and post covid I and the great resignation and the recession here in the States, and, you know, the turmoil of our most recent election, I think people are just tired. And so it’s hard to get, it’s hard to gear up and think about growth. And, you know, as you were talking about sort of surging forward, talk a little bit about how does someone, who’s in that place as an, as an agency owner, how do, how do I go from that to what you talk about, which is sort of this extraordinary thinking.

Can you define what extraordinary thinking is? And then how do I, how do I gear up to do that? ’cause it, I assume it takes a fair amount of energy.

No, it

Doesn’t. Oh, I like it. Okay.

Yeah. And I, you know, when you say that back to me, I just light up because it supercharges me. So I think when you’re looking at an agency, you’re, you’re generally thinking about creative work for others, right? Yep. And even though I was in technology, I essentially ran an agency. My, my employees, the majority of them actually worked for my clients in, in doing software development or hardware engineering. So they were being creative on my behalf, which is what I feel like an agency kind of is.

Right? Absolutely.

And the beauty of that is you already have creative intelligence. Everybody does. I just remember back when I owned my business, I didn’t feel like I was in control. ’cause I didn’t feel like I knew enough to be in the position I was in. I was making it up as I went along, and I didn’t feel creative at work, which is really bizarre because as humans we’re all naturally creative and I was creative at home. Hmm. And I realized that in order to help my people want to help me grow my business, they had to feel as motivated and energized about it as I did, and I wasn’t feeling it. So I think the, what I can see in other business owners is when they lose that spark, but they still have this ambition to grow bigger and to do something more.

And they’re in, they like their business. They don’t wanna pivot like I did outside of it. It’s more about getting in touch with what’s personally meaningful to you, which sounds really counterintuitive to business, especially when you’re thinking about your employees and why I think the question is, why would my personal interest motivate an employee, right? Because they’re not, their personal interest isn’t the same. I think the magic really comes in when you can let go of all of those feelings that you don’t know what you’re doing or that you’re not worthy of being the leader. Yeah. That

Imposter syndrome.

Absolutely. When you can connect with what’s really meaningful to you, a change that you wanna make in the world, which really is about a feeling. Yep. Which to me, in this logical brain does not make sense, right? I wanna solve a problem, a real tangible problem. But that all comes from what is motivating to you on an emotional level. Right? And that’s where your creative intelligence comes in with comes trying to allow it to blossom and bloom in your business. So it’s connecting that personal meaning with what can your business do to affect that for you and your life, and then for others.

So we define that as something meaningful to me. And then you go out to this second layer and how is it gonna be impactful, this change for me? How does it be impactful to the people that are near and dear to me? Whether you have kids or there’s someone in your life you want to affect, you know, if you’re happier, let’s say, let’s say you’re, you’re, you wanna just be happier and you want people to benefit from that. Well, how do people benefit from me being happier? Well, I’m a better mom. I’m not yelling anymore. I’m enjoying my, I’m looking forward to getting outta bed on Monday morning instead of dreading it. Like that would be a real life changer for business owner. A lot of times the day to day gets so heavy that you don’t wanna go to work and Right.

Pretty soon you’re not just dreading Monday, you’re dreading the whole week. And that’s a tough place to be when your livelihood is tied up in your business. Yeah. And then you take that from, okay, well now they’re, they’re a mom, but so what, what does that have to do with my business? You know, I really encourage my clients to take a look at how can, If you were to affect the happiness of the people in your world, however you define world, it could be your community, it could be your office, your team, it could be your city, your state, your country, your world, world, right? You get to define the size of world. What If you could do that for them, right? And then you ask yourself, well, how can my business affect that feeling for my client, my world?

That’s how you really get into that creativity. And when you can really lock into something that is motivating you. I mean, think about the energy that you have naturally. So that’s kind of that first layer of extraordinary thinking. And let’s get street extraordinary. Isn’t this unattainable big giant thing like we normally think of, it’s just a little extra than ordinary. Right? Look at that little bitty thing. If I were to ask you, If you were to think of an extraordinary thing that humans created, what would you think of? The computer. The computer, right. Well, someone didn’t sit down and say, I’m gonna build a computer.

You know, they made vacuum tubes or a light bulb electricity, right? They had a calculator that it evolved. And I always think of the space shuttle going to the moon. Well, when you look at the space shuttle, say, you’re like, oh my gosh, that’s impossible to build. But someone had the idea, the spark to wanna go to moon or space. So you need to find that little spark of what are you interested in? What change are you looking to make? And it can be a small change, but it’s about believing that you have the capacity to think in extraordinary ways. And you start with what’s motivating to you and the energy that can come from that is unmatched.

So I look forward to getting up every day my clients. That’s how they get renewed with that spark of yeah, I know where I want to go in the world. And think about how motivating that is for your employees to have that kind of problem to solve. It’s endless. The ideas are endless.

So how does an owner sort of, how does an owner begin to explore that? What, are there questions I should ask myself? Are there, is there, do I have to sit in a yoga pose and listen to, you know, calming music? Like, talk to us a little bit about how I go from the hared pace of I’m working 60 hours, I’m just trying to put out the biggest fires, you know, I have employee challenges, we have client challenges. I got, you know, I’m juggling my family and the business. How do I get into a head space where I even think about that from the perspective you’re talking about,

You know, the shift from what I call incremental thinking, incremental growth into extraordinary thinking or exponential growth. That shift isn’t something that you do on your own, quite frankly, because you’re so into the day-to-day. It’s like the thinking that created the problems you have today isn’t the same thinking. You need to go to that next level or to have that breakthrough. And I couldn’t do it alone. I needed someone helping me. You know, I, I’m a coach, but I have coaches, right? And you don’t have to have a coach. I think a coach brings in unique skill sets that your colleagues and friends that you go out to coffee with or you pick their brain at lunch, they’re not gonna have the tools to be able to really help you answer that kind of question.

Right. What’s next for me? What’s the next level? How do I get out of the day-to-day? Crazy? There is a first step that you can take though. And that’s just wanting to, which sounds like a real asshole thing to say, but that gives you that motivation to want to find the answer to that question. And there is a trap in that question. The trap is trying to understand from a philosophical level, what is my purpose? I fell into that trap for a long time.

And if, is the trap a trap because it feels so weighty, like, like I have to change the world in some way.

I think it’s that there is no answer to that question. Mm. That’s why it’s a philosophical question, right? And I am a problem solver by nature. I find patterns in things that people can’t see. I like to create, you know, a calm path of logical steps from the chaos of my world. And when you ask that type of question, there isn’t an answer that’s the same every day. So when you’re looking for answering something, like what’s my purpose? What’s gonna give me that spark? If you’re looking externally, because we tend to look externally for inspiration.

You may find it for a moment and then you’ll lose it. Or you may, you know, I, I’ve had many jobs in my life, like over eight different pivots in my career. And I was, you know, as I look back on it, I think I was always chasing that next bit of joy. What, what’s, when should, what problem can I solve next? What’s interesting to me next? And then I got dissatisfied after a while, and then I wanted to jump into the next thing. Unfortunately, we don’t ever start over again. Like you think you climb the ladder, right? Right. Then you have to climb down the ladder and climb a brand new ladder. Right? Right. But that’s what what I was speaking. Yeah. It’s more

About building bridges between ladders, right?

Yes. And that concept for some reason was lost on me. And I felt really, really stuck. And I think when you are in your business, you own it. You have the responsibility of your employees mortgages on your back, And you often don’t have anyone in your business or even in your circle that you can confide in and have this type of deep conversation and you can meditate. I did, I had to figure out what that meant and what it meant to be mindful of my existence, which was a foreign concept to me to understand empathy and gratitude and compassion.

I didn’t understand those concepts and I had to find my way to those things. And I, I couldn’t do it by myself. And I think that’s, you know, that’s why I am so different in the way that I coach my clients, is I’m not a consultant with business where we just come in and tackle the problem and the issue. Right. Or I host a team building, or, you know, help them understand how to be a leader to their new leadership team when they’ve never been led before. With that, how do you make that up? Those are problems and challenges we work on. And yeah, I bring that personal side in that’s so uncommon in coaching because finding the answers to these questions is where your perseverance, your resilience is going to be built from.

Yeah. I find too in, in our coaching work, you can’t separate the personal from the work because they’re so intertwined and what happens on the personal side absolutely. Leaks over to the professional side and vice versa. And we don’t, I I, I used to describe, so my dad was a banker back in the day, and he would come home in his so work, dad would come home in his three piece suit, he’d go upstairs, he’d change, he’d come down in his jeans and then it was home. Dad. Like, that’s not, that’s not how we’re wired. Like, but in my kid brain, I separated the two, right. But it was, I’m sure my dad, as he was walking up the stairs to put on his jeans, was still thinking about work.

And when he was at work, sometimes he was doing what he was doing because of what was happening at the house. And so, I think you’re right. I think, I think we have to recognize that business is very personal and that if we, if we try and divorce those two things we have, we have a conflict. So talk, so let’s assume I’ve done some of this deep thinking. I’ve done some of this soul searching. I have a sense of what I want, what will make me feel good about my work and how I, and how that will help me change my little sliver of the world. How does that change the growth trajectory of a business?

Because I’m sure people are listening, just going great, Tori and Drew, this is a fascinating conversation and I’m gonna, I’m gonna find my inner peace and figure out, but, but I gotta make money ’cause I gotta help people pay their mortgage. To your point. So how do I take that insight about myself as an owner and translate it to sustainable growth in the business?

When we think about switching out of day-to-day incremental growth, the day-to-day grind, the first step in that is just creating that space for you as an owner to have downtime. Okay, let me rephrase that. Not downtime. I’m gonna go play with my kids. But actually at work, it’s that space, creating that space to just daydream. And if someone were to say to me, oh, go daydream, I would roll my eyes and be like, I I will get to that when I’m busy, when I’m done, you know, with my to-do list. ’cause I’m too busy for that. Yeah. But here’s the, here’s the reason you wanna do that.

If you can create a little bit of time to just allow yourself to think about what would be different if I implemented this creative crazy idea that I had, or how about taking a step back even further from that and saying, what if I just see what comes up, what ideas can come up when you are sparked personally to make a change, and that you successfully translate that into how does my business make that kind of change for my chosen audience, my chosen client? There is an endless supply of ideas for how your company can contribute to that.

And then you’re no longer copycatting your competition because you don’t need inspiration or you’re not catching up to the latest trend. You’re now able, that doesn’t even matter. What matters is, gosh, I have this idea, I think this is, this would be really great for my client. This would be the next thing that I wanna try to create. It’s that spark that drives and is it everything? Is

It, is it other focused rather than, so sometimes I find agency owners growth ideas are, to your point, either based on what other agencies are doing, or I think we could make, I think we could sell a lot of this, right? Like, so it’s, it’s about me as opposed to, you know, what our clients need, our clients need an agency that is also a bakery. So what if we deliver donuts with every ad that we like, where they’re thinking truly like it doesn, even if it doesn’t make sense in the moment for the business, it does make sense in the moment for the client. So is, as I’m listening to you, does it, is it about who you’re thinking about and who you’re trying to help?

That is part of the shift.

It’s almost like centering your client instead of yourself,

Which

Is really hard to do when you’re, you’ve got a to-do list and you have personal goals. Like, you know, you, you may want to change your lifestyle, you may, you know, we’re in business to make money and there’s nothing wrong with that. And sometimes we either feel guilty about it or it becomes the sole focus. How do I make more money? And, and I am very familiar with that trap because that was my whole motivation for being in business in the first place. I need to make more money than I can as an employee so I can do that if I make a little bit of money off of a lot of employees and if I have bigger contracts. So it became all consuming. Yeah. That money, money, money was the driver.

And when you think about growth, especially 10 x growth, that can feel very greedy, that can feel like, oh, that’s a lot of work, or that’s a lot of money. And then it can be all consuming. So your your, your decisions end up becoming how do I make more money? Like they all get tainted by R-O-I-R-O-I-R-O-I Right. And work isn’t very fun anymore. Yeah. You know, to-do list isn’t very fun anymore. And you know, If you got into business because you’re creative and now you find yourself, oh well I have to actually run a business and do some numbers. Yeah. Right? Like we talked about, I have to do math. Oh my god, that’s not very fun. Right? But if you’re thinking, you know, what would really blow that socks off my client is if we deliver donuts with every package, right?

Whether it’s maybe you’re giving them a, an architectural set of architectural drawings or, you know, whatever your agency is delivering or a copywriting package and that just brightens their day. And think about the energy that you’re putting into that when you’re excited about delivering to this client. It’s that energy that I’m talking about that. And the reason it’s extraordinary isn’t because it’s impossible. It’s because you’re allowing yourself to play. You’re allowing yourself to take this space to come up with stupid ideas that may not ever make you any money. Because If you can come up with 25 ideas, let’s say, right?

Say you gave yourself, I’ll give you a challenge, right? If you sit down and think of a feeling you want to create and cultivate in your own personal life and then flip it around and say, how can I create that feeling for my clients and challenge yourself to come up with 25 nonsensical stupid, ridiculous ideas on how you might do that. And it, it can be work related. It doesn’t have to be an aside or a donut or a, or a a gimmick or anything like that. Right? Right, right. It can be just challenge yourself to come up with that and challenge yourself to put down unthought of unfiltered. They don’t have to produce ROI, stupid silly ideas that will never work.

Because If you can make yourself get to that list of 25 and 25 is a magical number for me. Not because of the heavens or anything, but because it’s damn hard to come up with 25. It’s a damn, it’s a lot, right? You think, oh, 25 is easy. You get to eight and you’re like, crap, I can’t even come up with eight or 15. That can be the creative space that you give yourself. That could be the challenge in that space that you create for your mind to wander and just feel excited about something. Yeah. And when you find yourself not able to finish that list, let go a little bit more say, well, what if it, what if it was dumb? What if it would never work?

And that is what I mean by being creative and finding that bit of intelligence in your work is allowing yourself to have a bad idea. But I don’t wanna just say, well, just go have a bad idea. I wanna tell you, write 25 ideas down on a piece of paper, right? And they’re gonna be bad. And that’s okay. And then just go back and circle a couple that catch your attention or star them or come up with a rating system. That’s how I plan my week. And you know, I have something called the daily top one, and it’s a little exercise I give my clients to plan their day and the plan their week. And you carry this little index card in your pocket, here’s my top three.

Whenever you get scattered or you get confused or you feel overwhelmed, you pull it out. I’m focusing on these three things and what’s your top one? And that top one thing might be that rating system, right? What’s my three stars out of? Instead of one star. You can do that with every list you make. But that top 25 ideas of silly things, you, you know, imagine If you take that list and you, you find five that you give three stars to, and you take that to your team and you, you say, team, I wanna figure out how to make this happen. Well now they have creative juices flowing right now. They have have something to solve, they have a purpose, and their work is no longer, well I have to crank out five more pages for my client.

Check the box.

Check the box, right?

Yes. It’s, oh, I have to figure out how to do this and what on top of that, what If you also ask them, what impact will that have on my client? How they feel and their business? Because when your energy is really running high, that’s the answer. It’s letting yourself play with the impossibility that’s so hard when you’re stuck in the day to day. We don’t wanna do it. We think it’s impossible, but what if it’s probable instead?

Yeah. So I wanna take a quick break, then I wanna come back and talk more about how do we translate what’s in our head and heart to the employees in a way that is meaningful for them so that it is ultimately meaningful to who we serve our clients. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and talk about how to knit those two together. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I go back to the interview, I just wanna remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops. And you can see the whole [email protected] 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 ’em out and come join us. All right, let’s get back to the show. Alright, we are back with Tory Boats and we’re talking about the idea of basically extraordinary thinking leading to extraordinary growth and as opposed to sort of that incremental chugging up the mountain kind of growth. So right before the break we were talking about, we started to talk about how do you, how do you translate your ideas to your employees so that they can help you accomplish the goal?

So we, we, earlier in the show, we’ve talked about how personal this is and how it is, you know, sort of at the core of who we are. When we really dig in and figure out what, what we wanna do and what’s possible, sort of that idea of dreaming big about what our, what our business could do, how it could change the sliver of the world that we serve. So how do I go from that being in my head and heart? How do I infuse that energy, enthusiasm, excitement, vision of possibility as opposed to, oh my God, this is just more work to our employees.

Well you hit on a, a key word there, which is visionary. And I, what I find is a lot of business owners don’t think of themselves as the visionary. Mm. When they think of are, if I were to ask, are you a visionary leader, they’d absolutely say no. And they would think of someone and a big company on stage or yeah, Steve, they would think Steve of a future thinker, Steve Jobs or the the guy that thought of going to the moon, they wouldn’t think of themselves. But I think the first shift is really seeing that you are capable of becoming a visionary leader. And the role of that visionary leader is just sharing that vision you have of the world of your company’s place in it with your employees.

And sometimes that might mean that you’re weeding people out of your business who don’t align with the energy that you want going forward. And they may not connect personally with the change you’re trying to make in the world. So when you can take a change you’re trying to make in your own life and translate that into, I wanna make this change in the world and let me caution you that that can be it right there. It doesn’t have to be any more concrete than that. You don’t have to have the exact plan. ’cause that can, the role of your whole company, your employee base coming together to solve that problem with you. That’s what gets them involved. If they can connect that change that you’re seeing with something that they can affect, that gives them their own energy toward it.

Because that will start to feed the culture that you want to create at the company when you have this vision for the future. And your vision can be, I wanna make this kind of change. How can we do it? Or I have these silly crazy ideas, let’s create some more. Or let’s put some bones on, let’s put some flesh on the bones and and see what we can create. You know, that gives people that creative energy. Then when you can translate that into a decision, this is the direction we’re gonna go, that becomes that vision that you have for your company. And when you have a vision of, and a vision is simply what is the next phase of my company going to be? What are we going to deliver next? And it doesn’t have to be the esoteric things like how does my organization change?

Those are very important things to change. I don’t mean to make light of those, you know, I have the system I take people through and one of the key pieces is your operations, right? How are you going to optimize your operations? We talk about the org chart and culture. How do you build culture? How do you infuse your values into your hiring, retaining, measuring process in all the systems that you need. But first has to come, where are we going? And I think when a business owner says, oh, okay, well now we have to do another vision and exercise. They get in a room and it’s a stuffy boardroom. They may or may not have their leaders with them if they have a leadership team, right? And they try to figure it out.

And it’s, can you imagine you’re sitting in a room and it’s hot, it’s daunting and stuffy. Yeah, it’s daunting. It’s stuff. You’ve been there for hours and you’ve nothing on the board, but generic integrity and trust and right to be the world leader in light bulbs. Yep. Not very inspiring. And then you start to feel like a failure as a leader. Like, how can I be a leader? I can’t even come up with a vision. And If you ask your employees well, or your leadership team what, what is, what should be the vision, they’re gonna look at you and say, well isn’t that your job? And they’re right. That’s why it’s personal. That’s why connecting to what’s next and you know, there is a place, there is a place for, well I want the next thing to be the next revenue growth.

You know, when I talk about extraordinary growth in my clients, I’m very practical. It’s 10 x revenue. What is that 10 x revenue jump? That’s not gonna make me work harder. Because when you think of growth, and gosh, I’ve got so much on my plate already and now you want me to do more to grow that, that’s impossible. Right? And I don’t have the time. Your employees are gonna feel the same way. But when you have a goal that’s lofty, that’s energizing, you don’t think of those things anymore. And that’s where the big ideas come from. So, you know, flipping from incremental growth to extraordinary growth or exponential growth is not, I’m gonna work harder and bring in 10 more proposals.

It, it is on the practical surface, but it’s that new idea of how you’re gonna be different to get there. That differentiation you’re seeking in your company is a very personal thing. It’s not one-upping your competition because you can, that does work. You can one up your competition and then they’ll one up you. And it’s always this bloody race, right? But what If you didn’t need cutthroat competition in your business? ’cause that will eventually wear you down. What if instead you just had fun with it and then your employees could have fun with it. So when you talk about culture and building a culture, building a, a place, an environment for your company to thrive and your employees to thrive and to want to grow with you, all of that comes from that momentum of what do I wanna to build next?

What do I want my company to be next? That’s the vision. And when you can translate that by just sharing the energy you have behind it, well it’s, it’s naturally, I want to say infectious, but that’s kind of a strange word since 2020, right? Right. But think of that, think of how you feel when you feel enthusiastic and excited about something and then everybody else around you starts to feel excited and enthusiastic about it. And of course you wanna solve this problem. Of course endless ideas. And that’s where the energy comes from. So it’s no longer about my endless to-do list. It’s about creating that team culture and weeding the people out where it needs to be. Which is not the fun part of our job, but you’re the leader.

You know, sometimes you have to make the company the best it can be for everyone else that’s gonna stay.

Yeah. I think one of the concepts that we talk a lot about is, you know, you are, you are the captain of a ship and your job is to get the ship from place to place safely. And sometimes there’s a specific crew member that’s not contributing to that. And and as much as you love that crew member, they’re the one that sings shanties every night after dinner and every, and you know, ’cause people always say, I know, but he or she is so important to the culture and blah blah blah. And I get it, I totally get it. But at the end of the day, your job and your responsibility is that ship and, and the crew as a whole. And sometimes that means somebody doesn’t, you know, doesn’t belong on the crew.

But to your point, staying with that analogy, you gotta know where you’re po point pointing the boat, right? If you’re gonna get to a new harbor and you’re gonna get to a new place, you do have to have sort of the vision of where we’re headed literally and figuratively. Being able to sort of help your team see and share in the vision. And I think particularly, I’m sure you’re seeing this with your coaching clients, you know, a lot of our agency owners are, you know, in their forties and fifties and they’re struggling to really connect with their younger employees. And one of the things that’s different from when we were employees to today’s employees is employees today are very clear.

They want to work for someone who has a vision, they wanna work for a company that is going somewhere that they are aligned with, that they can celebrate, they can be proud of. And when we don’t provide them with that vision, then it, things get very muddy. And then it’s just about the task. And it’s easy for them to get poached by another agency for another $5,000 or some incremental dollar amount because they’re not, they’re not, especially now with everybody being hybrid or remote. We have to find new ways to anchor people to the company and the company’s path. And I think this is gonna become even more and more important as we have multi-generations in the business.

But as hybrid and remote work becomes normalized and we don’t have the comradery culture that we used to like where we all hang out on Friday afternoons and have a beer, how do we create those connections? And one of the ways, I believe is what you’re talking about, which is having a really clear vision of why we exist and how we’re changing our sliver of the world.

Yeah. I often talk about the five mistakes that are the uncommon mistakes to having a business stuck at a million dollars. And vision is absolutely one of the core tenets of that is that’s a big mistake people have is they don’t have that kind of vision. And that is one of the biggest mistakes I see. When you can create that vision, and it doesn’t have to be this lofty generic statement, it can hit at the heart. If it hits your heart, it’s gonna hit other people’s hearts, which sounds really airy fairy, but we are people and all humans have emotions.

And you may be in the position of power and being the leader, but you are still a vulnerable human with a heart, with something to care about. And we’re not just building our businesses to make money, we’re building our businesses to create change. Right. And to be differentiated and to connect. And I find that if you’ve lost that, go get, go get someone to help you reconnect that. Yeah. Because when you can connect that with yourself as a human and be willing and vulnerable enough to bring that insecurity or un it’s almost like you’re not quite confident in it yet into your business, your people are gonna respond to that.

You don’t have to have all the answers. That’s not your job. Your job is just to figure out how to bring the humanness into your business and to trust that that’s what will build the money that you seek. That’s what will build the powerhouse that you want to create. Yeah. That’s what will allow you to stick in the minds and the hearts of your clients. ’cause you know, yes, you have a cheaper solution or yes, you have the better idea, but ooh, If you can affect my heart because you made me feel something, I am yours forever and I’m gonna tell all my friends and your employees are gonna love coming to work.

’cause they get to affect that with their own creativity. I guess I’ve, I’ve kind of beat the creativity horse a little bit there, but start, but

Is the, it’s the core of our, it’s the core of our business. Right. In our, in our world anyway. For sure. All right, so as we’re coming up on the top of the hour quickly, and then we’ll talk about having you come back so we can do a deeper dive. But so the first of the five mistakes we make is not having a vision. What are the other four mistakes? I can’t, I can’t end the episode without knowing the other four people will be like emailing me going, why didn’t you ask her? So what are the other four mistakes we make?

Well the beauty is I have it as a free resource. So we have, I call them uncommon mistakes. The five mistakes to that keep you stuck, keep you from scaling beyond 1 million. They’re a weaker missing vision. Surprise, surprise, surprise. You know, if you’ve ever felt like there’s something Kruger missing, then that might be where you wanna start is yeah. Finding that unifying element. The second mistake is same thinking, same problem. We covered this a little bit in the beginning where If you, you know, the, the way you’re thinking created the problems, you can’t use the same thinking to get to that next level. Yeah. Right. To break out of where you are now.

Yep.

And then we have incremental thinking. So we talked about that too. When you have incremental thinking, you’re only thinking about the day to day. How do I hop to the next level?

Yes. You build your, yeah, what what fire do I put out next? Yeah. Yes,

Yes. You build your business one client at a time, one win at a time. But if you’re only thinking that way, then you’re not gonna have that breakthrough. Yeah. The fourth mistake is working harder to grow bigger. We talked about this as well. Yeah. How motivated are you to add more to your plate? Right. Not at all. Right.

Right. Not at all. Or how many of you even think there is room to add more to your plate? Right. You just keep piling nine

Never.

Yeah.

And you never want to grow you. You, you do. But incrementally only because that’s all you have the capacity for. But If you think differently about how to grow and differently about your business, that’s where the sweet spot is. And then the fifth mistake is the indecision in wanting to find that ROI. And so you never make the decision because which one’s? Right? Yeah. And then you find yourself at a crossroads going, well do I go left or right? I don’t know which one’s better, which one’s gonna bring me the most money because if I’m gonna spend the effort, I wanna make sure my effort is spent for the biggest return. Yeah.

Sort of that per that perfection paralysis. Yeah. Oh,

And then you end up just hating your life, right? You end up in the slog, that’s the, yeah, that’s the 60 hour grinding and, and you’ve already, you’ve hustled hustle’s in the bad, but you’ve grinded your way and you’re now on that, that part of your business where you’re no longer grinding, it feels kind of flowy and easy. Do you now, do you really wanna do that again?

Right. Right,

Right. And so if you’re gonna bother putting in more effort in bringing suffering back to your life, then you wanna make sure you do the right one. And that that indecision can be crippling. So, so I have a resource, you can download it. ’cause not only do I go into those very lightly, it’s how to fix them, how to think differently about each one. And then there’s a bonus sixth one, even though the title is The Five Mistakes, there’s actually

Six Always a great, always a great thing. Give ’em a little extra That land, there’s that Irish word nanny app I can remember pronounce it, it’s not spelled that way, but it is the, it’s the concept of giving someone something extra. It’s like If you go into most stores in Ireland, they slip us something free in your bag. It’s just, yeah. It’s just this cultural idea of giving a little extra, which I think is a sweet idea. So we love that. Okay, so do you wanna give everybody, as we wrap up, this is a perfect time. Do you wanna give everybody a URL where they can go to get the download for not just the five but the six mistakes you make?

Yes. So there are actually three ways that your audience can kick, can connect with me. You can find each of them at the same place. They’re [email protected]. So the first way you should definitely check out my audio content, If you liked this kind of banter, it’s my podcast called Scale right Revolution. And that’s at torry boats.com/podcast. And that’s about to release. So right now you can get on the list, you know when it comes out. Okay. And depending on when you’re listening to this episode, if you’re in late 2024, if it’s beyond that, you just head on over to that URL. The second way is if you’re thinking you’d like to chat about one-on-one support or to book me to speak, I’ve streamlined that on my contact page [email protected] as well.

And then that third way is one of my favorite things. While you’re listening today, if it’s resonating with you in any way, you can grab that special resource to find your own 10 XX growth advantage, which is for every client I work with, we work with what are, what can we tackle out of those uncommon reasons? You’re stuck at a million and you can step right into that with the five mistakes Keeping you stuck at $1 million Playbook, which is the five reasons and the fixes plus that bonus one. And inside you’ll find new ways of thinking about how to scale your business. You can continue running, you know, at the highest level without missing out on your life. ’cause that’s important. So there’s simple steps you can take immediate action on. And If you have any questions, you can always email ’em to me.

So you can get the Five Mistakes Playbook by visiting torry boats.com/five mistakes. Okay. So just the number five and the mistakes.

Awesome. Tori, thank you for being with us today. This was super helpful and I think hopefully super inspiring that our business can be more than just the grind our business can, I really do believe that that every one of us is capable of building a business that changes the world. I don’t mean world with a capital WI mean small, small W world, but our world that we can have impact on the people we serve. And that there is, I know for, I know for us, when I think about our work, one of the reasons why we work so hard and it’s so easy to work hard is because we are making a difference.

And there’s so much gratitude in being able to do work. Think about how many people do work that they hate and they don’t love, and it doesn’t inspire them as business owners. There’s no excuse for that. Like we construct the business. And so If you want to be, If you want to change the world, you absolutely have the power and the opportunity to do that. If you, If you have clarity around the vision. And I think you helped us think a lot about how do, how do I embrace that idea first of all, that I can change the world and I can have impact. And then how do I begin to explore how I want to do that? And, and I really believe that when we do those things, the money comes.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but the money comes when you focus on what you are giving into the world as opposed to what you’re trying to get from the world.

Y you know, I, I laugh, you probably can see me laughing here though. I used to tell myself that I wanted to inspire my kids with a lie. And the lie was, If you follow your heart, you can trust that the money will come. And the reason it was a lie is because I don’t think that’s a lie, but I was living my life as if that was a lie and I didn’t trust that I could do work that made me feel alive and excited because other people told me that it wasn’t a good path, it wasn’t work, it was a hobby or something frivolous. Or in order to make money at that, you have to be the top one.

And I think that was the biggest detriment to my early career and even up until my forties, was this belief that I couldn’t make something happen when all the evidence in my life proved that that was not true. Yeah. And it, it may seem very impractical for me to come on a show where business owners are looking to make a difference in their business and say, well, just think about, you know, thinking differently. But let me tell you, that really is the base. If you take nothing away from the show other than that one thing, it’s to allow yourself to think about the impossibility of having fun in your business and finding that spark within that is very practical advice because it practically translates right down into your vision, right down into that motivation and right to your employees who will want to get up to help you grow.

Yeah. Because they feel that connection to you. So it it, it doesn’t feel practical. ’cause I’m not telling you to do an assignment other than the 25 list, but that it’s so, so worth your time because that’s the start, that’s the genesis point.

Yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree. This has been great. Thank you. Thanks so, so much for being on the show. Really appreciate you. Thanks Drew. Sharing your inspiration. Alright everybody, so this is an episode. You know, I love episodes that get you thinking and this episode should have you thinking a little bit, but in a different way. So we spent so much time thinking about our business. What I want you to think about is think about the people that you serve and what do they need, whether you do it today or not, whether, whether whatever it is, what do they need? And then like Tori said, make a list. What do they need? What, what would make them, what would make them more successful?

What would make them get a promotion or a raise? What would help them make more money? What would help them change the world and the people that they serve? And then ask yourself of those things. Which of those align with who and how I want my business to be? And what we could do. And, and maybe the rule is you can’t say, oh, we can’t do that. Maybe the rule is you pick the, the five that you think are most impactful and say, all right, the, the rule is we have to do this. We have to, we have to figure out a way. And again, you don’t actually have to do it, you just have to think about how you would do it. Because I think that that mental process is like what you’re working on may not be the idea, but there’s a tangential idea out there that you’re like, well, we can’t, we can’t take them all on vacation every year.

But what we could do is we could offer a service that allows them with white glove service while they’re on vacation so they could actually unplug for a week. Like we become them. We step into their, I I have no idea what it is. All I’m saying is there are possibilities that you have not explored. And Tori’s is inviting you to explore those. And, and I think it’s great advice. I think it’s perfect timing as we’re rounding the bend into the new year and you’re all thinking about the possibilities, the newness of the new year. So I want you to think about all of that and, and just let your brain play a little bit, right? Just let your brain sort of toy with those ideas over the holidays.

If you’re listening to this in real time or by yourself, a little bit of, of breathing room as Tori said, some downtime inside the business just to let your brain and heart play and ask different questions. I think it’s a really exciting opportunity for you. So that’s your homework, my homework for you from this episode. So two other things quickly and then I’ll let you go. Number one, huge, huge thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They do white label design dev and PPC. They come alongside agencies and If you don’t have a dev team, they become your dev team If you need extra hands, ’cause you’re slammed, they become your extra hands.

But because they were created from an agency, they understand how we bill, how we make money, how we make clients happy, and so they show up in a way that’s really meaningful to you and your business. So head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami to read about them and how they work with agencies just like yours and last, but as you know, certainly not least, I, I love that I get to do this every week with you, but I don’t get to keep doing it If you don’t come back, because otherwise I’m just talking to myself and Danielle is gonna put me in a straight jacket. So super grateful that you keep coming back. Super grateful that the show is valuable to you. I’m coming back next week with another guest and I hope you will join me.

I, I so appreciate your time and I love that I get to hang out with you every week and I know sometimes I’m walking the dog with you or we’re on the treadmill, or I know a couple of you, I put makeup on with you in the morning and one of you I golf with on Monday mornings. I don’t care what we’re doing together, I just love that we’re hanging out and so I’m gonna keep coming back and I hope you do too. Alright, thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.