The Agency Hour
The Agency Hour is for digital agency owners like you who want to start, grow and scale their businesses. It’s like hanging out with friends while getting a masterclass in how to tackle the most significant obstacles you’re facing as an entrepreneur.
The Agency Hour
Recruiting as you scale
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How do you know? Because you, you know, you kind of do need to have your processes or you the kind of the outcome that you're looking for, you need to have enough clarity around that to be able to hire someone. But kind of how do you know when you should hire someone and what you know what level of detail should your should your processes, what state should they be in before you pull the trigger and and take that plunge?
SPEAKER_03I would say get don't wait. Don't wait. If you're struggling right now and and you can't get enough done and you feel like you're working 12 hour days, six days a week, and we now's the time to bring somebody in, raise your rates because you so you can hire somebody. Now's the time to do that. And and just put something on paper, kind of like what Johnny and I both have. So some sometimes it's just a design brief. Just so you know, you can explain how a website is supposed to be designed. That could be the very first thing you do. And then from that point on, you just keep you keep adding a process to it. But I don't I don't believe you should wait. I didn't have a process when I first hired my VA. I didn't have anything. That came later.
SPEAKER_02If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, brought to you by Agency Mavericks.
SPEAKER_01Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are around the world. Welcome to another episode of the Agency Hour Live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. Today, we're going to be talking about the challenges that we go through when growing our team. I've got a couple of special guests that I'm going to introduce in a moment who are joining me here. And we're going to talk about the obstacles, the mindset, and also the tactical stuff that you need to put in place as you grow your team. And also, hopefully, we're going to make a case for the fact that you should be growing a team of some description. And when I say a team, it could be two freelancers or contractors somewhere helping you do the thing that you're promising your clients. One of the very first things that we got rid of in our business and delegated to someone else was bookkeeping, for example. That's one of the things that you just shouldn't be doing as an agency owner, is doing your own books. So we're going to talk about the different roles that you can delegate. We're going to talk about hiring a team. We're going to talk about the challenges that you will have as you bring on new team members. And uh, in order to uh do that, in order to have that conversation, um, I'm going to welcome to the show two very special guests, of course, two of the coaches here at Agency Mavericks who coach our clients through the Mavericks Club program. I am referring to the one and only Johnny Flash and Christina Hawkinator Hawkins. Welcome. Johnny and Christina, how are you doing? Good. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Oh, pleasure. Thanks for being here. Now, Christina, you're back in the States, right? You're not in Germany anymore. You're back in the States.
SPEAKER_03I'm back in my office. Can't you tell?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can. That's looking very good. Your hair's long, too. Your hair's getting long.
SPEAKER_03It's all about the hair tray.
SPEAKER_01You're looking more and more like Belinda Carlisle every day, you know that, don't you?
SPEAKER_03I wish, yeah. She's eating well.
SPEAKER_01Now, before we dive in, I had this moment this morning where I thought I want to share something that we do in Mavericks Club regularly. And on, in fact, any call that I have with clients, any call that we have with clients, coaching calls, whether it's through Sales Accelerator or Mavericks Club or any of the other programs, one of the things that we always do is we start with a win or something that's working well. Now, there are a couple of reasons that we do this. One is because we want to celebrate the wins. It's very easy being in a small business to give yourself a hard time about the things that don't go well and to beat yourself up because you're not where you think you should be. But I think it's really important to just stop, take a moment, reflect, and celebrate the wins. The other reason that we do it is because it puts us into a positive frame of mind, which is always a good thing when you're working on the business, is to stay positive. And the other reason that I do it is because I want to make sure that we don't break something that's currently working and delivering results in the business, right? So to completely put you both on the spot, what I want to do right now is just ask you guys to share a recent win or something that's working well in the business over the last few weeks. And maybe we'll start with Johnny because Christina looks terrified, frankly. I do. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So Johnny, uh, share a win or something that's working well in the agency.
SPEAKER_00Uh we've hired five people in the last two months. So um the hiring's going well, and um, I'd have to check my stats on the recurring revenue increase in the last few months. But we took on a large retainer uh a few months ago and have added some recurring revenue then. So we're probably uh I'll ballpark like 11k up in recurring revenue over the last couple months.
SPEAKER_01So 11k additional recurring revenue over the last few months. And who are the who are the roles that you've hired?
SPEAKER_00The five new roles that you've hired. We've hired uh two developers, two designers, a VA, and we're currently interviewing a Google Ads SEO specialist that we're probably will start next week.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So that's outstanding. Well done. Uh that deserves a round of applause. Uh, Christina Hawkins, something that's working well or a win that you've had recently.
SPEAKER_03Uh I would say much like Johnny, I've hired uh not as many, but one uh additional just last night on boarded this person last night, brand new front-end developer. I'm in the middle of hiring uh um an account rep and possibly looking for another full stack developer.
SPEAKER_01So wow, great. Um so I I the just for me, uh the one of the wins that we've had recently is signed a lease on a brand new uh office studio space here in Melbourne. I've been sharing some photos in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group about that the fit out that's coming together. The builders are in there now. In fact, the electrician is about to pull up out the front of my house and pick up the keys so he can go and run some more cables and data ports. It's uh it's a monster. It's coming together very well, and I'm super excited to get in there so I can start live streaming from there and not be live streaming in the house, which is just starting to kind of do my head in because the kids are out there having breakfast, and frankly, I'd rather be out there having breakfast with them rather than live streaming from home. And it's very tricky for my wife to try and keep them quiet while I'm live streaming because they just don't understand what quiet means because they're four and a half and two. Uh, so that's a big win for us, is really looking forward to getting into that into that building. Um, so I want to talk about today. There's a few things I want to sort of start wide and then get into the details, right? Go wide, go deep as as we say. In terms of, and maybe we'll start with the first role that you guys hired for the agency. What was the first role that you, the first person that you guys hired, whether it was just a contractor or an employee, what was the first role that you hired where you started to delegate something to someone else?
SPEAKER_03First role for me was a bookkeeper. That was the first thing I was like, I just want nothing to do with this anymore. Reconciling taxes, all that stuff. I just didn't want to touch it. So that was my very first hire.
SPEAKER_01And it's interesting because um uh I think we were the same. The bookkeeper was the first uh role that I hired. It was actually my wife, uh, who wasn't my wife at the time. Amy was doing the books for the agency. And so obviously there was a lot of trust there, right? Because I knew that she was going to manage the books well, and I basically taught her how to do it, and she did a great job. But if you're if you're hiring someone to basically kind of reconcile your books and manage your finances, how do you how did you find someone that you could trust, Christina? What was that process?
SPEAKER_03Definitely referral, and you have to understand when I found this person, web design wasn't a thing, right? So this is you know, this whole concept of a website design and hosting and re-occurring revenue that was somewhat new. So I actually kind of had to train my bookkeeper on how we did things, but it was definitely from a referral standpoint. I I have to say that's those are the best hires, the ones that somebody says, Hey, I've worked with them before and they're great. So that's where that trust front comes from. And and also when you with QuickBooks at the time I had QuickBooks, it was it was uh it wasn't even online, it was shared files back and forth. But um, yeah, it was just you had to train them. I had to train them in trust from a referral.
SPEAKER_01And were they a were they a bookkeeper? Were were they an existing right? Okay, but so you had to train them in your business model, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, we just don't have a very typical business model, especially the fact, I don't know, but Johnny, but here in Texas, it is an 8.25% sales tax on 20% of the work I do, which is like crazy. So why only 20%? Actually, flip that 80% of the work I do is taxed. I don't know. Ask the politicians why they did that. So I don't even bother with it, I just do the whole thing because it's just ridiculous. But but how much time do you think I would have had to do to figure that out?
SPEAKER_01You know, so yeah, right on. Um, and and what how uh how did you feel about handing over the the control panel to someone else to manage the books? Because this person's job at the end of the financial year, you're gonna have to pay tax on the profit that you make in the company, and that profit is gonna be reported to the tax office or the IRS based on the work that this person's doing throughout the year reconciling your books. So, how did you what did you have to overcome in terms of the fear or the psychological barrier to let this person manage the books, or was it pretty straightforward for you?
SPEAKER_03It's pretty straightforward. There was no fear involved. I mean, she was already a bookkeeper, but I have to say, I I also got a CPA to do my taxes. So she just does the books, the CPA does the taxes. So those two communicate as long as she's doing what she does, then the CPA only takes about 30 minutes to do my taxes. Um, but in terms of a financial thing, that was another conversation with somebody else about where can I move put my money so that I'm being profitable. But that's that wasn't the first hire.
SPEAKER_01Got it.
SPEAKER_00Johnny, who who's the first role? What was the first role? It was a uh kind of a front-end dev slash VA. I would think we were sitting around a WordCamp um in 2016. I had just gone through the WP Elevation Blueprint and I realized I needed recurring revenue. And so I was gonna start selling care plans at the time and needed someone to be kind of the front line of the support tickets that were coming in because I knew I wanted to grow the business and not be stuck answering all the support tickets. So I was kind of looking for someone who could troubleshoot most of the tickets and kind of respond to the client since that was the first person I hired summer of 2016.
SPEAKER_01Was that was that WordCamp New York? I think it was, yeah. Was that after the we did the masterclass in New York? We had the the day-long event in New York, and then we went to WordCamp Structural.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it was a one-day event. Yeah, it was a one-day event, I think. And and I jumped in and everybody else was like, Oh, yeah, you can hire someone overseas, and they're pretty good, and they, you know, um, it's lower costs and everything. And so I basically sold, I don't know, five or six care plans, and then hired someone with that money that I had earned to kind of take care of them. And then I just kept selling them, and they could keep, you know, they could obviously handle more than five or six clients on the desk. So that was like an instant kind of help and profit for us that that was really helpful. Love it.
SPEAKER_01Um uh Joan has a question in the comments here. Was the bookkeeper a subcontractor or an employee, Christina?
SPEAKER_03Oh, a subcontractor. Yeah, I didn't have enough business at the time when I first started, you know. And she still is, she still works for me. Um, she works, but we're actually gonna have a conversation because I need more of her time. It's just getting too busy. I'm back into doing more stuff. So I need her to take on more, more of the bookkeeping, you know, putting in, following up, you know. So got it.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Um, hey, for those of you who are in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, by the way, leave us a comment. Let us know if you have a team or if you're thinking about hiring a team. Let us know what questions you have, if the if you have any fear. I know there's a lot of fear around handing over control and delegating to other people and making sure that you maintain the quality and making sure that things get done the way that you want it done, which we're gonna talk about. Uh, let us know in the chat in the comments if you have any questions or any fear around this, uh, or if you're looking to hire someone when you're not sure where to start, let us know. Ask any questions, and we'll do our best to answer those questions. Um, so I want to talk about the mindset around, before we get into the tactical stuff, I want to talk about the mindset around hiring someone. And I know Johnny, you've been through this. We've had this conversation a few times where you're like, well, it's taken you a while, and I think it takes all of us a while to realize that someone else can actually do the job as good, if not better, than us. Right? I don't what was what was the role that you was that you were really nervous about delegating to because you just weren't convinced that someone could do it as good as you?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I mean, I think every I think I don't know, as someone who cares a lot and is and is, you know, I'm not like the master of anything, I'm just kind of pretty good at a lot of stuff, but you you kind of get used to doing things a certain way. And so I think it can be hard to let go of, you know, different things. So I think, you know, for a while I had some developers, I had an account manager managing support stuff and everything. Um, the design I was kind of a little bit nervous to let go of, but then that was that that was something I had to get over. And then really like a lot of the project management in terms of like, you know, a website build and and someone else on the team talking to the client and getting out the information and relaying that to the team and kind of making sure a project goes from you know, sign on the dotted line to website launch and a client happy. I think that was a big uh hurdle for me as well.
SPEAKER_01And how did you, you know, we talk, I know we talk a lot about processes and documentation. How did you mitigate that fear or that you know releasing control? Like how much documentation did you have? And how, you know, was it really like follow the bouncing ball, step one, step two, step three, step four, or was it just kind of high level? This is what we do. Let's work together to fill in the blanks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, for me, since I had been doing all the roles, like probably a lot of people listening to us right now, um, I just started documenting what I was doing so there'd at least be a starting point for someone of like, hey, this is how we've been doing it up to this point. It's not that you have to follow this exactly, but I didn't want someone to have to come in and necessarily like start from scratch or kind of figure it all out, um, since I had already figured out a lot of things. So I just started documenting. This is how I create a site map. Here's some site maps I made. This is what I think about when I'm laying out the you know, organization of the site. Here's how I write a design brief. Here's what I include in the design brief. Here's what I, you know, how I set up the task for the developer, whatever those things were. And so I just started to record more, uh, document it, might be a short like five-minute video here, 10-minute video there, and just tried to as best as I could. First, you just start out at a high level, right? You say, okay, we need to get a site map, we need to figure out what the design's gonna be and the influences for that. We need to make a mock-up, we need to, you know, build the header, the footer, the homepage on the WordPress, whatever. You just kind of high-level, at least what I did, high-level bullet point it out, and then start filling in the details a little bit. And so I just started kind of documenting that and then told the team members as they started taking it over, like, ask as I think you told me this, ask as many questions as you can this first time or two around, because I I want you to be able to do this smoothly, you know, 10, 20, 30, 50 times without having to ask me a whole bunch of questions. So I'd rather you kind of ask the questions these first couple times and we hold your hand, and then you know, um, then then you'll be good to go.
SPEAKER_01So and Christina, uh uh, how how well documented were your processes before you started bringing on people to do development and design and those things that you'd been doing up until that point?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I didn't have anything. My very first real hire after the bookkeeper, bookkeeper I didn't have any processes documented, but like Johnny, the first thing I put on uh added was a VA dev person. And that's when I was like, all right, in order to really hand this off, and I'll I'll I remember a flight to uh Sonoma, California, four and a half hour flight. I just started typing out Google Docs, brain dump all the things that I do to run my business, you know. So now I've gotten to the point where I have a full-blown intranet on Notion, everything, everything is in there, and it's all properly organized by the three different work uh services that we have web development, marketing, and care plan. And everything's organized in tables with tags. And so the the best thing about what I've got at this point is that my team can find things much easier, and they all have access to it. So if there's any changes that need to be done, I tell them, please update, you update it. Like, I don't want to get in there and update this stuff. I'm not in dev anymore. I haven't touched CSS, HTML, I don't do any of that website anymore. So I'm like, it's been a long time. I don't know even at the first thing at this point. So I need you guys to do this. So my my lead developer, that's her responsibility is to make sure that those processes are stayed um up to date. And then I'm going back in through marketing and adding in, I just did it today, is how to add us as a partner on your Facebook business manager, you know, so that we can, but project manager can send that out. So everything is all documented, full-blown intranet at this stage, including onboarding a new dev, a new employee.
SPEAKER_01Got it. And how how uh tell me, I want to, I want to hear, I want to hear a story and just just real quick, I just want to mention this too.
SPEAKER_03So that here we had this on our squad call um yesterday. Somebody was a probably felt a little overwhelmed when they looked at my notion. They're like, oh my God, this must have taken you forever. But really, it's just over years and it's an iteration. And you just you have to start. You just have to start somehow somehow, and and not worry about what I've got put together because this mine's years and years of of all that. And so, how do I how do you do it? How do you well, you just do what Johnny and I did, and you just start somewhere, just start how I build a website and just brain dump an outline. Um, but uh and then over time you iterate, you just start adding and adjusting, and then well, that's not gonna work, and then we're gonna move it over here, and so just don't be afraid, just start something and you'll feel a lot better about it.
SPEAKER_01This is really common. Someone just left a comment in the chat here. This is really common too, that people don't hire because they feel like their processes aren't ready, right? Yeah, and there's two parts to this. One, your processes will never be ready to hire someone. And two, the person that you hire, once you have enough trust with them, they're they're onboarded into the team, which we'll talk about in a sec, once they've onboarded onto the team and they start doing their job, they're gonna have a slightly different way of doing things anyway, right? And the way that they do it will evolve over time and they will improve it and optimize it, make it more efficient, more productive, whatever. And so I think this is a really and and I think it's I've been humbled over the years to and it's been a huge thing, and now it's like so liberating when I say, I don't, I haven't got a clue, I don't know how to do this. Someone else has to figure this out because that just takes all the pressure off my shoulders. Over the years, I've been humbled when I've seen other people come into the business and do things way better than I could, frankly, because I have the attention span of a mosquito and I can't concentrate anything for longer than two seconds. So when, for example, when we hired Emily and she came in and started running the Facebook group full-time, I was like, I'm blown away. I'm like, whoa, this is amazing. I haven't got a clue how to do this, and I don't want to learn how to do it. I don't I'm not interested in going down that rabbit hole. So, a, it's been humbling to realize that other people are actually better at things than me. But two, that's actually now really liberating because it takes the pressure off my shoulders. I know what needs to happen, and I kind of do enough research to know what's possible, but I'm not interested in figuring out all the details and all the process. I'm gonna let someone else figure that out because they're gonna be better at it than me because I'm you know, that's not my wheelhouse. So I I just wonder if there's like how do you know? Because you, you know, you kind of do need to have your processes or you the kind of the outcome that you're looking for, you need to have enough clarity around that to be able to hire someone, but kind of how do you know when you should hire someone and what you know what level of detail should your should your processes, what state should they be in before you pull the trigger and and take that plunge?
SPEAKER_03I would say I would say get don't wait. Don't wait. Um if you're struggling right now and and you can't get enough done and you feel like you're working 12 hour days, six days a week, and we now's the time to bring somebody in, raise your rates because you so you can hire somebody. Now's the time to do that. And and just don't just put something on paper, kind of like what Johnny and I both have. So some sometimes it's just a design brief. Just so you know, you can explain how a website is supposed to be designed. That could be the very first thing you do. And then from that point on, you just keep you keep adding a process to it. But I don't, I don't believe you should wait. I didn't have a process when I first hired my VA. I didn't have anything. That came later. So I don't I just don't think that you need to wait for that. And I think what what's our Mantra is what is it? Get it done before you what is it? Before don't perfection, don't get don't be perfect, get it done, just then get perfect. I don't know what's passive action. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Take massive imperfect action. And and and what's the quote I saw? Like perfection, perfection is this psychopathic mass murderer that just runs around killing off anything that could be good because we're waiting for it to be perfect.
SPEAKER_00Um I think the other thing is it's kind of like uh it's kind of like packing for a trip, right? It's like try to pack for a trip a month in advance and see how well you're able to pack for the trip, you know, and prioritize that in your schedule. You're just not going to be able to do it, right? Then when the trip is like tomorrow and the flight leaves at like 8 a.m. in the morning, and right for me in the East Coast, it's 6 p.m., right, I can probably get that packing done pretty quickly and efficiently, knowing that I have that deadline. So if you've if you've kind of like interviewed some folks, you hire someone, whatever, um, and you know that they're starting next Monday, then you're gonna like suddenly make huge progress on your processes and documenting some things and stuff, like as they're as they're starting, I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally. Um, two things I want to talk about. One recurring revenue and onboarding a team member. Recurring revenue is the absolute holy grail of all business models because it allows you, it gives you the confidence to know that you can hire another team member, right? Because you've got that predictable cash flow and that predictable revenue coming in. And so you can kind of go, well, I can afford to bring on someone else because I've got this recurring revenue that's gonna, you know, cover my expenses, and then project revenue on top of that is is a bonus. Um if you don't have recurring, if you don't have enough recurring revenue to bring on that next team member and you're struggling to get that recurring revenue dialed in, Christine, you said put up your rates. We all know now it's easy to put up your rates, right? Because we've been through that journey. But for someone listening to this who's like charging three and a half thousand dollars for a website and just terrified to put it up to five thousand dollars, what advice like if you could go back and tap yourself on the shoulder and and say, you should put, you know, like trust me, I've been through this journey, I know what it's like on the other side. What is what is the the game that you've got to play inside your head to just put the price up to $5,000 and know that uh people are gonna value it? Like how how do you overcome, and you know, whether it's three and a half to five or five to ten or ten to fifteen, whatever the price point is, how do you because on the other side of it, it's easy, right? You look back and you go, well, that was easy. I should have done that years ago. But when you're stuck in that moment, what's the what's the the mind game that you have to play to actually just do it? How do you overcome that fear that people are gonna push back?
SPEAKER_00I think you have to you have to switch from, and you this is this is all stuff I learned from you, but you have to switch from selling features to selling outcomes and solutions, right? Because maybe you've been talking too much about the widget or the plugin or the thing. Um, I think you need to you need to realize that the 3,000, the $5,000, the $10,000, the $15,000 website is not how much junk you pack into it. It's who you're doing it for, right? And so if you suddenly go from your prices are $3,000 to $5,000, you're gonna be probably serving a slightly different customer. Maybe they're a little bit more established in the same industry you've been serving, whatever. It's not necessarily that you have to like double the number of pages or do all this fancy stuff or whatever, right? It's just so I think it's it's a mindset shift with some of those things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree. And I think also you just have to kind of consider the fact that um you kind of have to put it in your brain that as you've as you've kind of worked these out, you're gonna start going back to the processes. That's one of my selling factors when I talk to clients. Um I have a very highly a very well documented process. My team is very efficient. We have all kinds of checkpoints with you. We make sure because you you have to listen to what the client is saying as to why they're wanting to hire you. And you have to kind of talk to them in a sense of I'm not, you know, I'm not here to build you a website. I'm here to build you a solution to your marketing problem. And that and that changes in their head about what you're trying to do. I'm not going to just put a website together for you in five pages and put some content. Yeah, that's a $1,500, that's worth $1,500. You can go to Squarespace and set something up. But what I'm doing is completely different. It's going to perform well, and I've got a whole list of things in the background that you don't see. You don't see these things that I'm doing, you know. And so you kind of come at it from that perspective of a solution rather than a website. And that's what we hear a lot in our in our sales accelerator, and you know, when we talk to people, we we've done these um, what was it, when we have conversations and we we pretend we're one or the other. And the first thing they say is, okay, so you need a website. So how many pages do you want? That's the worst thing you ever want to say to somebody during a triage call.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because you've just totally commoditized you've commoditized the whole thing.
SPEAKER_03That's it.
SPEAKER_01I don't understand people that that that I don't understand people that charge per page. It's I mean, you know, there's a plug-in called duplicate post, right? It takes like three seconds to add a new page to a website.
SPEAKER_03I just spoke to somebody last week that just did the that exact same thing. They're they're not in our group, they're not in a Maverick, but of course they're not now.
SPEAKER_01If they are, they're fired. Um so so all right, let's talk about I want to talk about some horror stories of of hiring of uh bringing on team members. I want to I want to talk about the horror stories first because I'm usually the problem, right? I have been the problem in the past, and then I want to talk about onboarding team members. I'm just gonna plant that seed so you can think about it because I know you guys are both really good at this. And Max actually runs our onboarding process here at Agency Mavericks when we onboard a new team member. Our latest team member is uh Aliandra in Brisbane, who is has replaced Maddie running our social media and our our blog. Um Aliandra, by the way, is an also an actor. If you check out the new Netflix series called Carol versus Joe, based on the Tiger King uh story. And she's actually in that uh that uh that that series. So go and check out Aleandra Calabrasi. She's our new social media uh girl here. And so Max ran Max runs the onboarding sequence for new team members here. But I want to talk about your onboarding sequence in a moment. But before we do that, I want to talk about some of the horror stories. Like we had uh we had uh a VA in the Philippines. This is way back in the days of video user manuals, right? We had a VA in the Philippines, and I the mistake that I made is that I thought you could hire a VA to edit your videos, manage your social media, uh write up all your blog posts, uh, document your processes, reach out and book guests for your podcast. Uh, I had this whole laundry list of things that I wanted them to do, which I was doing all of those things and and kind of not doing them very well because I was trying to do too much. And it was Chris Ducker, actually, who manages a uh a VA um uh office in Cebu and he helps you recruit and and manage VAs. He said to me, he pulled me up and he saw my brief that came through because I was looking to hire a VA. And he said, dude, try and hire someone in Australia that will fit this job, right? You are you are looking for a unicorn, and I don't know if you know this, but unicorns don't exist. They are they're fiction. They're horses with the horn out that they're they're not real, right? So you're trying to, you're actually trying to hire four people here, and you're trying to hire four people in one. And I didn't believe him. So I tried to hire this person, and it was an absolute epic fail. After about 12 months, we realized that you know the person was in the wrong seat, they weren't cut out to do this job. Uh, and it was totally my fault because I didn't know how to manage them, I didn't know how to recruit, I didn't even know how to define a role back then at that point. So take full responsibility for that. And I learned a ton going through that process. And as we've grown, our roles have become way more specific. So, you know, when there's three or four of you in a business, you people just generally get outside their job description and get stuff done, right? That's just part of being in a small business. But as you grow, the roles do become more specific, and you want to hire more specialists rather than generalists. So I just wonder if you guys can share a time when hiring someone hasn't worked and what maybe was the thing that that got in the way of a successful hire.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh. I guess I think my first, oh go ahead.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say my first hire, I think I it was kind of a little bit of that unicorn where I was like, hey, I want you to be really good at front-end dev, I want you to be really good at quality checking, I want you to be able to respond to the client uh flawlessly. And she did a decent job, but it was a lot to ask for someone. And so after she was not on the team, after you know, she had been on the team for a couple years, had some medical issues, had to stop working. Um, when I went to rehire, I said, Hey, you know what? I'm gonna get a person that's a front-end dev in the Philippines, and but I'm gonna have a US part-time person who's gonna check their work and do all the client communication. And that was a big shift because now I've got someone in the US talking to someone in the US. I've got someone to check the work besides myself and besides the person who did the work. And so it just, it just uh smoothed out a lot of things and it was just a subtle shift, but um, having someone else to be able to check the work besides me was was huge, you know.
SPEAKER_03Um, so a couple keep them brief stories. One, my very, very first real hire, like going through the process, putting them on payroll, right? Setting up payroll, they were actual physical person that came to work for me in an office that I used to have. And within six weeks, they were stealing from me. So I've had in the gamut of all kinds of contractors and employees. So now that was six weeks, and that was talk about fire quickly, obviously, you know, and it was, but the problem with that was is is I um was looking for somebody that was too that I hired somebody I felt like it was like me in terms of of personality, and you know, and that's not correct. That's not the best thing to do. I should have done a background check, which I didn't do, called a couple prior uh references and talked to them, you know. Now, from a contractor level, somebody in the Philippines, or for me, most of my team is in South America. They're they're come most of the they're coming in from referrals and like a friend or a uh in my case, I've got a brother and sister that work for me. Um, but if you're going to hire somebody, do just do some due diligence. Do pick up the phone and talk to a prior employee if you can and get a sense of who they are, as well as the interviews. Um, a second one was I hired somebody to help me run our care plans. And I did, I again, it was a referral thing, um, but I did not do proper due diligence, look them up, call, talk to somebody else that they might have worked with, because this person within about a week, I had fired them because the way they were talking to my clients. Like in our ticketing system, he was responding extremely rudely. And so again, it's it was a personality, which one of the things that we talk about Mavericks is hiring by culture, right? Somebody's gonna fit your business and how you work. Um, and so that was another mistake was not really doing due diligence of proper interviewing, asking the right questions, getting a sense of who you are. It was more like a desperation, like, I need someone to take this role. And he wrote, he raised his hand, and I'm like, great.
SPEAKER_01And I have a pulse.
SPEAKER_03I have a pulse, I can answer the email. Uh so that within two emails, I'm like, you're done out, bye, goodbye. No, no, no, no. So I've learned my lesson since then. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01My my buddy Nick said to me once, I was talking to him about a hire that we'd made that I knew that I just needed to get rid of. And he said, talk to me about your the process of hiring this person. So I talked to him through the process and I was like, you know, three words in. And he went, All right, so so you hired on you hired based on availability. I said, and I it was kind of like, you know, when someone wins you, someone like you get hit in the solar plexus, and it's like, I was like, oh yeah, you've I've been found out. Yeah, I did hire based on availability. And I said, What am I supposed to do? And he said, You hire based on ability, not availability. I'm like, oh, that makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_03You I just declined two people. I interviewed, went through the whole interview process, and the second person I was gonna, in fact, Johnny, I talked to Johnny about it because I'm like, you know, what do you think about this? Because my gut was telling me this isn't the right fit, but her credentials were great. You know, like she had she worked as a White House intern. She had all this, you know, like this is awesome. But my gut reaction having an interview with her, and she did a test, was like, this isn't gonna fit. This is it's not gonna be a good fit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, not gonna be a good fit. Um, and so we we actually have three interviews that we put people through now before we onboard them. This is but so this is before the onboarding process, before we've actually made them an offer, we have three interviews we put them through. One is the we I'll call them the three C's, there's the culture interview, there's the competencies interview, and there's the commitment interview, which I'm not gonna go into the details there because we've got a whole new training coming out soon where we're gonna go into the details and give you all the scripts and everything to follow. Uh, that's another story for another time. Um, but once thing, once you've made an offer and you've hired someone, what does your onboarding process look like? How do you get them, how do you give them everything they need to succeed? And and sort of what does that first two or three weeks look like for you guys when you hire a new team member?
SPEAKER_03Johnny, you want to start?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yours is probably a lot more detailed than mine, but um I will I will just say, you know, we have some we have some videos that we have them watch. We have we try to set out our expectations. All of our team works from home. So um, as you guys know, when you've got people working all over the place, um, it's really important to kind of set the expectations really clearly. So whether that's like how we use Slack or um, you know, different things that we do as a team and kind of what those expectations are, I think that's really important, right? So everybody says they're starting to work uh in the attendance channel and what they're working on that day, and then signs out or if they have to you know take a break or whatever. So we always know who's working when and that kind of stuff when they're able to be reached. Um, and then we do things like, you know, have them fill out uh a new team member onboarding form that we have on our own website that we send them to. It's part of their like first couple of days of, hey, you need to fill this out. And it's things like when's your birthday? What size t-shirt do you wear? What's your favorite thing to drink? You know, what what do you like to do in your free time? What are your kids' names, your pets' names, whatever? Because we want to really get to know them. And then I think that helps create the more uh family culture that we want to have, you know, and front and kind of team member thing, not just like this is a job that you're showing up for, right? So um we we kind of assign them to a success person, you know, that's gonna help them succeed in their first month. They have a weekly call with check-in call with them to just see how things are going and everything. So it's a lot of little things that I think add up to having a good experience.
SPEAKER_01Why, why do you think this is I'm setting you up here, I'm seeing you up here, but why do you think it's important that they feel like they're part of a family rather than they've just got a job? I mean, we're paying them well, right? We we oh god we're looking, we're looking after them. Like what why is it? I mean, for those, for those, I know there's a lot of people who are like, I don't do the woo-woo crap, man, like I'm paying you, do your job, like it's you know, I'm not gonna give you a virtual hug, like I don't care about that, I don't care how you feel, I don't care if you're having a bad day, like just do your job, I'm paying you, right? Yeah, why do you think it's important that people feel like they belong to it, you know?
SPEAKER_00You know, so one of our one of our core values is family and it's people matter more than the work. And, you know, when we brought on our two of our team members who started last week, I did something I hadn't done before. I said, for everybody on the team, we were on a you know, huge team call with everybody on the call, paying, you know, hundreds of dollars for this call to happen, you know, because everybody's on the clock. Um, and I just said, hey, introduce yourself, your role in the team, you know, some a fun fact. But I said, say why you like working at Johnny Flash. And to hear all the team members talk about how, you know, how much we cared, how it was more than a job, how you know they get to know you, like all those things, I realized like that's the culture that we're creating, and that, and that at least the team members on our team really appreciate that, you know. And so uh when a kid shows up on a team Zoom call in the background, you know, I know that that's Addy or Jetty or whoever the kid is, you know, of that person and stuff, and we're able to ask about, hey, how's the family doing? How's things going? And so it's a little bit more than just like get the job done. It's like we actually care about you as a person.
SPEAKER_01There's an economic benefit to this though, too, isn't there? There's not it's not just the thing, yeah, it's not just a feel-good, you know, like I feel good about my company and me as a boss because I know that everyone loves working here, and you know, if we had a glass door account, we'd be five stars all the time, and you know, but but there's an economic benefit to this, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Because we had a problem on our own website yesterday, and and the developers are all logging off and it's after hours. I'm like, oh, we can fix this tomorrow, it's not that big of a deal. And then, you know, one of the developers just on their own, like stays late for an hour and a half to fix the issue. Um, and that's because they just they care, right? They they care. It's a it's a mutual care, right? I care for them, they care for what's going on. You know, one of our values is everyone's an owner, and it's kind of like when I walk around my own house and I see a piece of trash in the yard or in the bathroom or whatever, I put it away because it's my house and I care about it, right? And I want I want my team members to have that same value that they see the piece of trash in my yard, and because they feel like it's their yard, they're gonna pick it up, right?
SPEAKER_01I scream at the kids when I say trash in the isn't what you're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00I'm like, who the bloody hell left this here? Put this away, it's a trip hazard. I'm gonna break my legs. And when you have a bunch of kids, they all just point the fingers at each other. Oh, they did it. Oh no, it wasn't me.
SPEAKER_03I think another thing to think about too when it comes to the economic value of that is you're not having you people don't quit on you, right? So people enjoy working for you. I I mean, I love it when my lead developer says she's moving to a better apartment, she can afford a better apartment now. And for me, that's great because she's got better, better internet connection, she's not interrupted, and so she can get a better work day. But at the same time, I'm very much about, hey guys, when was the last time you took a walk today? Because I'll come back and I've got a headache. I've I'm like, when did you take a walk? When did you stop and and breathe and meditate and listen to some nice music? Because I'm I'm very much about you need to take a break, you need to step away. And and so when they come to me and say, I've got a headache, like, go, go take a couple hours off. I'm that's fine. Because you know what? Just like Johnny, they're gonna work on a Saturday if we have to, which I don't really like to, but they'll be there and they're always learning. And and so the other thing for me, one of my values is you're always learning something new, always. And so one of the questions I ask about once a month to my team is what did you learn recently? Whether it be a personal growth, something you for your own career, for the business, you know, what did you learn? And I just I go around and I ask everybody, what did you learn? What did you read? What video did you watch? And um, because it's just always about growth internally as a team member. And I don't think that's woo-woo at all. I think from an economic standpoint, that helps my business because I don't want somebody that is static and has no desire to do better. So I agree.
SPEAKER_01Sheila Heard, who is in Mavericks Club, says people don't quit the job, they quit the boss, which is uh, I believe uh 100%. There's I can't remember who it was. I think it might have been Stephen Covey. I don't know, but uh, I read a book years and years and years and years and years ago. And the argument is that there are three things that motivate people to work hard and smart in a business. And in order, they are a cause they believe in. So this is why people will, you know, volunteer and fly to the other side of the planet to build orphanages and and you know, think about doctors without borders, for example, it's a great example of that, right? So a cause they believe in, um, a leader they respect, and money in that order, they are the three things that motivate people to work hard. The other thing that uh I just want to reference here is there's a fantastic book called Good Authority by Jonathan Raymond. I strongly suggest that if you have a team or are thinking about growing a team, that you read Good Authority by Jonathan Raymond. It is an it's an absolutely fantastic book. Um, it looks like it's on sale at the moment on Amazon for $167.32. That cannot be right. That's gotta be a that's gotta be really the hardcover, the hardcover is $173. $173 for the hardcover. Or you can get the audio book for free with an audible trial. There we go.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god. Jesus. Um one of the one of my onboarding processes. Um, so I like you said, I mine's highly documented. So I've got email to Templates that get sent out. I've got all the things that need to happen. I have a training page that has step one, step two. This is how we find documents. This is how we log into uh this is why we use Slack. This is how we use Slack. Um, we have a daily bot, please, you know, and instructions. There's a very, you know, so I have to make sure that I'm there for them because I just experienced this last night. I just hired him just last night and he had trouble getting into the email. So what I just like I would with any client, I wanted to be available to help him get in there and not ignore him until I felt like talking to him. Because I it's exactly again with a client, that first experience with me, I want it to be, I'm there to help you. Um, and so we had some issues, we we got it figured out, you know, and then that point it's adding him to LastPass, adding to teamwork, adding him to Slack, you know, and and so it's just the experience that I want him to have in the very beginning is is a good one that and so that way from there on out, and then I introduce him, the whole team's on Slack. Hey everybody, say hi to Oscar and uh funny, he's named Oscar, but uh but um yeah, and so we've got uh an entire checklist and email templates and training uh videos, you know, like Johnny was saying, I've got a few videos on how we do things, why we do things, um, where to do, where do we get this and how do we get that?
SPEAKER_01And so and how the so one of the questions I have is how do you how do you know? Let's say we've onboarded a team member, they're a good fit, uh first couple of weeks look pretty good. How do you know in six months' time that that team member is doing a good job and is succeeding in their role?
SPEAKER_03KPIs. Yeah, and but we've got a spreadsheet, so we're just we're just um setting this up. I've been really lax about it, but I've got a spreadsheet and I'm trying, um, I'm building it out. It's pretty much done. I had the whole team together. I had the the our my lead programmer, project manager, my care planager, the four of us got together. I said, I need numbers once a week that we know that this this person is doing their job. I don't want uh I don't want them to have to think or wonder or guess. The numbers should at least give them 50% of the idea that I'm doing my job well. But it needs to be a number that we all can find quickly and that makes sense. So we we put we put together some ideas, we're still testing it, but um that's kind of where we're that's where we're kind of at right now. Um, and then then it's uh a feedback, right? So there's a a quarterly feedback that we do. Um but for that first hire, um, you know, I'm gonna rely on some of my team members. I'm about ready to possibly fire somebody because they're they just can't get along with this person. The the job is 50%, you know, he's there when we kind of need them, but the team has a really hard time communicating with him. So it's that's kind of where you know, there's uh there's other people involved, it's not just me.
SPEAKER_01So and how do you uh one of the things that we have introduced after doing a fair bit of reading uh from a guy named Jeff Smart who wrote a great book called Who? Uh, and one of the things that he talks about in that book is the scorecard, the job scorecard. How do you guys use job scorecards for every team member, or are you still dialing that in? Because I know job I know scorecards are hard for some team members. Very challenging. We've kind of worked a lot of this out now, but it's challenging for people like developers where there's not an obvious number. Uh, I just wonder how your team members know that they're doing a good job. What one of the things I've learned is that, and I learned this when we came back from our last live event in San Diego, which is February 2020. We had a great live event, but we had a terrible quarter. Not terrible, but it just wasn't as good. The quarter itself didn't reflect the success we had at the live event. And so we had this great live event. We came back, everyone was pumped. End of March, I'm like, well, you know, we're kind of a little bit behind where we wanted to be. And a couple of my team members who were working in in the office with me at the time, they were like, What the hell? Like, what do you mean? How? And they felt like they kind of felt duped because they felt like we'd they they their analogy was we felt like we've been out there playing basketball, shooting three pointers all game, and then five minutes before the game's finished, you've pulled the curtain back on the scoreboard and we realize there's no chance of us winning because the opposition's so far ahead, but you haven't shown us the scoreboard until now. And that was a huge eye-opener for me. I was like, okay, right, we you need to see the scoreboard every day because I see it every day. I just wasn't sharing it with the team because I'm an idiot, right? Um, so how do you how do your team members know they're doing a good job? Do they have numbers that they can point to, or are you still dialing that in for some key roles?
SPEAKER_03That that's what we're that's what I'm instituting. That's the thing that we all got together to try to figure out what those numbers are. And you're right, the development one was really hard to come together and figure out. One of them was how often do you have to be asked to do a task? Like, here's we need you to do this thing. You do it, we do a quality check on it, and it's still not right. So, how many times did we have to ask you over and over, you know, and we have a tag called a redo tag. So, how many redo tags did you have this week? So, you know, that that was only that was one of the things I could think of was a quantifiable number that we could track. Um, another was estimated hours versus actual hours. Now, that can be a guessing game. And again, part of the thing I have to you have to really let the team know is if you don't reach your goal or what we've established, it does not mean you're fired. It doesn't that's not what this is. You know, this is not gonna be a thing that we look at, hey, you didn't reach it, that's it, you're out. That's not this is like you said, so you know the scoreboard, you know where you're at, and it's a quantifiable actual number that you can look at and say, Oh, I probably could be adjusting here. And it's all about adjustments. We just had a project go live, and I told my project manager, I said, give me a summary why we were so off track in our estimated hours versus actual hours. What happened? So he got a he just got the team together. The three the three of them had a little powwow and he came back with five bullets for the next time we do a project. It's these five things need to be changed next time. So I think it's a constant communication, but also some kind of quantifiable number. We have a spreadsheet in there, it's a scorecard. It's a scorecard.
SPEAKER_01Love it. Johnny, how does how do your team know that they're doing a good job? What can they point to to say, hey, look what I've been working on? Isn't this cool?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, we're we're still kind of figuring some of that stuff out too, but we have certain things. Obviously, we set out like detailed project schedules for when a project's supposed to go live. So the there's only a couple people working on each project, so it's very clear whether they hit that or not. Um, look at things like the time it takes to get support tickets resolved from the time that it comes in to the time that it goes out. You know, obviously we don't want it sitting on there for five days, you know, and still unresolved, that kind of stuff. So uh those are some of the things that we can look at to kind of see um along with some of the things that Christina said as well, um, in terms of like, is someone on track or not?
SPEAKER_01How's I want to ask you both how your role has changed as you've grown your team and how your not just your role in the business, but how you view the business, your relationship with the business, how has that changed? And how has your time that you spend in the business and the time that you spend doing other things and your kind of stress levels? Because it, you know, hiring people does reduce some stress levels, but frankly, it creates new stress that we didn't have before, right? Because we're dealing with people. People are the solution and cause of most of our problems, right? Um, so I wonder if you could just talk a minute about how you've changed as a business owner as your teams have grown from, you know, you you guys both started out as freelancers essentially, and now you're agency owners and your CEOs, and you've got teams and you've got mouths to feed and you've got responsibility. How's that changed you? Go ahead, Pristina.
SPEAKER_03Um, I have to say it's for me, I've really changed from that freelancer mindset, even from a business owner mindset to more of a leader. Like I just I'm looking more strategy. I'm looking more how can I do better next time? What can we do next time that's different, um, better, but also trying to understand the team better and how can they work better and how can I help them? How can I make sure the next time they have what they need to do better? Every single time, every project we do, we have a summary of what we what we could do better next time. So I'm trying to be that person for them that's it that's encouraging. That's um, you know, I I try and take on a lot of any issues with the client. Like I still kind of have to have that phone call sometimes with the client, and I have to be reassuring. It's almost like my mothering. I've got two kids right now. I feel like I'm turning that around and my five being mothered to five other people right now. You know, how are you doing? Everything okay? You know, well, I'm not feeling so just two roles in that is the team is happy, they're productive, versus how's the business doing? Looking at those higher numbers and what can I do better next time?
SPEAKER_00Totally, 100%. I I'll just add, um, you know, I think when I was a freelancer, I would use words like we because I didn't want the person I'm like selling the thing to to think it was all all me. And if I got hit by a bus. So it was it was sort of a like where I wanted to go, you know, versus now kind of like we're we're there, right? In terms of like it is a we and I can say that with confidence and it's true, you know. But I think it's sort of that like you have to kind of know where you want to go when you're a freelancer, when you're starting out. I mean, even when you're larger, you have to know where you want to go, but you have to say, I want this is the direction that I want to go. What do we have to do to get there? And so then you start taking those steps, right? And so uh sometimes you have to kind of have that like preferred future or that vision that you of where you want to be, um, and then kind of like start to take those steps as if you're there, right? So um now I think it's a lot more about leadership, it's about process, it's about getting the right person in the right seat. And if someone's not in the right seat, you know, how can we get them to a right seat if there is one on the bus? And it's a lot more about kind of dialing all that in and dealing with problems as you grow, right? I mean, you know, what worked when there was 20 clients and one person answering the ticket desk doesn't work when there's 120 people and three people working the ticket desk and different you know stuff. So um those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_01If you could go back and have a sliding doors moment, would you stay as a freelancer and do it yourself, or would you still grow a team?
SPEAKER_00No, no, because I I like going, I like going on vacation and leaving my laptop at home, you know. I like not answering the email, not answering the Slack, knowing that like the money there's still money coming in, there's clients being served, there's you know good stuff that's happening, and and and I'm not involved with it. And frankly, the more often I can do that, the better the business runs because we find whatever little speed bumps in the road and we say, okay, we need to work that out so that's not an issue next time John's gone and stuff. So it, you know, it's it's great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I agree. I think it's all I just like to be able to step away for a bit, but I think also on the flip side, I don't think I want to have a giant agency either. I like having it somewhat the size I'm at, maybe two, three more people. I don't know if I want to get any bigger than that. Because, like you said, the more people, the more problems. I think we're at a good size right now, but I definitely wouldn't go back to being a freelancer. And I'll, you know, here's another thing. I like the community, my own little personal community. I like the people I work with, I like having twice a month, twice a week meetings with them. I like hearing how somebody in Brazil is leave living and how someone in Ecuador is living. I I like that. And before when it was just me, it was just me, you know. So, and even before WP Love, or sorry, Mavericks, you know, Mavericks, there's just it's really hard to sit in a room by yourself and not have to be able to do it. Totally. Yeah, even Slack, right? Just hop on Slack and say, Hey, yeah, you know, hey, I need some help, or can you can you do this for me?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love the I love the community too. One of our Philippine team members, I'll just end with this story, um, said, Shout out to Regine for helping me last Friday in rendering this lyric video. Adobe let me down, but you didn't, thank you. And then Regine, who's on our team, said, uh, I'm still waiting for the fries at my doorstep for helping him. And then he must have door-dashed it or something to her because then he sent her like fries in a milkshake and stuff to her. And it was just it was just so awesome. But it's like one of those things, like what just what Christine was saying. It's that community, it's that family, it's that you know, making a difference together. That's just so awesome.
SPEAKER_03So totally one of the things that I did was I bought everybody my hoodie jacket, Zip hoodie, with my logo on it. So I sent everybody one of those. So we're gonna all get together and take a picture of all of us in our hoodies with our company logo together.
SPEAKER_01So awesome. And it's really rewarding too, isn't it? When you see clients being served, you get testimonials or or or gratitude from clients that you don't know. It's like, oh wow. I mean, we we this happens all the time in our Slack channels and our support tickets. I'm like, someone shares a success. Someone shared it this morning, actually. Uh, Liz Hamilton in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, who was in Mavericks for a year and then bounced out and has now come back into the group and said, I just want to say a huge thank you to all the coaches at Mavericks because it took a bit of time and I'm working on my own timeline, but this is now starting to work, and I've got my team, and she's taking a week holiday with her daughter to go diving and do some marine biology stuff, and the team's delivering. And it's really rewarding. And I didn't coach Liz, I had a couple of calls with Liz, but I think Johnny maybe coached Liz in in the squadron. Uh, so well done, Johnny. And it's great to see clients having success where I'm not, you know, individually involved with that client. I don't really, I'm not, you know, working with them one-on-one. Um, that feels rewarding that I feel like I've built something bigger than myself, which is very rewarding. Um, hey, this has been awesome. I hope you guys have found this helpful who are listening. If you're not in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, by the way, if you're just listening to this as a podcast, please come and join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. We have a lot of fun in here. We're over 12,000 members now, which is awesome. We also just locked over 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is a nice milestone. Um, and we over the last sort of six to nine months, we've been recruiting team members for our clients, our inner circle clients, mainly our Mavericks Club members. And we've learned a lot about the recruitment process, about finding, hiring, recruiting, onboarding, and managing a team of A players so that ultimately your team can deliver value and help you run a profitable agency without you being kind of stuck on in the business 40 hours a week, right? And what we've done is we have a lot of we basically have more demand for this thing than we can serve, right? We just can't hire for everyone who wants us to hire for them because we're a small business and you know we don't we we want to do a good job and we want to get it right. So we have a limit of the amount of people that we can help. But what we have done is we've taken our entire process from Team Accelerator, which is our recruitment service, and we've packaged that up into a brand new training so that you guys can do it yourself, so that you can follow the exact same process. We use ClickUp to manage it all. We've got all the templates, all the scripts, everything you need to interview, everything you need to place, job ads, job scorecards, job descriptions, everything that we've been talking about, how to attract, hire, onboard, and ultimately manage a team of A players. And we're going to be releasing that in the coming weeks. I think we're probably about three weeks away from having that ready. Um, so keep your eyes on your email, keep your eyes on the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, and keep your ears on this podcast because we will be talking more about that over the coming weeks. And then I think in the middle of May, we're gonna open the doors and make that training available for you guys so that you can come in and use the exact same process that we use to recruit team members so you can get off the tools and uh and have more fun. So super excited about that. Christina Hawkins, Johnny Flash, thank you so much for joining us on the agency hour today. And look at this, we've been live for 59 minutes and 55 seconds. This literally is the agency hour. It's amazing. Woo! Thanks for being a part of it. Really appreciate you guys and uh look forward to seeing you again here soon. Thanks for having us, Jordan.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you'd like to listen. You can catch all of the agency hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agencymaverics. Or you can get involved. Check out our free Digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free training. We'll see you there.