The Agency Hour
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The Agency Hour
Getting Punched in the Face
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So we had a failure metric in our agency that was not a success metric, a failure metric that that said, if a client contacts us to ask us where things are at, we've failed. And the way to avoid that is to have those meetings pre-booked in the calendar and say, hey, you don't need to contact us on a Thursday afternoon chasing us up as to where things are at because you know every Friday morning at 10 p.m., 10 a.m., we're going to have a meeting and we're going to walk you through what we've done, what we're working on next, and where we're stuck. Right? So you don't need to chase us up. It's in the calendar. Just save it for the for the weekly whip on Friday or the weekly whip on Monday, right? And so you might find that you spend someone in your agency spends most days, most Mondays, most of the day on Mondays, just going through weekly whip meetings with your clients. And if that's what you do on Mondays, then that's fine, then you've got the rest of the week to get the work done. And you know, every Monday you're just doing weekly whip meetings with your clients. And that that keeps their expectations managed and it's proactive communication so that you're not, you don't disappear and go and do the work, and the client doesn't know you're doing the work because you're not communicating it.
SPEAKER_01If 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_02Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are around the world, welcome to another episode of the Agency Hour live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, possibly the best Facebook group on the planet for web design and digital marketing freelancers and agencies. And by the way, if you're listening to this episode of the podcast on a podcatcher like Spotify or Downcast or Apple Podcasts or Google Play or one of those other fancy apps, and you're not actually a part of the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, I would encourage you to come on over to Facebook.com, join the metaverse, and uh join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. Just search for Digital Mavericks and uh click on the group when it comes up and answer a couple of questions, promising not to be a jerk and to follow the uh the group rules. Be kind, be courteous, be helpful, and um we'll let you in. And then you can come and join in the fun, and you can watch the podcast as we record it live in the group. You can join in the comments, you can ask questions, you can interact and engage, and more importantly, you can join me in heckling, my good friend and co-host, eat crispy butter period. How are you, brother?
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say, where's my intro? And more important intro.
SPEAKER_02More importantly, how's your mailbox? Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00You'll oh the the short story will come out soon. Like I'm gonna write a little short story about it. I'm gonna elaborate on the real story, but it's a short film, man.
SPEAKER_02It is a short film, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00It's a it's a great lies and deceit. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_02Who would have thought that a mailbox could lead to adultery?
SPEAKER_00I'm just gonna say for posterity that the adultery had nothing to do with me or anyone in my family. Like you said out there, since this is a podcast. I want to make sure everybody knows that.
SPEAKER_02It's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00This is my mailbox, but not my adultery.
SPEAKER_02That's fantastic, isn't it? Um excellent. So, hey, what do we what okay? So Tuesday we had our leadership meeting, Tuesday, my time, Monday, your time, we had our leadership meeting, and we were talking about uh agency owners and freelancers who who get to a point in their journey where they realize they need some help, or they think they need some help, whether it's an online course or a mentor or a coach, and or just joining a you know, mastermind or hanging out with other people in an accountability group. And then they kind of get to the finish line almost of like making that decision, and then they wig out. For some reason, they freak out, right? They're like, oh no, I'm just gonna do it on my own, which is totally fine. I'm like, trust me, this is we're not here pitching you our coaching services. We're totally fine either way. Um, but it was an interesting conversation because I was talking about the reality that growing an agency or growing any kind of business is really hard.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's it's you know, you kind of have to be prepared to get punched in the face a hundred times a day and and just get up the next day and do it again and do it again and do it again. And it's really, I've been doing this a long time now and coach a lot of people through the process, and it's a two-year journey, right? That to to to experience any kind of significant transformation in the business really takes about two years. You reflect back on where we were two years ago and go, wow, we've made some progress. People's expectations are, I think, that they're gonna take a course or join a program or get involved in a group, and within three months, right, you know, they're gonna have Lamborghinis and you know, they get into this game because they're they're good at design or they're good at creating websites and they did it for somebody and then they did it for somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Next thing you know, they're doing it for more and more people, and they think, oh wow, it would be cool to grow to actually have a business, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is very different, yeah, very different from actually having a business. Yeah, very different from from from being a business owner, and and so the reality is that uh you can do that like either way, it's gonna be hard work. And either way, it's it's gonna be it's gonna test your resolve, it's gonna test your resilience, you're gonna have to learn new skills. Uh, it's gonna be freaking hard, and there are plenty of ups and downs. It's very rewarding, but it's also very challenging. So you can either do that on your own or you can do that with the support of other people. Either way, the journey doesn't like just joining a program or taking a course or getting a mentor or or you know, joining another Facebook accountability group or whatever it is, having a private Slack community with some buddies, whatever it is, that in itself is not going to make the pain go away, right? That when I say the pain, the pain of growing a business and getting punched in the face 150 times a day, uh, that is not gonna go away just because you've joined some group or taken some course or you've got a business coach, right? What it does is it gets it's like if you think about training at the gym, right? Getting a personal trainer doesn't make it easier to lift the weights or easier to, you know, tone your muscle or lose fat or whatever it is. You've still got to do the work. You've just got support and encouragement from someone who's a little more experienced than you, right? So I think one of the things that we're noticing is that people's expectations are that if I buy that plugin or I join that program or I take that course, it's going to solve all of my problems. And I just wanted to go on record and tell everyone, and we talked about this on Tuesday, and that's why Max was like, we should definitely talk about this on the agency hour, because uh I just want to go on record and tell you that it just doesn't work like that. Like buying the thing, whatever the thing is, does not solve the problem. You have to do the work, right? Either way, you have to do the work. And as I said, you can either do the work on your own in isolation with no support, no frameworks, no experienced people helping you, or you can enlist the people around you to help you. Now, I'm not saying that doesn't have to be us, that can be anyone. I don't I don't care. It's entirely up to you. It's your business. I'm not your business partner. We're here to help businesses grow, but ultimately it's your decision. But I just want to let you know, and Noah Britton made a video about this uh a little while ago. He put it up on his YouTube channel. He's been through our programs, all of our programs, and he said, if you are not prepared to do the work, don't join any program. Whether it's ours or anyone else's, don't join any program if you're not prepared to do the work. Because joining the program is not going to fix the problems.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_02Right? It's going to give you the support, it's probably going to help you solve those problems faster, but you still have to do the work to solve those problems.
SPEAKER_00It's it's like buying that self-help book that sits on the shelf and was never opened.
SPEAKER_02Right, exactly. Wrapped in plastic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um, seeing the doctor doesn't magically cure the issue. You have to take the advice and follow through, says James Moogatroid. Exactly. And it does take a while to change mindset. Uh uh thank you, Jaden Navarette, for that contribution. It does take a while to change your mindset. And again, just joining the program doesn't change your mindset. I'll give a shout out to Amber Rushton here from the Barossa Valley in South Australia. She joined uh Sales Accelerator. She's just a massive action taker.
unknownHuge.
SPEAKER_02Right? She joined Sales Accelerator. She's taking massive, imperfect action and getting results and sharing those results with us. And when she gets stuck, she asks questions. And that's the kind of client that we love working with because they're fully engaged in the process. They're taking massive action, but she's also taking responsibility for the fact that her success is up to her. Right. Right. And so I just wanted to use this segue to uh kind of move into the the sort of the bigger topic that we want to talk about today, which is how do you apply this to your clients? Because I know that when clients hire us to do something for them, they think that actually hiring us is going to solve all their problems. And a lot of the time, clients who might be a little bit inexperienced and have never launched a website before or never done any online marketing before, what they do is they hire us to do the work and then they abdicate all responsibility and they go, Well, great, I've hired Pete to build the website and do the SEO. Now I can just check out and not think about it, and money's gonna fall into my bank account. And that's why when we go back to them and we ask them for content, or we ask them for ideas, or we ask them for their thoughts, or we ask them for, you know, how they solve problems, it's very hard to get that content out of a client because they think just by hiring you that that's solved all of their problems. Right. And this is this is one of the most common reasons it feels like you're being punched in the face a hundred times a day, is because clients' expectations are unrealistic, are not matched with the reality of what's actually going to happen. Right. So uh prime example is if you're running ads for a client or you or you're producing content for a client, you publish a blog post or you publish an ad for them and they don't like the image that you've used. This happens all the time, right? I'll come back to the concept of a red herring in a minute, which Max taught me, which is genius. I'll talk about that in a second. Um, but the the if you publish something and the client doesn't like the image, it reminds me of that scene in The Wedding Singer, you know, where Adam's where Adam Sandler, Adam Sandler's bride says, you know, something I can't remember exactly what she says, but something like, I just don't love you anymore, I'm in love with someone else. And he's like, again, information that would have been useful to me yesterday before we were at the altar. Um so, you know, the the you're not getting the feedback from the client, you're not getting the input from the client into their style guide and the images that they like to use. And so you go and publish an image that you think is appropriate, and then they come back and they say they don't like it. This is the minutiae that you get stuck in trying to manage client expectations and you end up just putting out fires. This is really common. I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments if you've got examples of this where you have delivered something and all of a sudden you've missed the client's expectations because you didn't know what their expectations were to begin with, right? So how do you and I think their expectation is, as I said, because they've hired you, they think the problem is going to be solved and they don't realize it's a collaboration. Yeah. So we're gonna talk, we're gonna dive into a deep, a deep dive framework in a minute about managing client expectations to avoid having to put those fires out. Um, but in the meantime, just let us know in the comments what is something, and Pete, have a think, uh uh maybe offer offer up some examples too about where you've published something in the past or you've done some work in the past, and then you've realized, oh shit, the client's expecting something completely different. And I I'm realizing that now, but I that would have been good to know that two weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm I'm almost famous for um missing on logo design. Like that's the one thing that's like the thorn in our side, is I just I I guess I don't set expectations well enough or get from them what I really need to get from them. Um most other things we do a pretty good job, you know, there's some content that might need to be changed or whatever. But um, you know, we we try at this point, we're trying to work with clients where we get to drive the bus. So we're you know, they're trusting us to do our thing and trusting us that if we say that should be blue, then it should be blue, you know, that kind of thing. But um still sometimes we do miss the boat on the on the logo thing. And I'm not really a design shop, so it doesn't happen all that often, but um yeah, that's the one thing, the one place we miss. Yeah, can you make my logo bigger?
SPEAKER_02So funny you talk about logos because I want to come back to this red herring idea that Max taught me. So uh Max has done a lot of video production and and uh editing in the past for corporate clients and also has produced all of our courses and does an amazing job. And he was doing a course for someone uh once and he mentioned this thing and he called it the red herring, and I'm like, what's the what's the what's a red herring? And he said, so what you do is when you produce something for a client, you deliberately leave something wrong, right? You either you leave a typo or you make the logo black and white instead of color, or you make the logo just or you make the logo fuzzy and all blurry, or you do something that is like just an obvious mistake. Because every client is going to want to change something just so that they feel important. Yeah, right. So you give them something wrong so that that's what they change, and then they leave the rest of your work alone. They'll oh, it's great, but can you just make the logo not fuzzy and and make it color because it looks like in black and white, go, oh, terribly sorry, I don't know what happened there. Yes, of course we'll fix that. And then they don't pick on anything else because they you've given them something to fix, right? Known as a red herring, which I think is genius, and usually it can be around the logo. You make the logo too small or too big. Not that I think you can make a logo too big for most clients, they generally want it bigger and they want it to dance in 3D. Thank you, Martin and James. Yes. Um, so so what I want to talk about now, I had a conversation yesterday with uh Adam Silverman, who's one of our Mavericks club members, and I want to talk about a framework for, and this is this is a I want to talk about a framework for managing client expectations proactively and being in front of them all the time. And this is the same framework we use for our our team meetings internally, and it's the same framework that we teach our Mavericks to use for their team meetings, but it can also be applied to client meetings. Really, what it comes down to is once you've signed a client, there are three types of meetings that I like to have with a client. And the bet the better you do the first one or two, then the easier the rest of them get. Okay. So the first meeting you want to do is, and I was talking to Adam specifically about retainers, ongoing retainers. And I'm a big fan of recurring revenue. I'm a big fan of selling a signature system. I like working with clients over a long period of time because it helps us actually get stuff done. I know a lot of agencies and consultants and coaches like working with clients for 90 days and then they're out. They're like, all right, I've done my bit, you're out, you're gone, go find someone else. I need some new clients. I like working with people over a three-year period because you can see a transformation, right? Adam's been with us for two years now, just moved into his own office, you know, hired a salesperson, you tripled revenue. It's like it's ridiculous, the transformation's been ridiculous. And you can't, I wouldn't get to share that if I only worked with people for three months. So I like the kind of you know, three to five year lifespan of a client. Um, so even if you're just selling a web project that might typically take three months, you can still follow this meeting cadence. The first meeting is the big picture, it's the planning meeting, right? So if you are just working on a project, it will be once you've done discovery and signed the client, this will be the planning meeting for the project, okay? Project kickoff meeting. And a couple of things that you want to talk about on this meeting. The first thing I want to know is are there any key dates in the calendar coming up over the next three months that we need to be aware of? Because I've seen this happen time and time again, where you start building a project for a client or you put them on a retainer or a marketing plan, and six weeks later they tell you, oh, by the way, next week there's a conference, and we're going to that conference and we've got a bunch of banners printed out, and we've got a QR code that needs to go to a landing page on a micro site for capturing leads, and we don't have the micro site. Can you get that built for us by next week with the lead capture and the email sequence? Why didn't you tell me this a month ago? It would have been handy if I'd known this a month ago. So the key dates that are coming up in their industry, any events, any key milestones that are coming up in the calendar for the next three months, I want to know about that right now. Do they have a hard launch date? Max has been in this horrible situation where we were editing a course for someone and they told us halfway through the edit, oh, by the way, we're doing a press release and a press conference Monday to launch this, and it's Friday, and the videos aren't all edited yet. And Max is like, what the why didn't you tell me this two weeks ago? Like, what do you mean Monday? I'm not like, I got shit to do on the weekend, right? Now I'm editing videos on the weekend. Thanks very much. So, what are the key dates coming up in the calendar over the next three months? That's the first thing I want to know when I'm working with any client. And then I want to know what their objectives are, what their business objectives are or their priorities over the next three months. And again, if you're just building a website, there will be other things happening in their business that you need to know about. So are they launching anything new? Are they, you know, uh are their priorities to be featured on a bunch of podcasts and drive a bunch of traffic? Are they doing a joint venture partnership? Uh are there any live events coming up? Uh is there an acquisition coming up? Are they employing more staff that's going to actually take them out of the project and keep them really busy? And you're not going to be able to get access to them for a couple of weeks because they're onboarding new staff. What are their business priorities over the next three months while we're working together? Right. So that's really the first kind of meeting is any key dates coming up, and then what are your business objectives and business priorities over the next three months while we're working together? And again, it doesn't matter if you're just building a website project for them, which might have a lifespan of three months and then we're done, or if they're on a retainer or a signature system, same conversation. The second meeting, and I we call that the flight planning meeting, because we talk in aviation terms, right? So we call that the flight planning meeting. The second thing that, the second meeting that I like to have is what I call the monthly traffic control. Right. So every month we're gonna, and then by the way, the quarterly kind of flight planning meeting might be two to three hours, right? You want to spend a lot of time in that workshop, a lot of time asking lots of questions and getting all the information you need in that meeting. In fact, the the the more detailed you go in that meeting and the more information you get, the easier your life is gonna be over the next three months. Once we've done that, and what you might do is you might roll the first month's uh traffic control meeting into the same quarterly planning because you go, okay, now we know it's happening over the next three months. Let's break down the next four weeks. What are the priorities over the next four weeks? What are the key dates in the next four weeks? What are the priorities? What absolutely must happen by when and who's doing what? And let's prioritize uh the build or the campaign or whatever it is, let's prioritize what we need to get done in the next four weeks. Okay. And we do typically do that at the end of every month for the following months. Then we run a weekly WIP, a weekly work in progress meeting, right? And the weekly work in progress is, you know, either Friday or Monday, and it's hey, this is what we're doing this week. And we basically work in weekly sprints. This is what we're doing this week, this is what we did last week, this is what we're doing here, this is where we're stuck. This is what we need from you. This week we're gonna need this, this, this, this, and this. And this should be no surprise to the client or to your team, because you should have already discussed this on the monthly traffic control meeting. So you know this stuff's coming up, right? And you should have talked about it at a high level during the quarterly flight planning meeting. So when you're asking them for content for their staff profile pages this week, because that's what we're working on this week, it should be no surprise. They should be like, oh yeah, that's that makes sense because we talked about that last week. We haven't done it yet, but it's okay, we'll get it done. There shouldn't be any, oh, hang on, what do you mean? No, we didn't, that's not we didn't know that was happening. Okay. Now, when you so when you start working with the client, if you're building a website and it's going to take three months, you need to have these meetings in your calendar booked in. So the part of the onboarding with the client is right, let's get the quarterly, the big planning meeting locked in the calendar. Let's get three. Three monthly traffic control meetings booked in the calendar and let's get a weekly whip booked in the calendar with the key people from your team and their team. Let's get those meetings locked in the calendar before we touch the crayons or start coding anything, right? Get them locked in the calendar and share the agenda for each of those meetings with your client so that they turn up prepared, they know exactly what needs to be done, you know what needs to be done, and there are no surprises.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, having a good onboarding process and then following this meeting cadence um is just gonna set up communication, which is gonna set expectations. That's really what it boils down to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. The number one uh reason that's so I explained this to Simon Kelly once. What happens is when you first start working with someone, the relationship's really tight. You're on the same page. And over time, you you I'll do it this way, over time, you tend to drift, right? You kind of you kind of do this. I'm making signs with my hands, by the way. If you're listening to this as a podcast, this is great radio because you can't see what I'm doing. But it typically what happens is that you get further and further away from each other as the relationship continues. It's the way to bring you back on the same page with your client is constant touch points and constant communication. So we had a failure metric in our agency that was not a success metric, a failure metric that said if a client contacts us to ask us where things are at, we've failed. Right? So the the and the way to avoid that is to have those meetings pre-booked in the calendar and say, hey, you don't need to contact us on a Thursday afternoon chasing us up as to where things are at, because you know every Friday morning at 10 p.m., 10 a.m., we're gonna have a meeting and we're gonna walk you through what we've done, what we're working on next, and where we're stuck. Right. So you don't need to chase us up within the calendar. Just save it for the for the weekly whip on Friday or the weekly whip on Monday, right? And so you might find that you spend someone in your agency spends most days, most Mondays, most of the day on Mondays, just going through weekly whip meetings with your clients. And if that's what you do on Mondays, then that's fine, then you've got the rest of the week to get the work done. And you know every Monday you're just doing weekly whip meetings with your clients. And that that keeps their expectations managed and it's proactive communication so that you're not, you don't disappear and go and do the work and the client doesn't know you're doing the work because you're not communicating it to them. And also if you don't have an account manager or a project success manager and it's just you and you want some, you want to talk about how to switch hats or how to work out how to, you know, block calendar in your time to have these calls so that it doesn't interrupt your work. Uh, we I had a client once who I eventually called them up and I said, listen, I'm gonna get this job done a lot quicker if you stop emailing me and stop calling me. Like, let's have a meeting once a week and I'll tell you where we're at and I'll give you an update. In the meantime, back off and let me do my job. Because they were just on the phone all the time trying to micromanage. I'm like, why don't you just do it? Or come and sit in my office next to me and look over my shoulder if that's what you really want to do, because I can't get any work done because I'm spending all my time answering the phone. And what I realized during that is they were anxious because they didn't know what was happening. Right? It's kind of like having a long, long distance relationship. I don't know, I don't know where you've been for the last three days because I haven't spoken to you, and now all of a sudden my imagination's playing tricks on me, and I'm getting anxious and I'm getting worried. Whereas if we just talk every day, I'm cool. I know where things are at and everyone's good, right?
SPEAKER_00So I have a question. Um, I know we sometimes hear some people that do the do them do the kickoff or the onboarding and then do the monthly call. And then for the weekly, which I label as done, doing, and need. Like what's been done, what are we doing, and what what do we need? I love it. Does that can that be a video? Like, can I just do a loom video and send that update to the client every Friday and save us all some time? Sure.
SPEAKER_02So I think it depends on the I think it depends on the client, right? It depends on the client and and some clients will be happy with that. In fact, some clients would prefer that. So I would ask during so these are some of the things that you want to establish during the during the kickoff meeting, right? So during the kickoff meeting, some of the things you want to establish are let's get these meetings set up in our calendars, right? Let's get the meeting communication cadence set up in our calendars. And I would ask them during that first kickoff meeting, do you want to meet with us physically? Come into our office once a week for a quick whip? Do you want to do it on Zoom? Do you want us just to send you a video update? How do you want us to communicate with you every week? I tell you what, we're not gonna do. We're not gonna get on the phone with you every day because you're anxious. We're gonna communicate with you. It's gonna be set in the calendar once a week. We will communicate with you and let you know we'll give you a done doing need update, right? That can be either over Zoom and typically if you get the quarterly, if you get the planning meeting right and the monthly meetings right, then the weekly whip is like a 20-minute Zoom. This is what we've done, this is what we're doing, this is what we need, right? We good? Great. Uh, do you want to just a video? Do you want to catch up on Zoom? Manage, set that expectation from the start and ask them what they need. They may not have the time to jump on Zoom for once a week. They might just want a Loom video they can watch at night or whatever, right? It's entirely up to them. Give them that option. But what you're doing is you're basically saying once a week, we're gonna give you an update. Once a month, we're gonna have a deep dive to make sure that we're all on track and see what's changed because things change. And once a quarter, we're gonna do our planning session. And if we're just doing a project, then that really is the kickoff. And it also depends on time zones. Like if time zones are tricky, then you know, Loom videos are great. I I have I use Voxer and Loom videos quite a bit with clients in the UK and Canada because the time or on the east coast of the states, because time zones aren't great. And what what and what I would do is I would make sure that your client has the agenda for each of these meetings in advance, right? So there are no surprises. Here's the other thing is what happens, particularly with retainers. I was talking to Adam about this yesterday. With retainers, someone's paying you, you know, four, eight, nine, fifteen grand a month for a retainer. They're not made up numbers, by the way. If someone's paying you a lot of money as a monthly retainer, they and I made a joke about this in our Mavericks Club Slack recently when uh one of our Mavericks landed about a $9,000 a month retainer. I'm like, yeah, and for that price, they expect you to come and mow the lawns and wash the cars and pat the dog and feed the kids and tuck them in, right? And I'm kind of only half joking because what happens is when you're on a large retainer like that, all of a sudden the client says, Oh, uh, by the way, we're going to exhibit at this conference in uh three weeks, and we need some banners printed up, and we need a bunch of uh uh pamphlets printed that we can give out, and we need this landing page in a micro site and a lead capture form that we're gonna connect to a QR code. Can you get that done for us too? And because they're paying you so much money, they expect you to drop everything and do it. And so in that case, what we do is go back to the Kanban board that we but this works particularly well if you're working on retainers, and we said, hey, at the start of the quarter, we worked out our Kanban priorities for the for the next quarter and we broke them down into monthly and weekly sprints. This week we're working on this, next week we're working on this, and the following week we're working on this, and we all agreed that on the monthly meeting. So we can get this stuff into our production for you now. You tell me what do we take off the Kanban board in order to put this new priority in that you didn't tell us a month ago. Because we're happy to do the work. Something has just got to give, that's all. Right. So um, you you know, you you you tell me. And then at that point, the client's like, uh, well, yeah, okay, well, we need it all. And you're like, well, that's great, that's out of scope. That's extra work. I need to put more people on this. So it's this is the I'm just gonna have to charge you time and materials for this extra work. Got it.
SPEAKER_00Um, Diana Gaffney's here. Diana Gaffney from San Francisco. We met her in New York a years ago. That's right.
SPEAKER_02A long time ago, 2016. And Diana, I have Amy and I have very, very fond memories. When we were in San Francisco, Diana spent the best part of a day driving my wife and I around San Francisco showing us the sites. And it was amazing. We have absolutely lovely memories of that day. So great to have you back. How are you? Good that you've uh joined in a live stream. Let us know what's going on and uh where you're stuck and where you need help or what's happened over the last few years since we haven't spoken. I hope you're well and hope you're doing well. I hope the business is good. I hope you're healthy and I hope you're happy. She's good, she says. Excellent, fantastic. Uh, what questions do you guys have about this meeting cadence that we're talking about? Um do you have any have you tried this? Are you doing this yourself? Do you have any uh ideas on how we can improve this? Uh, what do you need uh to implement this? James says this is an area that I need to improve on. Um and and what what are the action steps? How are we going to improve on this to make sure that we can manage expectations and of and try and you know reduce the number of times we're getting punched in the face every day? Let us know in the comments. And if you're again, if you're what listening to this as a podcast, come and join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. Just come over to Facebook.com and uh search for Digital Mavericks. Join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, and then you can join in the comments and uh we can answer your questions. Did you cover what you discuss in the monthly meeting? So the monthly meeting really is a uh I, you know, in if if I'm put on the spot and I need to run a meeting and I'm not prepared, I just for everything I use the why, what, how now kind of framework. So why are we here? The purpose of this meeting is to kind of recap what we've done in the last four weeks, talk about what we need to do in the next four weeks, what the priorities are, uh, any key dates that are coming up that we need to be aware of, any changes in the priorities or the objectives that we need to be aware of. Um, and then now let's, you know, so that's why we're all here. Uh, has anyone else got anything that they need out of this meeting? What are the expectations from this meeting? Um, everyone, cool. No, that's great. And then listen to people and make notes of what people need. Don't get into the details in the first five minutes of the meeting. Just, you know, why are we all here? What's the purpose of this meeting? I would also share some wins. What's been working well so far, what we've done that's worked really well, what's been working well in our relationship. You guys presented that content to us and gave us those videos on time. It's awesome that you've been doing that. Thank you so much. Max is really appreciative because now we've got that stuff loaded up into the portal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. So, what's working well? What are the wins? Why are we here? What are the expectations of this meeting? Then go through what needs to happen in the next four weeks, right? So we've done all that kind of stuff. This is these are the priorities over the next four weeks. This is what we're going to be working on in the next four weeks. Talk about how we're going to continue to communicate, how we're going to manage this workload, who's going to do what by when. So the three W's are really important. Who's going to do what by when? You want to make sure that you've got that documented by the end of the meeting. That really is kind of the now, right? And then send a recap of the meeting to everyone who was on it, basically summarizing what we spoke about and then listing out who's going to do what by when. And of course, if you're using something like ClickUp or Asana, you can just, you're, you'll be collaborating with them in that project management tool and you'll be assigning things to people to make sure that things get done on time by the people who said they were going to who said they were going to do it, right? So why, what, how now, uh, or a, you know, as Pete said, a done doing need. So this is what we've done, this is what's working really well. Always start with wins and what's working well because that gets everyone into a positive frame of mind. And then either a done doing need or a why what how now simple framework. Um that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Can you save yourself from getting punched in the face a little bit in the uh in the sales process? Like so, during the sales process, can you uh set the stage for reducing the number of times you get punched in the face during a project? Like, how do you do that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a good question. So I think again, it comes down to uh setting expectations. So while you're managing a client, really, it shouldn't be called project management, it should be called expectation management. There you go. I've just coined a new I've coined a new thing. I've made up a new category.
SPEAKER_00Right here on the agency hour.
SPEAKER_02Expectation management.com. Look that up, see if it's registered. If it's not, let's grab it. Expectation management.com. Really, because that's what project management is. It's just about managing people, managing the expectations of the key stakeholders. Now, a stakeholder, just break that down for a second. A stakeholder is people who have a vested interest in making sure the thing gets done that said was going to be done by the time it said it was going to be done, right? So key stakeholders are the client who's paying the bill, uh, might be another business partner, client side, right? You as the you as the agency owner are a key stakeholder because you need the project to be done on time so you can get paid and so that you can stay profitable. Who are the other key stakeholders? It might be your client's customers, right? If your client's an author, it might be their PR person or their publicist needs to have the project done on time because there's a whole publicity campaign coming out about the book. Right. So who are the key stakeholders? What are their expectations? And then your job as a project manager is to manage those expectations. Well, guess what? Your job as a salesperson is to set those expectations so that it's easier to manage them. Now, the too long didn't read version of this is it's really easy to set expectations if you don't give a shit about the project and you're happy to walk away from it. In other words, if you're busy and you don't need the, you're not desperate for the work, it's really easy to go, listen, this is what we do, this is what we don't do, this is how we can help you. I'm confident we can knock this out of the park. Are you in? And let's be clear, we're not going to do XYZ. Even though you're paying us $10,000 a month as a retainer, you don't get to call me on the phone. I'm just letting you know. If that's what your expectation is, we need to have that conversation now. We're not staff, we're an agency, and you're paying us to do this. We're not coming to your freaking board meetings, we're not coming to your weekly WIP meeting with your whole team. I had one of our Mavericks reached out the other day and said they were potentially landing a big client. And before the client was going to sign on, the client said, Oh, this is so exciting. We're super pumped to be working with you. Can you we're really excited to have you come and meet the whole team? Which was a three-hour round trip for this Maverick to drive, meet with the team and then drive back. And she pinged me and said, What do I do? I said, politely tell them to whistle Dixie. Once you hire me, I will come out to your office and we'll run a three-hour workshop with the team and do a do the planning meeting. 100%. But you haven't hired me yet, and you haven't paid me anything. I'm not coming out to meet the team and kiss the baby in the hope of sealing the deal. That's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00You can pay me to do that, correct. Yeah, and then dripping it amount.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Yeah, um, so so it so it's easier if you're not attached to landing the project, right? If you're not attached to the outcome, it's it's like dating, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is it is all like that, sales is there, sales is there.
SPEAKER_02I don't give a shit. I mean, I remember I don't want to brag here, but I remember I remember, you know, when when you're single, I remember being single. I do remember being single. And when you're out and you're hopeful, oh baby, tonight's the night I might meet someone, never happens. Never happens. In fact, the night I met my wife, I just didn't give a shit. I was like, I'm whatever, I'm done. Like I was 34, I'd been through three long-term live-in partner relationships. I just made peace with the fact. I just had a conversation with myself about two weeks before I met my wife, where I said, you know what? It's probably not gonna happen. I'm probably just gonna be single for the rest of my life and grow old disgracefully and be a playboy and behave badly as I get old, and I'm not gonna get married and have kids, and that's fine. That's just my loss in life, and whatever, I don't give a shit. And I just made peace with that, and then of course, and then and then, of course, you got amazingly lucky. I I know, dude. I know. Someone looked down at me and went, Yeah, you've done something right in a past life. Here we go. And then I met Pete. That's right. And so the nights, the the those times where I was out and I didn't give a shit about meeting anyone, you know, hadn't showered, was wearing a hat to cover the hair, like, you know, didn't care. Of course, you meet people because you're more magnetic when you're not desperate. That's the mindset piece of it. The practicality of what do you do in the sales process to make sure you don't get punched in the face later is really just about setting those expectations. Here's what we do, here's who we do it for, we're really good at it. Go and look at our case studies and our testimonials. They should have already done that before they're on a sales call with you. So that's pre-framed. Here's what we do, here's who we do it for, we're really good at it. We can do it for you. Here's how we work. By the way, here's what we don't do.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, and that's might be more important.
SPEAKER_02Right. I don't run ads. Yeah, I don't run ads for clients, right? Uh I don't uh, you know, design, I don't design.
SPEAKER_00We don't do apparently I should stop doing logos.
SPEAKER_02Right. Uh stick to your knitting, stay in your wheelhouse and just do it really well. And set those expectations and put those expectations in the statement of work. This is what we said we're gonna do. This is the timeline. It's not a proposal, it's a statement of work. You agree to it, we agree to it, great. Have that and use that as the backbone for your meetings. Hey, the statement of work says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's what we've done, here's what we're doing now, this is what we need. And by the way, we don't fix your printer and we don't add HTML signatures to your email.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Thank you, Sheila.
SPEAKER_02That's what we're I see.
SPEAKER_00We would let's take a quick two-minute break here and remind everybody or tell everybody about the contest that we're running, the competition we're running. Are you even aware? You have a blank look on your face.
SPEAKER_02Oh, look, I I I vaguely remember seeing something in one of the Slack channels about the launch of the podcast and the competition. Is that is that is that what you're talking about? Or am I giving away a car again?
SPEAKER_00Like is we are not giving away a car unless you can buy a car unless you can buy a car on Amazon for a hundred dollar gift voucher.
SPEAKER_02I'll tell you a funny story before we dive into the competition. We did a launch once. We did a launch once for the blueprint course, and all the videos for that launch were me standing in front of my car at the time I was driving a Mazda CX5, which we still have is the family car now, which we're about to get rid of because we're gonna buy a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, uh, IKEA Sorrento, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle because I'm sick of putting petrol in cars. It's bad for the planet and it's bad for the global economy, and it's just bad for geopolitical reasons. Anyway, that's a whole other thing. But I made these videos in front of the Mazda CX5, and then we had this big competition where I gave away a thousand dollars uh in the in the launch videos. The the person who won, this just goes to show you how people don't pay attention, right? And how easily distracted people are. The person who won the $1,000 emailed us because she thought she won my car. She's like, I'm oh my god, I'm so excited, but how are you gonna get the car to me? And Brian is like, What the hell are you talking about? You didn't win the car, you won a thousand dollars. How did you get that? How did you even think how is that I remember that picture actually? You're standing on a tree or something. Watch the videos with the uh with the sound down and just gone, oh, there's a car, I won the competition, maybe I won the car.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, Diana says, and nodded both since 2019. I'll let myself and client move away from my best practices. This led to my last-minute requests, and I accommodated them. Uh hit burnout in 2021. After I did the blueprint and learning from you guys, the first client I brought was 3500. The next the client I'm working with now started at 250k.
unknownWoohoo!
SPEAKER_02Wow. That is out. So so when when Diana did the blueprint in whatever it was, 2000, I don't know, long time ago, the first client she brought in was $3,500. The client she's working with now started at 250k. That is just insane. Man, that is amazing. Diana, we should get on a call and talk. Uh, because we've definitely we can definitely help you, Diana. Let's though you don't have to do this on your own. Darling, darling, Diana. Let's get on a call and talk. I want to find out where you're at. Um, that would be amazing. Hit me up. James Murgatroyd says he's also available to sit in as a host. Oh, that's great. And uh Johnny will be on next week. Johnny Flash. Johnny Flash will be on the show next week. Are you on the show next week, Pete?
SPEAKER_00I can be. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Oh, there we go. Do we want three people? It's up to you. We'll be having a menage a toire on the uh on the agency next week.
SPEAKER_00All right. So so far today we've talked about adultery and dating and menageatoires. So and the mailbox. And the mailbox.
SPEAKER_02Oh, fantastic. There we go.
SPEAKER_00That's gonna be the name of the movie, by the way. The mailbox.
SPEAKER_02The mailbox. This uh is the agency almost hour. Hey, thanks for joining in. Thanks for having fun with us. Uh, we we love you guys being a part of it. Someone said I'm liking this show, says Adam Silverman. Oh boy. Uh get back to work, Adam. Oh, that's right.
SPEAKER_00Silverspoon Silverman, as James called it.
SPEAKER_02And uh, we'll see you next week on the agency hour and live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. And Pete, you said we need a sign-off. We used to say go elevate, didn't we? We used to say go elevate.
SPEAKER_00We didn't say go elevate. Now we can't. What do we say go agency?
SPEAKER_02No, what is the sign-off? Like, I don't know. We gotta work on that. Well, you know what? I think we should put it out to the community. We used to say go elevate.
SPEAKER_00So I think it should start with I'm Troy Dean and I'm Pete Perry and whatever. Like go elevate, which used to be our sign off. That's what it should be.
SPEAKER_02So, what is it now? Be a maverick? That's a bit cheesy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00That's a little cheesy.
SPEAKER_02Flip the bird, go maverick, go top gun. I don't know. What is it? You tell us what works for you guys.
SPEAKER_00We're open to suggestions.
SPEAKER_02Hey, you can be my wingman anytime. Silence is golden. Oh, there we go. We used to sign Simon and I used to sign off knowledge is power and silence is golden.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_02I I came up with one that the team poo-pooed because they thought it was too cheesy, which was hey, I'm Troy Dean and I'm Pete Perry. It's your time to fly. Oh, that's bad.
SPEAKER_00No, we're not doing that.
SPEAKER_02That's why we're not using it, because I'm a cheese ball. Don't be goose, says Stuart George. I like that. Yeah. My personal sign-off when I do the Troy Dean stuff, which I don't do much of these days, but my personal sign-off is stay curious and make some noise, which I know some people think is still cheesy, but I don't care. Um, make shit happen. Uh Seth Godin says, Um, go make a ruckus. That's his sign-off. Go make a ruckus, which I like. Don't be goose. There we go. I like that one too, says Stuart George. All right, tell us what should our sign-off be at the end of the agency hour? And uh, we might run a competition. There we go, Max. Here's an idea for you. All right. Hey gang, have a great week. We'll see you next week on the agency hour. Take care.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you like to listen. You can catch all of the Agency Hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agency mavericks. Or you can get involved. Check out our Free Digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes in London for that community every week, along with a ton of free channels. We'll see you next.