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The Agency Hour
Defining Success
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The problem with giving advice is that if you if someone says to you, you know, if if someone comes to us, Pete, and says, Hey man, I'm really struggling and I need to hire a care plan developer, and we go, Great, and we just start diving into helping them hire a care plan developer. Chances are we're solving the wrong problem.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. Because we've just accepted what they've said at face value. So doing a go-why, go deep, asking lots of questions. Why do you need a care plan developer? What's going on? Like, how are you going to spend your time once you've got a care plan developer? Uh, and you dig in and you find out that they've got 12 clients on care plans, right? Which equates to about, you know, $1,800 in recurring revenue, and their sales pipeline is dry. You go, you know what? You don't need a care plan developer, man. You need to fix your sales pipeline and bring in more recurring revenue because you can't afford to hire a care plan developer right now. You need to get, you need, you need a sales process, you need a sales pipeline, you need to increase your recurring revenue.
SPEAKER_03If 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_01Welcome to another episode of the Agency Hour, live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. Very, very exciting to be here. You might notice uh we have a different background today. I've had to come home and work from home for a few weeks because the office building that we were working in has a sewerage problem, ladies and gentlemen. No shit. Actually, shit, a sewerage problem. They flooded our studio twice with sewerage. Yes. So we've decided that we're no longer going to work in that building because it's a toilet and we're leaving and we're finding a new office, uh, a new space to call home. And we're very excited because I think I found one. And so for the time being, I'm just gonna work from home for a little bit. And um, so here we are. So, welcome to another episode of the agency hour. Today we're gonna talk about how not to drown and what the hell that's got to do with your business. And to help me have this conversation is my good friend. Please welcome to the stage, Pete Crispy Butterperry.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, I love that little intro so much.
SPEAKER_01Uh it'll never get tired, that will it? It'll never get tired.
SPEAKER_04So my one experience at your office, because that you know, I'm in New York, you're in Melbourne, but I did fly down to Melbourne, and the first time I walked in that office, there's a nightclub attached to the to the office, and that's right. And it was a freaking mess. It was not your office itself, but everything around it. It smelled like it smelled like urine and bad decisions.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_04And uh and it was like there were there were half-drunk margaritas and beer bottles knocked over and like toilet paper on the floor, and like I was I was like, empty bottles.
SPEAKER_01Well, also they'd had a party the night before, and what happens is uh there used to be a great community at this place. It used to, when I first moved in there seven years ago, it had a really great vibe. It was a new co-working space, it was run by this amazing community manager named Samantha, who was just an absolute rock star, and she held it together. And then it changed owners. The the guy that owned it originally kind of ran it into the ground and ran out of money, and it got taken over by a lawyer who was working in the building. And again, for a couple of years, it was really good. It had a great vibe. Um, and then the community managers changed, and then it kind of started to get a little bit feral, started to get a little bit rough. There was a good for it. Yeah, there was a guy working in there, renting one of the offices who who had a drug problem and was kind of trying to have parties in there or not. I I turned up to work one Monday morning, and him and about 15 of his mates were in his office completely off their chops, playing records on the on the decks. And I'm like, uh, I'm about to jump on calls um upstairs at uh 7:30 on a Monday morning. This is kind of a workspace, it's not a nightclub. The nightclub's next door, which is open till nine o'clock in the morning, they have a 24-hour license. And um, so you know, then there started to be like little remnants of little joints left in the kitchen, and it was just starting to get a little bit skanky. And then and then we went into lockdown. COVID happened, and we all kind of went home. And during that period, they flooded our one of our, we have a little, we had three rooms in there at one point. We had my office, we had a video studio that Max and I were working out of. Um, the Facebook Ads Accelerator course is shot in that video studio. Silence is Golden, the show that the live show that we used to produce was shot in that video studio. We had a lot of fun in that video studio. We spent a lot of money in that video studio, and we also had an audio studio. We had a little little sound studio for recording um voiceovers and bits and pieces. And the sound studio is the one that got flooded with sewerage in March 2021. Um, horrific flooding of sewerage, like the worst you can imagine. Everything and what the problem is that the toilets upstairs in the nightclub don't have any bins. There are no bins upstairs in the nightclub because they don't want to be responsible for what goes in the bins, because everyone knows that there's lots of drug taking going on up there in the nightclub. And my theory is that the community at large is kind of complicit, the local authorities, the local council, they're all kind of complicit with what's going on in the nightclub because they'd rather all the kids hang out in the nightclub and take drugs all weekend than be out on the street. So it's kind of like a safe sorting room for teenagers, right? Um, and uh and so you know, they they kind of they don't, they don't, they don't, they just kind of leave them alone and and everything goes down the toilets because there's no bins, because they don't want to be responsible for cleaning out the bins, and also they don't want to see any evidence of what's illegal activity in the bin. So they're like, well, we're in denial about that, just throw it down the toilet. So everything goes down the toilet, the sewage pipes get get blocked, and it floods the bathroom next to our studio, and it floods our studio. So unfortunate, but what's more unfortunate is the the owner of the co-working space willingly let us move back in there after the first flood, knowing full well that the sewerage problem was addressed, but can't guarantee it won't happen again. Now, never said that to us. We were under the assumption that it was fixed. So we spent we went back into lockdown the second half of 2021. We came out of lockdown, we spent uh about 15 grand of our own money giving that studio a facelift with new acoustic treatment, new lighting, new ceiling, because we wanted to start bringing clients in there and renting it out as a voiceover studio for an extra revenue stream, and also just because I love having a studio, an audio studio. And it flooded again in January 2022, this year, on the 16th of January. It flooded not as bad, but it still flooded. They had to pull up all the carpet, they had to pull all our gear out of there. Everything that was on the floor was soiled with effluent water, they had to take everything out of there. And uh at that point, the the owner of the co-working space um, we we said, Well, look, man, you know, we're pretty pissed off about this, obviously, and we're not gonna go back in there unless you can guarantee that it won't happen again. And without even blinking, he said, I can't guarantee it's not gonna happen again. Which for me, in hindsight, now was an admission that he knew the problem wasn't guaranteed to be fixed when he let us go back in there the first time. And he was he was more than willing for us to go back in there again this time. In fact, he was trying to get us back in there as quickly as possible. He goes, Hey, let's just get back in there and get on with business. I was like, dude, you know that this place is probably going to be flooded again and you're willingly renting it out to tenants. That's fucked up. So at that point, we were like, you know what? Uh, you're an amateur, we're out of here. Uh, we um vacated, we're vacating the building at the moment. Max and I go in there this afternoon to pack up the rest of our stuff. We've got removalists coming in tomorrow to pick everything up and get out of there. And um, I rang my lawyer and said, here you go. I think you might be interested in this. So it's now in the hands of uh our lawyer. So in the meantime, I'm working from home, which is awesome. Love it. So, and and and how lucky are we that you know we can, I can, we can work from home, we can work from an office space, we have the kind of business that we can work from anywhere. I've I just feel incredibly blessed to have this opportunity to be able to stay connected to the business and and not have to worry about the office space.
SPEAKER_04So you you started the call by saying um by the podcast by saying that we were gonna talk about not drowning, but nobody realized they were gonna talk about not drowning and shit.
SPEAKER_01Not drowning in series, that's right. Well, so the so what we're actually talking about today is um I'm curious, just let me know in the comments if you guys can swim. Just a simple yes or no. Can you guys swim? And when I mean can you swim, like can you if I throw you in the deep end, which at some point, if we meet up at a live event, I will find a pool and probably get you some margaritas and throw you in a deep end just to prove the point. If I throw you in the deep end, are you in trouble or can you swim? Right? Simple yes or no in the comments. Can you swim? Because what we're talking about, uh, we had a call on Tuesday, and uh James Murgatroyd says, I was on the swim team as a kiddo. Woohoo! Have you forgotten or can you still swim? Um, I'll tell you a little bit about my story about swimming um in a moment. But before we get there, what we were on a leadership meeting on Tuesday, and we were talking about some projects that we're running here internally, and we were talking about success criteria, right? What how do you know when a project is successful? So, in the case of renting an office space from someone, one of the success criteria would be it doesn't get flooded with uh feces and effluent water. That's a fail metric as far as I'm concerned. Let's go rent an office space and let's put on the criteria. If this place floods with effluent water and feces while all our gear is in there, that's a failure metric, right? Uh, not a success metric. Um, a success metric would be we get we, you know, how do we know it? How do we know that we have successfully rented a new office space? Well, I turn up to work on a Tuesday morning and or a Thursday morning, and we go live in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, we run an episode of the agency hour, the set looks beautiful, the sound works, it's quiet, there's no sewage on the floor, winner, winner, chicken dinner, everyone's happy, right? That's the success criteria. Now, there is a whole bunch of decisions we need to make between where we are now and to get there, but we are talking about the outcome that tells us that this project is a success. So swimming lessons, right? Swimming lessons, the crit the success criteria, like tell me this. Why do we learn how to swim? Let me know in the comments before Pete spoils it for everyone. Why do we why do we why do we learn how to swim? Why do we learn how to swim? All right, do I have a drum roll sound effect? Close enough. Pete, why do we learn how to swim? So we don't drown. Oh, ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, there we go. So we don't drown now. What's wrong with drowning?
SPEAKER_04Well, that it's not a good way to uh live.
SPEAKER_01Right. So there we go. The ultimate outcome is we want to stay alive. We want to get in the water and come out alive, right? So not drowning. There's a great band in Australia in the 80s actually called Not Drowning Waving. Not drowning, just waving. Uh the the so the idea, the reason that you have swimming lessons is so that you don't drown, right? Now, when I was a kid, it's uh story time. I need I need a I need an audio sting, Max, for story time with Uncle Troy. Do I have a do I have a no? How about this? Oh, here we go. All right. That's a bit vibey, isn't it? That's a bit vibey. All right, Max, find me, find me some new music for story time with Uncle Troy. I know, build a bumper. Let's build a bumper for story time with Uncle Troy. Story time with Uncle Troy. When I was a kid, I had asthma. And my pretty bad asthma, and I used to come home, uh, you know, would come home from primary school and I would sit on one of those nebulizer machines for 45 minutes uh every day of the week, actually, for a period of time. And I remember watching all the other kids in the street out there kicking the footy around and um and I had to sit inside after school on this nebulizer for 45 minutes to help clear my lungs and my chest so I could breathe properly. So as a result of that, my mother was a little bit concerned about me being around the pool. And we were very, we were so fortunate. We had a swimming pool in our backyard. All right, we there's I don't remember this because I was too young to remember it, but I we have video footage of the crane lifting up the in-ground swimming pool and lowering it over the roof of the house and into the backyard. And we were the only, we were the first uh house in the street to have a swimming pool. And so therefore, we had a lot of friends as kids because everyone wanted to come over and use the pool. And my brother was a really confident swimmer, he just took to the water. He he was a water, a water kid. He loved swimming, and I wasn't that confident. And my mother was really, really anxious about me being in the water, obviously because I had asthma and she didn't want me to drown, right? That's the failure metric. Please don't want my child to drown. So she was quite concerned about me. So I always had the floaties on, I was always hanging on to the edge of the pool. I was a little scaredy cat in the water. And turns out, I only learned this a couple of weeks ago. I knew my mum was quite ill as a child. She spent a she spent the best part of a couple of years in hospital at the age of about seven to nine. She had a rare condition called rheumatic fever. And as a result, she didn't learn how to, she never learned how to swim. Hope if mum's watching this, by the way, I hope you don't mind me sharing this, mum. Um, she never really learned how to swim. She could kind of do breaststroke and a bit of doggy paddle with her head above water, but she never learned how to do freestyle with her head under the water and all that kind of stuff. So turns out the reason that she was a little bit nervous about me being in the pool is probably because she wasn't confident that she could dive in and rescue me if she needed to, right? My dad was always busy in the yard building stuff and cleaning up stuff and building retaining walls and fixing the garden bed and all that kind of stuff. My brother was super confident in the water, and so I was kind of left on the sidelines with my floaties on and never got my confidence up. Mum tried a whole bunch of different specialists, teachers who specialized in teaching kids how to swim. And I was just petrified. Also, when I was about eight or nine years old, some punk in the street who who one of our neighbors threw me in the deep end of the swimming pool. And my brother had to jump in and rescue me, had to jump in and pull me out because I thought I was going to drown because I couldn't swim. Um, and so that little kid was a little shit of a kid, and um, I'll never forget the terror that he caused me. So we have kids now, and Oscar loves swimming, he loves the pool and he's getting really good at it. And so he's having a couple of swimming lessons a week at the moment. We've put him into a different swim school to uh help him because he just needs more one-on-one attention because he's loving it. Like he's he's diving under the water and trying to do freestyle. No one's ever taught him to do freestyle, he's just watching, right? Amy's a fantastic swimmer, she's really confident. So um, when we were in Europe in 2010, there is a point to this story, by the way. When we were in 2000 in Europe in 2010, we stayed in this little villa in Tuscany, San Giovanni Voldano, was the little town that we stayed in for a week. I remember they had Peroni beer on tap, uh, and I drank a lot of it. And Amy, my wife, basically taught me how to swim in the swimming pool at this villa. Then we came home to Australia and she bought me swimming lessons. God love her. And I went and had swimming lessons and I kind of learned how to swim. But I was always, I never really uh took to it because I was always panicking. I was always panicking with my head in the water, right? With my head, face is underwater, panic. Um so recently I was like, you know what? Screw this. I'm gonna learn how to swim properly because I need to for Oscar. I need to. I need I we live in Australia for fuck's sake, right? You need to learn how to swim. And I've got two kids now, so I need to be confident. So I went and had swimming lessons and I'm having swimming lessons and I'm loving it, and I'm getting so much better because I'm just spending time in the pool. And also, I've just realized this now as I'm telling this story. I have the biggest reason in the world now to learn how to swim. Whereas before I had kids, learning how to swim was kind of like a well, I'll get to it one day, and it's probably good if I do know how to swim because I live in Australia and when I travel, I do like to swim, and I love being in the water, so it's probably a good idea. Now it's like you have to learn how to swim because if you have to jump in the water and rescue your kids, you don't want to be the one that drowns, right? So not drowning is the ultimate failure metric. So I'm having swimming lessons, loving it, getting my confidence up. And the point of the story is that one, I have a very, very clear motivation, a very big why for doing this, but also the outcome that I'm aiming for is extremely clear, very easy to articulate, and everyone understands it. The swimming teacher understands it, I understand it, everyone understands it, right? Why are we doing this? So we don't drown. So we can jump in the water and rescue our kids. Fun little story, scary, but fun little story. The other day we're at the pool, we hang out in the kiddie pool for a bit, we're with the kids, everything's good. It's time for me to come over and do my laps in the big pool. I come over, start doing my laps in the big pool. Oscar wants to come over and watch Dadder swim. So Amy gets out of the kiddie pool with holding Goldie and Oscar coming along and they get in the big pool. Amy makes an assumption that if she gets in the middle of the big pool, it's still going to be shallow enough for Oscar to touch the floor, right? So she gets in with Goldie, she's standing up, Oscar gets in behind her. She can't see what's happening. He can't touch the bottom, he freaks out, he's starting to panic, he's starting to thrash around. He's like, Oh, this woman's standing right next to him, and she's like, Can this child swim? And without even thinking, she just reaches down and pulls him up by the arm. And I come up after my lap, and all I can hear is Oscar crying, and I turn around and he's cuddling Mummer and he's freaking out, and I swim over there and find out what happened. And the lesson for us was, you know, never assume anything, like never take your eyes off them. And because Oscar's so confident in the water, it's kind of easy to go, well, he's all right. So it was a big lesson for us. Interesting, also, the woman said she was nervous because she knows that some people get weird about touching their kids. She was like, Fucking, get your hands off my kid. What are you doing, you're crazy person? I'm like, Are you serious? You're a guardian angel, like you're in the right place at the right time. Thank you so much. Uh, you know, you saved us a lot of heartache. The lifesavers, by the way, were fucking missing in action. So Amy wrote an email to the swim school guard. You might just want to review your processes a little bit because even after the event, and there was a lot of commotion and chaos and lots of crying, they never came over to see if we were okay. So we did uh gave them some feedback. So, point is let's not drown. And in order to do that, we're learning how to swim, right? Um, James, swimming is a great way to relax and forget about agency work. Yes, it is. It's an incubation exercise. If you were at Mavcon a couple of weeks ago, we talked about incubation and being in the water is a great way to incubate your ideas. Uh, we have Coast on three sides, and the council is closing the only place where kids learn to swim. Genius! What an excellent move by the local council there, Martin. Fantastic. Why are they doing that? Uh so what I wanted to do on this call, what Peyton, so we were talking on the leadership meeting this Tuesday about the success criteria of projects. We were talking to Max also about this agency hour podcast. And I said to Max, how will we know when the podcast is a success? And we started brainstorming some ideas. And so what we wanted to do on the agency hour today was kind of help you understand how to define the success criteria for projects that you work on in the business. We're not, I mean, you can apply this to client projects, and I'm happy to have that conversation. But the point here really is when you are working on the business, how do you know that you're working on the right thing at the right time? And how will you know when it's a success? And we just had an agency join Mavericks recently, three owners doing really well, seven-figure agency, and they admitted we don't spend any time working on the business, truthfully, because we're not sure what we're supposed to do. Right? We're not sure like let's carve out half a day to work on the business, and they sit there and look at each other and go, we're not sure what to do. And so having a framework to figure out what to do, and then having the outcome, the end in mind, and then reverse engineering and working backwards. So we wanted to just throw this open to you guys and maybe I don't know, Pete, maybe it's an idea to have some examples of projects that you're working on, right? Or things that you're trying to fix in the business. So, for example, it might be hey, I need to hire a new developer to manage my care plans. Great example. Like, how will we know when that has been a success?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, those kinds of things. So um, yeah, you can, I mean, they can be around revenue, right? Goals can be around revenue, they can be around. Uh exploding the team or elevating the team. They can be around packaging your products into or services into products. Um anything operational, they can be, they can be just a matter of we I talk to so many people who are in Mavericks or uh accelerator programs who are who have no idea what their numbers really are. So like you can a simple one would be by the end of the quarter, I will have I will and and whatever the success criteria is, but you'll you need to know more about your numbers. Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the way that the way that I think about success criteria is there's there's the thing that that tells us whether or not it's a success, and then there's the the way that we the measurement device that we're gonna use to measure that. How do you know when it's done? That's right. How do you know when it's done? How do you know when it's done? Yep.
SPEAKER_04So you know you know that your revenue goal is is hit when you look at your numbers, and you can see that your revenue is increased. Um as far as a team, like if you were hiring a care plan manager, a care plan developer, you would know that that was a success because you would have somebody in that seat and you would no longer be involved in the care plan.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_04That's really the success criteria. There is I'm not doing it anymore.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_04And then there's a lot of steps that have to happen before I'm not doing it anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, so let's break some of these down. Just want to touch on a couple of comments. Jason Reznick, hey Rez. Uh, welcome to the show. My wife, girlfriend at the time, sorry I haven't got back to your Voxer 2, by the way, man. I've been in, uh we're moving office, as you might have heard at the start of the show because our studio was flooded with sewerage. Uh, so but I will get back to your brother. My wife uh told me right before we dove in to do snorkeling in the Caribbean that she couldn't swim. All I thought was, oh God, she better not drown, otherwise, I'll become a permanent citizen of St. Thomas. Fantastic. Um, if you do gap selling, then you should know the success criteria of the project. Yep. Uh and uh Tammy Gray says, yes, there's some mindset lessons here. I panic when I can't touch the bottom. Yeah, I used to as well. And then I learned to uh learnt to tread water, and uh it's a game changer. So let's talk about um, let's just run through some examples here, right? Let's talk about hiring a care plan developer. How, how, what what is, and here's where I would encourage you all all, I would invite you to think about, you know, what usually happens when when you start thinking about outcomes and success criteria is you'll say something like, Well, um, I've hired a care plan developer, and the care plan developer is is how do I know it's successful? Because I've onboarded them and they uh are starting to manage the care plans for my clients. And you might think that that's the success criteria, and you might think that's a successful outcome, right? What I would encourage all of you to do is just ask yourself, so what? And I I don't mean that disrespectfully, but uh you know what the the the question is, okay, what then? Like so you're care plan developers on board and they're starting to manage care plans for clients. What then? What happens next? Like, why does that matter? Why is it important? And think about the the next impact of that, like the next consequence, consequence of that, right? So for example, there's there's and I typically like to have no more than three success criteria for a project, because otherwise I think it just gets a little bit difficult to manage. So if we're hiring a care plan developer, one of the the ultimate outcome might be, and I'm always looking for the ultimate outcome that proves everything else to be true. So for example, if I said one of the success criteria of hiring a care plan developer is that in 90 days' time we are running regular CSAT surveys with our care plan customers. CSAT stands for customer satisfaction. We're running regular CSAT surveys with our care plan customers, and we are constant consistently ranking at four plus out of five stars for our care plan service. That is a success criteria. Now, you can't achieve that. And by the way, um, Troy is no longer involved in any care plan work. That would be one of that would always be one of the success criteria when hiring a team member to do something that you're currently doing, is that you are no longer involved at all. That is a success criteria. So to think about this for a second. If in 90 days' time we're getting four or more stars out of five for our care plan work, and I'm no longer involved in any of it, we can't achieve that without onboarding a care plan developer, teaching them the systems that we use to do it, having them start to manage care plan work, right? Getting them to automate the monthly reports that go out to clients, all of the things that need to happen that you might think are success criteria are just decisions that need to be made to achieve the ultimate success criteria, which is to not drown, right? So back to the swimming analogy. How do we know that my swimming lessons, me learning to swim, how do we know that's a successful project? Well, Troy's in the pool and he's doing three laps of freestyle and then two laps of backstroke. Okay, Troy's going to swimming lessons every Tuesday night. Okay, I'll tell you what, Troy doesn't drown. Like the the simplest that you can keep, in fact, if you can distill your entire project into one sentence less than 10 words, Troy doesn't drown. Three words, right? Nothing else, everything else is irrelevant. Whether I do 10 laps of freestyle and four of backstroke or one of breaststroke and six of butterflies are relevant, Troy doesn't drown. That's all that really matters, right? Now with the care plan developer, does it matter whether he uses Manage WP or Infinite WP or Blog Vault or who cares? Doesn't matter. CSAT from Care Plan customers is four out of five or higher. And I am not touching the keyboard. That's all that matters. Everything else is detail that is kind of irrelevant as long as we end up at that, as long as we cross the finish line in first place. Right. So I would encourage because typically what I see happening is when people start to define success criteria, they start to describe how we're gonna get there. And if you're gonna climb Mount Everest, there's only one success criteria. We are on top of the summit with our flag in the air. And we're alive. Actually, that's probably not the success criteria. The success criteria for climbing Everest is we we top the summit, we raise our flag, and we make it back home safe to our families. That's the success criteria. Because you know, more people die on the way down than on the way up.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01So um maybe not more, but a lot of people die on the way down.
SPEAKER_04One way or the other, a lot of people die.
SPEAKER_01That's right. So, you know, what is the success? So, you know, well, you know, the success criteria is we get the base camp. No, no, no, no, no, that's irrelevant. Like you can't summit Everest and make it back down without getting the base camp.
SPEAKER_04That's just a step correct.
SPEAKER_01So if you if you if hiring a care plan developer, if one of your success criteria for hiring a care plan developer is that you onboard them and teach them how to use managed WP. No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They might come in and say, hey, I man, uh thanks for the job. Uh by the way, I've been doing care plan uh work for hundreds of customers for the last five years, and I hate managed WP, and I'm gonna use infinite WP because it's way more efficient or whatever, right? And you're gonna get in the way and go, well no, man, we have to use managed WP. Right? Just let them do their thing, get out of their way, don't worry about the details, just work towards a common goal, which is four out of five on our CSAT for our care plan work, and I'm not involved. Right? Make sense? So what other so let me know, let me know in the comments or Pete if you've got any ideas uh from Mavericks or accelerators, let me know. Give me some examples. Let's workshop some examples of projects, and I'm happy to talk about our podcast as well, and we can kind of dive in uh to some of that, um, some of those um criteria. But give me some examples of projects that you're working on. And this is also a really good exercise to run through with your clients, right? This is, I mean, you know, this is go wide, go deep, right? Like if you're sitting in front of a client, if for those of you who have done the blueprint course, you will have learned the go wide, go deep. For those of you who haven't done the blueprint course, what the hell is wrong with you? Um, go wide, go deep is, you know, if someone says, Well, we think we need a website, the first question is why? Like, why do you need a website? How will we know when this is a successful project? Right? So use this same and and the first answer that clients give you is not it's not untrue, but it's not the truth. Right? I'm reading this book at the moment from um guy that wrote The Coaching Habit, uh, which is a great book. He's written uh a follow-up book called The Advice Trap. And the coaching habit is uh what is his name? He's got this great little company called Box of Crayons, uh, is his is his company name. I believe I think he's Australian too, actually.
SPEAKER_04Um that sounds like an Aussie.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um his name is uh I can't even remember his bloody name, which is terrible. Um someone tell me his name. Michael Michael Bungay Stania. Michael Bungay Stania, right? Wrote a book called The Coaching Habit. He's written a follow-up book called The Advice Trap. Yeah. Um, the advice trap is uh be humble, stay curious, and change the way you lead forever. And really, it's about asking more questions and giving less advice, right? And one of the things he says in um in um in the advice trap is the problem with giving advice is that if you if someone says to you, you know, if if someone comes to us, Pete, and says, Hey man, I'm really struggling and I need to hire a care plan developer, and we go, great, and we just start diving into helping them hire a care plan developer, chances are we're solving the wrong problem.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. Because we've just accepted what they've said at face value. So doing a go-why, go deep, asking lots of questions, why do you need a care plan developer? What's going on? Like, how are you going to spend your time once you've got a care plan developer? Uh, and you dig in and you find out that they've got 12 clients on care plans, right? Which which equates to about, you know, $1,800 in recurring revenue, and their sales pipeline is dry. You go, you know what? You don't need a care plan developer, man. You need to fix your sales pipeline and bring in more recurring revenue because you can't afford to hire a care plan developer right now. You need to get, you need, you need a sales process, you need a sales pipeline, you need to increase your recurring revenue. Right? So asking lots of questions and digging deep and actually figuring out what the actual problem is, and then putting the success criteria, defining the success criteria around that.
SPEAKER_04Seamus, I you need to hook up with me, my man, so we can we can have a conversation about your message there. I just started with the sales accelerator. Uh, and and if you sit down with me, which I've just asked you, I think today in Slack, I just asked you if you sit down with me, we will set some some good goals for you and some success criteria for sales accelerator in the next 90 days. So go off with me.
SPEAKER_02But love it. And you know what?
SPEAKER_04That's actually what we do as coaches. We sit down with you, and if you're a maverick, we should be asking those questions. Like Troy said, just because you think you need this doesn't mean that that's truly what you need. Let's let's go back to your let's really dive into the situation, let's look at your flight plan or your goals and and see what it is you really truly need. And maybe maybe you're right, maybe you're not, but let's get it, let's get it figured out.
SPEAKER_01You know what? What what one of the one of the um byproducts of this is that you end up with a smaller to-do list. If you get really super focused on the actual problem you're trying to solve and you have success criteria packaged around it, your to-do list gets a lot freaking smaller because there's all there's all this stuff that we feel like we need to do. And if you get clear about the success criteria, like I mean, frankly, to learn how to swim, I don't need to know how to do breaststroke or backstroke or butterfly. All I need to do, all I need to learn is survival stroke, which is you know that kind of like breaststroke on your back, which actually is the most the thing that comes most naturally to me. In fact, that's the the stroke that I've been doing when I when I couldn't swim, I just lay on my back and kind of look like a frog upside down, right? I just kind of kick my legs and and do this with my arms and lay on my back and I float, right? I just need to know how to do that and freestyle and tread water, right? In fact, to not drown, all you really need to do to know to do is how to tread water and have a flare with you at all times, right?
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_01Tread water, send up a flare, put your arm up, tread water, and don't drown. That's all you need. You don't need to learn how to do butterfly, you don't need to learn how to do tumble turns, you don't need to learn how to breathe underwater with goggles. All you need to learn to not drown is you need to learn how to tread water. It would also be helpful if you could do freestyle because then you can swim to a safer part of the water and maybe get out if you're in a pool or swim to a different part of the ocean and put your hand up and get some attention. But the point is you don't need to learn all this other stuff to not drown. So if you get clear about the success criteria, then your to-do list gets smaller. Um, so Seamus, jump on a call with Pete and he'll uh definitely help you with that. Um, Max, I want to I want to talk here. Uh thank you, Brian. He said this is gold, the rule of three. Too often we have every metric under the sun to measure success. Yeah, right. And it's just like meaningless, you know? Like what is the point of having all those metrics if you're not taking action on the data? And I don't know about you, but show me one number that's significant, right? There's usually one number in every part of the business that is if you think about sales, team, operations, you can do the work and distill each part of the business down to one number that is the most meaningful number to improve. And if you improve that number, it's the big domino that knocks over the little ones, right?
SPEAKER_04So give us an example of what you mean.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, well, so if you looked at sales, there's sales, team, and operations. If I looked at sales, the one number there could be, depending on your business model, the one number could be obviously revenue, like monthly revenue. If you are a business that is built on recurring revenue and you have a signature system dialed in, it could be number of new clients that you're onboarding into your, and let's say you have a silver, gold, platinum plan package, right? For want of a better term. It could be the number of clients that you are onboarding into silver, gold, and platinum each month. In fact, we have a financial spreadsheet uh built that Chris Martinez from Dude Agency introduced me to called the Proforma, which is freaking amazing. And it allows you to punch in your monthly sales targets to each of your recurring revenue packages, and you can then predict how that's gonna affect your cash flow and your revenue and your profit for the rest of the year, right? So it could be your number, your one number might be six platinum clients a month. That may be the only, like if you if we get that, everything else is gonna be great, right? That might be the number depending on your business model. So, from a sales and marketing point of view, it also might be I know that every lead I put into my sales pipeline is going to uh my sales pipeline converts at 25%. It usually takes four to six weeks, an average deal is worth 12 grand. I know that every prospect I put into my sales pipeline, qualified prospect I put into my sales pipeline, is going to end up being worth $3,500 because of the conversion rate. So, you know, 70% of them won't convert, but 25 will, and it takes this long. So you work out that number and go, right, my focus is to put in 15 qualified leads into my sales pipeline every month. That's the one number that matters. Because if I do that, I know I've got my conversion rate and my sales process in place. That's the number I need to focus on. Maybe you're getting heaps of leads. We had a conversation with a guy in the States who's got a team of 25 and has heaps of leads, but converting is terrible. The conversion rate, they just had they have no sales process, right? So his number is conversions. He just needs to convert more leads. So one number in sales and marketing, right? Team, um, it's typically going to be around uh, you know, there's a there's a couple of numbers. It can either be around outcomes on their job scorecard. So are the team, what percentage of the team are performing at a at an A level? Like how many A players do we have in the team that are hitting their numbers regularly? It could also be if you've got a great team, so we've got some agencies who have a great team who are doing a great job, but they're finding it hard to keep staff because the staff are getting poached by larger agencies who are offering bigger pay packets, right? Which is a real problem, particularly in during COVID, because what people want is they want flexibility, uh, they want to work from home, uh, they want more pay, and digital marketing staff and web design staff are in high demand. So in that case, it's going to be something around culture. In that case, if that's your situation, then your one number might be your employee satisfaction. How happy are my staff working here? Right. And we just run a simple ESAT survey every 45 days or every 60 days to figure that out. And we do things to improve the culture to retain staff. From an operations point of view, it's the obvious one is around net profit. How efficiently is this business running? I've got all these sales coming in, and we've got the sales and marketing stuff dialed in. The team are doing a really good job and everyone's really happy. How can we increase the profit margin? And that comes down to operations, right? So tier so there's like three numbers that give you a kind of a high-level overview on how the ship is uh tracking and whether or not we need to course correct.
SPEAKER_04I think my team, every one of them has on their on their scorecard client happiness, not just not internal client, but external client happiness. So I think that that's that's something that every team member should be responsible for.
SPEAKER_01Great, love it. Um, couple of questions. Martin Apostolov says, Why do you guys call it a care plan developer? What should they develop? They're rather a care plan automator monitor, sure, whatever. Yeah, care plan VA doesn't matter. Care plan assistant.
SPEAKER_04They need to they need to know how to update a website. That's basically correct.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Um, James Mergatroid says, I keep thinking I should hire a care plan developer. Well, then you should, James.
SPEAKER_04You should talk to you should talk to your coach.
SPEAKER_01Totally. Yeah, get on a call with Michelle and pull the trigger and get one. Um uh now this is I think this is Brian Duckworth who says, in my team dynamics method, ooh, I'm gonna take that on board as the outcome the client will get from each segment, three success factors or less. There we go. Love it. Not exactly sure what the team dynamics method is, but it sounds interesting. James says, is that pro forma sheet public? Well, no, it's for Mavericks, dude. And you're a Maverick, so hit your coach up. Um, you need some guidance with that pro forma. Uh, it is the the I think of the pro forma as like turning the headlights on in the business and going, oh, we're gonna hit that wall, or we're gonna go over that cliff, or we're gonna drive into the sunset, or we're gonna land in tropical paradise and sit pina coladas by the pool now that we know how to swim. Uh so the pro forma is turning the headlights on in the business. And if uh hit your coach up, dude. And um, and otherwise you and I might just jump on a quick call and I can walk you through it. There's a couple of pieces to it.
SPEAKER_04I can walk him through it. He's in my time's on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Perfect. Um, there's a training in the Academy website for it around financial clarity. Um, and there's a few, like it will take you a few drafts to get it right. It's a little bit uh complex. Um, Pete will walk you through it, then go away and do it, and then give it back to your squadron. I'm happy to run my eyes over it when you've done a draft as well and make sure you know you can poke any holes in it, make sure you're not missing anything. Awesome. So have you guys got any, oh, have you guys got any examples, any any ideas that you want us to run through to help you develop success criteria? And I do just want to touch on what Max has said here. Uh, this is what came up in our leadership meeting the other day. We believe that it would be beneficial, and this is where success criteria is really powerful. On our leadership meeting, Michelle and Pete were talking about how good it would be to have a customer journey map or a customer. A journey something to show our customers and our and our ecosystem, not just our customers, but our people who are in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group who are on our email list, who maybe not a customer at the moment, to show them, give them a visual or an idea or some context and say, hey, based on what's going on in your business right now, you are here. And this is the typical journey that we've seen freelancers and agencies go on. And we've been doing this for over 10 years and we've trained thousands of them. This is typically what happens. You're here. So this is the typical journey you're going to go on. This is what's possible. And these are all the things you're going to need to do to get there. And we can help you at certain um junction points along the way by getting you tapped into some of our courses or some of our coaching or some of our resources to help you, right? And we kind of Pete and I were going, you know, Kat's done some work in the past on these beautiful PDFs, and we're like, yeah, it'd be great to have an infographic. And then we kind of pull back and went, hang on a second. That's just that's just a piece of the way that we present it, right? Could be some videos, could be a podcast, could be uh a training, could be some PDFs, could be some software, we're not sure. What is the outcome that we're actually aiming for? And we kind of brainstormed what Max has written here, that everyone in our ecosystem knows where they are, where they can get to, and what training they need to get there. Right. And I and one of the things that we've tried to do in the past, and I and we are going to do this again, is I think is to give us all a common language so that you guys in the group can go, oh man, I'm a cadet. I know where I am on the in the bigger picture, I know where I am. I'm and at the moment I'm a cadet. My next step is pilot and then top gun, right? That's like a simple kind of three-step process. So I'm just starting out, I'm a freelancer, got a little bit of recurring revenue. Maybe I've got another team member working with me, another contractor or whatever, or maybe I'm just doing everything myself. You're probably a cadet, right? If you've got a little bit of a team and you've got some record, you've got enough recurring revenue to pay for the team, you're a pilot, and then once you've got a team doing everything and you're kind of off the tools and you're in the world of like an Adam Silverman or a Simon Major, you're, you're a you're a top gun because your team are doing everything and you're literally running the business. You're not involved in any of the day-to-day operations, right? So just knowing where you are and being able to identify, hey, I'm a cadet, I want to get to pilot, what do I need to do? We look at sales team ops and go, well, from a sales point of view, you need to do this. From a team point of view, you need to hire a developer. From an ops point of view, you need to get this dialed in, and then you'll be a pilot. And then to get from pilot to top gun, you need to do this, this, and this. And then we can plug you into the resources. And so the success criteria is everyone in our ecosystem knows where they are, where they can get to, and what training they need to get there. Right now, again, if I if I peel the layer back again, like how will we know when we've achieved that? If I look at the practicalities of it, I would say, well, we log into the digital Mavericks Facebook group and we see conversations, people putting their hand up and saying, Hey, I'm a cadet and I'm focused on team. How do I need to get to pilot? What do I need to do? Who should I hire next? If we see those conversations going on in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group and our email list, people responding to our emails saying, Well, I think I'm a I'm a pilot here. I need some help with sales to get the top gun. I'm focused on sales for the next three months. How can you guys help me? Right.
SPEAKER_04Then actually, actually, we want to hear them say, I want to upgrade my ARN ramp. Like we want people to use our language.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that we've got a common language so that we will understand, so that we so that you know where you fit in and what the next step is, right? Um so I think that's you know, the the success criteria that we've got here, everyone in our ecosystem knows where they are, where they can get to, and what training they need to get there. I still ask, well, how will we know when we've achieved that? And I think it's we see conversations from people identifying that they're a cadet and they want to get to pilot, or they're a pilot and they want to get to Top Gun.
SPEAKER_04Right. When Damien is reporting back to us that people are calling him and saying, This is where I am, this is where I need to go to. So I think I need to do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, right on, correct. So Damien is uh one of our consultants, uh, he helps onboard clients into the right program, right? So he does a deep dive analysis, helps you work out where you are, where you want to go, and then get you plugged into the right resources. And if he's hearing that feedback from custom from clients saying, Well, I think I'm a I'm a cadet, I need help with team, I need to hire a developer so I can free my time up, so I can then focus on biz dev, then great. That's the kind of feedback that we want to be hearing and seeing from our ecosystem, from our tribe. And then we know that we've done that, that we've mapped out that customer journey successfully, right? Makes sense. Do you guys have any examples? Do you guys have anything that you're working on in your business at the moment that you are struggling to get to understand how to put like how what's the finish line? What's the gold medal? How will you know when you've achieved that? And by the way, if you're listening to this as a podcast and you're not in the group uh contributing to the conversation uh and being a part of it, then come and join the Digital Mavericks. Look at that. Hey, Max is just, I mean, if you're in the group, you would have seen Max just pulled up a it was very quick, Max. There we go. Join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group today, brought to you by Agency Mavericks. Uh, get on over to Facebook and search for Digital Mavericks, join the group. There's about 12,000 people in the group these days. Come on in and be a part of the conversation and ask questions. If you need help with success criteria, just tag us in a comment. Ask a question, tag me or Pete in the comments, and we'll come in and answer those questions. Uh, all the episodes of the agency hour are in the group. This is episode 23, by the way, of the agency. I know. And you were a podcast virgin before we started this. I was a podcast version. There we go. Episode 23. Doesn't take long. Uh uh, so and and let us know if you've got a project that you're working on that you need help with success criteria, ask in the the chat and we'll come in and answer those questions. If you tag us, you need to tag me, otherwise, I just won't see it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, me too. Same here.
SPEAKER_01And for those of you watching now, do you have any projects that you're working on? Let us know in the comments. We have about 10 minutes left here. Um, and so if you've got any projects that you're working on in the business that you need help defining success criteria, we're here. I'm happy to brainstorm some ideas for you.
SPEAKER_04Otherwise, otherwise, we're gonna go back to talking about sewage.
SPEAKER_01Oh shit, really? Uh so another example that I want to talk about is one of the things I see people getting stuck on a lot is um processes. One of the most common conversations I have is people saying, Oh man, I'm so busy doing the thing. I need to hire someone, but I can't hire someone just yet because I don't have my processes organized. And so I need to organize my processes before I hire someone, but I haven't got time to organize my processes, and so I'm kind of stuck, right? That's how we hear that all the time. And not necessarily in that voice, but not in that voice, no. And the truth is two things. One, you don't, as an agency owner, you don't have time to document processes, and I don't care what anyone says, it's not your job to document processes as an agency owner. I know it's controversial. Lots of people are gonna disagree with me, lots of people out there selling software around processes that and training and coaching around processes that are gonna tell you as an agency owner, the only way to free yourself from your own business is to build SOPs. That's true, it doesn't mean you have to do it.
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly. Yeah. So the problem is the problem is a lot of agency owners are still wearing the project manager hat. And it is the project manager's job to get those processes written, whether they write them or the people they manage write them. So when you're wearing the project manager hat, it's a little more difficult to take that hat off and get those processes written. So what's your type to that?
SPEAKER_01Well, my advice is first of all, when when we start a business, we kind of do everything, right? You you become the the CEO, the chief everything officer, and you do everything in the business, right? Because it's just you. When you start hiring people, you still you're still doing everything except what they're doing. So if you so, for example, if you hire a designer, so first of all, let's make an assumption that you are not a unicorn, right? Let's make an assumption that you are good at starting a business, but you're not the best designer in the world, you're not the best developer in the world, you're not the best SEO in the world, you're not the best care plan manager in the world, you're not the best project manager in the world, and you're not the best copywriter in the world, but you're good at starting a business and you're good at talking to clients, and you're good at coming up with solutions for clients and coming up with strategy, right? So by like is that a fair assumption that you can't be the best at all of those things?
SPEAKER_04You might be a really good blank, but you can't, you know, you can't do everything.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Um uh David, I'm gonna answer that question in a moment. Uh so based on the assumption that you're not the best at everything, it's then logical to say, well, you shouldn't be the one documenting the processes because your process ain't very good, because you're not a very good project manager. I've seen this happen so many times where people hire a project manager and then fire them within six weeks because they're not doing it the way the agency owner wants it done. And my question is, hang on a second, has this person got previous experience at project managing in a digital agency or web agency or a similar kind of service-based business working with small business owners? If you take a project manager who's used to working on a hundred million dollar construction projects and bring them into a digital agency, they're gonna struggle. But if you take a project manager who's had a little bit of experience and understands the agency model and has maybe worked in, you know, a smaller uh consulting or service-based firm, right? And you bring them in, you don't then need to teach them how to manage projects. You need to teach them your business model and you need to teach them how you do things for what you do for clients. So we build websites, we do SEO, these are the moving parts. You don't need to teach them how to use Gantt charts, you don't need to teach them the difference between agile and waterfall methodology, and you certainly don't need to teach them how to use clickup. That's their job. You go, great, you're a project manager, and they say, Awesome, I'm really good with Asana, I'm really efficient with Asana, and you go, Oh no, oh, I've been using ClickUp for the last three and a half years. We can't use Asana, we have to use ClickUp. I have an idea, let's be flexible and let the project manager do their job. And if they say we're using Asana, we're using Asana. Because guess what? It's not your decision anymore, it's the project manager's decision. It's like telling a developer, you're a great developer, but I want you to use SaaS as a CSS pre-processor from now on and GitHub instead of Bitbucket. And they're like, what are you fucking talking about? That I now gonna have to learn all this. I'm really good at using less and GitHub. And you want me to switch my by the way, I have no idea what I'm talking about. No, you want me to switch my whole workflow just because you read a blog post that said less was better than SaaS and Bitbucket was better than GitHub, right? Let just let them do their job and then let them document how they do their job. Right? So your team should be documenting processes. The only process that you as the agency owner should really be documenting ultimately are the sales process. By the way, we have one of them for you. Sorry, James. I didn't know what I was talking about. No one uses less anymore, he says. Great. Less, less. There's less, less being used these days. You should document your sales process, which by the way, we can give you. You should also document the process of recruiting A players into your team, which by the way, we can give you. And you should also document a process for building a great team culture, which by the way, we can give you. And you should document a process for looking at your financials, which by the way, we can give you. They're the processes that, as the agency owner, you should be concerned about. Everything else, your team can fill in the blanks because they're the ones that should be doing the work.
SPEAKER_04Right now, if you're if you're hiring, if you're hiring a project manager and then telling them how they should do it, you you then are responsible for the outcome, not them. Right? Correct. If they fail, that's on your ass, not theirs.
SPEAKER_01That's exactly right. Exactly right. Uh David says, if I'm just starting out, should I concentrate on processes first or should I try to get clients? I'm going to give you about three seconds to guess what my answer will be. One, two. Yes. Well done. Well done. Of course, of course, your focus should be to smooth out and optimize your processes so that your entire business is running like a well-oiled machine for the four clients that you have. No, get clients, get clients. Was there a weird audio delay going on there? Did something happen there with the audio?
SPEAKER_04It's not fine.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um, get clients. Yes. Getting clients is your focus. You, I promise you, I've seen it happen. You can grow a business, an agency to between $500 and a million dollars, $500,000 and a million dollars a year in revenue by just shouting at each other in Slack.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01You don't need a fantastic, beautiful, well-optimized, gorgeous, handwritten operations manual of SOPs typeset in copper plate gothic bold to grow a seven-figure a year agency. It's horseshit. What you need is clients and you need to be able to deliver results for those clients. At some point, you will need to document the processes if you really want to scale because things are going to start to fall through the cracks. But you do not need processes unless you are already at multiple six figures. And if you haven't got enough recurring revenue in the business to pay for the team, that should be your focus.
SPEAKER_04And scale doesn't mean what he's talking about when he says scale isn't necessarily hiring your first or your second employee, it's or team, it's really truly scale. So the first or couple employees should be writing those processes for you, and and then you can get ready to scale.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Yeah. Hey, this has been fun. Look at that. We made it. We made it. We made the we made the agency hour. We made it an hour. Um, if you guys want any uh help with defining success criteria around a particular project that you're working on in the business, please let us know in the comments, even after the replay, even after this is we're gonna turn this off in a minute, watch the replay, leave comments, tag us in the comments, we'll come back and answer those questions. This has been another episode of the agency hour. Uh, make sure you subscribe. I think it's gonna be on Spotify. And uh, is it gonna be on Spotify? We're going on Spotify. Yeah? Okay, great. We're going on Spotify. I'm not having a political conversation about Spotify right now. We're gonna put our podcast on Spotify. Excellent. It's gonna be on Spotify, it'll be on, you know, wherever you get your podcasts. Check it out in the Apple Podcast store or wherever else you get your podcasts. It's brought to you by Agency Mavericks. It is the Agency Hour. My name is Troy Dean. This is my friend Pete Crispy Butter Perry, and we'll be back next week uh for another episode of the Agency Hour. Until then, adios, ciao a vidazine. See you later. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_03Thanks 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, where we broadcast these episodes love for our community every week, along with a tiny free. We'll see you there.