The Agency Hour
The Agency Hour is for digital agency owners like you who want to start, grow and scale their businesses. It’s like hanging out with friends while getting a masterclass in how to tackle the most significant obstacles you’re facing as an entrepreneur.
The Agency Hour
How do you know you’re doing a great job?
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You can probably look at the growth of your agency and go, well, I probably know why it's not growing the way I want it to grow, because I'm just not spending enough dedicated time working on the business based on success criteria that I have predetermined with my coach and with my team that this is what we want to do with the agency. This is how we want to grow the agency over the next three months. Therefore, I'm going to work on these activities. If you haven't got that plan in place, it's very difficult to know what to do. And that's probably why you're not allocating those double pomodoro sprints to work on the business because you're not sure what you're supposed to do in that time.
SPEAKER_00If 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_01Morning, afternoon, good evening, whatever time of the day it is where you are around the world, just chilling out here to some uh Kintsugi by uh DJ Toner and Eric TrueFaz, apparently. Uh got a new music app on the phone and on the computer. It's called Tidle T-I-D-A-L. Spotify, you're out. Spotify uh is basically compressed MP3s. Title is high fidelity sound, high quality web files and A files, and also their highest plan is the original mastered files from the session. So, like full quality, as if you're in the recording studio with the artist. And more of your subscription goes to the artists. By the way, I don't get paid to recommend title. I've just been put onto it recently by a buddy of mine. And if you listen to a playlist on Spotify and then go listen to a similar playlist on Title, uh, unless you're listening to it on really crappy speakers, the difference is unbelievable. It's just like listening to CD quality uh audio. It's amazing. Anyway, so I'm checking out Title T-I-D-A-L. I should have an affiliate link for these things. Anyway, welcome to the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. We're live here for the agency hour, and I'd like to bring on down my co-host, good friend, brother from another Pete Crispy Butter Perry, all the way from New Year's. Oh, look at that. Isn't that fantastic? That is just so good, isn't it? I love it.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, I gotta send Max some money for that one.
SPEAKER_01All you need now is a little bit of you just need a bit of Wawa guitar underneath that. That'll be nice. That's right. Um Max will just take that little audio snippet of me doing and that'll be it. There you go, Max.
SPEAKER_02How you doing, dude? I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. How did you nice the weekend in the woods? Yeah, weekend in the my my my brother, my brother from another, my other brother from another, um has uh has a lake house uh in the mountains of Georgia, and uh it was just uh it was great, it was great. Lots of berries. I mean, we didn't see any bears, but you know you say again.
SPEAKER_01You're cheating on me again, yes.
SPEAKER_02Well, he's a lot closer.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, okay. Uh I mean we've been pretty close over the years, Pete. So I shudder to see. Yeah, every every every weekend in the woods either ends with like a murder or someone goes missing, or someone reveals that, like, you know, there's intermarital affairs happening. So, what was the big drama on your weekend in the woods, man?
SPEAKER_02There really was nothing. I've known this guy since we were four years old, which is more than half a century. So we know each other better than and our wives, of course, have known each other for 35 years. So um, yeah, there's nothing to reveal.
SPEAKER_00There's nothing to reveal. Excellent.
SPEAKER_02And the only the only tricky thing is we are on we are diametrically opposed politically.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02Opposite ends of the spectrum. Wow, awesome. So I have learned that for the for my own sanity and for the sake of our of our friendship, yeah. I do not talk about that stuff. Yeah, talk about it. He tries to engage me. He tries to engage me because he's one of those guys, but uh I just ignore and move on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so what do you do when you go to a cabin? We don't have so first of all, we don't have woods here in Australia, right? I mean we don't really understand what we have like a few trees down the end of the park, but we don't have woods. Uh we have forests, but uh we don't really have cabins in the woods either. We generally go to the beach and and stay in caravans or tents. So what do you do when you go away for a weekend and stay at a cabin in the woods?
SPEAKER_02So you um we we it's in a it's in a town called Great Uh Blue Ridge, Blue Ridge, um, Georgia. There's a lake there, obviously, and we're up on a mountain, but at the base of the mountain is a just adorable little town with all shops and really great restaurants and bars and um all that kind of fun stuff. So you do a little bit of that. You it's actually a it's actually a dry town, so you can buy alcohol in restaurants, but you can't buy anything, you can't buy the liquor in the liquor store.
SPEAKER_01Wow, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's really kind of a damp town, but it's not quite dry. But you can't buy any alcohol for in the whole county. So uh we have you have to lug in your own um beverage of choice, and we did we did a lot of that, so there was a lot of whiskey, and um yeah.
SPEAKER_01Do you get fishing or or like so it was too cold?
SPEAKER_02It was it was too cold. I mean, in the summer you could do that, you can go out on the lake on the boat. Um, he has a pontoon boat and all that stuff, but it's way too cold for that. It was right, you know, it it was probably Celsius, it was probably like two, two or three degrees.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, too cold for that stuff.
SPEAKER_01So just lots of hanging around, eating, drinking, talking, telling stories, catching up.
SPEAKER_02That kind of stuff, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Cool, awesome. Uh good, good, love it. And um uh Bush equals woods for Aussies, says James. Yeah, kind of. Uh yeah. I mean, we you know, we don't even really have like we don't like the cabin in the woods, I think is a very American thing. Yeah. Uh, you know. Oh, thanks, Mr. Mergatroid. Um, and uh it I think it is particular to the States, and we've all seen it in the movies, but I've never actually been to a cabin in the woods. So next time I come out to the States, I'll make sure I go to the cabin in the woods.
SPEAKER_02We'll do a we'll do a Mavcon in Atlanta, and it's only an hour away. So there you go.
SPEAKER_01There you go. I've been to Atlanta. Atlanta's a it's a special town. We've got a lot of customers in Atlanta too. Big shout out to everyone here uh in Atlanta. Now, how do you know? Here's a nice little segue into our topic for today. How do you know that the cabin that the weekend in the cabin in the woods is a success? How do you know that it's been a good weekend? How do you how do you measure it? Yeah, um the headache on Monday morning is it?
SPEAKER_02Well, like you said, uh no one was murdered, no one went missing, um, no one got injured too badly. Um and uh and in our case, we didn't fight over politics.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. And the bottles of whiskey.
SPEAKER_02I can check all those boxes, and yeah, right. Got it.
SPEAKER_01The bottles of whiskey are empty. And no, and no emails, no emails? No. No emails, no slack, no slack.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02I slacked, I slacked only into our family channel, so I could show you my cool coat and my I saw it's a very cool jacket.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think you did if there was a superhero in based in the woods, they would wear that that jacket, right? Right. That that would be the cape. Actually, it's superhero.
SPEAKER_02Uh if you if you guys have ever seen Yellowstone, it's very much uh Kevin Costner's jacket that he wears, the very colorful one that he wears in Yellowstone. So it's like a lumberjack. Is that like a lumberjack jacket? Yeah, kinda. It's also a $600 jacket.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Fire out. Ridiculous. You're getting paid too much. Um not mine. So the uh so the segue is the topic of today's agency hour is how do you know you're doing a good job? And for those of you that have a team or or team members, how do you know your team are doing a good job? James Murgatroyd says client feedback reviews. Okay, James. So can you be a bit more specific? Good words from our clients, says Martin Apostolov. Yes. How do you know you're doing a good job? And how do you know your team members are doing a good job? That's what we're gonna talk about today on the agency hour is defining success, the success criteria for any project or anything that you're actually working on. We're gonna walk you through some examples. I'm gonna show you a worksheet that we use here with our clients, our agency owner clients. James says they refer new clients. Now we're talking. Okay, that's good. So if clients, existing clients refer new clients, then you know you're doing a good job.
SPEAKER_02So, me personally, I know I'm doing a good job when I can look at every 90 days, I have a plan and I look I go back to that plan and make sure that I've achieved my goals and uh my outcomes. So my plan lists out the desired outcomes and uh has some has some numbers, whether those are revenue or yeah. So I just kind of mark go back and check out that and do a new plan.
SPEAKER_01And that's it at the end of the year. We're gonna show you an example of that in a minute. Uh, it was Chris Castillo who said projects and deliverables are delivered on time and within budget. Awesome. Uh well done, Chris. By the way, if you don't know Chris, he runs a great Facebook group. Uh and I and the name of it escapes me right now. I do apologize. I think it's something like uh supercharge your web agency, maybe. Um uh someone tell me the group that Chris runs. Anyway, if you don't know it, you should totally check it out. Uh he's awesome. We connected recently, jumped on and had a quick chat. He's uh building a team, and uh we had a quick chat and I gave him some uh tips on uh how to grow that team, which is uh which was super helpful for him and also really helpful for me. And it was great to get to know a little bit more about Chris and his uh his business. So I think it's Chris, what's the name of your group, dude? Just drop it in the comments um so people can um go check it out because it's a great group. Yeah, supercharge your web design agency or something like that. Supercharge web business. Go check it out. All right, so I think what we might do is um, and there we go. He look at that. See, he clicked the StreamYard link, and now we know who he is, and we can see his beautiful face and see his name. That's how you do it. Follow his lead, ladies and gentlemen. Um, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna dive into Google Drive here and I'm going to share a file from our uh here we go, one of our playbooks. It is the um the Mavericks flight plan. This is the agency GPS flight plan. This is a document that we give our clients to help them. Um, there's a couple of things. We we have a saying here plan the work, work the plan. Right? If if you don't know every day what your one to three mission critical tasks are to keep you working on the business, I'm not talking about client projects. Okay, this has got nothing to do with client projects. Client projects is called business as usual, BAU. And BAU will eat you for breakfast every day of the week. It will actually prevent you from growing your business if you just get caught up in the treadmill of delivering business as usual, right? You gotta carve out some time in your calendar to focus on working on the business. And I, you know, if you've if you if you're new to this and you're not carving out time to work on the business, I'll give you the beginner's version, right? Carve out a 50-minute sprint once a day, one 50-minute block of time in your calendar. And I would suggest that you do it first thing in the morning, so just to get it done, where you do not work on client projects, you just work on the business. Why a 50-minute sprint? Well, back in the 80s, there was an Italian gentleman whose name escapes me, but he developed this productivity technique where he worked for 25 minutes on one task, not multitasking, he worked for 25 minutes on one task and then had a five-minute break. And what he would do is he had this tomato-shaped timer, kitchen timer, that he would put on for 25 minutes and he would work for 25 minutes on one task. And when that timer went off, right, he would take a five-minute break and he would go for a walk, stretch his legs, whatever. Then he would put the timer on for another 25 minutes, right? And it became known as the Pomodoro because Pomodoro is Italian for tomato, because the timer looked like a tomato, right?
SPEAKER_02It's also easier to pronounce than his name, which is Francesco Cerillo.
SPEAKER_01There we go. Francesco Sarillo. And so it became known as the Pomodoro technique. Now, Tim Ferris popularized this in the four-hour work week, uh, where he explained how he uses the Pomodoro and what he and I tried it for a bit, right? And like, man, 25 minutes goes like that. So I had this app on my computer at one point called Time Out, and every 25 minutes, it locks you out of your computer for five minutes. And I'll be halfway through something and I'll be like, oh, damn. So Tim Ferris uses what he calls a double pomodoro, which is a 50-minute sprint with 10-minute breaks. And you have to step away from whatever you're doing for 10 minutes, whether you're on the computer, whether you're scrapbooking, whether you're playing, practicing the bass guitar, whether you are learning how to do something else, or just whatever you're working on, 50 minutes, laser focus on one job, and then take a 10-minute break. And he calls it the double pomodoro. That's my preference because I feel like I can get enough done in 50 minutes that I feel like I've been productive. And then the 10-minute break, I usually go for a walk, get a coffee, whatever. So carve out a double Pomodoro Monday. I'll let you off. Do four days a week, right? Have Fridays off or have Mondays off, whatever. I don't care. Four days a week, four days in a row, Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday, double Pomodoro first thing in the morning where you're working on the business. You are not touching client projects. And if that means you have to start work 50 minutes earlier, then so be it, right? Now, when you aren't doing, when you're working on that in that double Pomodoro, the question is, well, what am I supposed to do? And that's where this document comes into play, right? That's where the flight plan comes into play. Because what we do is we sit down with our clients and we help them work out their plan for the next 90 days. So I'll walk you through an example here, and I'll also tell you that this example is not the best example. This is just placeholder example text that we put in, and I it's not the best, and I'm going to explain why it's not the best. Okay. Because what I specifically want to dive into in detail on this call is how do you know you're doing a good job? And what that comes down to is being very clear about the success criteria before you start work on anything. So Pete is learning how to play the bass guitar. And one of the first things he learned was a 12-bar blues in A. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02In A? The one I'm playing is in G, actually. But I can play as many players, yeah. Sure.
SPEAKER_01He's learning how to play the 12-bar blues in G. Um, I'm studying guitar again with guitartricks.com. Again, I should have an affiliate link, but I don't. I'm studying guitar with guitartricks.com. And at the start of each lesson, my instructor at guitartricks.com has, you know, this is what you're gonna learn. And he plays what you're gonna learn. So you can hear it.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_01So if he's playing a 12-bar blues in G, you'll start on G, you'll play G, then you'll bounce to C, back to G, then D, C, G, and you'll play the 12 bar blues. But like, this is what we're gonna learn. If he plays an A minor pentatonic scale, he plays the scale. This is what you're about to learn. So, right from the get-go, you know what success looks like because you can hear him play it. Let me give you a very practical example. If you're building a website, one of the success criteria might be that it needs to score a certain score in GT metrics or page speed insights, or it needs to score a certain score on the WCA3 accessibility audit thing or whatever, right? Like that's an actual metric that you can measure it against. And also the deadline is 31st of March, and the budget is this, right? So, what is the success criteria? How do we know this project is a success before we start? Okay. So back to working on the business, I'm gonna walk you through some examples here, right? And specifically, what I'm looking at is like these squares here, okay? I'm not gonna go through the whole document here because it's a little bit uh in-depth. We don't have time, but I want to talk about these squares here. Let's pretend that this particular client who's working with us has been through a process with their coach and has decided that the three projects that they're working on over the next 90 days are upgrade your on-ramp, ignite fire starters, and activate accelerators. Now, those names might not mean anything to you, and that's okay. That's not the point. Those project names come from our agency GPS model. I'll translate it into plain English for you. This means improving the sales process. This means packaging up some of our diagnostic tools like web audits or SEO audits into actual paid products or discovery workshops. Instead of giving that stuff away for free, we're going to package that up into actual products that we sell. And activating accelerators, again, is productizing other services that we might deliver, like ongoing SEO, social media management, care plans, um, building an actual website, productizing those services into individual products that we call accelerators, right? So for context, fire starters are designed to diagnose a problem and accelerators are designed to fix a problem. Okay. So, I mean, this should actually be called uh um, you know, if this is a fire starter, this should be called an extinguisher, right? So uh this is like, for example, a web audit, and then this might be designing a new website. This might be SEO audit, this might be ongoing SEO. This might be keyword research, fire starter might be keyword research to diagnose, hey, a whole bunch of keywords here that we need to go after that we're currently missing out on. This might be building a bunch of landing pages around those topics, right? And this is sales process. So if these are the three projects that this particular client has decided are the most important over the next three months, and they've been through that process with their coach, the next step is to map out and write down the success criteria. In other words, how will we know that we have improved our sales process by the first of June 2021? And this in this, I'm gonna just run through these and then try to pull out why I think some of these are better than others. In this example, uh upgrading on ramp, the success criteria here is that we understand the biggest challenges our clients have. How do you know? Correct. How do you so so that's in theory that's good, but how do you know you understand the biggest challenges your client has? How do you know? Like how how do you know when you've arrived at that destination? So I'll give you some other examples in a moment that are, I think, better versions of success criteria. We offer a lead magnet addressing that problem. Uh okay. Again, how do you know you've achieved that?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01I'll come back and I'll come back and give you some other examples that I think are better than these. We have a nurture sequence which encourages people to jump on a call. Close. It's getting closer. Yeah, it's getting closer. We have a sales script we use to turn leads into clients.
SPEAKER_02Whoops, hello. That's a big one.
SPEAKER_01It is. Uh, again, how do you know when you've got that? Let me run through some what I think are better examples here. We understand the biggest challenges our client has. I would say we have a client avatar document that the whole team is aware of that details the problems our ideal client has. So that's much more specific, and you know when you've achieved it because you can point to it in Google Drive or Canva or wherever it lives and go, hey, when we onboard a new team member, you're here, get familiar with our ideal client. Here's our client avatar. This is the typical client we have, and this is usually the types of problems they have that we solve. We offer a lead magnet addressing that problem. I would say uh a better example of that is we are collecting 10 leads a day off our website that match our ideal client avatar by offering them a free resource which is a solution to their most common problem.
SPEAKER_02Right. And ideally, you want to get a number in there like that, like an X number of leads per this much period of time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Because otherwise you can't measure it.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. And if you can't measure it, then we can't improve it. It's why in sport they have scoreboards.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02It's why in just having a lead magnet that addresses the problem doesn't mean that it's really speaking to your clients.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_02Because if they're not downloading it, they have to be actually interested in and download it in first.
SPEAKER_01Correct. That's right. We have a nurture sequence which encourages people to jump on a call. I would say we are booking four calls a week from our email nurture sequence. Once our ideal client downloads our free resource, there's no point having a nurture sequence which encourages people to jump on a call if it doesn't work. And how do we know if it works? They book in a call. Right. We have a sales script we use to turn leads into clients. I would say we have a we have a sales conversation template that converts leads into clients at 25% consistently. Right? That's a much better success criteria because we know if it's working. Okay. Your turn to play. Oh, great. Give me the hard one. Here we go. So ignite fire starters. We have a low-risk entry product. In other words, web audit. What's a better version of that? Let's leave that to the crowd, James. Oh, excellent. Excellent. What's a better version of this? Pete's phoning a friend here, right? No, Pete's asking the audience, right? Pete's asking the audience. Okay, so so that's one lifeline gone, right? The next thing you can do is phone a friend or pass, and then you're and there's three strikes in your back.
SPEAKER_02There's always three, so I get it.
SPEAKER_01I'm good. Oh no, there's this whole column here as well. We have a low-risk entry product. What's a better version of this? We have a low-risk entry product, example, web audit. What's a better version of that? We've sold at least three entry products.
SPEAKER_02So that's what I would do. I would like in the other column, I would probably combine those and add a number to it. So we've sold X number of web audits, or we've sold X number of SEO audits or over the course of a certain amount of time.
SPEAKER_01Right. And then we've used that entry product to sell at least one web project. So these are better. But if I was your coach, I would tell you that you're just being like lazy because this is a three-month sprint, ladies and gentlemen, right? From first of Feb to first of June. That's actually like February. That's a four-month sprint, five-month sprint, and you're going to sell three in five months and use that entry product to sell at least one web project. Come on. You should be selling three a month at least, right? Six a month, and then like convert two products a month. Adam Silverman, by the way, has what he calls a uh his fire starter is called the track builder. And the track builder is essentially paid discovery, right? He's converting about 80% of his track builder clients into larger projects. And he's selling his track builder products straight off a triage call, which is the first part of his sales process. So he's actually combined this and this. These are two actual projects that he's worked on. He's been very clear about the success criteria. One of the success criteria is that he is not involved in delivering the track builder. And he is now part of his success criteria now is that he's not involved in selling the track builder, that he's getting right out of that. And he's hired someone who's going to come in, follow his sales process to sell the track builder because he knows that track builders will convert at about 80% into a larger project, right? So uh James says we've completed three web audits, we've converted one web audit into a full site project. Okay, so that's we're getting better. Okay. I would just say they're not ambitious enough. Yeah. Okay. Um let me now let's park here for a second before we do the third column because one of the things that you might notice, one of the common threads here that you might notice is that essentially what we want to do is we want to make these success criteria smart goals. What do smart goals stand for? S-M-A-R-T. Because essentially that's what we want here. We want the the success criteria here to be smart goals. You guys are taking way too long in the chat to answer this question. Lynn, specific, measurable, right? So smart goals are specific. Okay, so you know, um uh we have a low risk, we have a low-risk entry product that's not specific. Not specific. Right? We are selling web audits, is specific, but it's not measurable. So, how do you make it specific and measurable? What does the ART stand for? Well, the A is either attainable or achievable, in other words, it's got to be, you know, like there we go. Thank you, Chris Castillo. I told you he was good, man. Specific.
SPEAKER_02I don't know, there's an awful lot of time to Google that.
SPEAKER_01Attainable, realistic, and time bound or time sensitive. So attainable and realistic are so realistic can also sometimes be relevant, right? Attainable, realistic, achievable, relevant. Uh essentially, it's got to be, you know, the criteria has to be relevant to the project and it's got to be within the realms of possibility. It's got to be realistic, right? So we're not putting a man on the moon here. We don't want to sell three web audits a day. Otherwise, it's just gonna go in the too hard basket and you'll never achieve it. And it has to be time bound. Well, here we are, 1st of June 2021, in this example, right? So this is this is the time sensitive. Specific, we've sold at least three entry products. That is specific. I would prefer to say we've sold at least three web audits, right? Uh, it's measurable, it's definitely achievable, it's realistic and it's relevant. It's just not ambitious enough, right? So maybe, maybe attainable should be ambitious. Maybe the A could be ambitious, right? But essentially, it's got you like you need to know when you've achieved it and it's got to be achievable. But it also should be a bit of a stretch. Okay. So thank you, Chris Castillo, for playing along. Uh, now, in keeping that in mind, let's look at this activating accelerators. And again, just a bit of context. This is turning your existing services into sp into product, productized versions of those services, right? So activate accelerators. We have an ongoing subscription service, in other words, website care plan. Is that a smart success criteria? Does that fit the criteria of a SMART goal?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_01No, it does not. It's not specific, it's not measurable, it's not, I mean, it's nothing. We have an ongoing subscription service that nobody's buying. Sure, okay, great. How is that how is that relevant? How is that relevant to the goal? It's not. So a better version of that would be something like we have enrolled 12 clients into one of our website care plans. Right. That's specific, it's measurable, it's definitely achievable, it's realistic, and it's time sensitive because there's the deadline there, right? We've either moved existing clients onto a care plan or off-boarded them. Well, the problem with this is that it would be really easy just to ring all of our clients and get rid of them, make an assumption that they don't want to go into a care plan and wave bye-bye. And that's not relevant to the business. It's actually going to hurt the business. So, what I would prefer here is we have migrated X percent. We've migrated 75% of our existing clients onto a care plan. Right? That for me is a better success criteria. Because we don't want to just say goodbye to them because there is definitely recurring revenue sitting there that we can tap into. We set clear expectations about ongoing care plans with all new web clients. Again, how do we know when we've achieved that? Do we ask them at the end of our, you know, thank you for signing on to help uh for us to help you build a website? We really appreciate your business and trusting us. Now, have we been clear that at the end of this project, you will be signing on to a website care plan? Is that clear? Is that is that how we measure it? Right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So again, for me, this would be like 100% of new web clients sign up for a care plan.
SPEAKER_01There we go. If I had prizes, you would be able to pick one from the top shelf. Right? Uh, exactly. 100% of new web clients sign on for a care plan. By the way, if you're listening to this as a podcast, you should definitely get into the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. Just go to Facebook.com, log in, and go to the search bar and search Digital Mavericks. And then when it comes up in the search, click on the group Digital Mavericks. And in fact, the group is um actually called, let me just have a look at this. It's called something like Digital Mavericks: Helping Digital Marketing Agencies and Freelancers Grow. Okay, that is the current title of the group at the time of making this episode in January 2022, subject to change and pivot. Exactly. Uh come and join the group because if you're watching this podcast, if you're listening to this podcast, you might be going, Well, I can't see the screen that you're sharing, and this doesn't make for very good radio. Come and join the group, watch the replay. All the replays are in the group here, and then you can see what we're actually sharing and you can participate in the conversation. You can just leave a comment underneath the episode because this is actually a live stream into the Digital Mavericks Facebook group that we record and then we repurpose the recording as a podcast. Okay. So come and join the group and participate in the comments. And so if you're watching this or listening to this, what I'd love to know is do you currently have success criteria for the projects that you're working on in the business? And if so, share one of them with us so we can tear it to shreds. I mean, so that we can offer you some constructive criticism, right? Yes, James, the title of this group is designed to attract people who are searching for things like digital marketing growth, agency growth, freelancers growth, marketing freelancer, digital freelancer. That's right. Exactly. It's the same reason that GoWP just rebranded their group to the digital agency owners group, because nobody searches for Go WP unless you already know them. So we've made a couple of strategic changes to this group over the last 12 months. Since Emily's been with us, really, probably about 15 months. And the growth has been astronomical. We've gone from 5,000 or 6,000 members to, I don't know, how many we got now? 11.6,000 members in the group. We've we've doubled in size since we made some strategic changes to the group. And the name of the group is and the title of the group is definitely one of those changes we've made. And the reason we made that is because we had success criteria in place for the group. One of the things we wanted to do was get to 10,000 members in the group. Tick, done. Right? So this the changes that we make and the tactics that we use in this business and the activity is most of the time driven by success criteria for projects that we're working on to develop the business, right? When we're working on the business. So let me know in the chat what is what is the success criteria that you have for your projects. And if you don't, that's totally fine. You know, just say don't have success criteria, and we'll just laugh at you behind your back. No, we won't. We'll encourage you to get some success criteria.
SPEAKER_02I'll plant some seeds for them. So one of the success criteria we have in our care plan is that over a 30-day average or 30-day period, um, the first response to all tickets is within six hours on average. And that takes into account the fact that there's weekends and we only work nine to five and all that stuff. So so that and then the the close the time it takes to close a ticket should average about 32 to 36 hours.
SPEAKER_01Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Uh happy clients. Okay, so happy clients is is a great thing to strive for, but how will you know when you have happy clients? How do you know when you log on and start work and look at look at the internet? How will you know you've got happy clients? It's typically things like customer satisfaction surveys, which we run regularly. We're running customer satisfaction survey at the moment with our clients. Uh, we your NPS, your reviews on Google. Uh Johnny Flash went on a mission to collect 100 uh five-star reviews on Google over a period of time. And he did it. Right? And he knew and he was very clear about the success criteria. 100 five-star reviews on Google. Okay. Martin, cover the employee wages and try to increase pricing every month. Try to increase pricing every month is not specific and not measurable. You put your prices up by a dollar, does that mean you've succeeded? Okay. So uh cover the employee wages and try to increase pricing every month. I would suggest that covering the employee wages is not enough, that you need to be aiming for a 30% net profit margin. In fact, I think, by the way, you've got two goals there. You've got two success criteria, right? So cover the employee wages. I would suggest that aiming for 30% net profit every month is great success criteria. That's a smart goal. Because every month you look at your PL, you look at your net profit, you look at your revenue, minus all your expenses, and go, how much did I make as a business owner this month? Is it 30% of sales? No. Okay, what do I need to do next month to improve it?
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_01And one of those things you might do is increase your pricing. That is a tactic that you would use or a strategy that pricing strategy that you would use to meet the goal. The goal is not to increase pricing, the goal is to increase profit. Pricing is a lever you can pull to achieve the goal, which is to increase profit, right? Add five new growth plan clients in the next 90 days, says James. Excellent. I would just suggest that's not ambitious enough, my friend. But it's X, it's a great place to start, right? Because it's specific, measurable, definitely achievable, it's realistic, and it's time bound. 50 new clients. Now we're getting somewhere, James. 50 in three months, break it down. It's 17 a month. Break that down. It's four a week. Not outside the realms of possibility, by the way. Four new clients a week. It's one a day, Monday to Thursday. You can have Fridays off. Right. To do all the work. Right. So the question, the question is the question then is this what activities are you involved in? What action are you taking? And what activities are you undertaking in order to move the needle and achieve this success criteria? That's where this comes in. Remember your double pomodoro sprint that we spoke about? Your double pomodoro sprint, when you dive into that sprint, you go, okay, what do I need to do in the next 50 minutes? You should be looking here. By the way, this changes every day. You write one thing here to say, today's double pomodoro sprint, I'm just going to get this one thing done. Book calls with five clients to understand what their biggest challenges are. Now, this is actually a pretty good action step because it's directly related to this. Even though this is not a specific, you know, measurable, achievable thing, criteria. What we're trying to do here is we're trying to build a client avatar to understand what their biggest challenges are, and we want to talk with existing clients. So all we want to do in the next 50 minutes is book calls with five clients to understand what their biggest challenges are. We're not going to actually have those five calls. We're just going to book those calls in the calendar for sometime later this week or next week to talk to five existing clients to understand what their biggest challenges are. Now, here's why I love this so much. I get into a double Pomodoro Sprint and I go, great. What's the one thing that I can do in the next 50 minutes to add value to the business? Well, previously, we've agreed as a business owner with my coach and maybe my leadership team, my ops manager, or whoever you've got working in the business, we've agreed that these are the projects that we need to work on over the next 90 days. And we've agreed that this is the success criteria. So if I look at this success criteria and go, okay, we need to develop a client avatar highlighting who our ideal client is and their most common problems that we can help them with. And we're going to build that in Canva, because they have some great templates or FlowMap, spelled with two Ps. Again, should have an affiliate link, but I don't. FlowMap has some great templates to help you build client avatar PDFs. And that's what we're going to build. So, in order to do that, I'm just going to jump on a call with five existing clients and understand what their biggest challenges were before they started working with us and kind of talk to them about how working with us has changed things for them. Now, it's now very clear what I should be doing in that 50-minute Pomodoro sprint. There's no confusion. I don't have to sit there and look at the computer and go, what am I supposed to do in this time that I've allocated to work on the business? Because it's now very clear that the activity that I'm about to undertake is directly aligned with what we have previously decided is most important to the business. So I know that I'm working on valuable activities here. Okay. By the way, the other thing I can tell you is that if you book calls with five existing clients and do this research, you'll probably pick up more work from those existing clients because they'll start telling you what their current problem is and what they need help with. So you'll probably pick up more work with them. So it's a good exercise to do anyway. Okay. And then once I've done this, by the way, on our actual poster that we give our clients, this is about the same size as a post-it note. So what we encourage our clients to do is to write this on a post-it note, stick it here, and then when you've done it, tear it off and write a new one. Or if you're environmentally inclined like I am, do it on the iPad so you don't waste paper. Write it on the iPad, and then once you've finished it, rub it out and write a new next step for tomorrow. What am I going to do in tomorrow's 50-minute Pomodoro sprint to keep these things moving forward? Now, if you do four days a week over three months, you've got 13 weeks in a three-month period. Not 12, you've got 13 weeks in a three-month period. Right? What's 13 times four? 52. 52 days, 52 double Pomodoro sprints for you to get shit done. Right? There's three projects here. Success criteria's probably three for each. There's nine success criteria that we're trying to reach, and you've got 52 opportunities to move the needle. If you look back on the last three months of your agency and you can't hand on heart say to yourself, honestly, I have spent 52 double Pomodoro sprints working on the business instead of just being sucked into business as usual, then I think you're missing out on a huge opportunity. And I think you can probably look at the growth of your agency and go, well, I probably know why it's not growing the way I want it to grow, because I'm just not spending enough dedicated time working on the business based on success criteria that I have predetermined with my coach and with my team that this is what we want to do with the agency. This is how we want to grow the agency over the next three months. Therefore, I'm going to work on these activities. If you haven't got that plan in place, it's very difficult to know what to do. And that's probably why you're not allocating those double pomodoro sprints to work on the business because you're not sure what you're supposed to do in that time. All right, I want to ask some answer some questions. When do you eat the tomato after the 10-minute pause? That's right. During the 10 minutes, Martin, I want you to mindfully eat the tomato. Take the full 10 minutes to eat the tomato, right? And really enjoy the burst of flavor in your mouth when you bite into that tomato. You know, Oscar eats a tomato like an apple. He just grabs a tomato and just bites all dripping down his face and on his beautiful white t-shirts that we've just cleaned. Davidis says, uh, how to build an avatar if I have not niche down yet? Great question. So, uh, what I would do is I'm going to make an assumption that you've got some existing clients, David Us, right? If you have some existing clients, get on the phone and talk to them. And your job is to find out what they have in common because the biggest problem I see with people trying to niche down is they want to pick an industry. They go, Well, I want to go after accountants or tradies or home contractors or lawyers. And that's that's one example of niching down and choosing a target audience. There are other ways that you can niche down and choose your target audience, which is I haven't got time to go into that now, but there's a whole uh training that we put together around niching down. I think it's in the Godfather method. And there are vertical niches, which is what you're talking about, accounting lawyers, there's psychographic niches, and there's demographic niches, right? The way to solve this is to get on a phone with your existing clients and ask them what problem they were trying to solve before before they started working with you and what problem they're trying to solve now. Make lots of notes and figure out what they have in common. And then pick your favorite clients and go, Well, these clients have these common set of problems. That's my avatar. What other here we go? Go the grand the Godfather videos really spell out the niche thing, says James Murgatroyd. Yes. So if you haven't, if you know if you haven't got access to this, get hold of the Godfather method, reach out to the support team uh to get access to the Godfather method. It's got a great training. The first part of that training is all about figuring out your niche.
SPEAKER_02So then yeah, your first pomodoro needs to be watch the Godfather method. First card.
SPEAKER_01Yep, and do the homework. Exactly. David has already got it. Fantastic. So work on making the time for it. Great. Double Pomodoro sprint. There you go. Exactly what Pete said. First 50 minutes. And those videos are like less than eight minutes long. So you can smash through a bunch of them in a 50-minute sprint, right? Martin says it would be perfect if this 50 minute could be spent outdoors. Just write this board in your mind, maybe. Totally, Martin. You can totally spend the 50 minutes wherever you want. You know, I'm spending less and less time in front of the computer these days, more time in the car, more time at the pool, more time walking. You don't do your best thinking sitting in front of the computer. Okay. So if you're getting on a call with clients, make it a phone call. Or do a zoom call from your phone and do it while you're walking. Lynn says 50 minutes. Sprints has been the most valuable thing. Marvin says, reminder to take time for your business progress. Absolutely. Mitch says Pete looks awesome in plaid. That's the most valuable thing that he's got in the last 50 minutes. And for those of you who are listening to this as a podcast, please come and join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group and answer the question in the comments. This is live on January 27 Australian time. So it could be January 26 when you're looking at this in the group, depending on where you live in the world. Uh it's called How Do You Know You're Doing a Great Job? Come and leave a comment underneath the episode and let us know what you found most valuable. We we look at all the feedback and it really helps us figure out what kind of content we can produce in the future and what kind of topics we can talk about in the future. Cool. Pete, any questions? Do you anything you need? Anything we need to clarify?
SPEAKER_02I've been through this, so none for me. I don't know if they have any. You know, you got to keep your your outcomes or goals smart and measurable. That's the big thing. And then you have to, you know, you have to at the end of it all, you have to go back and look and s and check off like accomplished, accomplished, didn't accomplish, and when you didn't, you have to figure out what got in the way. Like why didn't you, why didn't you get there? Was it too was it too aggressive? Was it not something that you were truly passionate about? Like, why why didn't you not get that done?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So plan the work, work the plan. What we've talked about today is planning the work. Right? So so you know, you have to treat your own business as a client and schedule it in the calendar to work on the business. And don't miss deadlines and don't jerk around because you wouldn't do that with a client, would you? So don't do it for your own business. Right? I was a bit late to join the party, says Davidis, but invaluable thing for me was paraphrasing goals differently. It shifts the mindset. Love it. Awesome. Thank you, Davidis. And thanks for being a part of it in Lithuania, where it must be very, very late. Must be very late at night where you are. So thanks for sitting up and being a part of it. Really appreciate it. Hey, love for hanging out with you guys. You guys are an awesome audience. Thanks for being such a great part of this community. We really appreciate each and every one of you. Stay safe. Uh, let us know if you need anything from us at all. In let us know in the group. And I'm very excited to announce for those of you who are in Mavericks Club, MavCon, which is our live event that's coming up uh in the second week of February. We have secured a new guest speaker. Can I announce?
SPEAKER_02You're the boss. I haven't been announcing it. I've been teasing it. I haven't been teasing it, but I haven't been announcing it.
SPEAKER_01She confirmed. That's the question.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, she has confirmed.
SPEAKER_01Okay, great. So Dr. Sherry Walling is coming to Mavcon. For those of you who don't know, Dr. Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping entrepreneurs with mental health. She runs an organization called Zen Tribes. She also happens to be married to Rob Walling, who's just a legend of an entrepreneur, started Drip and sold it. They're a fantastic couple. I just love them both so much. And I'm super excited that Dr. Sherry Walling is coming back to Mavcon in February to talk to all of us about managing overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and dealing with our mental health in a post-pandemic world. Because fuck me, it's a strange time right now, isn't it? It's a weird world, and there are lots of people who are struggling with keeping their head together. So Rob, uh Rob and Dr. Sherry Walling wrote a great book called Keeping Your Shit Together, specifically designed for entrepreneurs. Um, definitely go and grab that book. She's got a new book coming out as well that we will um be talking about over the coming months. We'll try and get her back on the agency hour in the coming weeks. Uh, but for those of you who are in Mavericks Club, she's going to be at Mavcon and it's going to be amazing. I'm super excited to have her there. So thanks for being a part of it. Again, like subscribe to you know our channels, and uh otherwise we'll catch you next week on the agency hour.
SPEAKER_02You almost made it, man. You almost stretched it.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, I almost stretched it. One minute. There's like less than 60 seconds to go. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, Crispy Butter. See you again next week.
SPEAKER_00Bye for now. Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you'd like to listen, you can catch all of the Agency Hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agency Mavericks. Or you can get involved. Check out our free Digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free training. We'll see you there.