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The Agency Hour
Celebrating Remotely
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So I had my account managers uh organize it. They're kind of like my project managers. And so they they came up with all the ideas and everything, and they led a lot of the different games and activities and stuff. We also did a gratitude ceremony. We told everyone ahead of time, hey, we're gonna have a moment during the team party where everyone's just gonna share something that they're thankful for. And so uh we did that as well. It was just it was a great time. Everyone had fun, they laughed. It was about 90 minutes. We told them, hey, it's gonna be about 90 minutes, and we played games, we gave out prizes, it was a lot of fun.
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_02Welcome to the final agency hour for the year, live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. And it's a Christmas theme, apparently, today. I missed a memo, so I'm not dressed up, but I have some friends who are, and I was told I had to play some Christmas music, so I had to make it Christmas jazz. Because I don't like Christmas music very much because I'm the Grinch, right? Truth is I actually don't like Christmas very much.
SPEAKER_01So I'm gonna bring some friends up here who are in a much happier mood than me. Otherwise, this could get dark pretty quickly. Please welcome Johnny Flash and Pete Crispy Butter Perry. How are you, brothers? Hey Troy. Hey Troy, who hurt you when you were little?
SPEAKER_06Who forgot to give you a present or something?
SPEAKER_01You know, the list is long and deep, Pete.
SPEAKER_02It's you know, it's that thing when you're walking around the city in in late November and you hear Christmas carols coming out of a retail shop. I just want to go there and strangle someone. I'm like, it's not even December, and you're playing Christmas carols. Uh no, no, I'll tell you what, Christmas is fun when you have kids, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's I think it's all the and I know I'm not alone here, I'm not the only person that finds Christmas challenging because it's all the extended family stuff that makes Christmas challenging, right? You gotta put up like it's like that one time of the year where you gotta like put up with you know your distant cousin's weird behavior because it's Christmas and you're not allowed to tell them how you really feel because it's Christmas and you're supposed to be just happy because it's Christmas, right?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I usually uh keep myself very busy on Christmas Day, like cooking and cleaning, so I don't have to have weird, awkward conversations with people I don't know that well. Anyway, how are you guys doing? Who where where was this memo that it was supposed to be a dress up? Like, what did I miss? I have a red sweater, does that count?
SPEAKER_06I've been trying to I've been trying to wear this hat on. Yeah, I've been trying to wear this hat on as many Zoom calls this week and next week as possible. Like new client, uh team members, like whatever. You know, I just I can only wear it a couple weeks of the year, so I gotta get it in as much as I can't do it.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. I'm here. Like I wear this shirt to everything. I wear it like I'll be on the velocity call and wear this shirt again tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02So I love it. That's good. I don't have, I don't have, I mean, you know, when Jin was working here, we had Christmas stuff coming out of our ears, but I don't really, you know, it's like I don't know, this is not a thing. I don't really have Christmas costumes, so I'll have to get my shit together for next year. I do apologize.
SPEAKER_03You take two or three weeks off for Christmas. Well, it's certainly the thing they celebrate it.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's because it it's summer here in Australia, right? So this is the thing that a lot of people on you know the other side of the planet don't understand. In in our Christmas is our summer, so there's cricket, right? And there's beer, and there's hot weather, and there's the beach, and that's basically all we do for you know three or four weeks between Christmas and the end of January, um, which is why the economy slows down here because everyone's drunk for a few weeks. And then February, people are hung over and it starts to ramp back up and they're full of remorse and they're trying to get their shit together. Uh, whereas you guys, it's winter, right? So you kind of don't really you don't take a holiday, right? You don't go away over Christmas, is that right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we're trying to go snowboarding in a couple few weeks right after Christmas. I was telling Max uh ahead of time. We're taking the whole family snowboarding.
SPEAKER_02Uh awesome. Uh, today on the agency, we're gonna talk a little bit about our reflections for 2021. Uh, we're gonna talk about what our plans are and what our intentions are for 2022. And uh then we have an opportunity for you guys to jump on a call with one of our team and get some one-on-one help as well. So uh keep your ears out for that. So, Johnny, we also you you posted in Slack that you had a uh a Christmas party for your remote team. Oh yeah. Back in the old days, we'd just all when we were all working in the same uh office, we'd all just go out for a Christmas party, or in fact, one of our Mavericks, uh one of our Mavericks the other day said they just had their Christmas party on a Friday night and they just all go out and they go 10-pin bowling or go to dinner or whatever. What's kind of hard to do that now because we're remote teams, and so Max and I are in Melbourne, but everyone else is you know in the Philippines or New Zealand or or you know the Gold Coast or the States. Uh and so Johnny uh shared some photos in our Slack about how he was celebrating the end of yeah and celebrating Christmas with his remote team. And uh so this is gonna be this is gonna be great podcasting if you're listening to this and you're not gonna be able to see the photos that Johnny shares. So if that's the case, get on over to Facebook and join our Facebook group. It's called Digital Mavericks. You can just go to Facebook.com and search for Digital Mavericks group and then join the group. It's free. We let most people in. Not everyone, but we let most people in, and then you'll be able to see the visuals that we share on the the calls here, Johnny. How are you going with that screen sharing, brother?
SPEAKER_06I'm I'm almost there, I think. It's asking me to allow, allow, allow my computer that's new to uh do the thing, you know, share the screen here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, got it. Yeah, it's in he's installing screen, he's he's going into the privacy settings and letting it.
SPEAKER_06I'm going into the privacy setting.
SPEAKER_02Uh you're gonna let me take over your webcam, right? I hope you haven't got uh I hope you haven't got um what is it login J uh installed anywhere on your computer? Have you guys heard about that?
SPEAKER_03The the big security breach with with the login uh yeah that's we don't have it, but yeah, I've heard of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Not good, not good at all.
SPEAKER_02I think we've lost Johnny.
SPEAKER_03Actually, hi.
SPEAKER_02Hey Mike, Mike's in the back in the UK are you back in the UK, Mike? Are you still hanging out in Canada with Sheila Heard? Where are you now? I think we've lost Johnny. Johnny's trying to listen to it.
SPEAKER_03Johnny's trying to share Johnny tried to share a screen and he just disappeared.
SPEAKER_02Johnny has, yep, tried to share a screen and has just disappeared off the face of the earth. So he'll be back in a moment. Uh hey Pete, what do you do? Um now if there's I know that you know you're even grinchier than I am. So how do you celebrate Christmas with your remote team?
SPEAKER_03Um, I am not grinchier than you are. My remote team, we we don't necessarily celebrate like Johnny did, like have a have a get together, um, because they're they are all in the Philippines, so we kind of we overlap in hours, but but they work different hours than I do. Um but they do get off from uh my developer's off from the 20th of December through the 10th, I think, of of January, and the rest of the team is off from the 23rd until the 10th.
SPEAKER_04Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I give them the same words the first the 13th month. Yeah, so they get that nice little bonus at the end of the year and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02So and the we're on skeleton staff between about the 23rd and the 10th of January, I think. So we've just got the the support staff running, um, doing rosters there. Hey Johnny's back, and I believe he's got some slides to share with us. It's a slide night with Uncle Johnny.
SPEAKER_06All right. There we go. There we go. We had an awesome uh virtual team Christmas party. My team's always been all remote, so we've always had to kind of figure this out. So I think this is our second or third year we've done this. Um, and we basically, it was in place of our normal weekly team call. We kind of had a party. We told everyone wear your Christmas attire, um, bring your own drink of choice, you know, whatever kind of your holiday drink is. And then we had some games and activities and prizes planned. So I told everyone how much I appreciated them. We laughed, we played games, we gave out prizes. Um, we had uh we had a thing where everyone had to bring a cookie to the party, and so then you had to put the cookie on your forehead and you had to see who could eat the cookie without using any hands first. Um, and so that was pretty fun. We gave out a gift card for that. We played um we played uh Yuletide Pictionary where we used this the whiteboard feature of Zoom, and then uh the the gal on our team who was organizing that game would message you privately what you had, like what Christmas thing you had to draw, and then you had a minute to kind of draw it out, and you got a point for whoever guessed it first. Um, and so we gave out a prize for that, and we did some other games, and then one of the cool things, so my team planned all this. Last year I planned the whole thing. I was like, it'll be much better if the team plans it. So the team planned it this year, and they came up with this idea to do a team holiday recipe book. And so uh a couple weeks ago, they asked all the team members for their favorite holiday recipes, you know, it could be a main meal, a appetizer, dessert, whatever. And so we now have our first Johnny Flash team cookbook that uh we have in a digital you know format. And so we gave that to the whole team as like kind of a special thing. And so it's cool because we have a lot of Philippine team members, US team members all over, so all kinds of different recipes in there, which I'm looking forward to trying and stuff. So it was just a lot of fun, it was really great. That's a great thing.
SPEAKER_02What what what time of the day was this uh end of your Christmas party for you guys?
SPEAKER_06So our team uh in the Philippines works generally like US time, so they're working like evening nights for them. So we just did it um at 10 a.m. Eastern, which is 11 p.m. Philippine time, but our team's normally working those hours, anyways.
SPEAKER_02So the big question, Johnny, is at 10 o'clock in the morning for you, what drink of choice did you take to the I had I had hot chocolate and I had uh some tea as well.
SPEAKER_01Ah, very good, very good, very good.
SPEAKER_06You're gonna crazy, crazy, you were going crazy, John.
SPEAKER_02Uh and and also, how the hell do you eat a cookie on your forehead without using your hands?
SPEAKER_06It was it was so hilarious to watch, honestly. I was like trying to eat my cookie, but then I was trying to, it was just funny watching everybody trying to do it. And one guy was like really slow and gradual, like and it was just like barely inching down on his face, and it was like it was pretty awesome. So we gave out gift card prizes for all the winners of all the different games and stuff, and it was so you put the cookie on your forehead and you put your head back, and then you've got to like use your facial muscles to get it down to your mouth, right? Yeah, or if it falls off on the ground or the table or whatever, like you can't use your hands, so then you're kind of like however you can to try to eat it down.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So I'm gonna we're going camping the day after Christmas, uh, for about a week with a bunch of families. So that's gonna be a fun game. I'm gonna get everyone munted on gin and tonic and then say, right, now it's time to eat a cookie off your forehead. Yeah, that's gonna be hilarious. I wonder how many cookies the dogs are gonna end up uh with that night. Um, very funny. And um cool. And so who who organized it all? And also, you you do realize now that my entire team want to come and work at Johnny Flash.
SPEAKER_06Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_02That's great.
SPEAKER_06We um so I had my account managers uh organize it, they're kind of like my project managers, and so they they came up with all the ideas and everything, and they led a lot of the different games and activities and stuff. We also did a gratitude ceremony. We told everyone ahead of time, hey, we're gonna have a moment during the team party where everyone's just gonna share something that they're thankful for. And so uh we did that as well. It was just it was a great time. Everyone had fun, they laughed. It was about 90 minutes. We told them, hey, it's gonna be about 90 minutes, and we played games, we gave out prizes. It was a lot of fun. It was cool.
SPEAKER_02Nice one, awesome. Uh someone says, uh James Murgenford says, I bet Flash is a fireball guy. Actually, I'm the fireball guy. I'm the fireball whiskey guy. Remember, remember in New York, Pete? Yeah, were you there that were you there at that time of night when we were doing that? Yeah, we did that. This is great. It's good fun. I remember it. Um, cool. So now how what what yesterday on the velocity on the not the velocity call, yesterday on the Mavericks call, we did a reflection on the year of the year. So what I want to do is I want to ask people in the chat, but then I want to ask you guys as well. The question I asked all the Mavericks yesterday is what progress have you made in 2021 that you can point to? Doesn't have to be, doesn't matter how big or small. What I'm curious about is what progress have you made in 2021 that you can point to and say, hey, that's different from when we started at the start of 2021. There's the progress that we've made, and I know we've made progress, and I can measure it by pointing to this number. So for example, Adam Silverman was talking about his team, like he can point to new team members and go, well, we've hired extra team members, and you know, he can also point to profit because he can look at his PL. We had some people saying, Oh, my processes are better. And I'm like, okay, that's not an answer. How do you know your processes are better? Uh they said, Well, because I'm not answering questions anymore, my team are delivering stuff without answering, without asking me questions. I'm not involved in client projects. So I'm curious for you guys in the chat. Uh, Jaden went from no clue to a clue. Actually, Jaden said he's on his way from going from a kid with a laptop to an agency owner, which I thought was excellent. And I also think that kid with a laptop is a great name for an agency. Yeah, it is a good agency name. So, so what progress have you guys made that you can actually point to and say there's measurable progress that we made in 2021? And uh Johnny, uh, what uh how what for you can you look at as a reflection of 2021 and say, well, we made progress in this area, and here's how I know we've made that progress.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean, we've hired three new team members in 2021. So we've got uh besides Jule, my wife and I run the business together. Besides the two of us, we've got eight team members. Uh, so there's 10 of us now on Johnny Flash, which is crazy. Um, I I used to run all the projects prior to this year where like we would get a new website built, I'd do all those weekly calls. I handed all that over to my account project manager. So they've been trained up after the kickoff call. They have all the weekly calls, they make the site map, the design brief, give all the tasks to the team. I mean, there's sites launching that like I didn't have anything to do with, which is great, and they're actually better than when I was doing all the things. So um, that's been a huge win. And I think our profit is about 50% higher than last year, and our profit was the best that we had had ever last year, and we're 50% up in profit uh from 2020. So wow, awesome.
SPEAKER_02All this before your 40th birthday, hey brother.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. Got a couple few days left.
SPEAKER_02Was it Christmas Eve? Is it? Yeah, Christmas Eve, yeah. That's awesome. That's so good. That's so good. Uncle Pete, crispy butter. How do you feel about 2021?
SPEAKER_03I'm just sitting here trying to remember when I turned 40. I can't remember back to the far. Um, so 2021, the number for me that I'm um happiest about is a big zero. Uh, there's a big zero in my name next to my name in our ticketing system because I am no longer involved in care plan at all. Like I don't even know what goes on in the care plan anymore. And uh that was a goal of mine as I was going away for about two weeks in September to Italy. And uh we got there and I haven't looked at the care plan since. So I have no idea what's going on in the care plan.
SPEAKER_02And and I think you know, two weeks in Italy without being on a call and without being on the phone and being uncontact.
SPEAKER_03No slack, no nothing. Yeah, no slack, no nothing. Right. Projects just kept going and everything was good.
SPEAKER_02I remember when Johnny said that he went, you Johnny, you said you you had a holiday and you went away for a couple of weeks, and the first day you had the shakes because you weren't looking at the business and you were like, Did you experience that? Because I'm about to go away for the first time after Christmas. I'm literally, I have no phone reception for a week, so I'm gonna be off the grid. And I'm I I have a tension headache just thinking about it, right? Like I'm like, oh, oh, oh, I'm starting to panic, right? I'm in fact, I'm thinking of every reason to try and cancel the camping trip so I can just stay home. Uh so I had it like did you jete? Did you experience the like the first couple of days where you were a little bit nervous and you were kind of like used to checking in on things and it was a new experience?
SPEAKER_03No, I it just I uh you know, I I really was able before I left to build up that trust in some key personnel and uh just kind of left it at that and told them they had my voxer. So then if they needed me, they could vox me. And only only once did I get voxed during the uh during the vacation because a client it turns out it was a coaching client, it wasn't really a client client, it was an agency mavericks client, was uh repeatedly emailing me and not really saying why. So Michael on my team said, I guess I should reach out to Pete. Turns out turns out she lived in Italy and wanted me to purchase land near her, so that's what the emergency was. That was the only time anybody in the company reached out to me was so that I could buy land in Italy, which I didn't do.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's amazing. Um uh Joseph Trebelse here says, How is everyone's office so beautiful? Well, uh it's not an accident. Uh, there's been a lot of intention really around. I mean, I don't know for you guys, but I try and make my office feel like a lounge room. I have some lounge chairs behind me, of course, and bookcases and stuff. And I want to basically, if I'm gonna come to work, you know, for the best part of the you know, five days a week, I want to feel like I'm kind of hanging out. I don't want to feel like I'm in an office. I want to feel like I'm hanging out a lounge room. I don't, this is not in my house, by the way. I have a separate office. I know you guys work from home, but I have a separate office. I need kind of that separation between home and work. So I have a separate office that I come to. And if I'm gonna come in here, like I want it to feel like a lounge room. I've got my guitar behind me. I sit in the chair and noodle on the guitar quite a bit, and I kind of want it to be a relaxing environment. And so this is not this is I've intentionally designed this space for it to be a cool space where I want to hang out and to try and be conducive to me being creative, right? Um, and so um uh Yosef, that it's it's intentional, and I think, and I know these guys have actually put a lot of effort and thought into the way that their office is and also the way their background looks, because we spend a lot of time on Zoom, right? And the amount of calls I have on Zoom with people, and I'm like, dude, like I wouldn't buy a website off you because you look like you're in your mom's basement or a torture chamber.
SPEAKER_03Like your your refrigerator is behind you, and you know, yeah, like raise the game.
SPEAKER_02Like raise the game, exactly. Look professional, you know.
SPEAKER_03It's funny, we all we actually all three of us have guitars in our background, don't we?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that that just adds some cool points. But I was gonna say, I think we I think we were all in a good position going into COVID because we've all been living on Zoom pre-COVID, you know, in terms of having a lot of calls with different uh Mavericks and other folks, right? And so I think uh, you know, we were I already we already had the light setups and the different things kind of going into COVID. So now everyone's comfortable on Zoom, it just makes it that much easier, you know, when we're doing calls and stuff.
SPEAKER_02And we also we also all use nice cameras, so we're not using USB cameras here. We're using we're all using the Sony A6400 mirrorless cameras and the Sigma 16mm Prime lens. And so that is what makes the backgrounds blurry and gives that really nice shallow depth of field. And that's been intentional as well. That hasn't been an accident. We set that up here in Melbourne and then we just duplicated it for all of our uh our coaches so that we all look professional and it's engaging. And I get on calls with people, you know, on sales calls with people, and they're like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm looking at that background. Like, I'm so familiar with that background, and it looks amazing, and it's a real talking point. And so um, I think you know, five years ago, if you were making video on the internet, you could just make a video and you could use the laptop and you could be looking up your nostrils, and it was like, oh my god, he's making a video. Now everyone's making video, right? So you got, I think you gotta um for me, it's about cutting through the noise and being a little more engaging. And I still think there is room for like the iPhone handheld video, I think is really authentic. But this kind of look that we've all gone for here is designed to help attract attention and and be more, you know, produce more engaging content rather than what everyone else is doing. So um, that's kind of been the theory behind that. Um, so what uh a couple of things in the comment here, Martin Postolov. I hope I'm saying your name right there, Martin. Hyde, my third team member, expanded the services portfolio, got a second retainer client, moved from web dev to a more broad digital agency type of company. Well done. Awesome. Nice. Uh and uh James Mugatroid, who I'm gonna out here as an anonymous Facebook user, because he said this yesterday uh on the call, on the Mavericks call. I have processes and tools that I didn't have before. But what he said yesterday is uh he's had a huge mindset shift from being a dev in the business to being an agency owner. He said on the call yesterday that he's basically he's for the last 15 years, he's just had the same year, 15 years in a row, right? Where it's been him doing everything. And now he's you know, uh focus number one in the new year is hiring a dev um and getting, you know, he's just like, okay, now I just want to get off the tools and I want to be an agency owner. And it's really interesting that you know it can take 15 years for that decision to happen, but then when it happens, and we've seen this with Adam Silverman too, when it happens, it happens, it's like once you see the light, there's no going back. It's like, oh, right, now I just want to hire more people because they can do more stuff and I can just focus. focus on staying in my sweet spot. Cool. So the the other thing that we talked about yesterday was what what's the intention for 2022? What's the what's the focus? What's the intention and how do you know that you're how do you know that you'll achieve it? In other words, it's all very good to say, you know, we had people on the call yesterday saying, well the focus is sales and growth. I'm like, okay, cool, but how will you know when you've achieved sales and growth? So what's the intention? And then what's the success criteria and how are you going to measure whether or not you achieve that intention? Johnny, have you thought about the plan for 2022?
SPEAKER_06Man, I'm always I'm always thinking ahead and stuff, but um you know we obviously we have our revenue goals in terms of that um you know I'm I'm I've been kind of focused on this pod structure of I've got my account managers and then they each have a developer and they each have a group of clients that they're servicing and projects that they're doing. And our designers have kind of been to the side of that because I haven't put the designers like firmly in one of the pods, but I'm basically kind of building out my own pods within the agency, which I think is pretty neat in the sense that the same clients are talking to the same account manager that have the same developer generally working on their site and so forth. And so we really get to know our clients well and I think um clients have really appreciated that and I think that's one of the reasons we've gotten so many not only referrals but also clients coming back to us and wanting us to do their next website or whatever because of how well we've taken care of them. So um yeah I mean we've got we've got goals and things that we want to achieve but I'm I'm excited about 2022. I think it's great.
SPEAKER_02Love it. Darren Craig says don't work with dicks in the sales process just print that out on a big A3 poster and stick it up in the office right no dicks this is a dick free zone. Dick free zone dick free zone and uh that's my plan to be more picky. Love it Darren uh go from 40% conversion on 200k to a 60% on 350k love it. What's conversion James what do you mean there uh go from a 40% conversion on 200k to 60% on 350 is that is that 40% margin 40% conversion walk us through that James what's the uh what's there? Alex uh Alex Jenowich has I hope I'm saying your name right there dude Alex Jenowich has uh hired Deer Designer and GoWP which is a killer combination by the way DeerDesigner and GoWP dedicated developer uh and was amazing and did my largest project ever will use that setup moving forward for every single project so similar to what Johnny's talking about this is like an outsourced pod right where you've got Deer Designer and GoWP and that's scalable I mean it's your margin old long term your margin's gonna hurt because you're paying a premium but and it and you know rather than having people work for you in-house. However it's a great place it's a great way to start it's very pretty low risk because if it doesn't work out or things slow down you can just kind of pause or cancel or you know so it's fairly low risk and a really good way to to uh to do that and but it is kind of that pod where you have a designer and a developer and then the missing piece then is really just getting someone to project manage it right it's it's a good way to supplement when your team is overloaded too if if if you're if you're in a spot where you've got a lot of sales coming in and a lot of projects at one time you can supplement it with a with a pod like that that can be temporary and then when things go back to normal you're back to normal.
SPEAKER_06Yeah and I and I'll just throw in too I like hiring my team members uh overseas at like 25 hours a week to start and what that does is it gives me the room and I think our team accelerator is a great example of this right you get the you get the right team member they're overseas the cost is maybe a little bit lower than if you were hiring someone local and then because I've hired them at 25 hours a week I can increase their hours you know when we get really busy uh which has worked really well for us in terms of like having the bandwidth there's also something about the the um yes the the cost is uh probably makes economic sense hiring someone say for example in Vietnam or the Philippines or Thailand or India versus locally because frankly the cost of wages in Australia are just fucking ridiculous like to hire a to hire a good full-time dev in Australia is going to cost you well over 100 grand right yeah because seeing where I am because software companies are just software companies are just chewing them up like Atlassian and you know Canva and campaign monitor like I remember at one point um campaign monitor basically just went around and just hired every Ruby on Rails dev in the country right and it was just like you just couldn't get a Ruby on Rails dev all these freelancers just went oh I can't do any more work because I'm working for campaign monitor so the large software companies are are kind of gobbling up that talent.
SPEAKER_02So that what happens is not only do you end up with ridiculous wages, but you end up with a shortage in the talent pool. And this is something I've been talking to Mavericks about recently is don't inhibit your growth by just restricting your talent pool to local talent opening up and getting your head around hiring someone in an other geographic territories yes it makes sense economically but also just makes sense from a pure numbers point of view. Like there are more there's more talent there available to work and there are I I don't know what the numbers would be but I would bet that the percentage of let's say 25 to 40 year old people in the Philippines studying code to become a developer would be way higher than the percentage of 25 to 40 year old Australians studying code to become a developer. Because they know that if they skill up chances are they'll get a job working for a remote company which is going to be way better for them economically than working for a local company. So the supply and demand there's more talent in those talent pools and they're learning at a faster rate than local talent. So and they're real hungry to learn and they work hard and I mean lots of lots of things right yeah yeah totally so it's uh uh the and one of the things that I've learned over the years is that I like to hire people full time as quickly as possible. Once I've tested them out a little bit I like to hire people full time because I want their focus I want their 100% focus on what we're doing and I'm happy to pay for that rather than someone saying yeah you will work 20 hours a week and then you end up sharing them with five clients I want someone just focused on what we're doing full time. Yeah um cool cool so uh Martin has I gotta I gotta interrupt you for a second I have to actually bounce into a call with a new maverick oh here we go at the same time so wish everybody happy holidays and uh we'll see you we'll see you when we come back thanks Uncle Pete Yeah no worries and we'll talk to you guys later peace thanks for playing look after that crispy butter voice while you're on holidays uh Pete's doing an onboarding call with a new Maverick which is excellent Martin has a great plan for 2022 getting enough retainer clients to be able to join Maverick's club yes love it love it love it love it um now uh if by the way uh Jesus who is working with us now no not Siri Siri's just said yes I didn't say hey Siri I said Jesus Jesus who's working with us now is based in California uh he is uh he's opened up some time on his calendar to take a one-on-one call with you guys to help you figure out what the plan is for 2022. So if you want to have a chat with someone on the team a one-on-one call with someone on the team quick 15, 20 minute call to figure out where you're at, where you want to go, work out what the plan is, see what resources we can get you plugged in to help you get there. Just leave a comment with the word maverick underneath this video and Jesus will pick up that conversation he'll ping you in Messenger book in a time jump on have a quick call uh as I said figure out where you are what the plan is for 2022 and get you connected with the right resources uh so stick the word maverick in the comments and uh Jesus will pick that up uh pick that up in in messenger um so the question for you guys is what is the plan for 2022 apart from uh Martin who we know now what is the plan for 2022 what is your intention for next year what is the focus and how how are you going to know when you've achieved it uh because I think it's all very well to have a plan but if you don't know what the the success criteria is then you don't know if you know when you actually get there you don't know what the finish line looks like.
SPEAKER_06Hey Johnny do you use a journal or like a a planning thing or is it just in your head um for like the big goals yeah yeah we we I have them right here on the board to the side of me in terms of the I actually actually have my flight plan and then I have my uh my kind of quarterly and yearly goals. I haven't actually shared this publicly but um should I should I should I share my um 2021 uh goal that I had yeah absolutely you know what I'm talking about right I'm gonna I'm gonna I've got the clap I've got the applause button right here man I'm ready to go so my my actually for it's it's been like a multi-year goal now I would say but my goal was to get you know obviously grow the agency enough that we could get our house paid off by the time I turned 40. I turned 40 in nine days and uh about three weeks ago we pushed the payment on the last payment for our house and so we are like a hundred percent debt free house and everything it's ridiculous it's crazy. I'm still like in disbelief of it myself actually honestly we don't have any debt in the business we don't have any car debt loan debt house debt anything like literally we're 100% debt free.
SPEAKER_02So it is like uh yeah we hit the goal like a month early and we have just been uh pinching ourselves you know to kind of uh just you know still trying to like realize it yeah so well done dude that's awesome man congratulations congratulations thank you yeah yeah and uh it's you know I I know you and I are both big fans of Dave Ramsey and we've been following his stuff for a long time and uh I we are loosely loosely loosely no promises yet but we are loosely planning on coming out to Nashville in June 2022 for a live event uh if the pandemic doesn't get in the way which I think it's going to but anyway we're you know starting to add more restrictions here the UK has just added more restrictions so who knows but anyway all goes well we will be in Nashville 2022 for a live event and I know that that's a huge opportunity for you to do the debt free yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna go on the program and and and do my debt free screen I can't wait I can't wait for that man that would just be incredible that would be great that's yeah that's awesome um and uh I've never been a Nashville and I would love to go visit I would just love to go visit the Ramsey uh the building out there that they built they just built an like a couple of years ago they paid cash yeah and built an 80 million dollar purpose built building it's just ridiculous isn't it I know man I know it's incredible and I get you get some free cookies when you go there so I'm I'm I'm already I'm ready to go we're gonna put the cookies on the forehead and try that's amazing um and I've never been to Nashville and it's the music city it's the it's the you know it's the home home of music so I definitely want to go so what is the plan for you guys I love this plan from um uh oh come on uh Jacovia cart ride I love this my plan is to get a Tesla model X so I'm gonna need to go from 9k a month recurring to at least 25k a month recurring you're in the right place Jacovia uh I drive a Tesla model three which is my little runabout which I absolutely love and I've wanted an X for a long time I've I've since decided to not get an X just yet and I'll walk you through the logic one is you can't get them in Australia. There are just no Model X's available the next one coming will be next year late next year in Australia and it's the new model and it's going to be about 180 grand 180 grand in Australia right which is which is you know that's like that is uh that I don't care what school you come from or or or how much money you earn that is a significant chunk of change. The other thing is we've got two kids right and we go camping and we do you know road trips and that while I love fully electric vehicles don't get me wrong um and a big advocate for that the Tesla is not if you can like throw a tent in the back and a whole bunch of camping gear because of the shape of the Tesla it you just lose a bit of storage room uh because of the rounded shape right so here's what I've decided on instead I'm actually getting a Kia Sorrento plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and what that means is that you can drive it in full electric mode for about 70 kilometers and then after that it switches into a hybrid which is a hybrid of petrol and uh electricity which is not ideal but in Australia we just don't have the market is just not big enough we just don't have the same choice of electric vehicles in fact cars that size the only electric vehicle that size in Australia is the Tesla Model X and I've just explained why that's not going to be ideal yet. So once the kids have grown up a little bit the plan is still definitely to get a an X once we're not carting around gear and also once they're more available in the country. So in the meantime I'm making a bit of a compromise by getting the Kia Sorinto which I've put an order in on and I'm probably still gonna have to wait until March or April next year for that to arrive because you know again they're just not um they're just not they're just not sending them to Australia because uh you know uh LC300X what is that what is the LC300X which uh now we're talking about cars. Tell me what model that is the who makes it what what make is it? Um uh what do you drive Johnny?
SPEAKER_06Uh I've got a uh 2016 Honda Accord that has like the Apple CarPlay and and all that stuff. I totally like it. Although I hardly go anywhere so usually I'm taking usually I'm taking the family van which that's on our list of 2022 to uh to upgrade because we've got a kind of older minivan that we towed around our four kids.
SPEAKER_02So yeah and that's the other thing too is like you know what it's like when you've got young kids right they just destroy the car. Yeah it's like I'm even nervous about getting the new Kia Sorento because I'm like it's just going to be destroyed in like two years you know there's just shit everywhere and there's food and they vomit and they wee on the seat and it's just chaos. They don't really um anyway so uh apart from buying new cars what's the plan for 2022 with you guys what is the uh what's the intention for next year and how do you know you're gonna get there and so what I when I say how do you know you're gonna get there what I mean is like what's how what's the success criteria? How will you know? It's all very well to say you know I'm gonna remove myself from the project management, but what does that actually look like? Projects go out the door you're not involved uh you know how will you know when you've achieved it I guess what does the finish line look like?
SPEAKER_06So I took a 16 day vacation without my laptop in this year, uh earlier this summer, which was amazing as we were talking about a little bit earlier. And I would love to like get that up to a month uh of not you know you know not dealing with the business not having my computer not being on standby or whatever and uh and just kind of stretch that out. So it's that's definitely something I've got to I think the key for me to be able to do that is to actually plan a month long you know time away so that I'm not just kind of around the house tempted to try to uh jump into the business or get on the computer, you know?
SPEAKER_02Totally. Yeah it's um I I can't stay home if I'm if I'm off work I can't just like even on the weekends I struggle. I'm like I just got to get out of the house get out of the city go on road trips on the weekends because if I'm even around the house yeah that's like tempting yeah yeah I'm just thinking I'll just check something on Slack and so I like to try and just get out and just completely change the landscape and change what you focus on we went to Hillsville which is about an hour and a quarter out of Melbourne last weekend with the kids and and their cousins and Hillsville's this beautiful little sleepy hollow in the hills with these you know beautiful gum trees everywhere and there's the Hillsville Sanctuary which is an Australian native animal zoo essentially it's a very small zoo just full of you know kangaroos and wombats and wallabies and dingos and this amazing amphitheatre where they have the a bird show where they bring out these incredible birds that are so well trained they fly around they fly right over your head there's this huge barking owl flying right toward you and goes straight over your head and goes to the keeper who's got some snacks for it really well trained birds a big wing uh uh um um uh what's the wedge wedgetail eagles massive wedge tail eagle cockatoos parrots it was incredible and I I just got home after three days and I was like wow I haven't pretty much haven't thought about work for three days which is just a really good mindset shift and a good kind of reset uh because even if you know it's what it's like as a business owner even if you're not working one of the challenges is to just like put your head into another yeah not be thinking about it right exactly yeah which is which is tricky. Jacovia says for me uh 2022 would be only doing a few consultations or fractional type roles and the business is running with me not having to be involved in every aspect of the day to day are you familiar with the fractional kind of fractional CMO role Johnny that he's talking about no so fractional we just hired a fractional CMO actually to help us here because the sort of you know I'm just trying to get out of every seat in the business and marketing uh is kind of one of those things that is my sweet spot but I just don't I mean I you know I I mean and I love it but it just means that I can't do other things like you know think about who to hire next and think about larger um strategic things and so fractional CMO is someone who basically kind of works with you a fraction of the time right they then they're not a full time uh they're usually remote they kind of uh our fractional CMO Tissu we meet with him once a week he looks at our numbers he looks at our business and he goes right this week we're gonna do this and he just fixes like one thing a week and uh he's performance based which is amazing like his offer was too good to refuse so he only gets paid on additional revenue that he helps create which is great so very low risk and he does a little bit of like he'll do some copy he knows enough that he can kind of log in and fix a page in WordPress if he needs to but our team do uh most of the implementation he just comes up uh with the strategy and the and he acts like a true CMO is like we have a weekly meeting he's like all right cool let's fix this this week and then our team go and do stuff and then we report back and make sure that you know we can track everything so that he gets paid on the performance. So that's super interesting and I think it's a really good model because it's uh more strategy and less of the you know kind of detail yeah less of the actual doing which is good I'm just trying to also find out who these people are who are anonymous Facebook users. Daniel Doty click the link and give StreamYard permission my friend so that we know who you are. So 2022 is building a team to hand off builds after the design phase it takes two weeks off each quarter uh take two weeks off each quarter one week road trip to see clients and one week off interesting instead of waiting till the end of the year for a holiday burnt out yes so scheduling those two weeks off every quarter love it Dan uh my friend Dale Beaumont does that every year he looks at the calendar and he's got like you look at his calendar as like there's two weeks in April where he's just not around. He's just on holidays he's completely disconnected love it. And I think he ends up taking like eight weeks off a year. When he works he works his ass off and when he's on holiday he does not work at all. He's completely disconnected so um I think just having that intention on the calendar as well and planning it out rather than being one thing that I'm trying to get better at is is is looking ahead a little bit more and planning stuff in the calendar rather than just being a bit more reactive.
SPEAKER_06Hey Troy I got a little um thing I've been working on for um you know the website worksheet from the old you know WP elevation blueprint been kind of working on like a visual express version. We haven't launched it yet but you you want a little sneak peek? Absolutely cool I'll show you um okay so basically the idea is like how could we get like some basic information without having to like fill out as much stuff or it whatever. So you can kind of choose whatever things you're interested in and then it kind of customizes the journey for you uh based on that you know and we we pay out a referral fee so we want to know if someone referred them um and then it'll kind of ask you questions tailored to you know are we're we're doing a lot of like either websites for businesses that are trying to generate leads e-commerce or like church and nonprofit right so they can kind of choose whichever one and then based on what they choose it'll tailor kind of the experience a little bit further. We're just kind of getting a sense of like okay how big is this site and then depending on what type of website they said it's going to ask them well first I'll ask them if they want copywriting done uh but then it'll tailor the experience to even further in terms of like okay this is typically what we might have on a service based uh website that's trying to generate leads you know which of these things do you need? And so we're not like trying to generate an automatic like you know, price at the end of this, but just trying to get a quick amount of information, you know, so that we can then set up a call and kind of uh dive in, you know, triage this and go into it deep or whatever. But um love it. Yeah. And so it's just kind of a quick sort of visual thing that they can kind of fill out. And then um at the end, obviously they'll put in you know uh their details and and then we'll kind of go from there. So love it. How what did you use to build it? Uh just in gravity forms. Wow nice well you can use fluent forms or I mean there's lots of tools that you could use right I love the progress.
SPEAKER_02I love the customized progress meter. That's super cool. And uh what what so what's the what's the hypothesis here?
SPEAKER_06Like why why why are you building this? So basically right now if they want like if they want to fill it out we have kind of like the long like five page website worksheet with like lots of questions. And so basically now what we're gonna do when they say they want a quote we're gonna basically say do you want the express version that takes less than five minutes gives you know kind of rough ballpark whatever or do you want like the detailed like longer takes you know 20 minutes or whatever to fill out and we do have clients amazingly enough that will fill out the long website worksheet and then we land a 20 to $25,000 more project you know and they took like probably 30 minutes or an hour to provide like tons of detail but then we also have other clients where they're like hey we just we want to get to the steps faster. We don't want to have to fill out a 30 minute form you know and so we're kind of just trying to accommodate that still get some you know have a little hoop for them to jump through but not to be so much of a uh hurdle that they have to go through in order to work with us right yeah got it um James Murgatroyd The lizard brain is in overdrive and says is that a conversational form in gravity forms um not sure what a conversational form is an obvious it's like a type form it's like it kind of mimics the type yeah we that's kind of what we were going for um the team did the team did all the things with the design and the building of it and everything so I I just know they use gravity forms. I don't have a lot more detail than that.
SPEAKER_02I love the fact that you don't know I don't know that's the correct answer. I don't know I'm an agency owner I don't know what my I don't know how my team did it but I know that my team did it which is awesome.
SPEAKER_06They did a great job.
SPEAKER_02We're just we're tweaking a few things we're gonna launch it here uh next next in 2022 so in January someone said for me uh 2022 it's processes defining what I do better and being pickier and getting rid of my 100 to-do lists I'm not sure who that is but uh awesome thank you for sharing that um and click the link to give stream yard permission to know your name and your phone that was that was darren craig with that one that you just darren craig gotcha gotcha um well you know darren team will help you do that man team will help you get rid of your to-do list because you can delegate to the team I was talking to someone I've had two conversations this week with people who are like well you know I don't I'm not I don't really want to grow sales at the moment I'm like walk me through that tell me why you did it what's the thinking and the what it came down to is a fear of taking on too much work yeah being overwhelmed and what that comes down to is not having enough team members or the team not uh performing the way that they should be yes Darren you did ghost me after my follow-ups uh that's okay we can reconnect brother um and so my approach is this always be avid like never stop advertising never stop selling never stop recruiting that's my mantra right because the only way as you know Johnny the only way to get your business generating a profit without you doing all of the things is to hire good people and let them do their thing. And the only way to pay for that is to sell more stuff. Yep and the only way to sell more stuff is to constantly do your positioning your marketing your promotion whatever I'm pretty much the sales guy now honestly I I you know I'm I'm on the sales calls had two today normally December slows down for us you know right before the holidays had two new calls about two new projects today got two scheduled for tomorrow and so I'm just you know I'm the sales guy and the uh the coach yeah that's it uh so you know foot on the pedal in terms of sales because that helps pay for people and then hire good people let them do their thing mentor them train them give them the resources they need to be successful and then just get out of the way intention for 2022 is never stop advertising never stop selling never stop recruiting like always be always be advertising selling and recruiting um uh that's the that's the uh that's the way Christopher Stratman says sales the last week and this week have been off the charts good excellent all right cool cool there's a lot of people that got to burn budgets for 2021 that are on a fiscal you know 2021 calendar year thing and they want to spend some money I'm happy to take it exactly that's right even if we can't start until February we're happy to take your deposit now we're happy to take it and reserve your spot yep Johnny Flash thank you so much for being a part of it and thank you so much for being such an integral part of what we do here at Agency Mavericks with all of our clients and for sharing your successes and what it is working in your agency. Really appreciate you brother and looking forward to a great 2022 and looking forward to coming out to the States again next year man and hanging out in real life. Can't wait can't wait awesome all right gang have a great uh have a great holiday season whatever you're doing and we'll see you back here early 2022 on the agency hour. Again if you want to jump on a call with one of our team you want some one-on-one time to help you work out the plan for next year and get you plugged into the into the right resources uh just drop the word maverick into the comments and Jesus will pick up the conversation and have a chat with you. All right gang have a great uh holiday season we'll see you all next year bye for now see you guys thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast.
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