Scaling Up Your Agency - Are You Being Productive, Or Just Busy?
How many times have you been around other business owners (not just other branding agency owners) and you hear people say ‘Yeah, I’m good - really busy!’
It’s usually accompanied by a slightly forced smile, raised eyebrows, and perhaps quickly changing the subject.
So are these people actually productive, or just busy?
Which one are you?
I’m going to call BS here (hey, it’s what I do, right?) and say that most people - whether or not they run a business - will confuse being busy with being productive.
It’s almost a ‘badge of honor’ to say how busy you are - as if that’s a measure of success.
Here’s the dirty little secret that NO ONE wants to tell you my friend.
Being busy has NOTHING to do with being productive or making money.
In fact, it usually leads to overwhelm, exhaustion and burnout.
And your revenue? Well, if you’re burnt out, I’ll bet you’re in no position to do sales calls or serve clients.
So how do you tell the difference? And once you know the difference between being busy and being productive, how do you ensure you stay productive long enough to keep scaling your agency?
Stay tuned - I’ve got the goods.
Fear - it’s a great motivator…but not much else
‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’.
It’s a great bumper sticker, and there’s probably times in your life when you’ve just had to suck it up and get it done.
But there’s one big flaw when fear becomes part of the equation in your agency.
When you take actions through fear, those actions aren’t usually the ones that generate the biggest results. In fact, it’s usually the opposite.
This is because you’re in ‘fight-flight-freeze’ mode if you’re coming from fear - it’s your primal instinct for survival.
In this case, your survival instinct will lead you to take ANY project or ANY client so you’ve got money coming in and can pay your bills.
But saying yes too quickly to those opportunities can mean that you end up paying for it in the long run.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you’re getting close to the end of the month, and you haven’t hit your revenue goal, and you’ve got a big supplier bill coming up that’s already overdue.
You normally charge $30k for a full branding project, but you don’t have many leads who are able or willing to pay that.
You have a couple of possible clients who will go ahead if you drop your rates by $10k, but you’ve resisted going ahead and closing that client, as you know that it’ll be a nightmare to do the work.
The clock is ticking…what do you do?
If you’re coming from fear, you would probably go ahead and close that client - hey, $20k is better than nothing right now, right?
The trouble is, you still have to do $30k worth of work for $20k. And if the client is already picky on your rates, they’ll want multiple revisions and the timeline could drag on. So it will take up all your time in servicing that one client, effectively wiping out any time for generating new clients, so next month, you’ll be in the same position.
Here’s option two - the one where you act from a place of confidence, instead of fear.
Time is ticking, and you’ve got financial commitments, and yes, $20k is better than nothing, so you can go ahead and close that sale.
But there’s one BIG difference.
Before you close that client, you work out what $20k worth of work would look like, and then offer that, and NOTHING more.
Then you can say ‘Hey Mr. Prospect - sure, I’ll knock $10k off, as I get that you have a limited budget right now.
Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll get you set up with the new website, logo and social media graphics, but we’ll take out the content strategy, marketing plan and business cards.’
That’s a win all round. You get the cash flow you need, you protect your valuable business development time, and you take the lead with your client, directing them as the expert in what you’re doing, rather than being dictated to by their wallet.
All it takes is taking a moment before rushing in and saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity that comes along - another thing that’s a great bumper sticker, but not much else.
Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable - the real secret to being productive
Now here’s a slogan I CAN actually get behind!
And it’s probably because I’ve come to love it over the years, as have my students, and as will you.
Being uncomfortable just boils down to this.
There’s things that you would probably rather not do in your agency, but you kinda have to do them anyway.
For instance, you probably really don’t like doing sales calls. Maybe it’s because you’ve had a bad experience with them and now you just want to avoid them altogether.
Hate to tell you this, but in our line of work, you still need to have at least SOME level of interaction with a prospect before they become a client.
Often, the thought of how uncomfortable something will be is way worse than the task itself.
It’s just that your brain has tricked you into thinking ALL future situations will be similar to the unpleasant ones in the past.
So what if you flipped that on its head, and remembered a really great sales call you had? And then decided that all future sales calls will be equally great?
And even if that doesn’t pan out, what if you decided that it’s just the nature of doing business, and sometimes it’s just a numbers game? That another ‘uncomfortable’ sales call in the future doesn’t mean they’ll all go that way?
What would that be like?
This is how you get comfortable being uncomfortable.
And this is how you start being productive, instead of just busy.
You take something that you keep resisting doing in your business, and reframe it in a way that really empowers you, or, at the very least, gets you comfortable.
Then you take that action!
Mind games? Maybe.
A bit woo-woo? Perhaps.
Effective? 100%.
Scaling up without sacrificing your sanity
I’m going to take a stab and guess that you’re starting to get a pretty good handle on how to be productive, instead of just busy.
But there’s a bit more to it than that.
Being just ‘busy’, as I’ve already said, is a surefire way to end up exhausted and resentful about your agency, if not broke.
So what do you do?
First, you need to shift your mindset from thinking that in order to run a highly successful agency, you need to have a big team of employees, working on big projects all the time.
Nope, not true.
In fact, having been there and done that with having a team on payroll, I can tell you first hand how inefficient and costly it is.
In fact, it was the reason why, on paper, our boutique agency was in the high-six figures, but whatever came in as revenue went out almost as quickly in expenses.
So cutting that out is the first step to reclaiming your sanity - just the thought of having to make payroll every month would keep me up at night.
Next, block out half a day each quarter (at least) to work out what your highest value tasks are. You identify this by looking at what has brought you the most revenue and/or cost you the least.
For example, you may find that doing a guest blog post or guest speaking spot with a non-competing business brings you a ton of leads each month, that has you booked up with sales calls, whereas doing lots of 1-1 coffee dates doesn’t work as well.
Or you might find that you can generate a lot of value and referrals when you add 30 min of marketing strategy at the end of each branding project you complete, and it doesn’t cost you anything, as the bulk of your work is already done and your client is already there with you.
By figuring out what these activities are (and it’s usually no more than 3-4), you can hone in on those and drop the rest. Or, at the very least (yes, I hear ‘bright-shiny-object-syndrome withdrawal loud and clear) you can park them for the next quarter.
Then, do those and ONLY those for at least 90 days, to build traction.
You’ll find you get to a point where you could automate these tasks, which frees you up to try another marketing activity to scale up.
The key is consistency. Marketing and scaling up your agency really is a long game. Yes, you could get new dream clients in a matter of weeks, but building a pipeline is the real prize.
That takes time, and you can sleep better at night accepting that fact. It won’t take years, but it’ll need a few months at least.
What makes this process take longer (and gets branding agency owners frustrated) is constantly jumping from strategy to strategy before giving something a chance to generate results.
So pump the brakes, and choose a few marketing strategies that you know work, and crush them!
Failure - the key to success
I can’t, in good conscience, write any article about productivity without talking about failure.
Most of us have a screwed up relationship with failure - we think failing is bad, and success is good.
Well, let me put some perspective there for you.
Imagine you had a huge number of leads come into your business, and you were totally excited about all these new people you could close as clients.
Your foreseeable financial future is taken care of!
So, you’d call that a success, right?
OK. Now look at the flip side.
All those leads need to be spoken to somehow, and it seems like there’s just not enough hours in the day.
And you notice that as you’re getting around to speaking to them all, about 80% aren’t even a good fit for your services, and don’t have the budget for branding.
Would you still call this a success?
And this is why branding agency owners (and even the wider entrepreneurial community) falls into the trap of being busy v. being productive.
It sounds really great to say you’re ‘So busy with loads of leads’ - right?
Except the truth is not as pretty.
The way to shift this is to embrace failure.
I promise - not another bumper sticker.
You’ve got to see failure for what it is, and what it’s not.
Failure doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, you should pack up and go get a job or any other crap you like to tell yourself and others.
It just means that you had a particular goal, in a certain time, that didn’t get accomplished.
I love the analogy of a baby learning to walk - how many thousands of times does it fail at that?
And I can guarantee you that, not once did I have the urge to punish my little boy when he was trying to take his first steps.
And if you’re a parent, or around little kids, I’ll bet you're the same.
Little kids just get it, don’t they?
They may stomp their feet a bit, but they won’t give up. They inherently know that if they keep at something long enough, they’ll get the result.
And by that token, they’re incredibly productive.
What’s the lesson here?
Well, ask yourself where you’ve given up on something too soon.
I’m not talking about marketing or other things you did in your business that kept costing you money with no return - stopping those is just being pragmatic.
I’m talking about where you stopped building your pipeline because you got a few leads that weren’t qualified or signed up clients who weren’t great.
What if you took that feedback from the failure and course corrected instead?
What opportunities didn’t you see that you could now test?
Those are the kinds of actions that are productive, and actually get results - not just busy work.
Here’s what you need to get…
When we take actions based on fear, that usually results in wasted time - we’re keeping busy just so we can be ‘seen’ to be taking action - to others and oftentimes to ourselves.
Taking a step back, getting clear on your goals and why scaling your agency is important, and who you really want to serve will give you a crystal clear picture of the actions to take that produce the most results.
Take lessons from everywhere - especially your failures. They’ll teach you the most about success, and about what is the most productive use of your time.
And just give yourself some time! Being productive may not always look ‘sexy’, but if you’re consistent, it’ll give you the biggest payoff and peace of mind.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your way to finding the most productive strategies and all my other tools to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!