I think agency owners, we started our business because, you know, we wanted more freedom, we wanted to make more money, we wanted to kind of have a bigger impact. But the other day, we want to enjoy it, we want to really love it. And I’m truly blessed that I have with business, both with plumbing and HVAC SEO or agency and my training company, seven figure agency that I truly I truly love I truly enjoy. I know that’s not the case for everybody that gets into business, sometimes we, we start our agency out, and we call and get a couple of clients and we, you know, struggle to get those clients results. And then we struggled to grow the business to make enough money that we can pay the bills. And I just thought it would be a good a good opportunity to kind of unpack what I did within our agency within our business to create something we truly love and that we truly, truly enjoy. And so Mark Twain is famously quoted as saying, saying, um, find something that you enjoy to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life or something along those lines. What is it Foreigners as business owners, that quote is good. But the fact is, we don’t want to just do our job, right? If you if you take that quote, and you apply it to running an agency, it’s okay. I like doing websites and SEO, or I like running Facebook ads. And I enjoy that. So I should just do that. And if I do it well, and I enjoy it, I don’t have to work hard, but I can still make some money. The reality is, as entrepreneurs that work that job isn’t what is going to create a successful business that’s going to create freedom that’s going to have a big impact. It’s really building the systems, the procedures, the team and the model to grow and scale your business. So my first business I some of you have heard this word, my first foray into running a digital marketing agency was actually a company called develop comm where I was building websites hosting websites, for like $1,000 and then $50 per month, I learned how to build the websites in Dreamweaver and write the content, and I was constantly chasing my tail for the better part of three years. not making enough money to pay myself anything but working extremely hard I did not enjoy it as a matter of fact I really disliked it. But I knew I wanted to be successful I wanted to build a business I wanted to develop assets and I was a big student of the game I read a lot of the books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and the E myth revisited and secrets of the Millionaire Mind. And I there was something about Secrets of the Millionaire Mind that that landed on me which was if you really want to be in a certain type of business, the best place to start is to is to get in the corridor like find a place that’s succeeding at that go work there. You know, cut your teeth on it learn the process then and that’s what I did I wound up working with reachlocal for a couple years I’m very very successful you know say what you don’t like about them but very successful high growth business spent about a year and a half there learned how to sell learn the business model learned a lot and then with that I was like okay, I think I’ve got some some ideas I can carry over into my into my other business which we We started with just Clickbank and then became plumbing an H back SEO or digital marketing agency serving hundreds of plumbing HVC companies across the country. But down to the specifics, right What did I do to make this a business I love First of all, I made sure I was doing something I was I was passionate about right, I have a high degree of passion for internet marketing, websites, SEO, helping businesses and anytime increase their sales grow their revenues, like I’m extremely juiced and passionate about that. And I always knew that was the line of business that I wanted to be in. So just found something I really wanted to do. And then as the business started to grow, my thought from the very beginning was
how do I make sure that I build a team around this so that it’s not just me trying to do everything? I’m not going to be the guy building the websites doing the SEO claiming the directories, very strategically figuring out what am I best at what do I enjoy the most? And then how do I put people in Place to do the to do the work. So the company continue to grow without me. And so if you kind of think that through as digital marketing agencies, the first thing we need to remove ourselves from is operations, right? Once you figure out how to sell and laying clients, the first thing you have to figure out is, okay, if when I sell a client, we’re going to do a website, SEO pay per click, we’re gonna run some campaigns, who’s gonna do that work. And once there’s enough revenue, and once we had enough money to do that, that was the first thing we replaced operations, we put somebody in place full time to take that to take that on. And then the next thing was kind of once we got to 20 or so clients, the big problem was, or the big challenge was what the clients need to be. They need to be managed, like somebody needs to be showing them the reports and kind of explaining what we’re doing and painting the vision for where we’re going as a company. So the next thing we need to figure out what’s Okay, who can we put in place to manage these client relations so they can get an amazing result so that they’re well taken care of, but also so that we’re able to do what we do best. Really, as you build a team, what you want to be thinking about is How can I find people that play at what I have to work at? There’s an amazing book by john Ostroff called the answer lots of interesting stuff in that book. The one thing that stuck out to me that I’ve taken the building this business that I love is finding people that play at what you have to work at. There’s things you’re great at, you’re naturally talented at that you just do well, right? For me, it’s I like public speaking. I like selling I like business development. I don’t necessarily like the behind the scenes doing of the work. And as entrepreneurs, we think we have to do it all We think we have to be the expert, we need to know how to do it all we could probably do most of it ourselves. The reality is there are people that are passionate about that piece of the equation that really love doing those specific types of things. And it’s an extremely empowering way to look at it and it really helps you realize if you’re going to grow a digital marketing agency that you love that provides money that provides freedom that provides impact, you know, do something you really want to do. But then as you get successful as you start to land clients and deliver results, build a team put some systems and procedures in place, so you don’t have to do it all yourself. And so kind of as we were growing our business as we were growing our agency, there came a point in time where we were a little bit bottleneck because me and my business partner, Dean, were the thought leaders in the company, right? We were the ones thinking about what we’re going to do next and setting the goals. And we’re both very,
we’re both very fast start type individuals, right, come up with the idea, and then throw it over the fence to somebody else, but it was all on us to execute and to kind of make sure the team was doing what needed to be done. We came across this amazing book called traction by Gina Whitman. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. traction, it kind of outlines the entrepreneur operating system EOS, and it’s really all around how do you build a leadership team And so that it’s not you running the company and having a bunch of peons that you say, do this, do that, do this, do that holding them accountable. But it’s really about how do you figure out what your organization chart looks like or what your accountability chart really looks like and the different functions within the business? And then how do you raise up leaders to take complete accountability of that aspect within the business. So within, you know, the websites within the paid search strategy within the account management within, you know, even just managing the team, there’s got to be leaders in those areas that really love it that are passionate about it, that understand exactly how to do that work that kids can raise up, I can tell you that once we transitioned our business from, you know, me and Dean being at the top and just having people underneath us that we’re doing what we said to developing a leadership team following kind of the entrepreneur operating system model. That’s really where a lot of the freedom came within our business because we were able to completely step out and focus on the things that We enjoy most things that we do very best. And the company really even started to flourish even more. And so that’s just a couple things you know how to build a business that you that you love. Do something you’re passionate about first, you know, first and foremost, build a team, and really find people that can play what you have to work at. And then, you know, focus on the impact, really focus on helping the people that you serve, the clients you serve, get amazing results, right. If you help enough people get what they want, you can absolutely get anything that you want, and be conscious of the fact that you didn’t probably start your business to have to work 60 hours a week, you probably started the business so that you could serve your clients so that you can make the money that you want to have, but ultimately so that you could have the freedom and the flexibility to spend time with the kids or with the family to take the travels. And so be conscious of the fact that’s what you’re after this whole hustle life. style where you know, you’re going to work 60 hours a week, and you’re just going to grind grind, grind, grind, grind. I don’t I don’t buy into that, right? That’s not why I started my business. That’s probably what not why you started, either. So I’d love to hear from you guys in the comments, you know? Do you love your business? are you passionate about what you’re doing? are you passionate about the work that you do day in and day out? Just let me know in the comments. I’d love to kind of have a conversation around this. And if not, you’re the architect of your business. You’re the architect of your of your life. So you have the opportunity to decide if I’m not happy with the way that it’s going right now, something needs to change, right? It might be your business model. It might be the way that you’re approaching your team and kind of trying to maybe do everything yourself. It might just be a change in the way that you operate your business as a whole. So that’s my two cents on this front. Hopefully this has been helpful. Hopefully it’s been useful. We’d love to hear from you in comments, and I’ll talk to you soon.
