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Eggs 458: 5 Key Systems Every Agency Must Have to Scale with Nick Avaria · EGGS! The Podcast

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And now back to the show. Hey, everybody.
2:13
Welcome back to Eggs the podcast.
2:14
Today's special guest is Nick Averia.
2:17
Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me,
2:20
Ryan. Glad to be here.
2:21
Absolutely thrilled to have you. Let's, I guess, kind of start at
2:24
the beginning. Why don't you tell us a little
2:26
bit about who you are and what you do?
2:28
Yeah. So right now I'm basically an
2:31
agency consultant. I own my own agencies still like
2:35
marketing agencies. And my background actually came
2:40
from like, you know, M&A. So I did like a lot of mergers
2:43
and acquisitions and not the agency space to begin with.
2:48
I transitioned over and I opened my own consulting firm helping
2:52
people do mergers and acquisitions for a bit.
2:54
We also had like this digital marketing component, which was
2:57
like really opportunistic of us and we eventually sold that
3:00
business to a competitor and I stayed along with them.
3:05
They were an agency primarily and what we ended up doing is a
3:09
few M and as you know hit kind of like that eight figure plus
3:12
mark after you know, 2 1/2 three years.
3:16
And basically you then went out on my own, opened my own
3:20
agencies back up again and we've been kind of growing ever since.
3:24
Now I'm basically just out here helping agency owners and other
3:28
entrepreneurs like on how to scale and grow their businesses.
3:31
Yeah, I love that. No, and I think maybe one of the
3:33
places we should start is kind of, you know, if you can go back
3:36
and think small a little bit, right.
3:37
I mean, it sounds like you've obviously achieved some success
3:39
in this business. I think there's a lot of
3:42
agencies, however, that sort of are started as a labor of love
3:44
or maybe there's a designer or a, you know, project manager or
3:48
somebody who did something for a company and then decides to go
3:51
out and start their own firm. But I think that everybody wants
3:54
to jump to the end, which is, hey, I want to be able to sell
3:56
my company or, or, or get a bag and retire.
3:59
But, but I think for most folks, they, they don't even know where
4:02
to get the work from. And so I wondered if you
4:05
wouldn't start a little bit. It just sort of like the the
4:07
early foundations of what actually makes a business
4:10
sellable or marketable in the future for, you know, let's say
4:13
entry level to mid level entrepreneurs who might be
4:16
trying to get started down that path.
4:18
Yeah. I mean, the number one lesson
4:20
that I can, you know, really impart that I had to learn the
4:22
hard way was really you need to create the business in a way
4:28
where you're not needed. Like that's really what it is.
4:32
And you have to basically wake up every single day figuring out
4:37
how to replace yourself from every single thing that you do.
4:40
Because one of the main things that's going to really affect
4:42
the valuation of a smaller business is its dependence on
4:47
the actual founder, right? Or entrepreneur.
4:49
So, you know, if you're required to do the day-to-day work,
4:55
that's not good. If you're required to do the
4:57
marketing or the sales, again, not so great.
5:01
If you're required day-to-day to do leadership, that's not as
5:04
bad. But if you can fully replace
5:06
yourself, that's really what you want.
5:09
So you want to be in a position where you're working on the
5:11
business rather than in the business.
5:13
And that's like really like lesson #1 and to do that, I
5:17
basically think of this, you know, like, if you want to, it's
5:20
like, OK, well, where where do I begin with this replacement of
5:23
self conversation, right? Because like, that's a lot to
5:26
take in. Well, number one, you got to
5:29
replace yourself like administratively, right?
5:31
So if you're doing admin tasks, if you're doing, you know, like
5:35
book your own bookkeeping, things like that, you need to
5:37
outsource all that as fast as possible.
5:40
You know, if you're large enough and you have the margin, get
5:42
yourself an assistant. So you're not doing like, you
5:44
know, that kind of admin either. So admin's number one then #2 is
5:49
replacing yourself from client delivery, right?
5:53
So I don't care what type of delivery it is, There's like 2
5:57
phases to delivery #1 to me is like the day-to-day work of
6:00
delivery. Phase two, if you're an agency
6:03
specifically, is like the client interaction piece, right?
6:06
So if you need to interact with clients like that would be like
6:08
the second part of delivery, then you get into replacing
6:12
yourself from like the marketing perspective.
6:14
Then you replace yourself from the the sales side, meaning like
6:17
you're no longer the salesperson.
6:20
And then lastly, you would be replacing yourself as a leader,
6:25
right? Which basically means like
6:26
you're hiring like a presenter C CEO kind of person, right?
6:30
But that's sort of like what I think about as like the
6:34
replacement ladder of what you got to replace yourself on, you
6:37
know, one after the other. And if you do that, you're
6:40
probably going to be in a pretty good spot.
6:42
Yeah, no, I love that. Well, I think one of the things
6:45
that people struggle with like I could sort of alluded to is a
6:47
lot of people start these agencies because they had a
6:49
skill, right. And and you see this in other
6:51
kinds of entrepreneurial ventures too, you know, like, I
6:53
don't know, I was a commercial electrician for a guy and then
6:57
I'd go out and start my own business, right.
6:59
So, so I'm really at the core and you hear this and in people
7:02
who talk about entrepreneurial stuff or they write about it,
7:05
they talk about you didn't make a business, you've made a job,
7:08
right? And so there's a little bit of a
7:09
difference there. So I think there's definitely a
7:11
mindset shift that has to take place.
7:13
And I wonder if we could spend just a little bit time digging
7:16
into this, a little bit more of these four items, this idea of,
7:19
I mean, first administrative tasks.
7:20
So, I mean, obviously these are probably the easiest ones for
7:23
your. Yeah, because you probably.
7:25
Don't like doing? Expertise based entrepreneur,
7:27
right, because these guys yeah, I mean to your point, like, you
7:29
know, I don't know how to do my books right.
7:30
I have to have a accountant do that.
7:32
I don't know how to do my taxes, you know whatever.
7:34
So, you know, those I think are some of the easier ones.
7:37
And so I imagine for most people that's like level 1 is the
7:40
easiest 1 to get to, yes. But level 2, this client
7:43
delivery subsection, I think is where stuff starts to get hairy,
7:46
especially for the entrepreneur who started their business
7:49
because they had a skill. You probably did it because
7:51
you're really good at what you do, right?
7:53
Or like, you know, you left your current job because you were
7:55
good at what you did. And you're like, I think this
7:57
can be done better. And so it's kind of like your
7:59
bread and butter. And that'll take you to a like a
8:02
level, right? And I'm not saying like you got
8:04
to replace yourself right away. But once you kind of figure out
8:07
the delivery and like what it takes to do, you got to teach
8:10
other people how to do it. And, you know, whether that's
8:12
through standard operating procedures or like, you know,
8:15
kind of training people one to one or a combination of both,
8:19
you need to do this. And this is by far like, in my
8:23
opinion, one of the harder things to replace yourself on.
8:27
I think that a lot of people get this stage wrong for various
8:31
reasons, like, you know, the founders, like I don't like to
8:34
sell. So like, I'm going to hire a
8:36
salesperson, but I'm going to keep delivering work.
8:38
That doesn't really work though, because you know, when, if
8:42
you're, for example, try to replace yourself in sales too
8:44
early, there's like this thing like that.
8:46
I call like the founder premium, which is basically your close
8:50
rate as a founder is always going to be higher than a
8:52
salesperson because like you talk with more passion, you talk
8:55
with more conviction, like you know, your stuff inside and
8:57
backwards and like there's like a contagious kind of element.
9:00
And so your close rate is just going to be higher.
9:03
And so when you go out of order in this replacement ladder, like
9:07
problems are inevitably going to happen, right?
9:11
So what generally happens is that people grow and they're
9:15
like, I'm going to hire this really good person that I know
9:17
is really good. And it's like, well, they're
9:19
good by the standards that you were probably looking at before
9:23
you left your actual job. Now your standards are much
9:26
higher because you've perfected the delivery in your within your
9:30
own business, right? So now the standards are a bit
9:32
higher and you hire somebody even if you know them and all of
9:35
a sudden you're like, oh, actually like they're not doing
9:38
this the way that I want. I need to fix all their work
9:41
like time and time again. And I'm now in a position where
9:45
I'm basically stuck fixing other people's work like I was.
9:48
I hired people just so that I could get out of the day-to-day.
9:52
And now I feel like I'm stuck in the day-to-day more so than
9:54
ever. And it's probably because you
9:55
sold a little bit more because you knew this person was coming
9:58
in and all this other stuff. Replacing yourself is the
10:02
hardest thing because you basically need to create like
10:04
the procedures and the training. And this is a skill set that is
10:08
foreign to most founders, especially like agency founders,
10:11
just like small business founders of any kind.
10:14
Like teaching other people things and training them is a
10:17
learned skill. It's not like this innate skill.
10:19
Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you
10:21
can teach that thing to other people.
10:24
So now you need to be like an expert teacher.
10:27
And until you get out of this day-to-day, you know, delivery
10:32
and you, you surpass it, like the other items are going to
10:36
still be there waiting for you. And it's going to be really hard
10:39
because this is where people get stretched thin.
10:41
They're like, I don't, I'm working 60 plus hours.
10:44
I, you know, I have to work evenings and weekends like all
10:48
this other stuff. It's because they don't know how
10:50
to train people and how to manage the people around them.
10:55
Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I think it's, you know,
10:56
especially relevant for, you know, you know, the point you
11:00
made about just, you know, if you're the creative person or
11:02
whatever and, and you try and are doing the sales on your own
11:05
and then you bring in somebody to do sales for you.
11:07
I think that that's a really great point, just because you're
11:10
totally right. And in fact, I know very few
11:12
creative businesses like ad agencies, things like this, that
11:14
have had a ton of success with outside sales.
11:17
And I think a big part of it is that right?
11:19
Like, I mean, especially in agency and my backgrounds in, in
11:22
creative agency, design agency, it's totally relationship
11:26
driven, right? And if your salesperson is kind
11:28
of transactional and they don't necessarily buy in, they're just
11:30
a salesperson for hire, it's really easy for them to a, turn,
11:35
you know, turn off your clients, the ones that you already have
11:37
and then B, you know, keep you from bringing on new business
11:40
because it's off putting or it's not the right kind of approach
11:43
for that type of business. So it so sales in particular I
11:46
know is a real challenge for creative agencies.
11:47
Especially what I, what I like, attribute all of this to, okay,
11:52
is like I have this model called the missing middle.
11:54
And if I ever do write a book, it'll be about the missing
11:56
middle, right? And what I generally tell people
12:00
is like, look, people like founders and entrepreneurs are
12:04
actually pretty good at strategy and planning, right?
12:07
So like, why does the business exist?
12:09
Like you know very well why the business exists and like what
12:12
the problem or defect was in the market and why you're doing
12:15
this, right? So like you're really good at
12:17
that strategy and planning thing.
12:19
And if you're not, you generally like learn and you become pretty
12:21
good at it, then you know you're pretty good at day-to-day
12:25
delivery because chances are like you are an expert in
12:28
whatever it is your product or service is, right?
12:30
Like you're delivering it day-to-day.
12:32
So you're pretty good at that. The missing middle is like this
12:35
education thing, right? So it's really like, what are
12:38
the elements that I need in order to drive behavior change
12:42
of the people around me, right? And those systems are generally
12:47
missing. And even more so it's like, OK,
12:51
well, what are the things that we're missing?
12:53
And so it's like we have a blind spot, right?
12:56
And to me, so you have like planning at the top, you have
12:58
like daily delivery at the bottom of you, and you have this
13:01
missing middle. What's missing is 2 things, A,
13:03
the missing middle and B, like a feedback loop, which is
13:06
generally data, right? So like the day-to-day delivery
13:09
should generate some kind of data meaning like client
13:11
satisfaction. How well did we do sales?
13:15
Like all of the things that we're doing day-to-day sales,
13:17
marketing, etcetera. Like everything must be measured
13:19
and put into a dashboard that basically comes back up to like
13:22
the strategy and planning thing. And based off of what we're
13:26
missing or like the numbers that were are not on the right side
13:29
of the equation. We got to fill in this like
13:31
behavior change item with like management systems so that our
13:34
employees can actually amend the way that they do things so that
13:38
we can actually hit like our targets, right?
13:41
And that's like really what I call the concept of the missing
13:44
middle. And the thing that I think a lot
13:47
of people find surprising is that it's been shown via studies
13:51
that up to 65% of middle managers have a negative value
13:55
to the business. Like I'm not even talking
13:56
neutral, right? It's just straight up negative.
13:59
So like, like if you have a manager of the 65%, it's like
14:03
literally you're paying them and it's, it's basically like all
14:07
cratered and it's going in the trash can.
14:10
And then there's like a percentage even above this that
14:12
is like neutral that basically do nothing, like no value add.
14:17
And so you have very few managers that actually know what
14:20
it is that they're doing that are actually valuable to the
14:22
business. And this is generally because
14:25
people that get elevated to this management role are technical
14:28
experts and they're not actual managers, right?
14:31
So you're like, oh, this person's fantastic on a
14:33
technical basis. Like they're so good day-to-day.
14:36
Let's make them a manager. And it's like, well, no, no, no,
14:38
like the, the skills of management and the skills of
14:40
being like a technical expert of some kind are completely
14:44
different. A technical expert can be like a
14:46
go to resource, like quality assure work or like train people
14:50
on how to do like certain technical things.
14:53
But the, the, the job of a manager is really to like, help
14:56
people understand like how it is to do their job in a way that it
15:02
enables a company to hit its targets as well as like the the
15:06
employees themselves, right? Meaning like you look at the
15:09
employee and you're like, what do you want?
15:10
Oh, like I want a promotion, I want to raise.
15:12
I want, you know, to get better at XY and Z.
15:15
It's like the manager provides that and basically acts as like
15:19
the buffer between the company and the individual to make sure
15:22
that the individual's taken care of and that the company hits
15:25
their goals at the same time. And that's not an easy job.
15:28
It's not. And, and to me, management is
15:32
70% how to generate performance, 30% how to, you know, generate
15:37
technical ability, right? And people over index for the
15:41
technical ability. So they're like, oh, like, you
15:43
know, like it's 90% technical ability.
15:45
It's like, well, that's not really how this works, right?
15:51
And generally the problem begins at a wrong person in the in the
15:56
role as a manager #2 not giving people clarity on what the
16:02
objectives are and the metrics that they need to hit in order
16:05
to like, be on the right side of the objectives right, depending
16:09
on their role. Yeah.
16:11
Now I think that makes a lot of sense.
16:12
And I think, you know, especially, you know, just keep
16:14
keeping in the frame of creative agencies or marketing agencies
16:17
where you might be dealing with creative people or tactical
16:19
people kind of like you're talking about.
16:21
You know, not only are they not managers in a lot of cases, but
16:25
it's actually the thing they hate the most.
16:27
So you're taking your highly technical people and you're
16:29
asking them to do something that, you know, not only do they
16:32
not know how to do, but they don't want to do at all.
16:34
And so I think there's a great delineation there, a great point
16:37
in, you know, as you're hiring or as you're bringing on people,
16:39
you know, getting the right person for the role, right?
16:41
I mean, if you, I don't know, are trying to spin up a film, a
16:44
film in motion team, you know, you're going to get a director
16:47
of photography and some copywriters and, you know,
16:49
whatever, like, but you're hiring for the role, right?
16:52
I mean, you need a guy that can actually run a camera.
16:54
You need a guy that can actually write scripts.
16:55
You know, you need those things, but when we go to hire, we
16:59
usually promote from within or we take somebody off the team
17:01
and make them the manager. And so it's like, well, you're
17:03
an awesome fan, you know, camera guy, highly technical, really
17:06
competent, great camera guy. And now we're going to ask you
17:08
to run your team. So enjoy that.
17:11
You know, I think that's where you start to run into these
17:13
problems. So, Nick, one of the things I
17:14
want to try and do is talk a little bit about or see if we
17:17
can figure out from your experience how to apply some of
17:19
the things that we're talking about here.
17:22
One of the things that you've done it with some success
17:24
obviously is, is built and sold these agencies.
17:27
And so one thing I, I know that you've done is, is taking your
17:30
companies to 10 million AR or more.
17:34
And, you know, a lot of companies get stuck before they
17:37
ever get anywhere near that. And I think one of the things
17:39
that keeps especially small agencies, but even, you know,
17:42
agencies that are beginning to get a little traction, I think
17:44
get stuck. And I think a big part of that,
17:47
I mean, in my mind, it's a fear thing that like you kind of have
17:49
to breakthrough to another level and sort of, you know, actually
17:52
experience success at a higher level to be able to repeat that
17:56
and continue to do it. And, and so I like to tap into
18:00
the experience of people like you who've done that kind of
18:02
thing, because I think it's really important that we, I
18:05
guess, see how to get to the next step, where for a lot of
18:09
people, I think they kind of get in their own way, they almost
18:11
self sabotage, you know, they've got they don't have the mental
18:14
framework to get to that next level.
18:16
And so I wonder if you just talk a little bit about your
18:17
experience building from small to bigger and scaling and then
18:21
we'll circle back to our list of problems, but like we were doing
18:24
before and and circle back into some of that.
18:27
Yeah. I mean, I think the number one
18:29
problem is generally like, as people detach themselves, it's
18:32
like people underestimate the, the volume of systems that you
18:35
need in order to maintain quality control over your
18:39
operation, right? So when you're doing everything,
18:43
it's like it's easy. It's like, well, you see what's
18:45
going on, you're, you're delivering with against the
18:47
client, you're doing the sales, you're watching the money go in
18:50
and out of your bank account. So it's kind of like, you know,
18:53
your, your Mission Control, like your dashboard, if you will,
18:56
it's just your daily activities, right.
18:58
But as the business grows, that basically becomes impossible.
19:01
Like you can't really keep your finger on the pulse that way.
19:04
And this is where you need to start, you know, actually
19:07
building systems like your administrative systems are
19:09
generally first and you outsource those.
19:10
And the amount of build up you need to do in administrative
19:13
systems is just not that high because generally you're hiring
19:16
experts that know how to do it better.
19:18
They're probably going to tell you, hey, do this instead of
19:20
what you're doing. And you're probably going to be
19:21
like, yeah, sounds good. Like as long as it doesn't break
19:23
anything, Like go ahead and, you know, run my books the
19:26
appropriate way so that, you know, I don't get audited and
19:29
all that good stuff. Or like IT people like, right.
19:33
It's just like, Hey, you do security the way that you're
19:35
supposed to do security. Like, I don't know how to do
19:37
like IT security. So that part's pretty easy.
19:40
But when you start getting into the product, I think that this
19:42
is where, you know, as entrepreneurs, a lot of time
19:45
we're like, we kind of wear the Cape because we're, you know,
19:47
and, and become these superheroes.
19:51
We're, we're fixing everything because it's not to our
19:53
standard. And the question is not whether
19:55
or not it's to our standard, it's whether or not the job is
19:57
getting done right and, and in a way that is satisfactory to the
20:01
customer and they're getting what they expect, right?
20:04
And if they are getting what they expect, then everything's
20:08
fine. And we need to keep those
20:09
systems up that taught our people how to actually get
20:12
there, right. This is where I think a lot of
20:16
businesses differ in their scale, right?
20:19
Meaning for example the bigger. Businesses that are like on the
20:25
small side, you know, they're still small, but they're on the
20:27
bigger side of small. You know, they had like really
20:32
good contacts and they hired a bunch of the right people that
20:36
knew how to do it the right way because of just like that's who
20:39
they knew. Some of the smaller businesses
20:42
in a weird way have to figure this out a lot earlier because
20:46
if they don't have the, you know, employees that they can
20:49
hire that know how to do it the right way, do it like, you know,
20:53
to a standard that they're comfortable with.
20:55
They got to figure this out first before they ever get to,
20:58
you know, actually being able to scale.
21:00
So the weird thing is that like, you know, people can fuse growth
21:02
and scale all the time and scale is about the ability to deliver
21:06
work and you're not in the room. Like that's like if I want to
21:09
boil it down to like one thing like that is the one thing like
21:12
there's there's no question about that.
21:14
Like can you deliver when no, what like when you're not in the
21:18
room and can be quality assured and can be done the right way
21:20
without you having to come back and like salvage this thing,
21:24
right? Really.
21:27
And that takes a lot, you know, to be able to do.
21:30
And like, you know, management part is generally the thing that
21:33
breaks down. So like people don't set the
21:35
right expectations and accountability, what drives the
21:38
actual results and like teaching people how to time manage, how
21:41
to work well with others. Like, you know, they're not
21:43
teaching people that kind of stuff.
21:45
They're not teaching people how to hit their objectives.
21:47
They're not teaching people how to prioritize.
21:49
They're not teaching people how to like align to like the
21:51
service culture that we have here.
21:53
And all of these things matter. And like these are the things
21:57
that actually like, in a weird way, Dr. performance outside of
21:59
the actual technical ability of like how to deliver things,
22:03
right? And one of the main things is
22:06
like, what are the objectives that you give that person,
22:09
right? So, you know, like you need to
22:11
have like clear objectives so the person understands like this
22:14
is what matters. And here's the measurements.
22:16
And like, those measurements have to be put into a dashboard
22:19
somewhere where you can read them to see how things are
22:21
actually going. Because if you kind of like turn
22:25
a blind eye like this, what's happened?
22:27
And like, I'm sure that everybody's felt this before.
22:29
I go out, I delegate a bunch of tasks or like a job and I come
22:35
back and like, I, I'm not checking in.
22:37
I'm not doing anything. And like, I come back and like,
22:40
it's not done right. And now I got to like redo it or
22:44
like save it last minute or whatever else.
22:46
Have you? And it's like, yeah, well, it's
22:48
like, because you have no feedback loop, right?
22:50
There was like no feedback loop telling you how this thing is
22:52
going. And there wasn't a way for you
22:55
to check this easily without, like, you diving like, headlong
22:58
into it and actually like going into the system or checking like
23:02
in person, whether this thing was getting done right or not.
23:05
And like, this really is like the job of feedback loops is the
23:09
job of dashboards. And so we need to be able to,
23:11
like, measure these things actively, frankly, kind of on a
23:15
weekly basis, right? And people like, kind of are
23:18
like, oh, like, I'll do it once a month, once a quarter, like
23:20
once a year. It's like, yeah, that's like,
23:22
not enough probably, right? And like, this is where things
23:25
go sideways on you. And when you do see these
23:29
discrepancies, it's not like, oh, I need to go do it.
23:32
It's more, oh, I need to go teach somebody how to do it.
23:36
Like all of these things are signs that somebody doesn't know
23:39
how to do something right now. If you taught somebody how to do
23:42
something and they should be able to do it now because you've
23:45
taught them like in depth, you've walked them through it,
23:48
you've written it all down, you've shown them like, you
23:50
know, insider and backwards how to do it and they're still not
23:53
doing it because they choose not to.
23:54
It's like, that's like a different problem now you're
23:56
accepting underperformance. But this is where people get
24:00
stuck like time and time and time again, wrong data, wrong
24:05
people management systems. They don't generate this like
24:07
behavioral feedback loop because that's what you need like the
24:11
data plus the people systems create this behavioral feedback
24:14
loop where we improve people's behavior through iteration,
24:18
right? So when that's missing, it's
24:21
like you're kind of getting what you're getting and like, what's
24:24
The X Factor that saves the whole thing?
24:26
It's like, well, it's you, it's the entrepreneur, it's the
24:27
founder. And then basically you're stuck
24:30
in this hamster wheel of just like living the same day over
24:34
and over again because nobody does it the right way, right?
24:37
And you're not really sure how to like break that cycle.
24:40
And that's how you break it. Measurement and people behavior
24:44
change systems, right? Which is really like, I hate
24:47
calling it just management, but it kind of falls within the
24:50
umbrella of management, which is like, how do you get people to
24:53
behave differently and better over time, right?
24:57
To like hit the right targets to like deliver for the customer in
25:01
the right way. Like these are not easy things.
25:05
Like these are hard things to understand and like to actually
25:07
like put into place in a systemic manner.
25:10
And like, This is why there's so many companies that are so small
25:14
because like all the systems required, you're like, oh, like
25:16
it must, you know, if I have, you know, like 10 standard
25:20
operating procedures to like run my day-to-day today.
25:23
If I want to, you know, get to 30 to 50 employees, I must only
25:27
need like, you know, three times as many or like 4 times as many.
25:30
It's like, no, no, it's like, it's way more than that.
25:33
The amount of systems and all this other stuff is going to
25:35
like balloon on you exponentially.
25:38
And that's why it's hard. And like a lot of people can
25:42
sometimes sort of like get their way into like a big bit of a
25:46
bigger business. And then they'll hire like a COO
25:49
or somebody that's like way more experienced that cost them an
25:51
arm and leg. And what's the first thing that
25:53
the person does is that they look at all these systems that
25:55
are like, oh, like, I have no idea how this company is even
25:57
standing right now. And usually the answer is, is
26:01
that it's standing because the owner's working like 80 to 100
26:04
hours like a week. And they're completely
26:06
relentless. And one or two other people
26:08
might be on the same page. And that's not sustainable,
26:12
right? So it's basically like work your
26:14
face off and luck, right? It's like how a lot of these
26:18
companies got here. And sometimes it's like they
26:22
don't know what they don't know and they just hire the right
26:24
like second in command. And the second in command
26:27
basically like carries them. And I've seen this more times
26:31
than I can frankly count across businesses where I'm like, you
26:35
are where you are because of your second in command, kind of
26:37
like built reality behind your vision.
26:40
And you know, you just got lucky that you hired the right person.
26:44
And it's not that you hired the right person because you knew
26:46
that they were the right person or that, like, your process to
26:48
hire them wasn't like predictive of like, oh, this person knows
26:51
what to do. They just kind of got lucky,
26:55
like, frankly. Yeah.
26:58
No, I think that's right. Well, and I wonder then, and
27:00
maybe that brings us to a good question, which is, you know,
27:03
either through acquisition when you're picking up a new company
27:06
or, you know, maybe in an instance you've seen or whether
27:09
you're building your own agency from the ground.
27:12
You know, what do you think? Is that sort of critical first
27:15
hire that most founders get wrong?
27:19
Yeah. I mean, this isn't going to be
27:23
your first hire, but to your point, it's a critical first
27:25
hireright. So like generally in any kind of
27:27
business, you're going to generally hire people that are
27:29
also doing the same job as you, meaning like your client
27:32
delivery specifically, right? Because you need like some kind
27:36
of volume before your first critical hire.
27:38
And your first critical hire is either going to be a manager
27:42
that overseas like day-to-day delivery of what this product
27:45
and service that you're actually doing is number one, or it's
27:49
going to be like a non billable person that acts like a second
27:52
in command. And the non billable person is
27:56
going to be that person that, you know, whether you want to
27:58
call them like a COO or like an operations director.
28:03
That is generally the person that if you hire that person,
28:07
right, is going to come in and build all these systems that
28:10
you've been missing to be able to actually scale your business
28:13
properly. Right.
28:15
But those are the two that I see like, I mean, and by the way,
28:18
like, I don't care if it's like a plumbing company or like a
28:21
marketing agency or whatever. Have you like time and time
28:24
again I've seen those two things be the roles that people hire,
28:27
like either, you know, head of a manager that's overseeing
28:31
delivery or, you know, like some sort of like second in command
28:34
COO type. The the consideration of which
28:40
one you hire, whether it's like the non billable COO type versus
28:45
the day-to-day manager type. Frankly, most of the time
28:50
entrepreneurs make that call based on who they think will
28:53
save them the most time, which is generally the wrong thing.
29:00
OK, Like that's the wrong way of looking at it.
29:02
So a lot of people are just like, you know, hey, I'm, I'm
29:07
really busy in client delivery. I just want to hire this
29:09
manager. It's like, OK, you need to kind
29:12
of inspect your own skills and figure out like, what is it that
29:15
you're actually good at? OK, if you're really good with
29:19
the clients, like, and, and acquiring them like both like
29:23
sales and delivery, it might make sense to like stay there
29:27
and like hire this like second in command to kind of like run
29:29
your back office. They're almost gonna kind of act
29:32
like president in a weird way, even though you have like veto
29:35
power over them, right? Like they really, they really
29:38
are at that point. But if you're good at that kind
29:40
of stuff, if you're good at writing standard operating
29:42
procedures and you're good at teaching people and you can get
29:46
the performance that you need out of people on a day-to-day
29:49
basis by teaching them, then hiring that manager like might
29:55
make sense because that means that you've been able to kind of
29:57
automate the delivery yourself, meaning like you've made
30:01
yourself unnecessary to delivery.
30:04
Then you could maybe hire them, that manager as the first person
30:07
because you're basically going to create this like playbook or
30:11
like this, like, you know, blueprint of delivery.
30:14
And you can basically hand it off and say, like, look, keep
30:18
delivering this way. And then it frees your time up
30:21
to do like more sales or whatever else have you.
30:25
And then once you do more and more sales, eventually you're
30:27
going to get to a point where then you can hire that like
30:30
director of operations or like COO type of person whose entire
30:34
job at that point becomes like, OK, well, fill in all the blanks
30:38
of how we actually, like operationalize this and scale
30:41
this in a way where we can actually, you know, uncouple
30:45
ourselves from like the current plateau of revenue that we're
30:48
at, right? And this is generally what
30:50
happens. Like a lot of people think that
30:54
the main problem they have, it's like, oh, I just need more
30:57
sales. And it's generally not the
31:00
actual answer. It's that the systems that they
31:02
have in the back end don't enable them to scale.
31:05
And that's why even if they get more sales, what generally
31:09
happens is that I sold more, but now I have less profit.
31:14
It's like, OK, well, why? It's like, well, it's because
31:16
your operations are broken somewhere.
31:18
Your, your delivery systems are broken somewhere where they're
31:22
ineffective, right? And that can come down to like
31:26
how you how long you retain clients, like as repeat
31:29
customers, can you maximize like upsells, can you maximize
31:33
referrals? All those things are like a
31:36
element to this. And generally you need a lot
31:39
less like brand new sales than you think if you've got your
31:43
client retention systems and upsell systems and referral
31:46
systems down pat. Yeah, I think it makes sense.
31:50
And that's actually where I was going to go next was First
31:52
Systems. So we talked a little bit about
31:54
first hires, but where do you think are the first systems that
31:57
people ought to be installing when they're taking either
31:59
either taking over a business or starting an agency on their own?
32:02
You know, where are you seeing, I guess, what is the single most
32:05
effective or like if you had to start, what's tip of the spear
32:07
on the the system front? Yeah.
32:09
I mean, like the the most obvious one, which you're
32:11
probably not even going to build the systems for this are, you
32:14
know, all of your admin systems, which you're generally going to
32:17
hire other people and they're just going to build them for
32:19
you. Like meaning like if you hire
32:20
like a bookkeeper, they're going to have their pre, like they're
32:23
already going to have pre-existing systems that
32:25
they're just going to use on your business.
32:27
So it's not really you building them, but it is you acquiring
32:30
them in a way by hiring these people, right?
32:33
That's like the first ones. And like generally when you're,
32:35
you know, looking for those roles or like those contractors,
32:38
you need to make sure that they do have a way of doing it and
32:41
that you are capable of like, you know, understanding it
32:44
reasonably enough where you're like, Yep, I'm willing to like
32:47
undergo and operate under your system.
32:52
The second one is like a combo of the actual delivery.
32:58
So like, you know, having like a client playbook or like a client
33:02
blueprint of like how we service customers is incredibly
33:08
important because you can't be everywhere at once.
33:10
And you're probably going to be hiring some people that are
33:12
going to be delivering alongside of you pretty quick, right?
33:16
So that definitely becomes number two.
33:19
Number three, as you become increasingly detached from
33:23
day-to-day work. It has to be dashboards, right?
33:27
So some kind of data set that enables you to see what's going
33:33
on day-to-day without you that needing to be like in the room
33:37
next to the person seeing what they're delivering, right?
33:40
Like that's generally like number 123, like 1 is the admin,
33:45
2 is the delivery, 3 is like the measurement on the delivery,
33:50
right? Because if there is something
33:51
wrong where your help is needed because like, look, there's
33:54
fringe cases on this stuff, right?
33:55
Like people are going out there doing the work and you see, oh,
34:00
here there's a problem in the data.
34:02
OK, like, let me go dig in. Sure enough, there's a problem.
34:05
It might be something that a situation where the person's
34:08
never encountered it before. It might be something that even
34:11
you haven't encountered before and you need to go figure out
34:15
like what it is that happens when this like unknown situation
34:20
occurs so that you can develop some training for that thing and
34:25
leave it behind for the person. And generally this is where you
34:31
know, and I'll speak to agencies specifically around this.
34:33
It's like service being too broad, like really comes back to
34:38
haunt you at some point, right? Like like a plumber, like
34:43
generally specializes in like certain things, right?
34:46
And there's like very advanced plumbing stuff that you know, in
34:48
a commercial sense or like Poly B or whatever there.
34:51
There's like some more advanced things that are like, OK, like
34:54
maybe I do that, maybe I don't do that.
34:56
But like there is a, because of the like, you know, being like a
35:02
tradesman, there's like very specific, you know, once you
35:06
kind of like get your card and you go through the
35:08
apprenticeship process like you know, certain things.
35:11
So there's like this standard, right?
35:13
When it comes to marketing agencies, there isn't that
35:15
standardized process of like you must know these things.
35:19
And when you create like a really wide product line in an
35:22
agency, the problem that occurs is that like people just don't
35:25
know how to deliver against the full breadth of your product
35:27
line, right? And I see this like a lot.
35:30
It's like, hey, my account manager doesn't know how to, you
35:33
know, upsell, retain clients. It's like, right, Because you do
35:36
like 20 different things like, and you expect them to be the
35:40
expert on everything. It's like, OK, well, it's sort
35:43
of like your structure is not correct.
35:45
You need like a strategist that like overseas the full breadth
35:48
of everything that understands that.
35:50
And they're probably going to be pretty expensive, right?
35:54
And then you can have the accounts people, and then you
35:56
need like all these other individuals all working
35:58
together. And people need to reasonably
35:59
understand what's going on. And if they don't understand
36:02
what's going on, it's going to be ineffective or it's not going
36:05
to generate the results for the client that you need.
36:07
And the client's not going to be happy, right?
36:10
So you need to kind of like keep a pretty tight ship on what it
36:15
is that you deliver at the beginning and then expand out
36:19
once those things are like what I call fully automated.
36:22
And by fully automated, I mean you as the entrepreneur don't
36:25
even have to touch it. You know, it's being done right
36:27
each way. There's at least one or more
36:30
people on your team that can deliver that thing and teach how
36:34
to people how to deliver that thing without you being in the
36:37
room. Then you can move on to building
36:39
like other, like, you know, whether it's like systems or
36:45
products or whatever it is that you want to build next, right?
36:48
But I think that people just move on too early.
36:51
They're like, they get this idea and they're like, I'm going to
36:53
do this. And the current thing that
36:55
they're doing, they're the ones that are actually holding the
36:57
whole thing up. Meaning if they walk away, it
36:59
kind of starts to crumble and it's because they haven't
37:02
finished the process of getting somebody to be able to do it on
37:06
their own. Yeah.
37:08
And I've seen this a bunch of times, like with small creative
37:10
agencies, especially if somebody goes out and starts something
37:13
because let's say they're designer, there is this
37:16
tendency, especially for small, really small, maybe single
37:20
operator companies where they will just try and take
37:22
everything, right? They just got to get every
37:24
dollar. So they all of a sudden start
37:26
doing everything right. And even, I mean, I'll even say
37:29
even in our agency, we started trying to claim the, the, you
37:33
know, mantle of being kind of an all things to all people kind of
37:35
agency pretty young, you know, like, I mean, Ogilvy barely does
37:39
that. But meanwhile, me as a single
37:41
operator, we, yeah, we can do everything.
37:42
Don't worry about it. You just come to us.
37:44
And most, you know, young businesses or young
37:46
entrepreneurs don't even realize that it's actually working
37:48
against them to be so broad. You know, I, I mean, you think
37:51
you're doing something good because, oh, OK, well, anybody
37:54
can hire me. But the reality is that either,
37:56
you know, to your point, internally, people don't know
37:58
how to deliver against that stuff.
37:59
You know, maybe you, the solo operator, have a lot of
38:01
experience across a lot of verticals or something, but not
38:04
everybody has that experience. And so you're selling things
38:07
that your team can execute against.
38:09
And, you know, then it keeps you stuck in the middle and all
38:11
these other things that we've been discussing, you know, or,
38:15
you know, you can also, it's so funny the conversation around
38:20
niching and how how much creative people fear it because
38:25
they do feel like they can do anything right?
38:27
And they feel like they're going to be locking themselves into
38:29
something. And there's this grand, you
38:30
know, issue or the struggle they're going to encounter
38:33
where, well, but I'm going to be bored.
38:35
I don't want to do the same thing for my whole life, you
38:37
know, that kind of thing. And so they talk themselves out
38:39
of actually becoming a little bit more tactical.
38:42
And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, right?
38:44
Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to
38:46
do more things and more variety. It's just that you need to
38:51
complete the function before you move on, which is different.
38:55
Like here's the thing, like I'm not saying don't add more
38:57
products. I'm not saying don't do more
38:58
services. I'm not saying, you know,
39:00
service more than one ideal customer profile.
39:03
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you need
39:05
to complete the function of, you know, training and systemizing
39:13
the things that you need to do in order to move on.
39:15
Because the problem is, is that as entrepreneurs and I run into
39:18
this all the time myself, like meaning like I, there's a
39:21
problem I have, it's like, I figure it out, it's all in my
39:24
head and I'm like, got it. I figured it out and then I move
39:27
on. But the fact that I figured it
39:30
out doesn't mean that I've taught and, or systemized it so
39:35
that other people can do it too. Like it's almost kind of like,
39:39
because I love learning. I'm like, oh, great, I learned
39:42
this thing. I move on.
39:43
Like to me, the finish line looks like I know how to do this
39:47
right. And I, I am capable of doing
39:49
this and I have to even myself constantly remind myself to say
39:53
like, that is not the actual finish line.
39:56
The finish line is when I figure it out, I need to teach somebody
40:01
else and systemize that teaching.
40:03
Meaning like when I do teach somebody else, like I record
40:06
myself teaching this other person how to do it.
40:09
And then that person goes out and does it based off of what I
40:12
taught them. And they do it the same way.
40:14
That's the actual finish line, because then I can take those
40:18
recordings and say like, oh, this other person, they don't
40:20
know how to do this either here. They can watch it.
40:23
And if they can watch it and without even me in the room and
40:26
then they can do it properly. That is the true finish line,
40:30
right? It's not, oh, I know how to do
40:32
this. Therefore I move on.
40:34
And I think that, you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs, like
40:36
this is the exact problem. They're like, yeah, it's easy.
40:39
But the problem is, is that for you, like, easy for you doesn't
40:43
mean easy for other people. And so we kind of like, throw
40:46
them in the deep end of the pool where all the sharks are, and
40:48
we're like, hey, go swim. And they're like, I have no idea
40:51
what I'm doing. And you put them under, like,
40:54
huge pressure and stress and people mentally burn out.
40:56
And, like, that's where bad things happen.
40:58
Yeah. Well, I think there's also a
41:00
trap there too, especially in small businesses where maybe
41:02
your first hire or your first couple hires are people who have
41:05
skill sets outside of yours, right?
41:07
So maybe you have some expertise in a thing and you don't know
41:11
how to do X. So the example I would use is
41:13
just, again, in my own career was, you know, sales was not my
41:16
thing. You know, I just wanted to sit
41:17
behind the computer and draw and do, you know, artwork.
41:20
And so, you know, so my first inclination was to try and bring
41:24
on somebody that could sell well, the way it burned me.
41:27
And I and, you know, translate this into whatever job, you
41:31
know, it doesn't have to be sales.
41:32
But I mean, you know, it's easy for me to get snow blown by
41:36
somebody who's an expert in a different realm where I have no
41:39
expertise. And I was purposefully trying to
41:41
stay out of it, right? Like I understood sales was a
41:44
function, but I didn't care. Like, I don't want to do it.
41:47
I want somebody else to do that and take it off.
41:48
This is where the data comes in though, right?
41:50
And so then this is where, yeah, you start to find trouble
41:53
because, you know, people can basically say, oh, no, I'm doing
41:55
it. You know, this is this is what
41:56
I'm doing. And hey, you don't know.
41:58
So you don't. Now you're in a position where
41:59
you're not even in authority over your own team, right?
42:01
Because you can't say, well, you know, you're not moving up to
42:04
metric a or metric B. What, what you just heard is
42:08
like, I mean, from that individual, like I don't
42:10
necessarily think it's wrong for them to say it in as far as
42:13
they're hitting their target, right?
42:15
So like this is the, this is the whole data piece, right?
42:17
And I like, I call it data architecture, but really it's
42:20
like, what are the targets? Where are they measured?
42:23
Where and how are they measured? And is there a dashboard where
42:26
we can see these come to life? So like if somebody's telling me
42:29
like, hey Nick, like you, you need to get out of the way.
42:32
I'm like, OK, well, like let's look at the numbers.
42:35
Are we hitting our numbers? And it's like, well, I can't hit
42:38
our numbers because you don't understand.
42:39
I'm like, OK, well, the only reason you can tell me that I
42:42
don't understand and to stay out of your way is really if you're,
42:46
if you're hitting your target and if you're not hitting your
42:48
target, then I, I can't stay out of your way because like I have
42:51
like a fiduciary responsibility to the business, right?
42:56
And. No, that's a huge point
42:58
actually. Just, I mean, just that data
43:00
validation, just even in this little kind of silly example,
43:03
you know, I mean, it's really a good point for especially small
43:06
entrepreneurs that don't track anything and don't pay any
43:08
attention to this stuff, you know, and you bring on somebody,
43:11
I mean, that is where you find your common ground with people
43:13
who have skills that you don't have, right?
43:15
Yes. You agree on some term, some
43:17
metric that this is the thing that we're going to look at
43:19
together. And, you know, in sales, it
43:22
might be as easy as being able to track, you know, the number
43:24
of people you reached out to today and the number of people
43:26
that close or whatever it is, right?
43:28
I mean, there's pretty well established sales, Pat, you
43:31
know, patterns out there that you could grab and, you know,
43:34
and nowadays with AI or whatever, it's easier than ever
43:36
to put together a dashboard for sales.
43:38
And you know, but if you and the salesperson or you, and this,
43:42
you know, expert, you know, expert B who, who's doing
43:45
whatever it is that you don't understand.
43:46
But at least if you have a center metric, you know, did you
43:49
deliver on X for the client? Did you, you know, make 9 phone
43:53
calls today? Did you, you know, whatever it
43:55
is, as long as you have that company metric, then you can
43:57
manage those people. This is the, this is the hard
43:59
part, right? Because like if you're not an
44:00
expert in that thing, like it's like you need benchmarks because
44:03
otherwise people can just like pull the wool over your eyes,
44:06
right? Meaning like it's like, hey,
44:09
you're not doing enough reach outs per day.
44:10
It's like, oh, I'm doing like 20.
44:12
It's like that's a lot. And it's like, you're like, that
44:16
sounds like a lot to me, but I'm really busy.
44:18
So you put it through your own lens.
44:19
You're like, that's OK. And it's like, then you take
44:21
some course, right? And there's like pretty good
44:23
ones out there that are like, oh, yeah.
44:25
Like how you block your time is that, you know, you do like,
44:29
there's like a research phase and then there's like a call
44:33
phase. And like every call phase, you
44:34
should be like dialing the the phone 100 times right in an
44:38
hour. And there should be X number of
44:40
pickups, X number of conversations, X numbers of like
44:44
this is how the script should go.
44:45
You're booking meetings for the future.
44:47
You're not just getting them on the phone and then talking to
44:50
them. Like there's this process and
44:52
all of a sudden you realize that the benchmark is like, you know,
44:54
300 dials a day minimum when they're like, yeah, I'm doing 20
45:00
and it's all good. And you're just like, you're
45:02
completely off. And so like understanding your
45:05
business's benchmarks by roll is honestly like the most leveraged
45:12
thing that you'll ever do. Like meaning like you will get
45:15
so much leverage upside for yourself on it, but it's hard to
45:19
figure it out. And like, look, this is where I
45:21
work with like a lot of people and they're like, Oh yeah, I'm
45:26
like generating like, you know, 10% profit or like 15% profit.
45:29
And they think it's good. And I'm like, I, I want you to
45:31
know that the top 10% of the market is all above 30%.
45:35
And they're just like, I don't even know how it could get
45:37
there. Like I've never seen those
45:39
numbers outside of it when it was like me by myself and I
45:41
didn't count my own salary. And I'm like, well, this is the
45:45
problem. Like you, you will ultimately
45:48
hit whatever target you aim for. And it's because of the
45:52
benchmarking behind it that that's the actual problem,
45:56
right? So like, imagine it's just like
45:58
you're, you're doing like a certain percentage profit or
46:00
whatever have you, you go to your leadership team or your
46:03
management team or your staff and you're like, hey, guys, like
46:07
actually we should be doing twice as good.
46:09
And like, like, it's basically like knowing is the first
46:12
hurdle. And then the people are gonna
46:13
rack their brains. Like how is that possible?
46:15
Like, I didn't even understand how that is possible.
46:18
Like, well, I guess if we did like these things and we did
46:21
this and we stopped doing that, we could maybe achieve this.
46:24
And like all of a sudden it triggers like brainstorming in
46:27
people of like how you can actually get there, right?
46:31
And so knowing and understanding of benchmarks and then holding
46:34
people to those benchmarks is so absolutely important because
46:39
people will not aim like if you're aiming at the wrong
46:43
target, you're never going to achieve the right outcomes.
46:47
Yeah, no, I think it makes a lot of sense.
46:48
And and even if you just stop and think kind of critically or
46:51
apply common sense to it, this all makes sense, right?
46:54
I mean, it's, it's not like we're we're cracking the code or
46:56
anything, but you know, but it is interesting.
46:59
I mean, even to me, I mean, I've been around this stuff for a
47:01
long time, but like, you know, just the, the, the, the learning
47:04
alone that just by speaking a common language, which in this
47:08
case, you know, could be a measurable or a metric or
47:10
something like that, how much easier that makes things in
47:12
terms of at least being able to hold one another accountable.
47:15
And, you know, it's really hard. And it's, you know, always been
47:18
challenging for creative businesses, especially, you
47:21
know, because I mean, creative hours, at least in my opinion,
47:23
aren't, aren't one to one, right?
47:25
And you might have this vision that, you know, oh, well, we're
47:27
going to build 4 hours. But you know, design is weird
47:30
and sometimes you need more. Yeah, sometimes it takes hours
47:31
and sometimes it. Takes, you know, and sometimes
47:34
you just have to go think and stand in for 10 minutes or
47:36
whatever. You know, it's like you're doing
47:38
weird stuff that isn't necessarily billable.
47:40
But if the metric is I delivered on time, or if the metric is we
47:45
met some sort of objective that we'd established with our
47:47
client, whatever it is, then that common language becomes the
47:52
thing that you as a manager or attempted manager in training,
47:57
can, you know, I guess, speak in common with the people who are
48:00
working for you. So that, you know, we all agreed
48:03
that this is the bar. So if you don't deliver on time
48:06
or you don't show up on time or you don't, you know, you know,
48:10
you're delivering bad output or whatever it is, you know, then
48:13
it becomes much more objective or much easier to look at
48:17
something and go, OK, well, you didn't reach the mark, you know,
48:20
and to to your point earlier, it just makes it easier to not get
48:23
snow blown by people who are expert in subjects where you're
48:26
just not. Absolutely.
48:29
And I mean, like, this is where finding a source for these
48:33
benchmarks becomes really important or talking to your
48:36
peers or whatever else have you, right?
48:38
Like you need to get the information from somewhere, you
48:41
know, and like this where, you know, you might want to hire a
48:44
consultant, you might want to like, you know, pay like some
48:47
guy that you know that's running a business bigger than yours in
48:49
the same space is like take him out for lunch.
48:51
Or like be like, hey, dude, like I'll give you like a few 100
48:54
bucks for like one hour of your time.
48:56
So I can ask you these questions.
48:57
Like whatever method that you need to take in order to like
49:01
get these, you know, answers, you need to go get them and you
49:04
need to go get them sooner than later generally, right?
49:08
Because like, look, it's if you're an entrepreneur, this is
49:11
your first time doing this, right?
49:13
Like it's easy to sit here and like beat yourself up and be
49:16
like, I don't know how to do this and blah, blah, blah.
49:18
It's like everybody had to figure it out some time and like
49:23
my stance on things now, it's like, you know, we were running
49:26
like this, like webinar. And it's like, I don't know how
49:30
to run like a webinar or like a webinar funnel or like anything
49:33
like that. And I'm like, OK, well, what's
49:35
my first reaction? It's like, well, like who who
49:38
knows how to do them well? Like can I pay somebody to give
49:41
me the answers or their experience or to be like, come
49:43
in and be like, hey, like this is what you guys did.
49:45
These are all the things that you did wrong with it.
49:48
Can you like, you know, just do these things instead?
49:51
It's like, great. It's like if I can pay somebody
49:53
to, like, give me the answer or the blueprint behind that thing,
49:57
it's like I'm going to pay them because, like, me figuring it
49:59
out from the ground up sounds like me spending way too much
50:03
time on something that somebody else probably, like, spent
50:07
thousands of hours perfecting, Right.
50:11
It's like, why don't I just pay this person, like, a couple of
50:13
grand to, like, get unstuck and move on?
50:15
Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
50:17
And like, that's something that I've like more recently been
50:20
doing in the last few years before, like, I felt like I had
50:24
to learn everything. And because I had to learn
50:27
absolutely everything, the amount of hours that I worked
50:30
were absolutely asinine. I don't wish that on anybody.
50:33
In in retrospect, it's like, I could have shelled out a few
50:36
extra bucks. Yeah, it would have been tight
50:38
maybe, but I could have saved myself like 80% of my pain and
50:43
suffering by paying other people just for knowledge.
50:46
Like, and I'm not saying they would have necessarily done it
50:48
for me, sure, but I could have definitely paid them for my
50:51
like, for the knowledge acquisition.
50:53
And like, instead of spending, you know, 100 hours trying to
50:56
figure something out, I could have figured it out in like 5 or
50:58
10. Yeah, Yeah, this is one of those
51:01
areas where I kind of think about, you know, like what
51:02
you're doing in your business, which is, you know, I don't
51:04
know, are you going to run webinars from now on?
51:06
Like, are you going to become a webinar company?
51:08
Well, then it maybe makes sense that you learned the
51:10
foundational stuff. You know, if you're going to try
51:13
a webinar and see if it works for your business and you've
51:15
never done one before, like maybe it does make sense to take
51:17
the shortcut and have somebody kind of get you to, you know,
51:20
point B quicker than trying to learn every living thing about
51:23
it. You know, now, if it works and
51:24
it goes great, you'll probably educate yourself a little more
51:26
and you'll learn a little more about what worked and what
51:28
didn't and you'll become more sophisticated.
51:30
But the point is that you don't have to know it all today.
51:33
And so, you know, you need to know enough to go do the thing.
51:35
And so whether that means, you know, paying somebody, you know,
51:38
and sometimes to your point, you used to phrase everything I like
51:40
there, just the idea of paying somebody to get unstuck, which
51:43
is, you know, I mean, a lot of people do they go down this
51:45
trap. And, and for me, I mean, I've
51:47
always used this as a, a method for procrastination, which is
51:51
I'll just keep learning something and then I don't ever
51:53
have to actually do it. I'll just, yeah, you know, I'll
51:55
just keep reading on it or I'll get the next book or whatever,
51:57
you know, one of these days when I finish reading about it or,
52:00
you know, then we'll do it, you know, And that's always been the
52:02
reason to just kick something down the road instead of
52:04
actually stepping in and doing it.
52:07
Yeah. And I mean, like, this is where
52:10
I definitely am more action oriented I think now than I was
52:13
in years past, where it's almost like a scary prospect sometimes
52:19
to reach out to some of these people because you know, it's
52:21
gonna force action out of you. Because look, I like learning.
52:24
I like the process of learning and I know other people are that
52:28
our founders are out out there are like me too in this aspect
52:31
of like you learn something, it's super cool.
52:34
It's kind of like a new toy thing, you know, like you're
52:37
like, you're super amped about learning this thing.
52:40
If you pay somebody else to like, you know, give you 90% of
52:44
the learning upfront, it basically removes the barrier to
52:48
actually executing. And like, in a weird way, you
52:50
almost don't want that, but it is the right thing to do because
52:53
that, that means you're going to stop wasting time.
52:56
It just takes the shininess away from it in some way, shape or
52:59
form. But I've, what I think I've kind
53:01
of learned in a way is that like, I like the shininess of it
53:04
working just as much as I like the shininess of it, like
53:07
learning something. And so, you know, I, I just look
53:11
at it as like a shortcut. It's like I'm going to pay
53:13
somebody else for their knowledge so that they can teach
53:15
me so I can do something right. I'm a lot more cautious of like,
53:20
frankly, like as I've gone, I'm a lot more cautious of people
53:23
doing things for me. So I'm a bigger fan today of the
53:29
core things that I believe that I need to be doing in the long
53:32
run for somebody to teach me how to do it because then I can
53:34
manage it. Because to your point before,
53:37
it's like, well, somebody can just come over and just tell you
53:40
it's like, yeah, this is being done well, but if you know
53:42
better, it's like, look, maybe I don't know how to do it, but I
53:48
know what it is that it should be and what it should be
53:51
structured like and what the outcome should be.
53:54
So I can basically like not put up with that BS and basically
53:57
call people out and be like, look, I may not know how to
54:01
technically execute this, but I know the best practice of what
54:05
this should look like and it should look like this.
54:07
So like go back to the drawing board and like make this better.
54:10
And at least I'm in a position to say that from like an expert
54:13
side rather than being like feeling like I'm unreasonable
54:17
and asking for something more or better without it actually
54:20
really having the room to be better.
54:23
Yeah, well, and especially when you're working with talented
54:25
people who think they know their trade or they come in with some
54:27
expertise. I mean, it is a delicate dance
54:31
between, you know, sort of accusing somebody of not being
54:33
able to do what they're supposed to be able to do and stuff like
54:35
that. So it's a good way to bruise
54:36
egos and things if you can't figure out how to have that
54:38
conversation. Totally.
54:40
One thing I just wanted to get into real quick to spend our
54:42
last couple minutes together. I wondered if you just talk a
54:44
little bit about just your sort of your personal experience
54:47
after building and selling lots of agencies and things like
54:50
that, how success has changed for you and, and what you think
54:53
that something that you know, 10 years ago you would have loved
54:57
to have heard from somebody, you know, on a podcast or something
55:00
like this. What's the the bit of advice
55:02
that you wish you knew that you didn't know?
55:03
You know that you didn't know then, but you do know now?
55:06
Yeah, it's like, I think it's kind of what we're just talking
55:09
about. Like you don't need to know
55:10
everything. Like you need to like learn
55:11
everything reasonably and paying other people, paying other
55:15
people to learn things fast and move faster is probably like
55:18
the, the, the thing that I underutilized the most before
55:23
and the, it's the thing that I used the most today, frankly.
55:27
That's definitely #1 #2 is the replacement ladder that we
55:32
talked about the very beginning. It's like replace yourself
55:34
administratively, then in the delivery, then the marketing,
55:37
then the sales, and finally like leadership, you know, like the
55:42
number one skill set is the ability to replace yourself in a
55:46
function. Like that is the number one
55:48
skill set. And you need to like either a
55:50
learn it on your own or go find somebody that can help you, you
55:53
know, figure out how to do that. And then I would say like #3
55:59
more than anything is like draw a line of how much work you can
56:02
do. Because like, I think a really
56:04
tempting thing that we get into as entrepreneurs is like, oh,
56:07
hey, like I'll just do this extra thing.
56:09
I'll just do this extra thing. And like you keep like extra
56:12
thing in your way into like working like 6080 hours a week
56:16
and having like no work life balance and like not leaving
56:18
enough time for like family, friends, health, like you name
56:21
it. Like, it's, it's a trap.
56:23
Like, you got to like set limits on like how much you work.
56:26
And weirdly, that feeds into like numbers like 1 and 2
56:30
because once you create this like, shortage of your own time,
56:34
you're forced to figure out how to do things faster, right?
56:37
And potentially maybe not even do things.
56:38
Yourself. Yeah.
56:41
Nope. I love that.
56:42
Well, cool, Nick here at the end of the show, you want to take a
56:45
quick minute and just let people know where they can track you
56:47
down online, where they can engage with you, either your
56:49
business or you personally, and anything folks ought to know.
56:52
Any parting shots? Yeah, I mean, if people want to
56:56
like track me down Nick Averia on LinkedIn, last name AVARIA,
57:03
you can also find me on Nick Averia at YouTube and actually
57:07
Instagram as well. And if you want to like connect
57:10
with me or you know, like if you're an agency owner, agency
57:15
acquisitions dot IO is the website or you can connect it
57:19
with me and any of those other platforms and I'll connect back
57:22
with you. Awesome.
57:24
Well, thanks so much, Nick. This has been awesome.
57:26
And it, it's kind of hilarious. We were talking before we jumped
57:28
on the air about, you know, what were we going to talk about?
57:30
I made it to .2 of 10, by the way.
57:33
We spent a ton of time on what I think was just a treasure trove
57:36
of stuff. I had a bunch of, you know,
57:38
other things to go into with you and we may have to save that for
57:41
a Part 2 of this eventually cuz I really appreciate the, the
57:45
stuff that you shared with us and I think it was really
57:47
valuable. I'm glad we spent the time on
57:48
it. Thank you so much for having me,
57:50
Ryan. Really appreciate it.
57:51
Absolutely, and thanks so much to everybody who tunes into the
57:53
podcast this week and every week, and we'll see you guys
57:56
next time.