7 Steps to Escape Your Business Prison

May, 5th 2024

Feeling stuck in your agency business? 

You're not alone...

97% of agency owners find themselves trapped in the day-to-day operations unable to scale & unable to take time off.

Here are 7 steps to break free from your "agency prison" to scale BIG:

Preface:

To escape your prison, it’s crucial that you plan your escape carefully, this means: 

• Studying the layout of the prison. 

• Knowing where the guards are stationed, and 

• Finding potential escape routes.

In business terms, this means analyzing your current operations & identifying areas to improve; the first thing is your time.

Step 1: SAD Framework

To effectively scale and break free from the agency prison,

The first step is to take control of your time.

You need to know where your time is going.

At 8F,  we use an exercise called the SAD Framework.

Stop, automate, delegate. 

First, study your time: 

1. Measure it via toggle or any time-tracking software. 

2. ID the main areas it's going.

3. Stop the BS.

4. Delegate low-leverage items.

5. Automate what you can with the software.

Killer Content (My favorite content from last week)

• Podcast: Ultimate: How to Book Calls With Your Newsletter: LIVE Consulting Call with Marketing Max

• Long Form YouTube: This SECRET Forecasting Skill Helped Me Predict My Agency’s Future

Step 2: Org Chart  

Now that you know where your time is going.

It’s time you build the org chart in conjunction with the SAD framework.

In an org chart of small business, the founder is usually sitting in 5 to 10 roles.

You’re the CEO.

You might be the COO.

You’re the #1 strategist. 

You’re the head of sales.

You’re the head of marketing.

You’re the lead operations manager. 

& the list goes on…

You need to build an org chart that includes every position, including your own, as well as your team members.

When you have SAD + the org chart—you can easily see where your time is going.

So we can slowly and surely get some of your time back.

With these two things, you need to decide what you want to delegate and get off your plate first.

Step 3: Execute 

It’s time you start executing the strategy. 

Finalize the thing you want to get off your plate from SAD.

Source any talent to fill in the roles needed to execute. 

From here, you need to set up SOPs and training.

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3A- SOPs 

SOPs tell your team members what to do. 

Create SOPs for the tasks you spend the most time on. 

Admin and operations tasks can be handled by the team members. 

Create videos on how you handle these tasks, turn them into SOP, and give them to your team.

Now you have more time to dedicate to scaling and growing the agency.

Here’s my detailed video on SOPs

3B-Training

Most agency owners mix up SOPs and training.

SOPs tell your team members what to do.

Training teaches your team members how to think.

Your training documents should be complex and informative.

IMPORTANT: Training requires repetition

You can't train your team once and expect them to perform at peak levels.

Train them. Audit them. Repeat until they perfect the task.

That's how you train effectively.

This will take several months,

& even when they’re trained, you still need to audit.

At 8F, we still audit client calls and sales calls every single week.

We continuously find minor tweaks. 

Remember: Michael Jordan got coached until he retired–training your talent is no different. 

Step 4: Set KPIs and goals 

Setting clear expectations increases performance by +26%. (found this in some study years ago) 

Expectations include goals, KPIs, and responsibilities.

Goals refer to outputs.

Ex: Client accounts have a ROAS of =>5x.

KPIs refer to inputs.

Ex: Optimize campaigns the first week of each month.

For each role, you need to define clearly:

1. What success looks like?

2. What failure looks like?

3. What outputs do you expect?

4. What do the inputs from a daily/weekly perspective look like?

5. What are all the other responsibilities this role entails?

Once inputs are established, it's time we establish project management.

Step 5: Project Management 

There are four things you need to track for project management. 

A) Daily and weekly tasks that come from KPIs.

B) The Standard Work Checklist.

C) End-of-Day Reporting.

D) Templates.

The Standard Work Checklist is a daily recurring project management system that tracks the routine tasks of a team member.

Once the day is complete, team members submit the checklist to management via an end-of-day report.

Now most founders are hesitant to implement this process.

This process comes straight from Amazon and:

• Increases visibility into the process

• Makes management easy

• Increases accountability

Implement this to reduce the need to check in with team members.

5D Templates 

Templates help you standardize and systematize everything inside your operations.

A template is a set of steps that can be copied and pasted to a new client each time you onboard someone.

This should cover both onboarding and recurring monthly & quarterly services.

We can build this template by mapping out our client process in a workflow. (shown below) 

Your main goal here is to adopt a templatized (repeatable) approach for your PM while onboarding and retaining clients.

Doing this gets half of the work done for you and your team.

You just copy and paste the template, and the team member just has to execute a list of repeatable actions.

Watch this video to learn my entire project management process.

Step 6: Sourcing

Sourcing talent is just like a marketing funnel.

The larger the top of the funnel, the more qualified candidates come through.

You need to post your job everywhere. 

• Upwork

• Indeed 

• Linkedin

• Monster

Next,

Filter talent- When you have a lot of applicants, you have to DQ spammers.

The easiest way to do this is to create a technical test the applicants complete when they apply.

This will DQ 80%-90% of applicants and then show us which remaining applicants have the skills needed for the role.

I give a thorough explanation in this video

And then comes.

Interview talent - pretty much everyone gets this wrong.

The best interviews are the ones that ask questions to understand: 

1. Does this potential hire share our values (cultural fit)?

2. Do they think the right way?

My simplest recommendation here is to ask future-based questions that are scenario-based.

Avoid ‘tell me about a time when’ questions as these often get fluffed up.

Step 7: Training

After hiring, you need to put them through training.

My most up-to-date recommendation is to have your new hires consume hours of content

Your objective should be to have several hours of training per role that must be consumed in the first two weeks (aim for 20-80 hours)

I know, this seems pretty nuts

But the alternative is for team members to shadow

Why shadow when we can watch you perform a task at 1.5-2x speed? 

Once initial training is completed, managers should have pre-set training sessions where they work alongside their talent to ensure there is adoption and understanding

I give a full breakdown of how to onboard talent here

Follow all these steps and you’ll be well on your way to escape your business prison 

Reply to this email if you need help, I review and reply to each email because I’m here to help :) 

Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you

1. If you're serious about taking your agency to the next level and want my help in doing so, click here to book time for a growth consultation

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Stay Happy

Stay Hungry,

Jordan Ross

CEO & Founder @ 8 Figure Agency

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