8F Just Signed Its First Portfolio Company

Author

Jordan Ross
January 29, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

🔥 This Week’s Agency Insight

From Jordan Ross @ 8 Figure Agency

January, 28 2023

8F just signed its first portfolio company

This business has shrunk down to 100k/mo due to BAD operations

Here is how I am going to scale this business from 100k/mo to 200k/mo in less than 6 months

This agency runs a DFY funnel service

At its peak, they were doing 200k/mo, but the founder was stressed out

There are MAJOR issues at hand:

  • Unclear timelines

  • Lack of clarity in roles

  • Minimal to no project management system

  • Using Slack as a project management tool

  • MINIMAL visibility into the 40+ active accounts they are building funnels for

The list goes on

The founder can easily build a funnel to sign 30 deals/mo

They’re signing 9 deals/mo right now which is yielding the 100k/mo run rate

Solutions

1- Re-define workflow

This company has already created a workflow for their business in the past 

But the problem here is that it's not actually used

It was made 6 months ago, put into ClickUp, and never updated/edited/improved

A workflow is only as good as its accuracy of the process and leverage it as a template in your project management tool

My first step is to re-review the workflow and ensure it's truly up-to-date

2- Roles

From my initial audit, many of the team members are overwhelmed, many are sitting in 4-6 roles each lacking clarity

For each person, I will need to extrapolate all the roles they are in

Example:

One of the team members, titled customer success manager, informed me that they sit in the following positions:

  • Customer success manager

  • Operations Manager

  • Project Coordinator

  • VSL Coach

  • Copywriter

When I asked if she had clear responsibilities, goals & KPIs per role, she said no

I will have to comb through the business, extrapolate every role that exists in the org chart, and bring clarity to these metrics per role and per person

3-Issues

Boy, there are a lot of issues

In just an hour of auditing and conversations, I’ve probably counted over 50 issues so far

I will have to continue to comb through the business, but I'm mainly trying to capture:

  • When timelines are inaccurate

  • When the workflow isn’t followed

  • When the workflow breaks down

  • When project management isn’t followed

  • Where there is no visibility in the process

An effective operation should flow like a river. From sales to delivery, things should be smooth

I'll have to make a master list of all the constraints that prevent that flow

4- Project Management

We will have to re-introduce the use of the project management tool for this company

This will be very hard because the business has a habit of communicating ad hoc tasks in Slack, communicating about the process in Slack, and not creating updates in the project management tool

In order to effectively update this process, I assume we’ll need to bring in a project management auditor

Someone who will simply have to audit the entire company many times per day

Whenever someone communicates tasks in Slack, they’ll have to comment asking to move their task into the project management tool

Whenever there is a late project management task, the auditor will ask what the status is

There isn't a significant amount of budget to invest in another full-time project manager, but this auditor will move the needle

In order for there to be buy-in, I will need the founder to inform the team of the incoming project management change and that everyone must fall in line (this will be said more gracefully)

5- Project Tracking

This one blew my mind

The company currently only has 2 operational meetings a month

They barely review the 40+ active accounts and where they are at

I will be introducing an Amazon style operations meeting

Each account manager will be responsible for updating leadership where they’re at in the process if we’re trending on time, if we’re trending late and if we are late, why and how we can fix the issue

These meetings will probably have to be executed on a daily basis at first due to the high volume of accounts that are past due and the lack of execution 

6- Process Improvement

When walking into an operational shit show, the goal isn't to fix the company overnight, the goal is to make small improvements weekly

My goal with this business will be to improve processes weekly, even if it's only 1-2 per week

This requires an intentional focus on the following:

  • All issues that exist

  • Order of priorities of issues to fix & in which order

  • Updating/adding issues to the list & re-adjusting the priority order

We will have to celebrate small wins weekly

That's ok

7- Benchmarking

This will be a journey

Many months of work for sure

I will need to establish current benchmarks of performance the company is experiencing 

1% improvement week over week will be considered a win at first

When dealing with an overworked, stressed-out team, we must bring light to where we are and where we are going

We must celebrate the wins as they occur

We must acknowledge team members for their hard work and inform them easier days are coming

I will turn this business into an operational machine

Your business can be next

Thanks for reading. 

P.S Want to build an hands off, no stress profit generating agency? 

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2 Worthwhile Resources For Agencies

  1. EngineBI empowers your agency with a proven approach for planning and managing your business along with specialized software that provides the data-driven insights you need to make great decisions.

  2. Fiscal Advocate offers expert support in insights-driven financial planning and analysis, bookkeeping, and financial infrastructure consulting to drive your agency’s robust growth.

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Jordan Ross

CEO & Founder @ 8 Figure Agency

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