033 What Would This Look Like If It Were Easy?
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone, today I have a short episode for you answering a question that seems to pop up a lot in with some of the agencies that I start working with. And it's, why do things feel hard? Why are things feeling like they're getting harder? We're putting in the work we're doing all of the things it should feel like it's getting easier, right? And I have now heard this from so many agencies that I figured, hey, let me do a podcast episode on this. Give you some some of my advice, and we'll take it from there. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow, this is agency forward. All right, at some point in every agency founders journey, they have asked if they should be running a SaaS business instead, because it would probably be easier. However, that's a whole grass is greener. Situation, probably not the case. Starting an agency is easy, but building one that drives revenue isn't right. Anyone with a laptop can go sit in their mom's basement and start their own agency, but creating something that has actual results, where you're getting testimonials, and creating this feedback engine that actually develops itself right where you're actually bringing in continuous clients, you're driving revenue, you're getting all these awesome results for your clients, like That is hard, and so a lot of owners will say, Why does it feel like it's getting harder instead of easier? And it's because you're not doing all of the things that you need to be doing in order to make this work, right? It is hard to read the label from inside the jar. Now let's just get into this question. What would it look like if it were easy, right? A lot of what I like doing for my models is to start with the mindset. If we have the right thinking around the problem, we can then either hire or acquire the right skills, and then we can tack on some tools at the end to to kind of make everything easier, once we know we can actually get this done. But so getting to this problem, right? What would this look like if it were easy? It will help us adopt the mindset that tells us what skills we need to collect in order to achieve our goals. Okay, so first thing we have to do is get clear on the problem. So when we say, what would this look like if it were easy, we have to clearly define this. You can only improve what you measure, but you can only measure what you have defined. Okay, so we need to actually look at the goals. What? What is this referring to? Is it making more money? Is it creating the lifestyle that you want? Is it expanding your team right? When you understand what this is referring to, and like, really understand, right? This sounds simple when I just say it via a podcast and you're listening at home, but like, get as detailed as possible. So rather than, you know, making more money, it's what would closing new business for marketing look like if it were easy, and now you have very clear problem statement that you can start figuring out so you can get the actual result you're looking for. Okay, once we know where we are what we're defining, then we need to identify that perfect outcome that we want to achieve. Okay, so if we're asking, What would closing new business look like if it were easy? The answer might involve an automated content process that requires minimal input. While this perfect scenario might not be feasible like right now, it does provide us with a target to aim for, and so if we have a team, we could automate the content creation process by like recording calls and turning them into assets. Without that team, we might just have to outsource, right? But so understanding where we want to go and knowing where we currently are is going to give us a direction at which we we can start making this happen, which leads us into point three, which is develop the plan. Right? We know where we want to go, we know where we are. So now last step is just bridging that gap. And so we have to now identify some of the roadblocks. We have to prioritize our solutions, and then we have to test and iterate everything. When we talk roadblocks, we want every single potential hurdle that could get in our way from achieving this goal. Doesn't matter how big, doesn't matter how small, right? We just want to track everything, because that's going to help give us a better idea of what we need to do and who we need to become in order to get through it, with prioritizing the solutions, we want to focus on the solutions that have the biggest impact with the least amount of effort. And when we start talking about making. Things easy. We want to really it comes down to having less effort, right? We want to it should just be seamless, that we can go from from start to finish without having to sweat in the process. But usually that is not what gives us the biggest impact. And so we want to be able to kind of find the balance of these and see which one will actually help us the most as we're trying to minimize effort and then testing and iterating, super important, because everything you're doing, you should be testing set a hypothesis, right? If we do this for this amount of time, this is what we believe will happen. If you can do that, then track, did we what did we learn? Right? Was this positive? Negative, inconclusive, like, if you can actually track those things and look back on on what you're doing and and just do, like an after action review on it, right? Like, actually be critical about what's happening, you're going to grow much faster, and you're going to learn lessons way faster, right? That sounds pretty simple, but there are some common pitfalls that agencies run into a lot. First one being that they over complicate this process. Right? It's three steps. It's super easy. Where are we right? Let's define that so that we can measure everything appropriately. Where do we want to go? What is that ideal outcome? And then next, what is that path? How do we create this plan in order to actually get there? It's actually pretty simple. Figure out what does our minimum viable product look like, and just execute next. They're focused on the wrong problem. Okay, there's a great book that I've been recommending to a lot of people. It's called What's your problem? By Thomas, I might mispronounce his name, Weddle wettlesberg could be the W, pronounced like a V, I don't know, but he talks in the story, he gives the example of this apartment complex where everybody is is feeling annoyed that the elevators take so long. And so the team gets together and they start figuring out, all right, what do we have to do we have to do in order to speed up these elevators? And they come up with all sorts of ideas, like, we can replace the elevators, we can improve the machinery that helps move them up and down, do all these different things. But instead, they talked to one of the property managers who's reframed the problem for them, and he essentially said, The problem is not that the elevators aren't moving too slow. The problem is that people are impatient. So they added mirrors at every like little elevator lobby on each floor, and all of the complaints went away, and they were just completely looking at the wrong problem, right? And so by reframing, they were able to figure out what actually has happened. And I see this happen quite a bit in agencies just looking at the wrong problem. So do a brainstorming session, and like the great TED lasso states, do not bring an umbrella to a brainstorm and just jot all of those ideas down. Okay? And then last, uh, most agencies are lacking follow through on working through any of these challenges. So I would strongly encourage you to run your test all the way through. Right when you set that hypothesis, you're also planning out this full test. If we do this for this long, this is what we will get. You can set decision points where it's like if we have not hit this result by this time, then we will wrap it up. We're going to move on to something else, completely fine, but you need to be deliberate and actually follow through all of that. Otherwise you are always going to be short changing yourself. But okay, those were three steps to hopefully make your life easier by just asking the question, what would this look like if it were easy? I have run this little thinking process with multiple agencies, we've got some great results, and so I would strongly encourage you to try it yourself, do it with your team, and you should see similar results. That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.
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