Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey, everyone, today I'm joined by Laura Humphreys. Laura is an agency growth expert and former owner of a $15 million agency that she successfully sold to Ogilvy. Laura knows first hand what it takes to scale an agency from the early struggles to building a high performing team and ultimately making a profitable exit, and she now helps ambitious agency owners implement the same strategies that fueled her success. I wanted to bring her on because so many agency founders take growth plateaus, whether at 1 million, 3 million or beyond. She's been through all of it and is here to share what actually works and what doesn't. In this episode, we discuss the biggest myth about running a $15 million agency, the key leadership shifts agency owners need to scale. The right time to start thinking about an exit strategy and more. No one was asking for another community, but I've made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done them before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested. Right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join a dynamic agency dot community and now. Laura Humphreys, 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. What's the biggest myth about running a $15 million agency?

Speaker 1 1:52
Well, I think the myth is that it's going to be too hard to have a bigger agency, you know, assuming that you're a small independent agency, which is really kind of my sweet spot, it's going to be hard to when you get to a bigger agency, because you're going to have a big team, you're going to have to have, you know, like everything's much more complicated and much harder to me, my experience when I got to that level, to the 15 million mark, it was actually easier. It was the best time that I had as an agency owner was what was there? Because I had a leadership team, you know, and I had a self managing company, and for me, that's the goal to get to the actual The hardest part is not, if you do it right. The hardest part isn't having the bigger agency, or having a $15 million agency, and you know, that's still quite a small agency on the scale of things. Obviously, things. Obviously, the hardest part is the one to 3 million sort of part. That's for me, we got stuck there 1.5 million for years, for a few years, and we couldn't get beyond that. And that's the hardest part because the owner operator. Owner is still the agency owner is still acting as an owner operator. I mean, you know this stuff, Chris, you know it's, it's like, it's actually, it's hard, because you've got to, actually, at that point to get from 1.5 say, to to 5 million. You've actually got to change what you're doing. You can get to 1 million relatively organically. And you know, just by doing what you what you're good at and getting some clients on board and getting a small team. That's not the hard part. The hard part is, what do you have to do strategically? And, you know, you have to, actually, I always say to agency owners, you've got to put your big bill or boy pants on and actually start thinking like a CEO, not an owner operator. And that's, you know, so that, to me, is the real crux of it is not what it's like when you get there, it's actually what it's what you have to do here and now to enable that to be a self managing company when you

Chris DuBois 3:49
get there, right? Yeah, there's definitely something to that mindset shift that every agency owner needs, right? I have a client right now who started with almost nothing, like negligible MRR, and within seven months, broke the million dollar mark for ARR and and he had a couple contractors, but it was really just him doing it. And, like, setting everything up. But now it's like the growth started to slow, and it's like, well, how do I do this? Well, it's like, you can't be the one doing everything right. And so now he's bringing on some, some other team members, and, like, everything just pick right back up. And it's like, oh, look at that. You like, pass off some responsibilities. And now it, you know, everything starts to flow again. It's just crazy. How that little shift

Speaker 1 4:35
absolutely, absolutely it's, you know, you've nailed it on the head, of course, is you can't get there doing it by yourself. And you have to shift from being an owner operator mindset to a CEO mindset, which is all about, you know, then it becomes about, you know, what? What kind of clients do we actually want? What is, what is it that we're taking to market? Which is, I know, is one of your kind of specialties. And then, how do I actually. Organize a team of value players that are actually going to be able to deliver

Chris DuBois 5:04
that, right? So, so this is probably the best time then to shift into talking about the the agency, flywheel. Can you give like a once over on the on the concept, and then we can dive into it? Yeah,

Speaker 1 5:17
well, it's, it is a good point. It was a good time to shift into it because it's exactly aimed at that stuck at the one, 1 million, 2 million, between one to 3 million. And it's really the idea is that, you from my experience, we got stuck there, and then we did these things, and we worked at them, worked at them, worked at them, and then in one year, we won four major clients, like big clients, in one year, and then we took off. So it kind of, like, our growth kind of went, like, sort of, you know, to 1 million, and then it stayed flat, and then it just, it took off from there. And so the flywheel is really about, you know, the hamster wheel is when you're being the owner operator, and you're doing all the work, and you you've got that constant chicken and egg, you know, like, I can't get out there to do enough sales, because I'm back here looking after the clients and, and I'm so busy looking after clients that the pipelines dried up. And it's kind of this hamster wheel of just doing, doing the motions, you know, the Groundhog Day stuff. The flywheel is actually the seven strategies, which is really the strategies you need to put in place, you know, which starts with having a bigger goal, and then actually, then knowing what your offer is to market and who your ideal client is, and then building the right team for that model, for that offer, building the a team that's going to do that, and then having a client growth, a sales system that's going to approach that really target that ideal client, and a client growth system that's going to enable you to actually grow those clients and nurture them. And then bringing it back to the operational stuff, which, how do you measure what matters, you know? How do you, how do you actually measure what you're doing in 12 month and 90 day increments, so that you can actually move everything forward, so that, in a nutshell, is the flywheel.

Chris DuBois 6:54
So what I appreciate the most about it is that you start with a vision. And obviously people are going to say, like, Yeah, well, of course, you start with the vision, right? And with the vision, right? But I've talked to so many agencies, so many agency even, like coaches who want to get into like the other like the sexy stuff, right? Like the, well, this is how we go to market. This is how we build the offer. But if we don't know where we're actually going and how we're mapping this out, then does any of that even matter? I'm assuming you see the same things exactly.

Speaker 1 7:22
That's why I start with and, you know, I know you're going to ask me, you know what my book is, Frank Jones, Young's, but I'm going to tell you in advance, it's 10 times easier than two times, because it starts with a bigger goal, you know. It starts with, you know, and to be a CEO, to be a leader, you've got to have a vision, you know, and it's, it's, what are we actually building here? Because if you just, if you're just looking at, you know, what are we doing, you know, we want to sort of increase revenues and profits next year, then you can keep most of the stuff that you're doing and do and move incrementally. But if you really want to scale, you've actually got to be very clear, what are we building, and who are the clients that we need when that picture is complete, and what's the team that we need, and what, what is the goal that we've got that's going to excite everybody? So as I bring on board these A players, they're going to be really excited about about doing this with me, because a players, the real high performance people are motivated by goals, you know, and so, you know, they want to come on board and be part of a team that's actually doing something exciting. Something exciting. So it's critical, Chris, it's just, you know, it has to start there,

Chris DuBois 8:27
yeah, well, even just from so I call it agency design, right? Like, let's actually build the agency that you want, but we got to know how to get there first. I have two clients who are about the same age, and one said, Give me 60 plus hours of work a week. Like, I want to do this all now, so when I have a family later, I can, I can just focus on my family first. The other other client, he said, like, I want to kind of enjoy my my 20s and go explore and, like, do these things. And so the agencies look completely different for both of these even though they're, you're right, we're doing the same work, it's just completely structured differently, which I think brings a lot more like joy to what you're actually doing. Yeah,

Speaker 1 9:07
and that's a really which is another point that's really important is to that you just sit there, that you do with your clients. Is what is, what is in it for you now, what's your why? Because that's the thing that's going to get you up when it gets tough, right? And you just want to stay in bed and pull the cupboards over you. I used to say I was, I was jealous of the girl at the checkout counter, you know, because I was so stressed. I thought was awake all night. I was worrying about paying the bills, and I was standing there in the grocery line, and she's just going,

Speaker 2 9:36
and I'm going to wish, you know, she's going to go home, and

Speaker 1 9:39
she's not going to think about work at all. And, you know, like, and I was just that stressed. But what kept me going is that I had a vision, or a goal, if you like, right from the start, to build and sell my agency to an multinational right from the start. And that's not everybody's goal, you know, but that was my goal. And so in the middle, it got really, really tough. She. Which, you know, you know, I was, you know, I was having panic attacks. And that's, that was what forced me to actually put my big girl pants on and become a CEO, not an owner operator. And I don't wish that on anybody else, which is partly why I do this work, right? Because, you know, you don't need to get to a nervous breakdown to actually build your agency properly. You know, it's for me. So that was my goal. You know, that's what motivated me. So I bought my agency in a very specific way, because I knew that if I was going to sell it for multinational, I knew what I sort of what kind of sale price I wanted, and I knew that meant that I had to be at this level of revenues and billings, and I need these kind of clients. And so I had a really clear picture. And that's so that was what motivated me. And as you say, not everybody wants to build their agency to sell it, although my belief on it is that if you build an agency that's valuable enough that someone will buy it, then you by default, you've built a great agency, even if you don't want to sell it, even if you know your vision is to actually create that self managing agency, that you can have choice, so regardless of whether you want to sell it or not, I think, I believe every agency owner should have a goal to create a self managing agency.

Chris DuBois 11:12
So yeah, one of the pieces of advice I'd gotten years ago was get a third party every so often, every couple years, three years, to come in and just evaluate your business and just look at it and tell you, because if they can put a price tag on your business, they can also tell you where those shortcomings are. And so you get, like, a third party to really come give you an evaluation of like, here are all the things you need to work on, and it's like, and it gives you a better idea for how you can actually grow your business. Or, like, what do you need to tighten up without, you know, being, like, inside trying to figure it out? I

Speaker 1 11:46
think that's really smart. Yeah, yeah, I didn't, I didn't do that. But one thing I did do, in the second, at the end of the second year of business, I bought into independent directors, you know, which back in the, you know, that that time, you know, I paid them $1,000 each, a month, you know, which is, you know, I wouldn't get them for that today, but it was still $24,000 off, you know, off my bottom line, which was massive for me at that time, but it was what I did. I had one, one advisor who was a real it was an ex Sachs ad man, and he was really flamboyant, you know, retired, and he knew the ad scene, and the other guy was a real staunch left brain businessman, and it was the most hilarious. You know, our board meetings were hilarious because they were, they couldn't be any more different. But, you know, the, you know, this is sort of, you know that why I believe all agencies should have external advice in some form or other, you know, because, you know, having those two guys, they they were constantly evaluating, you know, like, you know, and questioning me and pushing me to, you know, not only achieve our goals, but you know, you know, they knew where I wanted to take the agency eventually, and so they had this constant sort of accountability and and support. And I think that that is absolutely critical, you know, I haven't, I've built a couple of successful businesses, which I've exited from, and I've, I've always had external advice, you know, advisors, directors, mentors, whatever, you know, like, so, you know, I think that's another key criteria, really, for agents that don't do it on your own. Like, it's just doesn't make any sense to try and do it on your own and bring in the best advisors for the different things that you need. You know, like you probably need a generalist who's been there, done that, who can actually, you know, has been through the roller coaster and really gets it. But you also need some specialists that have got particular areas of expertise. But for the next move that you need to make,

Chris DuBois 13:39
right? You're never going to be able to see all your blind spots. So it's like, yeah, let's bring these people in who can help. One of the, actually, one of the metaphors I love, is like the he with the biggest support team will win, essentially, right? Like you look at like in the the NBA, or something like LeBron James, that has so many he has, like, an athletic trainer, a physical trainer, a coach. He has multiple other coaches. He's got massage therapist. He has a water boy, like, literally everyone there just to help him focus on what he does. And so if we can set ourselves up to have that support network, like we're set right,

Speaker 1 14:23
that's, you know, it doesn't make any sense. I kind of use sports analogies all the time because, you know, it's the same thing. Like they have a goal, United goal, right? You know, and, and, and he's on a team that has eight players, and, you know, they have strategies, and they have a coach, and they all know where they're going, and they they know how to measure whether the strategies are working or not. And so the analogy just works, you know. And I think it's, you know, even golf, I find is funny. Even though golf is, you know, not typically a team sport, it's still something that you can you can go out and play golf, you know, anyone can go and get some some clubs and a ball and go on a golf course. Yes, and you can thrash around, and you can get from the tea to the green, you know, and you can put it in the hole, but it's going to take you 24 shots, and you're going to spend, you know, an hour doing it, as you know, because you're in the rough. Or you can go and talk to a pro and get some lessons, and, you know, have them go out on the course with you and show you how to do it and and over time, you get to be proficient, and you get to actually know how to do the strategies, and you get to play a more strategic game. You know, I haven't really got there myself, but that's, you know, I'm still playing into the unstaged game, but it's the same thing, right? You know, you anyone can start an agency and, and apparently, there are 53% more agencies in the world now than there were pre pandemic. So anyone can start an agency, and anyone can get it to a million dollars revenue, really, it doesn't mean that they've got a really well crafted, strategic, well organized entity that they've created, you know. And so that at that point is where, if you don't know how to do it yourself, and the only way you're going to know how to do it yourself, as if you've done it before, you're going to need to get some help, you know. And it's in it. The other thing is another book that, you know, I've got, I'm just such a massive reader, Chris, but another book by the same author, actually,

Chris DuBois 16:22
good one. Yeah, it's exactly

Speaker 1 16:24
that, right? It's like, you can set a big goal, but you really need to then work out who are the who's you need in your world that are going to help you get there. And so, you know, and that's when, I guess that's why you and I do what we do, right? Because we're, you know, we share a passion to see agencies thrive. It's easy to fail as an agency owner, and I don't know, a failure doesn't necessarily mean that you close your doors, but it means that if you're stressed out, you're you know you have no quality of life, you're not you know you're not paying yourself enough, you're not making you don't have great clients, then, you know, that's to me, that's kind of a failure to provide a lifestyle for yourself. Yeah, and the whole, who know, how is get there faster, man, you know,

Chris DuBois 17:10
you can move very fast just by saying, who could get me through I've done. I've been doing it with every decision. Now it's just who? Because very rarely are decisions based on like, kind of time constrained, and in that set, like, if I had more time, I could decide it's like, no, really, it's you need more information, and then you could decide, and, and so my question is now, okay, well, what information do I need to make this decision easy? And just asking that question usually points me to a person that's like, oh, they have the information. If I go talk to them, I can figure this out fast. And it's like, you start, I mean, decisions get made faster, and you start executing faster. And it's, yeah, becomes another flywheel.

Speaker 1 17:50
Absolutely, that's, that's exactly, that's exactly how it works. So, yeah, and it's, you know, and it's, it's really nice to be at a point in in my life where I have done it a few times successfully, and, and, and, and it's never been an easy journey, you know, like, you know, owning a owning a business, owning an agency, you know, I think, you know, we're nuts, you know, quite frankly, it's why would you because it's a massive roller coaster of highs and lows, you know. And so it's nice to be at a point in my life where I am able to say, hey, look, you know, I did do it, and I have got an amazing lifestyle, and I've created this this, but it wasn't easy. And I can share this, you know, I can share the story, and I can share the lessons, and that's where the coming back to, that's where the flywheel comes into it really, it's like, it's not, it's not rocket science. It is business fundamentals. You know, agency owners, it's not, you know, it's if you start an agency because you're particularly good at some aspect of agency life, you're a creative person, or you're a marketing person, or you you start it because you've got those skills you need. You need to understand the fundamentals of business, applied to it, applied specifically to agency life, and then you can actually grow faster.

Chris DuBois 19:13
Where do you see, kind of the biggest hang ups or bottlenecks for an agency that's trying to scale,

Speaker 1 19:21
pretty much the owner operator mentality. Because while the owner I've got a diagram that I that I talk about, which is, it's a triangle, and it's the problem solving capabilities of your of your agency, and at the bottom, you've got, you know, level one is people doing the work, and how far and what kind of problems are they solving, and how far out are those problems that they're solving? And typically, you know, they're solving the problem of getting the work to the client in some form or other, and they're thinking as far out as that is delivered. So they're never thinking more than, you know, two to three months out. You know, if they're, if they're kind of lurching from project to project or whatever. But then you get up to sort of team leaders who are thinking a bit further out, and they're solving the problems of, you know, how do I get my team to deliver and perform and it and as it goes up, you get your sort of, you get to your sort of general managers and who are operationally, you know, looking across the whole organization, looking at, you know, the profit and loss. And kind of, they're looking further out again, because they're going, you know, where do we need to be in the next year and the year after to make this happen. And then you've got level five or six, which is your your CEO, sort of heading up towards your CEO level. And they need to be thinking five years out, 10 years out, like, where are we going, and what's, what are the trends? What's happening, what's happening in our industry, what's happening competitively, you know, what markets do we need to be playing in? How do we actually win this game that's, you know, at a much more strategic level, you know. And so if the owner is the is the best problem solving brain in the in the agency, which it typically would be, and they're spending too much time down at, you know, sometimes down at level one, you know, it's certainly not much higher than level two or three, then they're compressing, and you just won't grow, you know. And it's just, to me, it's like, That's it, if you and I've got a saying, If you don't let go, you'll never grow. So, you know, this was where I had those nervous breakdowns. And we're like, panic attacks that kind of, you know, almost a nervous breakdown. My doctor sent me on a six month sabbatical at that point because I went to a hypnotist to try and cure me of panic attacks. I mean, they were awful. You know, I was in meetings, and I'd be doing a pitch, and then it was almost like I had an out of body experience, and I would just stand there, and I had no memory. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to be talking about, and I was just looking at all these people looking at me open mouth, going, I don't know what to say. And it was embarrassing for me. It was embarrassing for my team. It was awful. So I went to a hypnotist, and he told me that, basically, I was massively stressed. You should go see your doctor. I'm not going to hypnotize you out of this. And my doctor said you need to take a break. So I went six weeks off the grid. No Contact left. My general manager in charge left, and I came back after six weeks, nearly two months, and the agency would have had the best two months ever. Everybody had stepped up. Everyone was so relieved that I'd left, you know, it was like, because I had my, I had too many fingers and too many pies, and I was controlling too much, you know. So I had to, that's how, that's how bad I had to get before I let go, and and, and after that we that's when we really took off, you know, when I actually let people step up so that I could spend my time not doing any of that stuff, and not trying to quality control things, and trusting that the team could do what I needed them to do, and making sure that we had the right systems and the right training in place. And that's probably a critical piece, right is what do you need as an owner to feel safe, to let go, to feel that trust, and if you haven't set it in place, if you haven't hired the right people, if you haven't put the systems in place, you haven't put the training in place, then it's on you, because you haven't created allowed your team to be trustworthy, and that's on you as a leader. So it all comes back to that piece really is that you've got to step up as a leader.

Chris DuBois 23:01
Yep, the is there, like, a specific second hire for, like, the leadership team like to, I guess. And I'm framing this question poorly. When you agencies finally owner realizes I need to bring someone else in to help me with all of this. Is it, is there, like, a consistent theme that you see for, like, what position they're hiring for? Is it usually a COO type? Is it a general manager? Are they bringing something in just to, like, manage their weak spot? Maybe they they're terrible at finances, so they're like, let me get a CFO to just do that side. Yeah. What are you noticing? Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 23:40
my own experience was that it was a general manager who happened to be a qualified chartered accountant. And actually, I didn't, didn't actually hire her deliberately. I bought her in to sort out our finances, because I realized that that was, that was a weak spot, you know, like, I just, you know, we were, we were doing okay, and there was money in the bank, and we, you know, like we were, you know, but I, but I wasn't getting regular reporting. I wasn't, you know, and I kind of realized that I needed to that was a critical piece that needed to improve. So I bought her in to in the first place to sort that out. And she said to me, when she came in, I'll do that. Within six months, I'll have made myself redundant. And she did. She set it all up brilliantly. But then she started moving on to everything else. She started going through all of, you know, like all of our other systems and our and our operations and our thing and and she just started systemizing everything to the point where I went, you're actually, you know this, what happened, how this operates better than I do. And so I said, I think you you basically need to run the operational side of the business. And so I said, right, you know, promoted it to General Manager and, and it was the best thing I ever did. She was like my because that enabled me to be good at what I was good at, which was, you know, I'm a I'm a visionary, I'm a kind of ideas person. I started out as a copywriter, so I'm a creative person, and I just wanted to be, you know, let's do the next bright, shiny thing. And she was my kind of, well, let's do a business case for that, and let's see, you know, let me, you know, you tell me what you want to do, and I'll tell you the pros and cons, and you know what it's going to cost us and what the investment is and whether it's worth doing. And then she banned me from hiring or firing anybody because I was hopeless at that, you know, I was just, you know, our real, a team started to really come together after she started taking over the hiring, you know, and just said, you know, let me do the people management. And everyone in the agency used to call the auntie, because she was just, you know, she everyone would go to her with her problems, and which was great, because then she would tell me their problems, and you know, and then I would know, and she would say to me, like, Laura, you need to go and put a note on so and so's desk, because they're feeling, they're not feeling the love from you. They feel like you haven't noticed them. I'm going, Oh, it's ridiculous. Of course, I've noticed them. She goes, Just go and put a note on their desk, you know. And so it was like I had this guide within the agency that was telling me, this is the pulse of the agency. It's what's happening. And so she was the first. She was like, my two IC, my kind of, she ran the business operation, and I was the one that was out there, and that enabling us to kind of go after those bigger clients. And then the next two senior hires were creative director, and because we were strategic creative agencies. So a creative director and a client services director, and so when it got to that point, just before I sold it, that was the management team that I had in place, the leadership team, and it was just, you know, so I only had those three reporting to me, you know. And I, you know, got to the stage where I was doing a four day week, and, you know, could go and get my nails done and, you know, do all the Learn to play golf, all that stuff, because I had an amazing leadership team. And that's when it was, that's the self managing company, right? I had three people reporting to me. They were all very competent. They were all very competent. We moved offices into massive offices. I didn't have anything to do with it, you know, like, they just did everything. You know, it was just And when Ogilvy did eventually come knocking on the door, because we'd won some big accounts, we won agency of the year, we didn't, we kind of got noticed. They came knocking on the door, and they could, they could confidently see they wanted our clients. And then they'd say, who's looking after those clients? And I said, Well, you know, these guys. And then they could see that they could easily take me out, put someone else in top, and it would, you know, they wouldn't lose the clients, because that's really what they wanted. They wanted the clients, and they wanted the team that was going to deliver those clients. And then it was for them that was a no brainer. And we had a really, very, very tidy, tightly run operation because of Angela, my GM, she like, you know, when they first bought they bought 30% first, and then I had the option to sell the other 70% after three years. The reason I did that is that we just won three really big clients when they came knocking. And I said, multiple of eBay, right? And I said, Well, that's that doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to sell it. Now, if you know, these clients are on two, three year contracts, we are going to be worth four times as much in three years time. So they said, Well, look, we'll buy 30% now at a higher multiple, and then we'll buy the the other 70% after three years at the multiple that we'd agreed so, which was a great deal for me, because I had a buyer in the bank. But at that point they put a director on to they insisted that they put a director on. And we had to have a board meeting every month. And this guy would come to from Ogilvy, you know, and he'd come in his suit and kind of, he'd, you know, Andrew would prepare our papers, and he'd sit down and for the, you know, and he just, he was looking for where he could pick holes in what we were doing. But there wasn't any. And after about, I think it came to about four of these meetings, and then he said, Oh, look, I need to do this every month, you know, because he couldn't find anything wrong with what we were doing. And that was all Angela, right? That was all her just, she was just so good at that operational stuff. And I was keeping us on track, you know. And then the client services director was keeping the clients happy, and we were meeting our targets, and it was just so he stopped coming, you know. Then it was like, I will just have one every six months, you know, or just send me the papers you know. Like, it's, you know, and that's, that's to me, that's the, that's the dream you know. Like, that's the dream for every agency owner is, no, it's a long answer to your question, but that can run your business, operationally, is, is, you know, was, was actually the key for me?

Chris DuBois 29:24
Yeah. I think the the latter half of that was insightful too, just because most agencies haven't sold yet, and so just, just understand what that process could look like. Is super valuable. Yeah. So I have two more questions for you as we wind down, which you've already, you've already, kind of shown, shown your cards on this first one, I was gonna ask, What book do you recommend every agency owner should read? So I'll let you when he shows. So

Speaker 2 29:49
the book is 10 times. 10 times is easier than two times by Dan Sullivan and

Speaker 1 29:56
Benjamin Hardy for. Reason being is, you know, the reason being is, you you need to motivate a high performing team if you're going to get anywhere. You know, you're not going to be able to do it by yourself, and you're not going to be able to do it with a team of average people. You know, high performance culture is absolutely critical to reaching to getting past that, that stuck point one to 3 million, absolutely critical. And a high performing team, a high performing person, is motivated by a bigger goal, and the 10 times. The whole idea of 10 times is easier than two times. Is that a 10 times goal makes you you have to look into the future, and you have to imagine what you would, how it could look, you know, what would 10 times actually look like? You know, not saying we have to actually get there, but in order to have a look at what it looked like, you have to change 80% of what you're doing right now. And for most owner operators that are still very much involved in the business, it's really critical, because that 80% is probably the 80% of stuff you shouldn't be doing. And if you keep a two times goal, you keep moving incrementally, you'll just keep doing more of what you're doing it, which is probably what you shouldn't be doing. So the idea of the 10 times goal is, and I get everyone in when in my program, when we start the flywheel with the 10 times goal, and the vision and the V hag is, what do you have to let go of in order for that to be possible? And then right from the day one, from when we kick off, we get a list of what they need to let go of, and they're very committed to it, because they've put it out there, you know. And, you know, the other, the other thing I do is the big, hairy, audacious goal, which is, what's the goal that's not financial, but that's going to really motivate your team. I mean, we wanted to win agency of the year, you know. We wanted to be the country's premier boutique agency, you know, like, so at the time when we set in these goals, we were just a small team, you know, sort of, you know, just a handful of us struggling to, you know, get get more clients. And so when we brought people on board, it was, we're a team that's going to this big goal, and what, what can you bring to the team that's going to help us get there, which is a whole different conversation. To with hiring an account manager or digital marketer or whatever it's like, that's just hiring someone to do a job. If you sit them down and go, this is where we're going. Does that excite you? Yes. And what can you do? Like you've got a unique ability, what are you going to do? And how's it going to help us get there? And then, what's your goal within that goal so that we can help you achieve your goals? That is just a whole different way of hiring, and it makes, you know, like, you know, I've had some pretty bad hires. I know how painful it is. I've had a lot of emotional stress and cost a lot of money by hiring the wrong people. So, I mean, coming back to 10 times, all of that is because if you set that bigger goal, it changes the way you behave. It changes the way you look at your agency, and it makes you get out of being level two on one. You just make sure you have the first thing you have to do is let go of that,

Chris DuBois 32:58
right? Yeah. Definitely requires a lot more focus to be able to hit the 10x and so last question, Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your programs? Our

Unknown Speaker 33:10
best place is on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 33:12
Flora Humphreys, at LinkedIn, I'm there quite often, sharing my tips and stories about, you know, my journey, the highs and the lows. You know, sometimes I might share a story that's quite personal about, you know, know what, what it was like to have, you know, have panic attacks. But I'm also sharing, you know, the, as many of the kind of things that I did well, that I that can help as well. So it's probably just the best place to come and hang out with me there. And then if there's something that I'm saying that's of interest and you want to kind of talk to me, to kind of talk to me, then we can do that.

Chris DuBois 33:45
Awesome. Laura, Thanks for Thanks for joining.

Speaker 2 33:48
Thank you. It's been fantastic. I've really enjoyed it.

Chris DuBois 33:57
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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