I come across so many incredibly talented agency owners, but they’ll never grow a successful agency. They’re so great at what they do, they can’t let go. They’re so busy doing the doing within their agency, they can’t scale.
I know one guy who’s knowledge of Facebook ads is unreal. His agency runs Facebook ads and they do a great job of it. There’s 5 of them in the agency now, but the others are all juniors who he basically just spends all of his time managing. He’s key to the whole operation. It wouldn’t work without him.
Personally, I put a large part of my (relative) success down to the fact that I’m distinctly average at all of the things that we offer as an agency: design, development and specialisms within digital marketing.
I know a lot about all of them.
I can connect the dots between them.
I can run teams around them.
I can position them in relation to a client’s problems to deliver a solution.
Most importantly I can sell them.
But can I actually do the doing of them to the level of expertise or quality our clients need?
Absolutely not. And thank goodness. Being average at them allowed me to quickly replace myself with people who were better than me at them.
Because if I was tied up in the doing, my agency would still be 5 people too.
Every agency owner needs to be constantly reflecting on what they can let go of. What did they do in the last week, how long did it take, and was it a good use of their time?
If it wasn’t a good use of time, then find someone else to do it. Simple.
Or so it sounds, but then why are so few agency owners able to step back?
Some of agency owners actually don’t want to grow – which is fair enough. If you want a lifestyle business where you keep doing the doing then that’s cool. Respect. You’ve figured out what you want. This post is not for you.
Some of the time it’s because they don’t want to invest in the level of experience of team members they need. They go cheap, persuading themselves that having a big team is a good thing (no logic) and end up with an office full of cheap staff that can’t be trusted to do much without it being checked.
Hiring cheap inexperienced people can be great when you have some structures and management in place, along with strong onboarding and solid training processes to bring them up to speed.
But if you don’t have those things, you’re just creating yourself more work, not less work.
Sure, after 6 months these people might grow and be self sufficient and even add loads of value. But who has time for that? Just pay the extra £1000 per month in salary and save yourself 6 months.
The formula for agency growth is simple:
Hire great people who are better than you at what they do. And then empower them to do their job really well.
It’s the only way you will ever step back and grow a team (and an agency).
Digital Agency Life 