- Was I singing Madonna earlier?
What was I singing?
- [Camera Man] Oh, Cotton Eye Joe.
- I was singing Cotton Eye Joe,
but then I think I was singing "Like A Virgin"
for some reason.
(upbeat music)
The right way to build a consulting agency.
In today's video, I want to share with you guys
how to overcome the frustrations of
having projects that always go over scope
and you essentially make no money on,
to having people on your team that
don't buy into your vision, or even being in a situation
where you don't have systems or processes to scale,
or maybe you've even tried to scale
and you ended up with more headaches and more overhead,
more people and you made less money.
You know, when I was starting my company, Spheric,
we tried to do the same thing and really for the first
year and a half, we grew to a dozen employees
and it was frustrating.
I felt that nobody really understood what work
they were supposed to be working on,
what the expectations of the clients were,
and it always felt like I was two steps behind.
Then one day, I understood.
Somebody shared this with me that the framework,
or the methodology is the product in a consulting agency.
So, if you don't have a methodology,
if you don't actually name say,
this is the way we're different,
this is what we do, this is how we do it,
and have that named, then you don't really have a business.
You're just taking orders.
You're doing custom work all the time
and it will burn you out,
especially if you do this ten plus years.
What I want to share with you guys is how I thought through
designing this framework, I called ours "I Circle."
It was based on agile development methodologies
and a few other components and how we decided to focus
on enterprise portals as our core solution,
and only after we nailed that and built the repeatable,
scalable systems, that we then thought about
identity management, which is called IDM,
or business process automation.
So it was very focused and then once we nailed that,
we added a few other lines of business to scale
out the company.
So there's a framework.
I call it the Agency Model and it goes like this.
The first part is your roadmapping step
and I learned this from my buddy Brennan Dunn,
and it's really defining what you do upfront.
Take the sales process and actually charge for it.
Okay?
A lot of people sit down, they talk to a customer,
they spend two to three hours on the phone,
and then they create a scope of work or a statement of work.
That effort of understanding the customer's needs,
translate that into a solution, presenting it to them,
I mean, you'll probably get one out of four customers
you present that with,
which is super frustrating because it takes
you know, a lot of time.
What my buddy Brennan says is take that effort,
and create an outcome for the client
that you can charge for.
For example, if you are a design agency,
you could say,
"Look. This is,"
One of my clients I've worked with call it the Dig.
The Dig extracts the brand from the company they work with
and it gives them a roadmap that they can execute against.
It talks about customer personas.
It talks about the strategy and the whole process,
I believe they charge around $2,000 to $3,000 for this,
the whole process gives them a document that the customer
can execute on their own.
That's the key.
Great roadmapping process is an output they can actually
take and execute without your company.
Now, if they do that, if you deliver on that
and you show them how much work it is,
and how detailed you guys are,
and that you guys actually know how to do it,
then you can convince them to do the ongoing services.
So, first part, is a paid roadmapping service
that everybody pays for.
Then it goes to an ongoing service.
This is some kind of monthly retainer.
Some kind of service that you can define and create
that they pay every month to get a result.
It could be ongoing development.
It could be ongoing design services.
It could be ongoing bookkeeping and I'll share with you guys
a quick story with my guy that I work,
Mr. Greg Crabtree from Simple Numbers,
but same model, same process.
Ongoing service.
Then here's how you think about the extra part.
It's really the third part of the framework.
If you have things that come up that are out of scope,
you said, "Here's what we're going to do.
"We're an agency, a design agency, and we're going to develop
"this brand and visual assets."
The ongoing services continue, enhance that,
and maybe deploy it to different locations.
Different contractors you work with create those assets.
But then all of a sudden there's a need for copywriting
for their website.
That would be considered an enhancement.
Enhancements are strategically defined and processed
and created, almost like mini-products,
that you can upsell to the customer.
So, ongoing service is a fixed monthly fee,
then you have these enhancements that are very defined.
You know how to execute them.
It could be stuff that's done within your team,
or you can partner with a third party company
to execute on it,
but it all integrates into your ongoing service.
It's very detailed.
Account managers are usually responsible for identifying
those opportunities and presenting them to the client.
But that way, it's very clear to the customer, to yourself,
to your whole team, that this is how we do it.
That's the roadmapping.
Here's the ongoing service,
so you build that reoccurring revenue.
Then if there's these one off situations, a contest,
some kind of like theme guide
that you need as a visual asset.
Sometimes you want as kind of like a branding document.
That might be an enhancement.
All those are very clear cut and focused.
That is the Simple Agency Model.
A real great example is Greg Crabtree.
He has his book called Simple Numbers.
That's his marketing and I'll share with you guys
how that fits into the whole mix.
That book gets people interested in his services,
which goes into the financial model.
That's his road mapping service,
the Simple Numbers financial model.
It's a fixed fee.
Clients come in.
They present their books.
Greg does all that work.
Well, his team does.
Presents it to the client.
That's a very focused, very specific offering,
presents to the client and then after that,
the ongoing service is updating the books every month
to get the new updated financial model.
Now, they'll teach you how to do it amongst your own team
if you have your own bookkeeper or CFO,
or you can just pay a monthly fee to have them do it.
The enhancements are tax type situations,
or other financial things that
a traditional accounting firm would do.
That is an example, and there's many others
if you look into the world or agencies and consulting,
the ones that have figured out how to scale it,
they've used this process because it's very clear
and focused and you figure out your profit margins
and you understand the deliveries and the scope.
It all comes together.
Now, here's the bonus.
If you do this right,
the roadmapping step had three kind of features to it.
One, it becomes your USP, your unique selling proposition.
Most agency founders actually don't do anything unique.
Maybe they do, but they don't have a great way
to position it or explain it.
If you have this process, and you could name it,
like ours is called I Circle.
I've heard it called the Startup Bootcamp Process,
or the Dig.
There's just so many different names.
Once you define that, that's your USP.
That's what makes you different and unique in the market.
It also acts as your content marketing.
So I talked about the marketing step.
For Greg, it's a book.
In that book, you will learn how to
create your own financial model.
Most great blogs teach what the company does for the clients
as paid service.
So do it yourself.
Here it is.
You can essentially take the roadmapping process
and what you would work through with a client
and the output and take each one of those steps
and extract it as a blog post.
It becomes your editorial calendar for incredibly targeted
specific and qualified content to get people interested
in what you do and are ready to pay
because if they wanted to, they could do it themselves.
The third part is it becomes the filter for your customers.
Because many of you, maybe you had this experience,
have people that were really just kicking the tires.
They were just interested in getting a proposal.
They weren't really, they didn't have the budget.
They were trying to use your proposal against somebody else.
But they're just not serious.
With changing the whole model where you produce the content,
gets them interested, they then pay for that
roadmapping process, it becomes a filter for only very
serious customers that have the budget.
That are ready to invest in themselves and your services
and it just makes the whole company a lot easier
to operate and manage.
So that is the process.
Number one, roadmapping.
Number two, ongoing service.
Then you have your enhancements.
All those act as a filter for customers.
It provides your editorial content for your content.
Also gives you a USP, or unique selling proposition.
That's what I wanted to share with you guys
to really help you guys scale your business
to the next level.
As per usual, I want to challenge you
to live a bigger life and a bigger business
and I'll see you next Monday.
If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel
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continue on your journey and I will see you next week.