I’ve boiled down my business to just a few simple things.
- Building assets
- Designing systems that make our lives easier
- Creating a process for feeding the above systems with the required inputs
If you literally do these three things over and over across the 5 growth levers in your business, you’ll be building a business that can run and grow without you. And you’ll get to choose how often you work and what you focus on when you do. This is what I’m doing. It’s working for me. I think it will work for you. Check it out.
Transcript / MP3
What’s going on, everybody, Greg Hickman here from all agency@allagency.com. And in this video, I want to share this concept that I’ve been playing with called the automatic agency. Now the automatic agency, really this, this concept came in the fact that a lot of people are talking about how do I automate, how do I automate my business? How do I automate my lead gen or my fulfillment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I actually think there’s a big difference between automate and automatic. And I think what people really mean is they want their business to be more automatic. They want the results and the output that they’re looking for to be more predictable, they want to be involved in the process only where they need to be involved with it. But the business in most case will never be fully automated to the point where you’re not needed as the owner…So how do we make it as automatic as possible that, you know, when you put in a dollar, you can make two so to speak. And when I started looking across our business, there are multiple areas where we look to create systems and harness automation in order to make our lives easier. And what I found is that there’s really kind of two core areas. There are systems and assets, and there are inputs and processes. So systems and assets and inputs and process. Now, before I jumped into these, if you are new to the channel, please click the subscribe button. We release a new video each and every Thursday, and we’re really here to share. What’s working for us and our clients. As we help them really add a new revenue stream into their business and make more money while working less using systems, process, and automation. So like I said, the automatic agency is made up of a couple of key pieces systems and assets, inputs, and process. So first I want to talk about systems and assets, systems and assets. To me are those things where they’re the onetime things that once I build them, they continue to build value over time. Now you can look all across the client journey on this, uh, and find things that are systems and assets for you in your business. Now, when I say across the client journey, I mean, lead generation lead, nurture sales fulfillment, and kind of retention, resell, and upsell, like this goes to can go into operations and finance too. But if the business is stuck, it’s likely in one of those five areas. So at a high level, let’s look at some things that could be systems and assets for you inside of your business. First, your acquisition funnel, maybe you’ve built a webinar. Maybe you are using a video sales letter or an ebook as a, you know, a lead magnet. Now, the reason I’m saying that this is a system and an asset is because once I’ve built that as long as leads are going into it. And I have an email followup campaign, a lot of stuff like that works without me being there. So I’m unable to deliver value to them prospects when like I’ve already put in the effort beforehand. Now, another example of this is the action, the full sales pipeline management process. Yes. So we have a couple of different people on our sales team and we have a GoTo process that’s documented. And we set up using multiple systems that allow them to have sex sales conversations, and know what to do with those people. There are some pieces of it that are automated. Um, and there’s also process and documentation that they follow each and every day that allows them to move prospects through this pipeline. But once we have that process dialed in to me, that’s an asset because once I created it and we brought on two sales, yeah, the reps, once they walked through the system, they were able to take that off my, off my shoulders. They were able to take that off my plate. And now they are the ones sitting inside of that system. They’re just managing for me, but it’s an asset because it’s still helping us yield the result. I’m just not a part of the person like the person Manning the ship. Now, another example is just like a longterm nurture campaign. I don’t know what your belief is on longterm nurture, but someone ops in and they’re going to get emails from you over time. Like that is an asset because those emails can be selling your products and your services. Now another one could be your onboarding process again, which some of which can be automated. Some of which could be, you know, more of a, more of a process. Um, so this kind of covers both areas that I’m talking about, systems and assets and inputs and process. And again, I’ve noticed that they obviously come together to create the result that you’re looking for, but they are distinctly different because in the example that I’m going to share, there is the system that you create. But at some point that system is going to need constant inputs. So for us, um, you know, on the fulfillment side, we’ve much built a lot of campaigns, a lot of automation. So what does that mean for us on fulfillment? Well, when a client comes to us and says, Hey, I need a webinar funnel, or I need a new client onboarding campaign, or I need a, um, you know, a list hygiene campaign. Those campaigns are already built. They need some inputs to be added. It’s an asset for me because I don’t need to go do all of the heavy lifting to build it unique every time 85% of it’s built, but we’re going to need the client to put in some inputs to make it work for their business. So it’s an asset for us because I don’t have to do the fulfillment from scratch. It’s actually an asset for our client because they get it and they just need to tweak the inputs so that it’s unique to their business. And lastly, the fulfillment side, um, if you are a client of ours, you’ll notice that we use a lot of frameworks and templatize things. Um, not necessarily scripts because if you use scripts, you end up sounding more like us. But if you use frameworks and you model what we’re doing, you’re going to get the same results, but you’re going to sound like you. So that is the systems and assets piece. So that leaves us with the inputs and process piece. So inputs and process, I think of, well, once I create this machine, what are indoor system, as I just said, or this asset, what are the inputs that make the machine go well for us? And I should have done a little flashy animation here by bullet forgot to do that. But things like ad campaigns, well, an input for our, uh, our ad management process. We actually, they still need to come up with new creative and copy on a frequent basis to feed that machine so that we have new ads going live into the mix place, that email nurture campaign or the email newsletter, we need to write new copy that goes into that process each and every week, YouTube videos, I’m creating content right now, but once I’m done creating this video, it goes into a process where people will take it. They’ll transcribe it, they’ll schedule it in YouTube, they’ll add all the tags. So there’s a process that needs the input in order for it to work. To me, it’s sort of automatic because once I’m done with this video, I input it into the system and the system now, as the next person, the person who’s in charge of that seat, then notifies the next person and so on. Yeah. And so forth. Um, when it comes to, to a fulfillment, you know, we often create more solutions. So, uh, what I mean by that is, you know, maybe it’s a new campaign. Maybe it’s a new framework and a template, but as we’re serving our client, for example, in one of our coaching programs in Academy each and every quarter, we host a two day workshop. Well, each and every day, quarter, I need to come up with new training or that workshop. So the workshop has a structure and a process that happens every quarter. It’s two days between these specific times. And Greg has a structure for how he does those workshops. So, um, I’m designing almost like painting by the name numbers, but the content that’s good. When I go in there, it needs to become unique every single time. So I have a process to go create a new training. It’s called the new client training, builder, fancy name, right. But that isn’t input the content that’s going into that workshop is an input, but the structure and the processes, which we promote, promote the event, invite all of our clients. That is a system asset. And guess what? We can package that process up and give it to our clients, which is essentially what our, our business is, packaging up process and systems and automation and making our agency clients lives easier by helping them grow without working a whole lot harder. So if you weren’t sure what we did, that is what we do. So let me give you a specific example of something that’s very relevant for us right now. Um, the acquisition machine, so why the acquisition machine machine. So I had been managing my own ads for forever. Um, and I just brought on a media buyer and I needed to really onboard this media buyer to take over this process for me. And I had to codify what it is we do. And so I looked at it from a systems and, and, uh, the inputs, uh, kind of perspective that I was talking about earlier. So let’s look at this. So my video sales letter, right, my ads go into my video sales letter. So once people start watching the video sales letter, they are, they, they start moving towards the direction of becoming a client, right? But the ads in this case are the inputs. So ads are feeding the VSL system and the output would be the leads in the applications that we’re getting that are speaking to our sales team, right? But now within this, you can drill down into the ads management process, right? We release ads every Tuesday, new ads, every Tuesday and Friday. So we need to be ready with new ads, Tuesdays and Fridays to launch. So throughout the week, we’re working on content and creative, that will then go into our ads management process, which is very similar to like a Kanban board, kind of a production board, a Kanban board. And my media buyer will take the creative and content that I’ve put together. And we’ll take the ones that we decided to launch and he’ll take them. And then on Tuesdays and Fridays, he will launch that campaign and boom, Tuesdays and Fridays, and new ads are going live. So we know that every Tuesday and every Friday new ads will go live. But if Greg stops creating content and coming up with new creative and recording new add videos, well, the process, it’s still an asset, but it’s not going to lead to the result that I mentioned earlier, which was leads and applications. So as I started looking at this, I just realized that many of the things that I wanted and that my clients need, and that you might need watching, this is really how do you design your days and your weeks to create the inputs that feed the machines and the systems that you are creating, which really is just about how do you set up routines and daily practices? Because they are critical to feed the systems. They were critical to feed many of the assets. My mini webinar is great, but if new leads aren’t going into it on a daily basis, it’s not going to produce the results that I needed to produce. If I stopped giving ads to my media buyer, they will, you know, he won’t have ads to run, to run. If I stopped showing up to the coaching calls for our coaching clients, that’s an input, but they don’t get the support they need. They don’t get the result that they want. So it ends up really breaking down to the systems and assets and the inputs in the process. And I know I just gave you an example of really more in the lead gen and the lead nurture side, just because that’s more relevant for where I’m at right now, but it really plays throughout within each of those five drivers of your business lead generation lead nurture a sales fulfillment, and retention, resell, and upsell. I’ve heard it was called the five core functions of a business from Alex Charfen who has a great podcast, by the way, I think it’s, I think it’s called momentum, uh, or something like that. For some reason, I thought it was his name. But anyway, check out this podcast, I’ll link it up below great podcast. And I want you to think about where in your business are you creating systems and assets that when you build them, once they start creating value for you over time, and then how are you working into your daily routines and your habits, the activities that will create the inputs that will feed these systems. If you think about each of those areas and where you need help next, it’s very, very easy to start focusing in on the areas that are going to help you remove yourself. Well, if it’s sales, how do I develop the sales system in the sales process and figure out what I need to do each day to move leads through that pipeline? Because when I hire someone, I can show them that and they can jump into that role and follow that playbook a whole lot faster. When we hired our sales team, they came on in may. I was completely off the phones in about 45 days, and we really didn’t miss a beat. And if I didn’t have all of the structure and stuff to say, Hey guys, like hop on in here. This is where the lead comes from. This is what happens. Here’s what you say, here’s that document. And like getting them up to speed. It would have taken me a lot longer, the same thing with our media buyer. If I didn’t say, Hey, we launched ads on Tuesdays and Fridays. Like we’d probably be scrambling and be doing all over the place. But because we know that we want to launch on Tuesdays and Fridays, we structure the rest of the week around the inputs that are going to yield the assets, the creative that the, the, the content that’s going to feed that ads machine. So hope you found this helpful. If you’re watching live, hit me with a hashtag replay and let me know what you thought of this. If you’re watching on YouTube, I would love to know what you think of kind of this style of presentation. I’m working onStyles of presenting content and having a lot of fun with all of the gear that I’ve been buying, Trying to up level what we’re here to share with you. So let me know if you found this helpful, if you’d like to see more presentations and, and videos like This and make sure you’re subscribed and we will chat with you very soon. [inaudible].
Read more
