Are you committed to growing your Agency next year, but trying to figure out what support you need to get there? Maybe you’re wondering what to invest in to help you reach your goals and vision in 2023 in the most effective way.
There are so many options out there it can feel overwhelming! From masterminds to free content to hiring a consultant or even an implementer – what is really going to help you move the needle in your agency?
This episode gives you step-by-step guidance on what questions to ask yourself to know whether or not you need any support and if you do, the pros and cons of different support options available. The goal of this episode is to help you make an informed decision based on you and your business so you feel confident walking into the New Year with the support you need to thrive!
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Hey everyone. Nicole here and welcome back to the show. Today we’re going to talk about how to decide what business support you need inside of your business in the New Year.
And so right now we’re finishing out December of 2022. A lot of business owners are looking forward to 2023 and figuring out what is it that I want, what do I need, and what support do I need to get there?
So this is going to be very relevant if you’re listening to it in the moment and thinking about 2023. And also, if you’re listening to this during a different time of the year, this will still help you if you’re trying to figure out who to hire next to help you achieve what you wanna achieve inside of your agency.
That leads me very well into the first question I like to ask when you are considering support inside of your business, asking yourself the question, what do I want? What do I need right now? What do I want to achieve or create in 2023?
So here are a few options you might be considering. One, you may have a done for you service, you have been the solopreneur and the solo person delivering services inside of your business. And maybe you’re thinking about hiring team members to support your work with your clients. And you might be thinking about starting an agency model.
The second position you may be in is that you already have an agency model or you have team members who are supporting part of client deliverables, but you are still heavily involved in client delivery and management and know that you need to make some changes in order to actually help you remove yourself further from client delivery so that you can focus more on running your business.
The third place you could be in is you might already have delegated client work, but maybe you’re still involved in management and you want to be able to scale your agency and you’re trying to figure out what’s next in order to scale it.
Okay, so for each of those situations, like what you wanna create is either starting an agency model, removing yourself more from client delivery, or removing yourself more from management and actually scaling your agency.
So decide for yourself.: What is it that you wanna achieve and create in 2023? We have to start there to know what type of support we might need, or if we even need support at all. Sometimes there’s a benefit to continuing to work inside of your agency and build inside of your agency before getting support.
But first we need to know: where are you at right now and where do you wanna go? So take a minute to actually reflect on. And then the second piece of it is based on your answer, what does it take to achieve those goals? So sometimes I hear from people that I’m talking to, either on Instagram or LinkedIn or through email, is that they actually don’t know. They don’t know.
Maybe they’re thinking about starting agency and they literally don’t know how to do it, or they want to continue to get out of client work and they wanna delegate more to more team members, but they don’t know the best way to do it. They’ve been guessing or winging it, and they just don’t, they don’t know, they don’t have direction.
Or maybe they’ve, they feel like they’ve gotten to a certain level inside of their agency and things are working pretty well, but they don’t know what they need to do to really take it to the next level, and they can see that there might be some options or have some ideas, but are a little hesitant on what to do next and really don’t wanna waste time.
So if you don’t know it all, this is a really good opportunity to be able to get some support. And we’re gonna talk about the different types of support you may consider. Okay, so if you don’t know, you definitely need some direction. You need some support.
If you do feel like you know, you have to assess: do I have the experience and the ability and the preference to be able to figure this out on my own or not. And there’s also seasons of this too.
I was just talking about this with another business owner where sometimes I know what I need to do, for example, I think we were talking about personal training and it’s like, yeah I generally know what I need to do and I could do. Am I at a season in my life right now where I will show up and do it, or do I actually need to hire a personal trainer or join some sort of a group program to be able to have the accountability and the direction? In order to help me implement, what I already know, but maybe also get some shortcuts, right? So that’s an example that just came up in my personal life and some personal conversations.
So again, if you don’t know, you could try and do it on your own, but you also have to assess your experience, your skills and ability. I always say know yourself, the good, bad, and the ugly. So just because, for example, I know what I need to do in order to be stronger, doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m gonna be consistent with going to the gym or going down to my garage to work out. I might need, knowing myself, I might need to have a group or container where I will be accountable to show up. So again, know yourself the good, bad, and the ugly to know if you just wanna try it yourself or if you need to get some.
And so the next position is maybe you have already tried, maybe you have already tried to start an agency and it didn’t work out. Maybe you’ve already tried to get out of client work and management, and either it’s working but not really, or it didn’t work at all and you had to take it back on yourself.
Maybe you were trying to scale your agency and just ran out of cash or money or had problems with the people inside of your business, whether it be clients or team. Like you’ve tried to implement the steps and you haven’t gotten anywhere. This is a great time to be able to get some support inside of your agency.
Okay. So if you don’t know, get support.
If you know, you could try without support, but you need to know yourself and know if that’s the right option for you or not.
And if you tried and you’re not getting anywhere, that’s also a really good time to get support.
Let’s talk about what types of support are available.
And I’m just gonna mention, I actually wrote down a list. I have a lot here. And there might be more. So you can think for yourself what you’ve seen. But here are the main ones that I’ve seen.
So one is free content. Consuming podcast episodes, and podcasts like this one around agency operations. It could be reading blog posts, it could be talking to some friends or colleagues. The pros of this is that you can get some perspective on what’s needed. The cons of this is that there is a difference between learning and then implementing. And customizing it based on your agency. So learning is really digesting everything, taking this content and figuring out, okay, I know that this is probably what I should do next, but then there’s a difference between knowing and actually implementing it.
And so when people sometimes go to implement free content, they realize that there are challenges that come up that they don’t necessarily know how to overcome in the best way, or maybe they’ve consumed some content around how to overcome it, but that there’s nuances to their particular business and they don’t know how to customize it based on their business.
So the pros is that it’s there, it’s available, it’s accessible. The cons are there’s not really that customization and support with customizing. You’re actually having to do a lot of that yourself.
The second option could be taking a course. And so, it’s actually similar to free content, except you’re paying for it and maybe it’s a little bit more tailored to your specific industry based on the type of course that you’re purchasing. I don’t know too many courses out there that are specifically geared towards agency operations.
I know there’s some that are geared towards operations, but it’s very broad in the types of business models. Same thing with marketing and sales. But it is possible to purchase a course. Sometimes courses do come with a group where you can get feedback and that can be helpful. But generally you sometimes have to do the same thing with a course that you have to do with the free content, which is really filter through it to see what applies to me and what doesn’t. And you’re not getting that really customized support.
Then we have things like a mastermind program. So the cool thing about a mastermind program, and it’s a little tough because sometimes people will call their programs a mastermind, but not all masterminds are created equal. So sometimes there’s different things and resources that are included in certain masterminds. But generally the point of a Mastermind is that you are able to speak and interact with and mastermind with other people who are business owners and agency owners that are doing something similar to you and you learn from each other and brainstorm with each other.
The benefit to that is that you can start having these conversations. You can. What are things that other people have implemented? How might it work for me? You can form connections with other business owners. There’s a community aspect to it that can be really helpful and supportive.
The downside to this is if you need frameworks for implementing the work that you know that you need to implement, a lot of masterminds don’t come with those frameworks. So if what you need is frameworks for, let’s say growing and scaling an agency, if you’re just part of a mastermind program, of course you can be surrounded by other people who maybe have scaled an agency model. However, just because someone scaled an agency model doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to teach you how to do it and that they can help customize it for your business. So they could do it for themselves, but there’s a completely different skillset involved in helping lots of other agencies be able to scale their business. So that’s the mastermind.
Then we have the hybrid of group coaching and mastermind and curriculum, and this is actually what I have inside of my AGENCY program and all of our programs, is a hybrid approach where we teach the frameworks we get really clear on the results that we are promising inside of each of our programs. And then we have the frameworks paired with group coaching and mastermind minding to be able to customize it for each business and then also have the community approach where people can learn from each other, which is also really helpful.
I am partial to this because this is what I have, but I have it based on myself as a prior agency owner being a part of a lot of different offerings that I’m sharing with you right now and seeing where some of the holes and gaps were to be able to create a program that addresses all three of these areas. So that’s the hybrid approach.
Okay, so all of what I’ve shared is a lot of learning and teaching and coaching and masterminding, but what about actually hiring a implementer. So this is sometimes what I hear from people when they’re considering one of my programs is, do I spend this money and investment on this program or do I spend this money investment on hiring a team? And this is where you have to come back to where you’re at right now and if you need support or not.
So the benefit of joining something like my AGENCY program or any agency program. I can’t speak for other agency programs because I do think that, there’s the quality of the frameworks and the quality of the coaching. But let’s just use my program AGENCY for example.
So the benefit of the AGENCY program is that it helps you to actually set up your agency and address some of the root causes of why things may not be working before you go and hire new team members or fire team members or delegate more.
Most of the times when I speak with agency owners and they’re wanting to expand their teams, maybe they’ve grown it to a certain level and they want to scale or they have team members and wanna continue to remove themselves from client work or delivery, is that some of the challenges that they’re facing are actually symptoms and not root causes. So for example, a challenge could be, I’ve hired a few team members, but a lot of them aren’t able to fully take ownership of their area and I’m having to come in and correct a lot of the work.
And I’m actually not really getting that return that I wanted to get from these team members. Instead, I’m having to come in and do a lot of this stuff myself. This is where you might be in the situation where you’re like, well, I’m paying a team, but I don’t really know why exactly. Or I’m paying a team, but I feel like I’m not getting that true ROI.
And so sometimes the immediate thought is well, it’s not the right team member, so maybe I need to release them and bring in someone new, or maybe, and I’ve seen this inside of other business models too, where there’s holes and gaps and instead of addressing the root cause, they just keep hiring more people.
And the problem is that the actual foundation of the agency or the business hasn’t been updated to where they are now. And so if that’s the case, then what can happen is that it’s I use this example a lot, it’s like building, let’s say a six bedroom home on a two bedroom foundation. It just, it’s not going to work.
And if you just look at those symptoms, it may be that, yeah, I need to hire this other person. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about starting an agency and delegating client work and you’ve heard from a coach like, just hire someone to help. That was the advice I received. It’s like, oh well hire in, I had a project management agency, just hire another project manager, and the problem with that is that my foundations weren’t updated. The foundations were based on me and one person delivering the service, not a team delivering the service. And you can be hiring and team members, but that if those foundations aren’t there, if that, the management foundations aren’t there as well then, it’s not going to work well long term.
And so of course, if you feel like you have good foundations and good operational systems and you want to hire, you’ve already hired one person that’s working pretty well and you wanna hire that role again. You can totally do that. And maybe that will solve your issue. But what I have found is that as your business grows, that’s where people really need to make sure that they are addressing all of their operations, which is their foundations, their team, their management, and their leadership.
And it’s really the circle that you wanna continue to address as your business grows and go through a spiral and then you have to reassess these areas and then, you reassess, you make adjustments, and then you go through the next spiral and then you have to reassess these different areas and then you go through the next spiral.
And a lot of times it can feel like you are spiraling out when really what you’re doing is you’re taking data that you’ve gathered and you over that spiral over, let’s say it’s a year, and you’re using that to update and improve your business so that it’s able to continue to grow. Okay.
So those are some of the different options that I’ve seen. The other option that I do have written down is to hire a consultant that can come in and work with you one on one. I think the benefit of this, and I do some consulting work myself, I think the benefit of this is, yes, you definitely get that customized approach and I think there’s a few other things that you may want or desire, which could be frameworks that you can apply over and over again to your business. And then also the community and the masterminding that happens when you’re surrounded with other people who are doing what you’re doing, which is growing and scaling an agency.
So that’s those are the main areas I wanted to talk to you about today.
So step one is to really think about what do you wanna achieve and create? Step two is What does it asking yourself, what does it take to actually achieve these goals? And measuring do you know, do you not know, have you tried, but you’re not getting anywhere? Where are you at right now with knowing the steps and implementing them?
And then based on that, what kind of support you need based on the pros and cons. Like I shared, I’m a huge fan of the hybrid approach of having frameworks and curriculum while getting the coaching. And, another thing that this helps with is as long as you invest in the right program, it will also help you come up with operational and delegation strategies.
So I’ve had people come to me who are like, I think I need to hire a project manager next, but I’m not sure. And we haven’t worked together yet, and maybe they’re considering one of my programs and I’m like, you know what? Pause, because we actually take you through this strategy of figuring out who you need to hire next and at what time to make it work so that you’re delegating the right things at the right time to make it work both financially we’re not gonna delegate everything tomorrow. We wanna make sure that you’re delegating in a way that works financially, where you’re able to pay the person and yourself as well, and also takes the right things off of your plate or off of your team’s plate so it actually moves the needle in your business.
So that’s that’s why I love that so much. But it doesn’t mean that right now based on where you are that you wouldn’t get value from having some free content or only a mastermind or hiring an implementer, but the purpose of this episode is to really educate you and inform you on the different options so that you can make the best choice for you.
Now I will say if you are considering a hybrid approach, I highly recommend that you check out my AGENCY program. Just check out the page and you’ll kind of see what I mean when I talk about these different components so that you can understand what to what goes into a hybrid approach. And you can learn about that at nicolejacksonmiller.com/apply.
You’re not just going to an application, it’s actually going to a page that explains more about the AGENCY program so that you can see how we combined everything into that program.
All right, everyone. I hope this was beneficial to you as you are wrapping up 2022 and thinking about the support that you need in 2023.
If you have any questions on this and just wanna have a chat, head over to Instagram. I am @nicolejacksonmiller and I’m happy to just talk with you based on where you are right now. You can share with me some of the answers to these questions, and I’m happy to help point you in the right direction, even if it’s not joining one of my programs, but helping you find maybe some free content or maybe you are looking to just hire an implementer and want to get some feedback on it. You can totally DM me over there and I’m happy to share with you what I know.
All right, everyone. So this is our final episode of 2022. We are on break next week for the holidays, and I will see you in January of 2023. Bye everyone!