AltAgency

Have you found your tribe?

Does your service align with what your clients value most?

This helped us get more of our ideal clients

Want to grow a more profitable agency with fewer ‘clients’?

Here’s how.

First, you have to understand the different types of people you serve—clients, subscribers, members, and customers.

You can have 1 offer for each segment but make sure they are built around your core capability.

Here’s what I’d do:

- Dial in Your Core Capability: Focus on refining and stabilizing your primary service or product.
- Shift to Productized Services: If you haven’t already, transition from a la carte offerings to productized services to create consistent cash flow and stability.
- Buy Back Your Time: Streamline operations and delegate tasks to free yourself from daily business activities. Dan Martell has a great book on this.
- **Introduce Memberships**: Once stable, add a membership model to generate recurring revenue. This also can increase your LTV.
- **Expand with Products**: Finally, introduce additional products to diversify your revenue streams.Lower ticket products like books, workshops and templates are great for 1) acquiring customers instead of leads and 2) demonstrating your expertise so buyers can get a taste of what you have to offer in a low friction sort of way.

Having a variety of ways for buyers to engage with you has allowed myself and our clients to weather most uncertain economic climates while allowing us to keep our team as lean as possible.

Want to streamline your business?

Here’s how.

1. Dial in Your Core Offer: Refine your main service or product to ensure it meets your client's needs perfectly. You really only need one offer to get to $50k/month…arguably $1M depending on your goals.
2. Build Your Delivery Experience: Create a streamlined process that guides clients to success with minimal hands-on effort from you as the founder.
3. Develop a Sales System: Implement a repeatable sales process that can be delegated and automated. If you can’t physically hand it off in a playbook, you are the playbook.
4. Create a Marketing System: Produce engaging content that starts conversations. Conversions happen in conversations.
5. Optimize Your Schedule: Structure your week to balance CEO duties with other responsibilities efficiently.

As a CEO, even at a million dollars a year, you might only wear the CEO hat 20% of the time.

Structuring your week and systems effectively means you can manage all your responsibilities and focus on growth.

Which of these is your focus right now? 👇🏼

The future of marketing and sales is about fit, and social is at its core.

Each year, more people prefer social media for product/service discovery according to a recent survey by Vendasta.

- 45% of millennials
- 39% of Gen Z
- 27% across all generations

These numbers are only growing!

To stay ahead, focus on creating content that aligns with Google's E-A-T guidelines:

- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
-Trustworthiness

You have to demonstrate you have the expertise, firsthand experience, credibility, and trustworthiness to be heard and trusted.

What's the difference between clients for a service and a productized service?

🔍 Service clients often receive bespoke, hands-on solutions tailored to their needs.

🔄 Productized services, offer fixed outcomes for a fixed price, allowing for systematic delivery.

Think of it like this: clients are hands-on because their needs are unique thus requiring a more custom solution, while subscribers engage with productized services. They are looking for the specific solution you’ve marketed to them.

You’ll think about your service/product suite in a new way when you realize there are really four buying segments within your ICP.

The four segments: clients, members, customers, and subscribers let you tailor your approach to meet them where they are at and have a variety of options to not only get new buyers but keep them longer.

The lines between being an agency, consultant, creator, and even offering a physical SaaS product are blurring.

This is great news for all of us because it allows us to leverage the most efficient methods to serve our clients while maximizing profits.

Think about it…

- Tech-enabled services are revolutionizing how we deliver results.
- Sometimes, consulting is more effective than doing the work ourselves.
- Other times, creating consumable curriculums can propel clients forward, helping them tackle specific problems.

I’ve personally utilized this to my advantage so growth wasn’t always just about “get more clients”.

When we package our expertise into programs and products we don't always have to be the labor; you can create solutions, provide training, or offer consulting and advisory services.

These lines coming together means we can serve our clients more efficiently and effectively.

It’s an opportunity for those that commit to it.

Custom services keep you stuck in the business as the founder.

Learn to recruit and train your team.

Simplify your solution. Simplify the sales process.

We’ve all heard “niche down”.

Yet, so many agencies still serve anyone with a wallet and a pulse.

Here’s how Rob tackled this inside of our Navigator program and how you can too.

- Identify Your Core Offer: We recognized the need to focus and created our core offer, *Local Service Boost*, specifically for local service businesses.
- Simplify to Amplify: We further refined our offer to focus primarily on local SEO with minimal ads. This simplification allowed us to concentrate our efforts and expertise.
- Profitability Through Specialization: By narrowing our focus, our services became more effective and profitable. Specializing allowed us to deliver superior results and build a stronger reputation in our niche.

You can hear how it is more simplified and thus more profitable and easier to deliver.

If you’re offering services to a broad audience, I highly encourage you to niche down.

Specialization can lead to greater efficiency, better outcomes for clients, and improved profitability for your business.

Have you struggled with doing this?

Got this on lock? what worked for you? 👇🏼

We’re always building two businesses at the same time. One will grow us. The other will not.

Do your clients control your calendar?

Do you allow last-minute meetings that ruin your work-life balance?

Are you missing personal moments?

Unfortunately, this story is all too common in the marketing and creative services world.

Here’s the deal.

Leaving open windows for clients to schedule meetings up until the day before means your days are unpredictable and chaotic.

Like Rob, you might find yourself working weekends regularly, sacrificing personal time and missing out on key moments that mattered to you.

You control your calendar.

Here’s how:

1. **Set Specific Times for Client/Team Meetings:**
- **Identify Ideal Meeting Windows:** Choose specific time blocks during the week that work best for you and your clients.
- **Communicate Availability:** Inform clients of your available meeting times and update your scheduling tools accordingly.
- **Enforce Boundaries:** Stick to your set meeting times and avoid scheduling outside these windows.
2. **Block Out "Flex Fridays":**
- **Reserve Fridays for Flexibility:** Designate Fridays as days with no scheduled appointments.
- **Plan Activities:** Use this time for personal activities, hobbies, or spontaneous plans.
- **Protect Your Flex Time:** Ensure your calendar remains clear and avoid letting work commitments encroach on this day.
3. **Eliminate Weekend Work:**
- **Set Weekend Boundaries:** Commit to not working on weekends.
- **Plan Ahead:** Complete necessary tasks during the week to avoid weekend work.
- **Communicate Expectations:** Let clients and colleagues know your weekend availability policy.
4. **Review and Adjust Regularly:**
- **Evaluate Effectiveness:** Periodically assess how well your new schedule is working for you.
- **Make Adjustments:** Fine-tune your meeting times and flex days as needed to maintain balance.
- **Stay Committed:** Consistently adhere to your new schedule to reinforce your work-life boundaries.

Remember, your calendar is a tool for your success, not a chain to your desk.

Take control and create the balance you deserve.

If you know a fellow agency owner who needs to hear this give it a share ♻️

How do you make sure you own your calendar?

Are you the linchpin of your business?

Everything depends on you from decision-making to daily operations.

What happens if you’re no longer there?

Rob faced a harsh reality when his uncle who ran a successful agency for 30 years passed away.

His agency didn’t survive 2 months without him.

Rob realized how vulnerable his business was.

I think we all would…

What if I got sick?

What if I had an emergency?

These thoughts can keep us up at night.

I’m a bit like Rob and sometimes it takes moments like this to push you into action.

I’m glad that Rob joined our Navigator program to restructure his agency and build systems and processes to help it run smoothly without him in the day-to-day.

He’s since doubled his revenue to a 7 figure run rate takes Fridays off and no longer works weekends.

There is a lot more work to be done but it’s a step in the right direction.

Whether you want to sell or not, building a business that’s resilient, sustainable, and capable of thriving beyond any one person lets us live a life on our terms.

That’s why we got into this game in the first place, isn’t it?

What's one step you've taken to ensure your business can thrive without you?

Share your experiences and let's learn from each other!👇🏼

Transitioning a legacy business with custom solutions to a streamlined core offering is scary.

The biggest concern?

How to maintain your current client base while transitioning to a more scalable model.

Imagine the fear of losing loyal clients, the anxiety of simplifying without sacrificing quality, and the uncertainty of how to execute this transformation without disrupting your entire business.

You might struggle with the idea of letting go of a model that’s worked for years.

You might fear the potential loss of revenue and the challenge of adapting to a new way of operating.

Here's the truth…

Transitioning doesn’t mean abandoning your legacy clients.

It’s about strategically streamlining your processes and offerings to serve them better while positioning your business for future growth.

Start small, maintain your core relationships, and gradually introduce streamlined solutions that provide even more value.

With the right approach, you can evolve your business model without sacrificing the quality and trust you've built over the years.

Will some clients leave?

Possibly.

But if they do, they are making room for more of your future best-fit clients.

Embrace the transition, and commit to the fact that your future business will look a bit different than it does now…and that’s a good thing.