When is the last time you took your business to the chiropractor?
Brad Martineau, CEO of SixthDivision, visited the DigitalMarketer office to remind the DM Certified Partners that they have probably been forgetting to give their business the TLC it needs. Part of that TLC is going to the “chiropractor” and getting your agency’s backbone aligned.
What does that mean?
Brad explains that each agency has a core backbone and its alignment is a crucial step to growing your business and succeeding with the goals you set when you started your own agency.
If somewhere down the entrepreneurial journey your business turned from a nice idea into a terrifying demon, watch this training.
And if you don’t have time to sit down and watch the whole thing, don’t worry. We’ve outlined the main ideas down below.
Here are the 4 ways to align your agency’s business purpose so you can reach your goals, showcase your value, choose your products, and make a profit.
#1: What’s the Return?
Why do you have your agency? What are you getting from it?
The easy answer is to make money; but this is where agency owners mess up and their nice idea starts to transform into something ugly. There are 3 aspects of return that will align your agency’s spine.
Aspect #1: Money
What is the amount of money you need to take home in order to survive?
This doesn’t mean your gross revenue. This means how much money, post-tax, you need coming your way in order to put food on the table and keep your business afloat.
Defining this number is crucial in understanding how you’re going to achieve it. As Brad highlights in his presentation, if your business doesn’t work in an Excel spreadsheet, it won’t work in the real world.
Aspect #2: Time
How much time do you want to spend working?
This ideal work schedule is never going to be stagnant.
In the first months, and potentially years, of your agency, you’re going to spend a lot of time working—but the goal is to move toward your weekly work goal.
For example, your ideal work schedule may be 9:30am to 4pm Monday through Friday, with a hard no on working weekends. Or, your ideal work schedule is working ten hours a week maximum.
This ideal work schedule is never going to be stagnant. If you’re already an agency owner, you know there are ebbs and flows. Some months you can leave the office by 5pm and then other months you’re eating late-night dinners at your desk trying to fix every problem coming your way.
The goal is to know what work schedule you want and push toward it on a regular basis.
Aspect #3: Peace of Mind
What gives you peace of mind?
This is the architecture of your company and the return you’re scaling toward. Your agency doesn’t have to become an 8-figure agency. It can be a $250,000 a year agency that makes you happier than trying to run a massive organization.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Do you want to be the CEO?
- Do you want to be a technician who builds a team around themselves?
- Is this a massive agency?
- Is this a small agency?
#2: What’s the Business Purpose?
How does your agency serve other people, what transformation does it give them, and what trigger motivates them to work with you?
When we ask what the purpose of our agency is, there are a lot (A LOT!) of pitfalls to avoid. That’s why defining 3 purposes, not just 1, is necessary.
Purpose #1: The Bigger Picture
This is the purpose that a beauty pageant contestant would give to the judges when asked what they want to do to change the world. Your answer doesn’t have to be “Create world peace,” but it’s allowed to be an answer that gives you the warm fuzzies and reminds you of the good you’re doing.
Purpose #2: The Right Now Purpose
The right now purpose is the down-to-earth purpose that anchors you to the work you’re doing today. Right now—who are you serving and what is the transformation you are giving them? This purpose accumulated over time is what creates the bigger picture purpose.
Purpose #3: The “Could Be” Purpose
This is the growth purpose. The “could be” purpose is positioned for the question, “What could this turn into?” This business purpose isn’t associated with anything you’re doing right now, but what you could do in the future to have more impact and/or make more money.
These 3 purposes give you buckets you can organize your business into. Everything that you do and every idea you have should be able to be placed into one of the buckets. Every idea that lands in the “could be” purpose bucket stays there until the opportunity comes for it to be transferred into the Right Now Purpose bucket.
TIP: Don’t change your right now business purpose more than once a year
Everything that you do and every idea you have should be able to be placed into one of the buckets.
Quarterly, ask your team and yourself:
- Do we need to adjust our right now purpose?
- Do we want to modify what our big picture business purpose is?
- Are there any “could be’s” that we want to bring in?
- Is there anything we should cut out?
To really make a statement about your agency’s purpose, also ask yourself:
- Who do I not serve?
- What’s the transformation I’m not trying to create?
- What are the triggers I don’t want to have anything to do with?
#3: What’s Your Product Menu?
What products do you have for purchase?
Taco Bell has a brilliant system as its product menu. When you see their menu, you’ll see over 10 options of different items to get. Now, really look at what they’re serving—tortilla, beans, cheese, meat, and lettuce served in different ways.
That’s what you want your product menu to look like too.
Your agency can create different offerings that use the same services. When you start to offer services that have different fulfillment requirements, you bring in new ingredients and start to make your life more difficult.
If you’re in the services business, abide by this ratio:
The number of team members divided by the number of products or services needs to be more than one.
If this isn’t the case, you’ll run into a problem. You won’t be able to predict deliverability and create profitability without team members being able to focus on each product offering.
#4: What is the Purpose of Each Product?
For the last alignment, we’re going back to #3: Purpose—but instead of asking the purpose of your agency we’re asking what the purpose of each product is.
Each product should be designed for a specific person, deliver a specific transformation, and have a certain trigger that makes people want to buy it.
Each product should be designed for a specific person, deliver a specific transformation, and have a certain trigger that makes people want to buy it.
On the backend, each product needs to have a team that stands by and upgrades, markets, and supports it.
For example, a digital course needs somebody to support it to makes sure it’s always accessible and up to date. Once you know you need this person, you can figure out what resources you need in order to have that product on your menu.
Now you can define the resources necessary to keep it on your product menu.
- Do you have the resources?
- If not, how much is it going to cost to get them?
- How many units do you need to sell to make it profitable?
After your agency’s chiropractor appointment, you can start to have marketing conversations about lead magnets and marketing automation.
When is the last time you aligned your agency’s spine?
