Hello, this is Alex Burkett, and you're listening to the Long Game Podcast.
This episode is a part of our Kitchen Side series, where we pull back the curtain and we show you the behind-the-scenes conversations, debates, strategies, and brainstorming sessions that we have at our agency.
And this was a special Kitchen Side episode as we brought on a guest panelist, Gray McKenzie, to help us cover deeper territory on the topic of operations, specifically agency operations.
So Gray McKenzie is a true operations nerd with a passion for helping digital agencies build healthy, productive, and profitable teams.
He is the CEO of Zenpilot and has spent the past decade helping over 3,000 agencies streamline their operations using ClickUp and a full suite of battle-tested project management habits and procedures.
A lot of this conversation did center around agency operations, but I believe it can be applied to pretty much any business, particularly the ideas about process versus innovation and creativity and scaling culture and leadership as the company grows.
So without further ado, enjoy this episode of the Long Game podcast. David, how's it going?Hey, how's it going?Also, good to meet you, Gray.
Yeah, good to connect.And you all met at HubSpot?Yeah.Yeah, for sure.And then kept going and then pulled together Omniscient.Did you start it with the three of you all together?
Uh, no, David and I started at 2019, something like that.Yeah.And, uh, Ali joined pretty quickly after that, uh, what, six months, nine months.It was, it was pretty fast afterwards.
Uh, but we all, we started on the side when we were working at HubSpot.
That's awesome.Good for you guys.Nice.Thank you.All right.How did we jump in?
Every time we're like, how do we get started?
Well, we don't usually, usually on these kitchen sides, it's just me, David and Allie.And we've had a couple guests from time to time.I'm going to be the pedantic one.
I already told David and Allie, you guys are going to have to come in with the college level questions.And I'm going to come in with the explain like I'm five.But like, how do we even, I guess, parameterize the concept of operations?
Like, what does that mean?When I think about it, I think of kind of like everything that has to do with keeping a business afloat.
But then if I think more concretely, I think like processes and SOPs and sort of standardized operations that people can repeatedly do.Like, do you have a sort of conceptual framework for this?
I do.So I think a typical agency like Omniscient is probably a good example.That's what you call it internally, right?Just Omniscient.You don't say Omniscient digital every time.Exactly.So I think like Omniscient, you have three main
of the business, growth, delivery, and operations.And growth is how we make money.Like that's marketing and sales, business development.That's making the promise to customers and prospects.And then delivery is how we keep that promise.
That's all the fulfillment side of the business.And then operations is like the junk drawer of the business world.It's like people, culture, HR, legal, ops, finance, like all kind of get lumped in there.And so super high level.
Yeah, building out the processes to support like apps is what supports the other two functions. And so that's the, like, I think that's where developing systems and processes has to come from.The spearhead is from there.
Those should not be the people actually creating your processes.Obviously, those are not the subject.Like, if you've got a dedicated full-time office person, that's not the subject matter expert.
And how should we be doing this organic or paid acquisition better?
Oh, interesting.So the person who's running growth maybe shouldn't be the one doing the operations and vice versa, or like that should be a discrete function in a way?
Uh, so I think early on, like super early, there's no, it's the same people, just different hats.Further down the road though, there are ops folks.
I think they should be leading on the like, Hey, what are we making sure that we've got strong systems and processes in place, but they just can't be the people actually creating those.
So the people who will bring the, Hey, here's some of the issues, like what are the issues to solve?What should this look like?Um, and I've seen that come from,
Full-time ops people, I've seen that come from leadership level, like COO people, and I've seen it come from folks who are full-time on the delivery side.
And so I think wherever it comes from, ops, I would say ultimately ought to own, make sure that that's there.
But there's always going to be interplay between the departments to actually build out, hey, how do we deliver what we do and do it efficiently in a budget?
It's interesting to me, because what I'm hearing from you is we're going to separate the person doing the ops and what the ops actually is.Like, let's say, like Allie's delivering on SEO projects for clients.
She might have an idea of the process, but that's like a different function of like turning that into a process and documenting all of it. And so like maybe it is also Allie putting together all the documentation and process.
Maybe it's another person working with Allie to do it.But like separating what's being done and like the how do we turn this into a process are two separate things.
Yeah, I would agree with that.And I think it's great if if we can multiscale.And Allie is one of those competent people who could do that already.But if we could multiscale the people who are in that role,
So they can, Ally doesn't need extra coaching or help to develop those processes.That's great.But inevitably, people who are sitting in the SEO role, they've got a utilization target they're trying to hit.They've got client work.
That's their main thing to go develop.And so to be accountable to also create process and stuff, that accountability has to come from often from somewhere else in the organization.And so I think that's the function of someone in an ops role.
How have you skilled people up on that operations muscle?Because let's say you do have time, but it's on a skill-will two-by-two chart.It's like, I have the will to become more ops-oriented, but I don't know how to become more ops-oriented.
Like how do you coach those folks up?
Right.I think like anything else, it's kind of starting with the end in mind.Like what does great look like here?So we can give them a vision.And I think this is, you know, we're a lot of like,
There's two things that I would recommend that most agencies do that in most agencies are colossal waste of time today.Those are like time tracking and process development.
And agencies just waste a huge amount of time with SOPs that are like way overly prescriptive, sink tons of time into it.They become outdated, like it's stale.Nobody ever actually goes and uses them.
So there is a whole, like you're saying, there is a whole skill gap to, hey, how do we actually build something that people will actually use and follow and gain value from?
Same thing with time tracking, like how can we possibly ask, if you can't look back over the last quarter and point to one meaningful decision that you've made differently because of time tracking data, like you should not be wasting everyone's time tracking time.
So the skill set first is just like, Hey, what is good?What does good look like?What does it mean to one of the things, one of the core elements of our methodology for project management is make the process live where the work gets done.
Meaning you've got a task to do whatever, you know, write that blog post, refresh this piece of content, do whatever, you know, build links, whatever.
Well, the documentation for what you're supposed to do, what is doing this well look like can't live in a far off. you know, Google Drive folder somewhere that nobody is ever going to find or go look at other than their first week on the job.
Um, so I think that's the first place is, Hey, what does good look like?The second piece is there's gotta be some level of measurement of what does that look like?
So on the upside, like how many assets did you improve or how many processes did you improve or what was the end outcome of that?
How do we, where do we pick up efficiency this month or this quarter ought to be measured if you actually want to hold people accountable to. the results of all that work.
That piece on like the adoption is interesting, like the setting a process and setting like an SOP to me.OK, so first off, my brain doesn't work that way.I just like want to just put it out there that I'm like the least process focused person.
And David, I think maybe you have more of like a natural inclination for that or maybe you had to build that up.I don't know.But you can come in and say like, hey, we need like a standardized process for this where I'm like a little bit more like
chaotic energy.But still, I believe in the fundamental utility of processes for scaling a business.I can build a mural workflow, I can build a checklist, I can build a template that somebody can use, and I can set up time tracking.
but it's like lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it.So I think like there's a cultural component to this too, like a persuasion, a leadership, like maybe even like a, like you need to do this type of component.
So like, how do you see that split between like setting a process and actually making sure people do the thing?
Right.I think like it's all cultural.You've got in it for any system to work well.There's like, what are the tools that we're using and how are those set up?Those are going to help drive efficiency for us. what are the processes that we're following?
It's like, Hey, this is the, how are we ever going to get consistent outcomes if we don't have consistent inputs in terms of how we're creating what we're creating in whatever realm that looks like.
And then you've got habits, which is like, do people actually use the tool and follow the process?And it doesn't matter how great the system is if people aren't following it.
So yeah, I think this is all cultural and that like, how do you actually get people to do it becomes a, Here's the vision for the better tomorrow.Here's like what's going to be great if we have these document processes and we all follow it.
I'm going to make better decisions to get people into their sweet spot.We're going to run more profitable projects.We're going to be able to scale more predictably.Our clients are going to be happy.We're not going to be fighting client fires.
There's all these virtuous things that we all want.And what does that mean for you?That means less stress, the ability for higher earnings potential.That's the vision that we're painting for the team.
And the flip side of that vision is that doesn't just happen overnight.Like that comes as a result of these specific actions.Here's the specific expectations I need from each of you, which are, you are going to follow this.
You are going to track your time.You are going to mark off tasks.You are going to prioritize working this way, whatever those specific requirements that you have to get there are.And then, so that's kind of the first piece is like the vision.
And then what do I need from you as part of that? have the friction as much as you can at that point.You're not going to get 100% of it out.Push back on what you want to push back on now if you can't see yourself.
living according to these expectations, then this is not going to be the right long-term place for you.And then the last cultural piece is there's got to be consistent accountability to that.
So someone's got to be holding the team accountable to the expectations that you set for them.
I want to pivot this a little if that's okay.So Zenpilot, it looks like y'all are about 15-ish people.I'm curious for you, what are some of the bigger ops challenges that you've worked on that you're like, Oh, like that took forever to work on.
Or like, I wish I got to that sooner.Like some, like one of those problems you're proud of.
Yeah.Are you talking about internally specifically too?
Yeah.I think the, one of the biggest challenges that we've faced is we are trying to be the guinea pig on a lot of stuff before clients.So we have an idea, like a hypothesis.
If we use this tool to solve this problem, like we're gonna use 15.5 for employee engagement. if that'd be a good thing for our clients or not, we're going to jump in and we're going to try it.And I'm naturally oriented that way.
I'm probably naturally much more like Alex, you and I might have a lot of personality similarities in terms of, I don't know, let's just get to the right outcome.Everybody should just know what good is and then just go do good.
And we should play with all kinds of tools in the process and have lots of you know, like meet interesting people along the way, just kind of like a little bit more chaotic approach.
And one of the big challenges was I was pushing people too fast through the adoption cycle on stuff consistently.It was fine when it was Andrew, you know, my co-founder and I,
And then five people, but at 15, 16, 17 people, that became much harder for people to keep up with.And we were getting super inefficient.And it took me over a year to recognize that
Hey, this, the problem is me, um, pushing at the same velocity that we pushed at three years ago.Um, and so the, like the main ways that that showed up was our efficiency.Like, what did we, we were missing stuff in the process.
Like we were going back and reworking stuff that we should have gotten right before. And so looking at that data, being frustrated at first and finally digging in to figure out like, where are we wasting all this time?
We're wasting a ton of time trying to learn new tools with a lot of people who had different ideas.It was much harder to get 15 people to consistently use a tool the same way that we were trying out versus five people to do that.
Yeah, we've definitely had something similar, not just with tools, but like, hey, we have this new process and we have this new process and we tried this thing.And it's like, oh, this, why is none of this being implemented?
Why is no one doing these things?And it's like, oh, it's, it's information overload.It's easier to just like revert back to how you're doing things versus try to integrate all these new things all at the same time.
The hard part for me to know sometimes, too, is when those processes are actually helpful or mandatory.In certain cases, you have to do things for compliance or like they're like hard yes or no.
It's like it's a very binary thing versus like when we implement process because we want to standardize some level of quality control, but it's actually inhibiting people's ability to do the work.
It's hard for me to know, like when we've got so many different standard operating procedures and processes, which is which sometimes.
Yeah.What's an example where it's inhibited people's ability to do work?
Let's say like during a client delivery project, we're engaging in like an SEO strategy analysis.We've had certain frameworks at different times and like the deliverables tend to follow a similar format.
And, you know, even sometimes the deliverable might dictate the type of research that goes into it, which could narrow kind of like what work we do.But let's say there's like a proceeding step.Let's say Um, you, you have to do this.
I'm making this up, but like you have to do three customer interviews, um, you know, to, to, uh, identify voice of customer, uh, insights that you can triangulate with SEO research.
That might be a good idea, but in certain cases, like doing that as a checkbox item might actually be a horrible idea and it might be just a tedious thing.And again, you made up example, we've experimented with different.
frameworks during the research process that I don't want to give these specific, specific examples, but they ended up being like not helpful.
So we scrapped them, but yeah, it was, it was kind of later that we discovered that they were just kind of annoying for the person to have to deal with.
Right. Makes sense.I think there's different goals of each of them.Process is part of scaling knowledge.Process is part of giving people the framework to experiment within, like how far we want to go.
But process is also part of driving efficiency and driving a minimum level of quality, not like a you know, a maximum level.
So Blair Enns talks a lot about the inefficiency principle, like I-N-N-O, like the conflict between innovation and efficiency, and basically those are like opposing forces.
So you can be super innovative, that is never very efficient, and you can be extremely efficient, and that's generally not very innovative.
I think there's a counter argument, which is like, the more that we give people some, like process is part of the structure that we can create inside.
So Euclid way back in, you know, centuries and centuries ago came up with the golden ratio and it's been used by all kinds of artists. And that, I don't think you'd look at it and say, well, that's made art way worse.
It's just made drawing proportional stuff a lot simpler for teams.So there's a, there's a component to it that does give us like the playground to then go exercise our creative muscles.
So I don't think that most people's experience when they've interacted with well-built processes has been, Hey, I can't be creative, but it does put some limiters on what are we exploring.So that's a great point.
I think that, Hey, if I've got to, here's what the brief looks like, or here's what the document that we're going to deliver looks like.
Yeah, very few people are going to say, oh, I should maybe deviate from this, or there's a section in it, won't even consider the fact that maybe there should be a section that's not in it, or maybe I shouldn't do this because it's a waste of time.
So there does have to be, I think in any business, somebody who's still driving innovation at the firm.You can't totally fine to build hyper tight processes on everything and like scope everything way, way in to maximize efficiency.
It makes a ton of sense to be super productized. But it makes sense if you can actually capitalize on that in a very high volume in the near term.At some point, innovation is going to be required in most of the disciplines.
I would imagine most people listening to this.
I have a question.Going back to before David asked about, you know, a challenging problem y'all have faced at Zenpilot Gray.
You talked about the responsibilities of the delivery team versus operations team, you know, in a larger org, and talked about the operations folks relying on delivery or the folks on the quote unquote front lines to help inform the process.
To what degree would you say should the delivery team be involved in the systems that are set up and the accountability systems that are set up to maybe fulfill those processes?
Like, obviously, there's the accountability measure that's got to come from ops, because their delivery folks are focused on doing the work, right.
But I feel like to maximize adoption, they should also have a say in what the system looks like, and how it's iterated on.So how do you think about that?
Huge amount. Yeah, like 90 10 is probably like mostly delivery operations needs to make sure that the systems are in place.
So they, they ought to push as hard as needed to get systems in place to be able to deliver well.But I mean, I think you said the key reason people aren't going to buy into something.
It's like someone who doesn't know how to do what we do told me we ought to use the system to do what we do.Like what?
What frequency would you say one should update or tweak those kind of like the larger systems, not the not the SOPs themselves, although those are obviously involved, but the larger, larger system to hold everyone accountable?
Like what does that change management look like?
Yeah.So I don't think that there's a frequency.I think it's all based on what the results that you're getting are.Like, if the results are great, you know, don't, don't mess with it at all for years.
If the results are not great and you're never going to nail it the first time, then a lot more frequently.I've found four really good habits that seem to work well for teams who are adopting this to daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythm.
We call it the daily spot check, weekly roundup.Those are both like activity focused.Hey, are people building the right habits?Where are we finding, you know, We're not tracking time, or we're not adding tasks into the system.
We're missing data from this system that we're trying to build out.Is there a single source of truth?Those are really activity-focused checks.Monthly review and quarterly analysis.Monthly review is like, hey, let me look at profitability by client.
Let me look at the major gaps where, hey, we need to go in and make some corrections.But the quarterly analysis is, that's where we're driving the systematic, what are the one to three changes we're going to make over the next quarter.
And those might be, Hey, I can just see that we're bleeding cash every time we do this SEO audit, because we consistently go over budget.Like when I did it as a founder, it took me 15 hours, totally used to that.
Now I've got other people running it and it's taking them 30 hours.And so either I've got to train them better or we've got to adjust the process.We got to build in the pricing, whatever.
But that's going to be one of the main areas that we're going to fix over the next quarter.Either we're going to have to find out we have to charge more or we're going to find ways to get more efficient at delivering it.
So that might be more granular than what you're asking, but it's that quarterly look at the data that's really like, Hey, here's what we tried over the last quarter.
Here are the results of what, now that we've got enough data to actually look at and say, yeah, do we actually deliver better client outcomes faster or not? keep tweaking it from there.And those tweaks can be really small if everything's humming.
And those tweaks have to be a lot bigger if there's big, big problems.
I'm curious about the diagnosis specifically of if those processes and systems should be optimized or removed, right?And one thing that you had mentioned a few times is the amount of time that it takes for a task.
So like you mentioned time tracking earlier.Is that something that I know it's hard to say like universal answers, but is that something that you believe all or most agencies should be doing?
Yeah.Yeah.People who I absolutely love and really respect have been advising agencies way longer than me.David Baker is a great example.He's like, but I hate time tracking.Nobody really does it, so we ought to not do it.
And if we do it, we ought to just do it for a short period of time.Like, hey, we're going to plug in, we're going to track our time for a month, we're going to make improvements, we're going to go from there. I totally get that perspective.
And you can run... And I've seen agencies who've run really profitably without it.
But if you look at a broader... At a very large sample size, who's got their act most together, from a gross and net margin perspective, it's teams who are time tracking and actually using that data.So I haven't seen the numbers yet back up.
Yeah, we ought to just forget about it altogether. There's plenty of tech-enabled firms out there.But still, if you look at the P&L, obviously the largest line item from an expense perspective is your people.
And so the hours where they allocate that human capital, that's your inventory. So not to completely ignore how that gets allocated or not look at that at all.Even if it's, hey, we're going to zoom out a little bit.
I don't care about seeing task level detail.I just want to see how much time went to what client or whatever.To not have any type of... And it's never fully objective.I get that.I totally get, yeah, time tracking is flawed.
And whoops, someone said two hours instead of 30 minutes.And that's fine.But to not have some directional look at where time is going just seems like... I haven't found a way to make sense of that and make that easy to manage a larger team with.
Yeah, it seems specifically... Well, as you scale, more useful.But then also, if you think about services businesses on a spectrum where on the far end, there's a very simple COGS.
It's almost like a marketplace model where you're just paying for an article or for a link or for a social media post.That seems like you could get away with just deliverables, right?
It's very simple cost and profit versus like the flip side, which would be like fully consultancy based where it's like you're buying the brains and the time of somebody or even projects where it's like you're doing a user experience research project.
And that could take 20 hours or it could take 200.And there's varying levels of increments within the subtasks within that project, too.It seems like it's much more important on the more amorphous strategic side of services businesses.
I would also say even for the clients we've worked with who are selling extremely productized, you're getting X number of... The classic HubSpot agency of a decade ago was like, yeah, you're getting four blog posts a month and one ebook and one email blast.
And those folks didn't separate it out and sell it separately.But for the clients who have... And they've had both the revenue side be deliverable-based and the cost side be deliverable-based.Reason contractors are paying them per blog post.
You can certainly get away without time tracking. Still, if you had the time tracking data and can look at it and say, here's the spread that we have right now.
The margin that we're looking at is basically what is the average revenue that we're receiving every time someone buys one of these versus what's our average cost.
And if we found a way to get more efficient and drive down that average cost by taking it at some volume, it makes sense to bring it in-house instead of just contractors paying for a deliverable.There's still going to be a profit incentive
to figure out how to be more efficient if there's human capital involved.
I want to let y'all ask more questions, but I want to lower on the topic of like the universal stuff.Like I'm just curious. Again, five-year-old questions over here.Time tracking is one of those things that everybody pretty much should be doing.
Are there other things that you've seen that you're just like, agencies, you should be doing this?Like, I see this common mistake.You're not doing this.You should be doing this.Why aren't you doing this?
I'll just rattle off a couple.And then if there's anything, like, I'd be curious too, if you have, like the three of you, if you've got perspectives, I'm like, hey, this seems obvious.This is working really well for us.
It seems like we obviously should be doing it.I don't know.I'd be curious to hear.So I'll just rattle off a couple and let me know if there's anything you want to dig into at all.
One is how they do forecasting or resourcing for like, what are we going to need from a staffing perspective?
I think a ton of teams are trying to mix and pick one model for doing it or buy one software that is marketed to them to try to figure out what exactly are people working on and when do we need to hire for some role.
And I think there's two different types of resourcing.There's a top down, which is high level.We sold this retainer from our SEO specialists.We're going to need roughly, I'm guessing here, 20 hours in month one.
And then that's going to go down to 10 hours a month.And then from whatever other I need these other specific, like very high level estimates of what our is going to look like.
That's the top down approach is absolutely what you ought to be using for long term forecasting.What would our labor needs look like three months or six months from now if we keep adding a client a month and this is how we're allocating stuff?
The problem is when you try to do that and then you try to look at like where the capacity crunches this week and where do I move stuff around and that person got sick and now they're out for two days and what do we do with their workload?
And so the other way to do resourcing is bottom up. And that is, hey, we have all these tasks, every, you know, that SEO audit that we're Providing for that client is going to require these three individual tasks to get done.
Each of those are going to take an hour and they're assigned to these three different people.And then all that rolls up across all our clients.And now we're seeing a much more like workload style view of how much time is on people's plate.
That's absolutely what you need.That bottom up approach is absolutely what you need for the day to day, like weekly, really tactical.Hey, where do we move stuff around?
How do we find bottlenecks and make sure that we're delivering stuff on time for clients? I'd say most agencies, zero one, because like one of the main three archetypes of an agency owner is the accidental agency owner.
Hey, we were doing cool stuff and then we like bumped into it.I'd be curious to hear more about your story and see if that's the story as well.But it's not like we went to agency school and then we decided to go start an agency.
So they don't have a methodology for doing it to start with. But then they're trying to use bottom up, like all these tasks to say, what am I going to need six months from now?
And we don't know enough of, we can't, we don't know that level of granularity, what we need three months from now, much less six months from now or into the future.
Or if you're going top down, it's super frustrating for teams in the day to day, like, well, where am I supposed to spend? 20 hours this week.I don't understand what exactly I'm supposed to be doing with that time.
And that's where people could get potentially like stretched or burnt out in the short term, but then like have too much bandwidth in six weeks.
Yep.Yeah.So you really need to combine both bottom up and top down at some scale, super small.Don't even worry about like, don't even think about a methodology.
It's just, Hey, we're all talking for 15 minutes every morning and then we all go get it done.And that's great. three or four or five people that falls apart once you get to 10 people and beyond.
So that's, that's one that I think is, um, it's kind of obvious.I think owners specifically are, they live for autonomy.Like I want to be chaotic.
I want to be able to wake up and cancel all my meetings or I want to just be able to work when I want to work and do what I want to do.I want to take sales calls from a boat.Absolutely.Have you done that?No.
But I want to.I talked with Alex McCaw, Bill Clearbit.Yeah.He's living on a boat, right?
Yeah, exactly.So I was talking with him a couple of months ago and. Yeah, he's just Starlink in from his, from a civil, I guess it was more than a couple months ago.
That fantasy, right?Like the, Oh, I'm rolling through Seattle today.I'm going to pop into a coffee shop, write a little newsletter and then I'll go for a meeting.
Like it's a freedom, like you're just doing what's in front of you wherever you are or, or however you do it.Like there is like a, I resonate with that.
Yeah, super strong desire for that, which is great.And so they're like, don't give me a task.Don't tell me what I'm supposed to do or what process I'm supposed to follow or how long it should take or what dates do.
But then we project that on the team that we've hired.
And so it's like, no, my team will hate me if I ask them to track their time or if I actually assign out tasks to them, I should just give them the autonomy to say, here's what I want is a happy client and I want to be profitable doing it.
So go figure that out. That's not what the people who are working at an agency are looking for in general.So that's a big mindset shift that that's like always part of that.I mean, this is my example too.
And I do this stuff, like I've done this for 12 years now working with other agencies and worked with thousands of other agencies.
And I'm still the person who's like, yeah, we can just spin up two new tools every quarter and you guys can test it out and we can figure it out. That doesn't scale super well.
So I think that mindset around how we work and the importance of, boy, it'd be really nice.Not everybody, you as a, as an entrepreneur might love, I need a status update on something.Let me slack somebody and then they'll tell me what status update.
That's how I find where stuff is. Most people aren't that way.They're great and that scales horrendously.They'd much rather say, let me log into the tool and here's the status on stuff.
Let me get all the work into a specific tool and build it all out.So I think building a single source of truth is one.I think a simple prioritization framework for work.
There's a million, I mean, there's like agile and you know, there's a million different methodologies.I'm fine with picking one and working with it.Like I don't care if you want to be fully wonderful or fully agile or whatever else.
But for most teams, they ought to adopt a due date driven methodology. They shouldn't be saying, this is my one priority.This is my two priorities.This is my three priorities.This is my four priorities.
Like all the way down the list, because most of the time they're going to take that anyways.And they're going to go translate it to their calendar.And like, where am I going to get it done?
You got to just start ignoring the extra priority flag or this extra numbering systems or like the other complexity and just say, let's just use due dates and say, this is what I'm getting it done.
That's we do that, right?Like we're probably, would you guys say we're, we're due date based system?
I didn't know there was any other way to do it.
I just I got to know when things are due and then you back into it.
That's perfect.Yeah.So that's him.
It does seem like common sense.
Well, with like when I ran experimentation, we would have like a calendar of sorts just based on how much traffic we had allocated.
But like we would use sort of a P1, P2 or it was like a scoring mechanism, like the ice or like pie, like that kind of thing where you'd stack rank based on the highest expected value.So that was like a little bit more, I guess, like the
Like that, that side of the spectrum versus time-based, but yeah, in client work, it's probably different because you do, you're sort of like agreeing that this is going to be done by this date.
So there's a little bit more of like an alignment and expectation, I think.
Yep.I'm totally fine with other, like we used ice for web building software and it's like, yeah, that methodology makes sense.But I guess the point is largely like pick one methodology.Don't overcomplicate it.
Just pick the right one for what you're doing and then go with that.
Great.You've probably worked with at this point, thousands, maybe hundreds, hundreds of agencies.
I think personally, I'm in like, it's like 1100 or somewhere between 11 and 1200, whoever they're like behind the scenes with.
Yeah.I know this is ironic because we're talking about operations, but what have been some of the more fun problems you've helped solve.It doesn't have to be the most fun, but just curious what comes to mind.
The first thing that came to mind, and this is fresh in my head probably because I was talking with someone who I've known for a couple years who's acquiring another firm right now.
But this is not even a part of the business that I thought would be a thing five years ago.
And we've gotten pulled in not a ton of times, maybe like a dozen times, but a dozen more times than I expected to, to agencies or companies who have either merged or someone's acquired the other one.
And they're trying to figure out how to get everyone operating in one coherent system together. And that has been really, really fun, extremely challenging.Like sometimes it's like, boy, these two cultures were just meant to go together.
And there's one case that I'm thinking of specifically where it's like, these cultures are meant to never, never be together.But that's a really fun opportunity.It's a time naturally where there's a lot of
Uh, there's some tension in the air and some, everyone's a little bit uncertain.
Hey, obviously if we're merging, like there's probably some consolidation that could happen at some point and we find redundancies and we might need to, so everyone's a little bit sensitive about their jobs.
There's a natural, like, where am I in the pecking order, just human nature, like piece that happens.But there also are a lot of sparks of creativity and people who are like, Wow, what can I learn from this?
And that's a really fun time to get involved and kind of take the best of both worlds and try to inject some stuff that we've seen work well from the outside. So those situations have been really enjoyable.
Are you advising on ops and integration during the closing process or do you come in post-closing and find a mess?
Yeah, only twice.Only twice, like pre-acquisition.And both times that was the company getting acquired, had worked with us in the past.
And so the company doing the acquiring, one of the things that they were looking for was like, Hey, we need better operations as part of this.So no, very little presale.I think that's fascinating to do.
I've loved getting to just have the conversation, not even in a consulting sense, just like a, Hey, I'm curious.Walk me through the acquisition process and what's going on and the emotions of all that stuff.
And now I'm used to like, Oh, when I get an email from somebody saying, Hey, can you send me our contract?My mind for a while was just, Oh no, this is like worst case scenario.They're trying to nitpick something.
And now I'm like, Oh, that could be the case.Or they're in due diligence right now and they just need to collect all their contracts together.But now most of the time it's been post deal or deals closing.
Hey, we are looking at how we're going to integrate these together.
You had mentioned like this, like some of them being super compatible, easy, seamless, you all work together, you're meant to be together.And then the opposite, which is like, how are we going to integrate these two teams?
Like this is like Mars and Venus, right?John Gray.What are some of those yellow flags, red flags where you're like, these things just don't match.Like this is going to be really, really challenging to work together.Like if we if we were to go
acquire another agency, hypothetically?Yeah.What should we look out for that's going to be a major headache?
What I'm thinking of where there was a huge clash was just... There was an agency out of New York City.Average age of the workforce had to be 24 and a half.Extremely early stage, junior level folks.Nobody's in the office before 10.
very laid back culture.And they bought a larger dev team out of Eastern Europe where it's like, everyone's extremely blunt.We're getting this done.Show up.If you're a minute late, that's a mortal offense to a meeting.
And so the, like the services made a ton of sense.We got, Hey, we've got paid social, like e-com agency meets Shopify and like app development and web development service line.Those made a ton of sense.
But to have those cultures work extremely close together.So I don't know how to, like, I hate saying culture differences a, because I think culture differences are super refining for all of us.Like I, I love. I'm just curious.
So I love talking to people who are way, way different than me.And also, there's got to be a way to work through it.And that's just trite advice.But I do think that's a piece of it is, hey, can these people operate in a world together?
If you have a very written Slack first or PM tool first culture, and then a huge culture of meetings, those are just going to naturally have a hard time working together in a way that doesn't frustrate the other people.
So that's been the biggest issue that I've seen with those.I'm trying to think of what some of the other I think leadership style or the one other situation that was really challenging was just two extremely combative leaders.
One was a COO, one was the head of delivery at the other firm, and both wanted to be the absolute boss and authority on all of them.I guess that's a culture thing as well. their leadership styles, they can't.
I've heard, I've heard firsthand stories of friends who have gone through that, where even like during the courting process, like they, they get along super well, but they're both hard charging, very opinionated people.
And then once the deal is done and they start trying to integrate, that's when the clashes really take off.I've, I've heard that several times.Yep.Yeah.
Seems mainly cultural then, like less so like, oh, you use ClickUp, we use Monday, you time track, we don't.It seems like those are at least not salient enough where you mentioned them as being like pretty hard, salient red flags.
Yeah, none of those situations have been like, oh, we were both on the same project.None of the situations that we've been in from a services perspective, have they used the same PM tools?
And that's, you know, there's some friction with that, but none of that's all pretty easily solvable.
So we're at a stage right now where we're getting geared up to scale, probably I'd say pretty significantly next year.We're at about I forget the count, like 17 or 18 people right now.
Where my mind goes, because I'm a bit more ops-minded, is where all the issues we're going to run into and how do we get ahead of those, or at least delay really big issues as far as we can by building slowly.
So what issues do you typically see agencies running into when they're at about 20 to 30 people?Communication is a big thing that we're thinking about all the time, but what else do you run into?
Yeah.There's, there's one main one, but I'm curious, like what is scale up pretty substantially?Is that like, we're talking about being 34 people next, you know, we're doubling or like, what does that mean?
Based on rough forecasts, it will mean about doubling our client base.And I think it'll be 1.5 to 2X our head count.So probably 30 to 25.Yeah.Makes sense.
And then to the degree that you're comfortable sharing live together, Can you walk me through what the leadership team structure looks like?
Yeah, so yeah, I think that's fairly straightforward.We could do that.Yeah, it's the three of us.And then I'm handling a lot of the operations.Alex handles growth.Ali runs delivery under Ali.There's two teams.
There's the strategy team and editorial team.They work hand in hand.There's pods.So one strategist with an editorial lead that has a portfolio of clients.We have three and a half pods right now are going to be four full soon.
And then under ops, we have actually on the delivery side, it's not in the org structure like this yet, but we also have a link building team that works on delivery.
And we have one person that was a project manager and we're kind of leveling her up to like an operations manager right now.And then on the marketing side, it's like all contractors.
I think for most teams that like 15 to 25 person range is really challenging. because you need the next level of leadership and you don't have it yet, you're probably in a different situation here where there's the three of you.
And so if we just looked at it and said, if we were all paying you fairly a year or two years ago, I don't know what team size was, but let's say when you're 10 people and there's three people, they're all X. You guys have impressive resumes.
Here's what the market could have paid each of you.It would look from a staffing perspective, probably pretty top heavy.
And so you may not experience that to the same degree that a lot of other teams were, but if someone's listening and it's, here's a solo owner and they've got, you know, a couple other people who are maybe on the leadership team now, but often they've kind of gotten there because they were there early on and they're relatively junior, maybe don't have the skillset to still be in that role or grow fast enough to be in that role at 30 people.
That's one of the key issues that that teams run into.And you mentioned communication.So that's obviously part of what that means.
Like, how do you communicate and work with dynamics when you're managing four different pods and then six different pods and eight different pods?And how do we know that we're competing for some shared resources?
And how do we work out the dynamics of what that looks like and build the infrastructure and actually hold people accountable?I think like a culture of accountability is the number one thing that pretty much every team to scale needs.
And that's extremely hard when you go from super small team vibe of having got each other's backs and everything.And that means beyond just supporting each other and work like, you know, there's deep personal relationships that are built there.
And often that leads to that's not a bad thing at all.I think that's a great thing, but that can easily slide into you know, excusing bad performance or tolerating it because you've got tight personal relationships.
So being willing to act as a leadership team, as an entire team with the greater good in mind, here's the mission that we're on.Here's the vision that we've set together.Like everything that we do has to be in line with achieving that.
And that might mean I realize I shouldn't be leading growth anymore.Like I need to get somebody else in here to lead growth.Or it might mean I do need to lead growth, but now I need to mature and take a whole different step.
And now I'm hiring a sales team.I've never done that before.That's scary.
And do I need to hire someone who's like, it's just those, the biggest dynamic is just the leadership team being willing to take that step up and have the really hard, honest conversations internally and say,
you're doing an eight out of 10 job leading ops right now.But here's what I think is the extra two out of 10 that you need to tack on here.And so the emotional maturity to do that is another component of that too.
Gray's literally describing the last, like, three to four months of us.We just placed a new director not a month ago for a similar reason to what you said.Like, I wasn't as equipped.
We, you know, want to spend our time elsewhere, got out of the weeds, et cetera, et cetera.Huge emotional arc, I think, for all of us.Like, what is our value now, essentially?Knowing it was the right decision for the organization.
But following that now, I mean, he's been, oops, he's been with us for a few weeks. naturally.
And this is a good thing because he's so talented, identifying process optimizations, opportunities for new services, really across the board, bringing in a fresh set of eyes.Again, what we wanted
How would you recommend, I guess it could be for any organization, but for us, we navigate all these changes on the horizon, provided that they're good fits, the team is aligned, we're aligned, etc.
As our team grows, and we scale, and we have a lot of these improvements that we should and could be making, how do you look at all that happening at one time?How do you examine how to do all that without breaking?
Right?How do you do planning right now? Like, do you do quarterly planning together?I'm assuming you do some kind of annual plan together, but then what does that break down into?
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we've done consistently is annual planning.In a couple weeks, we're getting together and looking at next year.I think as a leadership team, we've kind of done ad hoc planning.
And bi-weekly, bi-weekly reviews of more like near term kind of goals and clients.Yeah.
I think one of the things that I would pull from any of the main frameworks for like scaling up or EOS or any of the like business operating frameworks is some way to agree as a leadership team, at least on a quarterly basis on what those priorities are.
And then that biweekly meeting pulse together is huge for being able to go back to that.But yeah, I think that's the most important thing is like we all have, we all have the faults that we know about.Like the weaknesses that, Hey, I wish I was,
an awesome motivational speaker and I naturally got people super pumped up about stuff.That's not my personality.I'm much more even keeled.
I like adventure, but it takes a lot to make me angry, but it also takes a lot to make me like, you know, just jumping up and down and super excited. So that's a blind spot that I know about.
Like I'm not going to be the best cheerleader for the team long term.So I've got to have the emotional maturity to acknowledge that and say, yeah, I do have a role, but I shouldn't try to be something that I'm not.
That's like a natural thing that I'm not going to, that doesn't mean I can't show up better.That doesn't mean I can't smile more on talking to people and like change stuff.
But, um, there's this, the blind spots that we know about and there's this stuff that we don't know about.And that's the huge gift that the three of you have to each other.
as a leadership team is helping each other realize, and I think this is called like the Jahari window, like what are the blind spots that people have but don't know about?
And so being able to point that out to each other and just have the emotional maturity to hear that and accept it and realize that's not a slight on me as a person, like my worth as an individual.That's just a, hey, for what we need as a,
to achieve this vision that we have, we need to solve for the gaps that we've got and we've all got them.So I don't know if that's helpful at all, but I think so much of it boils down to like, how do we agree on what those priorities are?
Because we're all going to have a different perspective.
So we've got to find some rhythms to get there and then hold each other accountable to that and be willing to call out what are the blind spots that we have as a team that we just need to solve for.It's not like you need to be better at
being more dynamic of a communicator or something.It's like we need to figure out some way to have a dynamic communicator here.And so let's go solve that with someone who that's that's in their sweet spot.
It is so interesting and pretty amazing how you've spoken to things that we've gone through or things that individually one of us has intuited and kind of been hammering on and from our own lanes and experience and like maybe mental models like
I know David, you had been talking about doing quarterly, you know, big rocks and like aligning like our like us three on sort of these big, innovative next step forward type items for a while.
And, you know, a couple of the other points, like, you know, I had been pushing for a while and like each of us has like little intuitive windows, but hearing you say it, I'm like, this is almost like founder therapy right now.
Yeah, it is.I mean, it's the same.Everyone's got their own unique mix of it, but it's all the same challenges for every business trying to scale it.You guys just have, and I think part of this too is leaning into the superpowers that you all have.
So there's things that as founders, as partners, as leaders in the company, like there's some unfair advantages that you're going to wind up having.Alex, no one, like you can bring in whoever you want.
They can be a way better salesperson than you are.You're still going to have some just innate edges in a sales conversation.Okay.I'm talking to a founder.So I naturally give that a different level of, respect or deference or whatever.
So what we're doing with some of those things, and sorry to interrupt, what we're doing is sort of keeping one foot in the past and one foot in the future.
And in certain cases, like bringing in some of our team in the early sales calls, or, you know, considering which legs of the sales process we can start to outsource.
And then there's certain parts that like are very, very difficult to outsource or replicate, which is like us going to a meetup or a conference or some sort of a, you know, a special dinner. It's hard to hire the person that can go do that.
And by outsourcing, say, the SDR component, then that allows us to spend more time where we have more leverage.But we don't throw the whole thing out and say, like, all right, now is the time to hire a VP of sales.I'm not going to do sales anymore.
No more sales for me.We've avoided doing that, which I think is a good thing.
That is a huge trap to avoid.Yeah.That's an easy one to be like, all right, we need to scale.And secretly, it's not the wrong motivation.We need to scale, so we need to hire somebody.
Often the motivation behind that is like, oh, I would love to be done taking all these calls.Exactly.That's the excuse we hide behind and don't say out loud.
There's a weird balance that we've all faced in each of our roles between, I think, being maybe too close and too far away.And in both cases, we've seen detrimental effects.
When we're too close, we obviously burn ourselves out and we can't focus on higher leverage opportunity. opportunity costs exist.And then sometimes we don't give the team autonomy.
But then when we're too far away, we remove our superpowers and training and guidance in certain areas.So I think a big challenge in all of our roles has been finding that sweet spot and outsourcing slowly.And I heard a phrase, it was like,
delegate, not, um, abdicate or something like that.Uh, you don't want to just throw somebody in the deep end and say, all right, this is yours now.Like you want to like give them frameworks and structure.
And I'm almost coming back around to like, I guess, ops and process, but process, right?Yeah.That's been a challenge of ours, I would say.
You know, we don't know what that sweet spot is all the time.
That's hard to do.That is the like, Hey, we need some clear indicators of performance because every person's a little bit different.The skill sets, they come in, there's a ton of dynamism in the process.
And the first time doing it, or the first couple times doing it, there's not enough pattern matching to say, I don't know, someone ought to be able to pick up on sales in two months.And if they can't do that, then they're not the right fit.
You don't know.This is the first time.So I don't know if it should be a three-month runway or a six-month runway or a one-month runway or what.So all you can really do is compare to, hey, what's similar in the industry?
Get some kind of, here's some idea that I have.But really, measuring performance along the way is the key piece. What are the measurables that person's responsible for?And then how are we tracking those and seeing those improve?
There's got to be a path to progress.I think when I hear recently about stress, stress is pressure without direction.I thought that was an interesting quote, but like the pressure is always there.There's always some kind of pressure.
When it feels stressful is I don't see any, I don't see a path to how this is improving or getting better.
I've been in situations where I've called it, um, responsibility without authority as well, like where you're kind of like under the gun for a certain task, but like you have no ability to do it or in the case where you do have the ability to do it and you're just seeing no like forward progress.
That's when I start to feel like I'm spinning my tires.That makes sense.
I'm resisting the urge to ask what advice you have, because that's just so broad and not helpful.But I'd love to hear, because you said you probably resonate more with Alex in terms of the chaotic energy, right?
And here you are running an agency helping with operations, which I love that.And I'd love to hear your Ops is such this nebulous thing.Like it's hard to figure out how you grow as an operations person.
So I'd love to hear how did you develop your skills and competencies as like someone in operations and like what are the things you've learned that would be helpful for others to hear?
Yeah. I've shifted a ton from starting in business in 2011 to today.So I've taken, uh, EOS has the idea of the visionary integrator and they've got an assessment you can take for it.
Very simplistic, not extremely scientific assessment, but I've taken that four different times.Uh, I think we first. Like the first time I remember hearing about EOS, I think was at Inbound actually in, I don't know, 14 or 15, something like that.
And I took it and I've shifted, if I take that assessment, I've shifted really hardcore from an integrator to the visionary.I'm still kind of a split, but towards the visionary side, the more chaotic side of things.
I had not heard anybody talk about that, that, oh, you might shift over time as well.And I don't think that lines up super well with the way that EOS specifically talks about it, where it's like, hey, people are wired.You're this or you're that.
And then you're just that.But I would imagine I'm not the only person who's gone through that type of transition or just, hey, you're growing and becoming a different person than you were in the past.
And you realize business has different needs and you learn more about what you actually enjoy and don't enjoy. And so I enjoy kind of mapping and I'm super passionate about what we're doing specifically around ops.
And the reason that I'm so passionate about it, there's a book that I'm dying to write, which is like the profitable agency operator.And I've got this hardcore belief that profit can't be a dirty word.
And it's got to be, you've got to run a super healthy bottom line for a business to be stable, to be able to run a business that can actually take care of people well in the business and serve clients well and sustainably.
And so, ops is a huge part of that.That's the visibility layer into that.
And the piece that says, no, I know that we need three more people, it looks like, to service these clients, but we cannot do that and still be profitable doing what we're doing.We've got to figure out something here.
Like, either the offer's got to change or how we deliver it's got to change or the pricing.Something's got to give, though, to get there. So yeah, super strong passion for ops.
And I think in terms of developing that, if there's someone else who's listening who's like, man, how do we become better operators?I think the first thing is just to figure out why do you actually care and tap into that.
and then find people who are doing it well and try to learn from them.And I've been really blessed that there have been some really, really cool operators that I've gotten to work with and get to know and learn from.
And they don't agree on everything.And that's cool.They're like, I don't think there's one core path to this.I think it's kind of figuring out, Hey, what do I believe in?But hold that
you know, execute on that, test it out, see where it fails, see where it holds up and hold it loosely enough in your hand that it's like, Hey, I'm willing to discard that belief or change my belief when I realized that's not actually the fantasy that I thought it was.
So good.And thank you.I mean, we got to learn from you today.So this is, uh, this has been amazing for all of us.
Well, it's just, it's just fun.Like I'd love to flip the script and just the dynamics of, All three of you working together like we can do another hour just on that.
We'll have to do a part two.All right, cool.Well, thank you so much.
Yeah, that's fun.Thanks, guys.
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