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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Mandy Ellison. Mandy is the founder of hands off CEO and the creator of the scale to freedom system. She specializes in helping agency CEOs scale their businesses while stepping back from day to day operations. Mandy has helped agencies increase profit, attract higher paying clients and free up valuable time for CEOs, and it's all through her proven framework. If you are feeling stuck in your business and want to scale without burning out, this is the episode for you. In this episode, we discussed how to scale your agency while stepping away from daily operations, why offering outcomes is critical for growth, how to command higher fees for the same work and more hiring in the agency world is rough. Most job posting sites get you lots of applicants, but with their easy applying options, most of those are unqualified, and worse, they don't understand what it's like working at an agency. This is why I created the agency job hub. You can post your positions for free to find applicants looking specifically for agency work, and we have a growing list of candidates who will be notified as soon as you post. You can list your open positions for free at agency jobhub.com, and now Mandy Ellis, and it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward.
How can CEOs get out of their own way to grow their business?
Speaker 1 1:46
Well, it's a great question Chris, and I think that it's important to look at, well, first of all, what is in the way and what kind of business? And because there, I'll say there's two different pieces of this, and maybe I'll just give myself a give a little context. I know you, you are. You introduced me here. But you know, my company is hands off CEO, and it's, you know, it's, how do you be able to get out of your own way? There? There are two different pieces of this. So there is a system side of it, which is what most people think to get out of my way, I need to have all these systems in place. I need to do this. And as you like, they dive deep into these systems and build the systems, and then build systems. A year later, you're talking to they're still building systems. And really the what it is is you need to have a mindset and a system, and both of them are important. So you need to be able to have the ability to trust your team. You need to be able to have the the structures in place, to know that these are things are done the way that you want them to be done. But you also need to be able to have a certain level of trust and and that trust comes from the systems, but it's also comes from a deeper level within yourself and that, and that comes from you really feeling ready to let go of that. So, so that's kind of the big picture answer, and I'll let you kind of dive in from there. Chris,
Chris DuBois 3:17
yeah, well, so I'm already intrigued, because I think you frame this differently from the trust perspective, where a lot of people will go into this and say, Well, how can I trust my team more? But really, there's another layer of being able to trust yourself to let go of things so your team can execute on it. How do you even start developing that mindset with leaders.
Speaker 1 3:41
Okay, well, all right, so it, I think it's what I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at a CEO, and if they can't let go, and I'm diagnosing, like, why can't they let go? I wanted, there's, there's a number of different aspects to this, and like the system in the mindset I mentioned, but I but let's get dial, dial in. A little digging, a little more on this, because it's, it's more along the lines of like, well, why can't they let go of this thing? We need to dial in and and understand that without making these really broad statements that are just kind of trite and don't really tell us much. So if we were talking about sales, why can't they let go of sales? Well, why are they? Why are they the ones that are always having to come in and close the sales? For example, maybe even they have a sales team, you know, maybe this is a an agency that's like three to five or or larger, million dollars a year company. They maybe they have a salesperson who is they're bringing them some leads. They're closing, maybe closing sales here and there. But they're the small things. They're like the small pieces, or they bring it up to a certain point, and then the CEO actually has to go and. Um, bring it to the finish line. Get it really fully closed, close. So that's when you need to be, be starting to ask, all right, well, what, what is actually going on here, where the CEO has to be the one that is, is, is driving that, and that comes down to a number of different different parts of that. And one of them is it like, Well, is there actually something to sell? There's not actually something to sell, then what you're selling is the ether that's inside of the CEO's head that you're you're selling the the charisma. You're selling their 25 years of experience, right? And, and that's pretty difficult to sell. So what that means is that the sells always going to be coming back, unless you're selling some small, productized offer, which is not a bad thing, but a small but, but it's not a bad thing, until you take into consideration what that small, tiny, little offer might do. It might then pull the CEO in even more, into delivery, getting the clients stuck, getting the client used to them being the one driving the engagement. And they they sell me then. And within that, maybe there's there they're up selling to the next thing. So maybe it's this, you know, 30, $50,000 program for some companies, that's teeny tiny, and for some agencies, that might be larger, but I'm going to assume that it's, let's just say it's a smaller package, right? Maybe, let's say it's 30,000 just to make it nice and small. But then then to deliver on that package, to be able to upsell, the CEO has to be involved again, to not just because the team isn't competent. The team might be very competent, but the team may not have the vision to be able to help the client See, here's what we see next for you, and until the team understands here's what we see, how to be able to create those types of conversations, how to look for those opportunities, then all of that thinking has to and all that innovation needs to come through the owner of the company. So what's ultimately mean missing here, like, if you're, if you're starting to see there's a root cause here, the root issue is that they're, they're selling, they're they're selling something that is ultimately based upon the insight and innovation of the CEO, which keeps the CEO stuck in the delivery and the sale of it, especially because it's because they're they're selling not a particular outcome, but they're selling deliverables plus magic, right? So, yeah, we can unpack that. But ultimately, that's kind of the stream that that like this is the 8020 that keeps them stuck in it. They can't really pass this off to a salesperson, because they're selling, how do they sell the magic? And then the delivery team, they could deliver a lot of this. But there are certain components that the CEO gets pulled into, there are certain components that, especially on the in on managing the relationship on an ongoing basis, to upsell like those are the kinds of things and innovation that doesn't happen without the CEO, is what I've usually found in our work, right?
Chris DuBois 8:19
Yeah, so the couple things I've noticed, like just around that the very frequently agency CEOs will will kind of feel like they have to be involved in sales, because, look again, it's in their heads, right? They haven't written it down somewhere, like they don't have a clear offer that's been codified, and someone else can go in and just sell and but then they feel like they have to be in the sales because they have the highest close rate. But what they don't realize is, like, there's no correlation, but in their heads between having high close rate because they're tweaking the offer to fit the individual, like they're customizing it on the fly, which like, if you had a sales rep, they don't do that right, because they're like, this is what I have to sell. Like, I need to just sell this that's already in a pretty package. First the CEO, who can, like, I'm in control. I can give you whatever I need to and then that's what leads to, like, the team having to bring the CEO in. But an issue we had at our agency years ago was that very frequently our founder would run all sales, and then very frequently the client wanted to talk to the founder if there was anything going wrong right, like they were attached to him, and it was the team could have solved the issue and delivered it, but there was some discrepancy between what the team like knew and what the founder knew and had a conversation about and so it kind of had everything falling apart in the delivery, and we're able to, you know, fix that. But, yeah, it's definitely like a challenge for for them to be able to, so is it like, like, it's, let's just get into your like, the scale to freedom system. Right, yeah, my, yeah, my guess is that part of, part of the solution for this is, is baked into that, right? Yeah, can you give it like a once over? Yeah,
Speaker 1 10:12
definitely. And so looking at it, so what our scale to freedom system is, is how to be able to get an agency to be able to run and grow without the founder now, and ultimately be able to add millions of dollars of profitable growth while doing that. So I'm going to go back to what we were talking about before, with the right offer, because, well, you're like a clear offer codified now, what is the problem with a clear, codified offer? Well, when you I mean, feel free to jump in if you have thoughts on that.
Chris DuBois 10:53
No, I don't have a I'm actually really curious, because I don't know what the problem would do.
Speaker 1 10:57
So here's the thing. Is, everybody likes the idea of like productized services. We need to put this into packages. We need to make these deliverables really clear, so that we have something that we can tangible, that we could sell and and then the client, the client will buy. And then this, this will streamline everything. This will eliminate all of our operations problems we can because we can standardize all of our systems based upon that. It's a really great hypothesis, except for it creates a new problem, creating a productized service that's based upon deliverables. Nobody wants to buy. They don't want to buy your deliverables. They don't and then they what they want to buy is a result, is an outcome. And when they're talking to the CEO, who has 25 years of experience, even if they're offering this product, I service, or if they're offering, you know, a series of deliverables, what they're purchasing is the deliverables plus the magic that's inside of their head. So they say, Hey, I know this. This guy is really sharp. The market is used to paying for deliverables. They don't know what else to pay for, but at the same time, they're used to buying this. But what ends up happening is, in down markets, they say, Well, you know what? We have less certainty here. We're gonna let we're gonna cut back all of we're gonna cut back on our budgets, which we've seen a tremendous amount of in 2024 Yeah, right now. Yeah, right. So what's going on with that, then is that it that the reason, how you overcome that is, is the trust that can be inherent with the conversation between the CEO or some other high level person on the team, their level of experience and the client, right? So they can see that, they can say, Okay, you have all this experience. I know that if you can sprinkle that magic on there, then we'll be able to get the outcome that we want, right? And this because that'll work all right for referrals, so someone who has gotten who has learned about the service from someone else who has that trust has been transferred over, right? It may work when you're doing outreach for teeny, tiny, little projects, right, where they're willing to throw some spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks. But the tighter budgets get less willing. Clients are to do this, so to throw money away, basically, because what it is is they're they're gambling. Most marketing services clients are gambling. So what we need to do is we need to be able to package offers in such a way where it's an actual investment, where it's an investment that they can they can evaluate and see, okay, you know what? I see that there's proof and evidence that this has been effective in the past. I can see that this is right for me based upon this is, this is who this is for, and I can see that it solves this problem that I have, and I can see a clear path to how I'm going to be able to get an ROI. And I can see a clear path to be able to reach this expansive goal that I didn't even know was possible. Now that is a compelling proposition. Now, when you go and break down what that actually takes. I really put that in a different way. Instead of just sitting there and having and working that out one by one, one by one with every new client, because that's essentially what the CEO is doing. They're working that out one by one and then and they're they're not confident of the results. So they're like, when the client's like, well, what? Well, what do you expect for us to where we where we going to be at the year from now? If we work with you, they're going to say, Well, it depends. They don't know, right? So that doesn't give a lot of certainty, and without a lot of certainty, what that means is that, is that the CEO, whoever selling it, cannot really confidently sell this. So it means that they're leaving an enormous amount of money on the table. When you're leaving a lot of money on the table, that's bad for clients. And the reason why it's bad for clients is that you're not you're not getting paid enough to really deliver a full transformation. You're getting paid just enough. Be able to, like, get to the next thing, get to the next thing, get to it. But it's not enough to really say this is what we need to be able to generate this kind of result. It's like, there, it's just these teeny, tiny little steps. It's all incremental growth, instead of the very big transformation that is that you need to be able to work out what is required to create that transformation. So I just said a ton here, and I want to just check in with you on this, Chris, before I kind of go back to what I was talking about.
Chris DuBois 15:33
No. So this fits perfectly with what I am working on with my clients. It's if you as soon as you're only selling those deliverables and stuff. Not only is it like, yeah, you're gonna be the first one cut right for when they when budgets get tight, but like you're inviting comparison based off pricing, because I can get on Google and type in Best SEO agency, and now it's everyone who is in competition with you is showing up, rather than leaning into that outcome, where it's like, no one might promise this outcome, like I'm I'm on my own for solving this specific problem and getting you this result. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm all for it. And I think listeners have heard me talk about that before.
Speaker 1 16:15
Good. I'm glad to hear we're on the same page on that. In my book, The hands off CEO. In chapter eight, I walk through how to actually put this together and and how you put together an irresistible offer it's based upon it's going to give your client that's going to solve the problem, their most painful problem, that they are willing to throw money at right now, and also be able to build such a compelling vision for them, that they won't want to work with anyone but you, and that you can truly position yourself as a growth partner. And when you do that, what that allows you to do is charge, you know, anywhere from double to 10 times as much or even more for about the same work, right? So, so we've codified this down to what we call the power of ones. And the power of ones is one client, not industry, but a client type in the industry, and one painful problem. We're talking like multi million dollar problems here we want, we want to solve, hair on fire, expensive problems. And then once you understand those two, then you can then, you know, this is the kind of outcome we can deliver for this, for this type of client. And sometimes it's like, I know we can deliver a $5 million we can generate $5 million in, you know, two years for businesses. But who could we do that for? Sometimes we work on it backwards. It's really an algebra problem here and but once you understand that, then you can build a very compelling offering around that. And then what we do is we help our clients build what we call this client success map, and it's an outcome map. It's not a not a process map. There's lots of process maps out there, and that's better than nothing, right? That's that's better than nothing, but it's an outcome now that it gets them very, gives them very, very, it's very clear on what they're going to get and when, and not as deliverables, but as far as what those deliverables are going to actually do for the company. And the problem with this, this is, it's, it's kind of hard. This is, this is pretty hard to do, meaning that that when I'm saying this, it sounds easy. It might sound pretty straightforward, but the challenge is, is that, like understanding, well, who do we work with if we're going to be going after this one client? First of all, that sounds scary and terrifying, like we're just going to go after one client, and I'm going to say yes, unless you want to boil the ocean, and you don't necessarily have to go after one client forever, but start with one build, the messaging around one, test one, make money off one. Build processes around one. And then you can niche stack, can stack on top of that, but, um, what that does is, is it allows you to be able to have a more singular focus, as opposed to, you know, earlier on today, I was talking to a new client. Who they are? They? They said, We know we have 26 different clients with 27 six different industries, and we're offering 10 different services. You multiply that, right, like that, that's that's a lot of variation that's pretty difficult to scale. And it's a great that's a great company. They have great, great results. Have exceptional results, actually. But the problem is, is that that, how do you, how do you sell that? Well, like, you sell it to the people within your local area, you sell it to the people who have you have a relationship with. But the real trick is, is, like they're looking at, well, how do we get beyond our, you know, the 100 miles that we have in our that are mostly our market is, how do we get beyond the outside of that? You know, they had some other clients are in the international and otherwise that just from referrals, but like they were having a difficult time getting past. That that that local market, and really what it came down to is that, is that their value proposition to to new clients did not, it did not appear powerful enough, even though, like, they were head and shoulders, you know, 10 times better than all their competitors, but they look the same. So clients are in this, this really difficult perspective here, because, like, how do we actually compare them? So it's a really bad deal for clients when they can't tell the difference between you and all the other agencies, which you know, like 8080, 90% of agencies really just they don't deliver very good results and or maybe more more accurately, they deliver really, it's like there'll be a good chunk of them they can deliver that have some really great case studies, but they can't do that consistently for every client. A great agency can deliver that consistently for every single client, and a phenomenal one, top 1% agency can, can scale that. That's the trick is, how do you scale that that goes beyond the CEO, and that's what our scale to Freedom program entails, from the sales and the marketing, the positioning of it, all the way down to, like, the delivery of it. And that's why it works.
Chris DuBois 21:12
Yeah? So, yeah, I'd seen this was years ago now, but I'd seen a study about like 86% of marketing engagements with agencies actually fail. And it was like a, that's a baffling number, right? To thing, and I'll have to find it to also, if I can find it, I'll put it really,
Speaker 1 21:31
would like to hear, I'd like to know where that is. That's the greatest. It is great. It's very effective, useful,
Chris DuBois 21:38
right? Massive number. We'd use it on our website after seeing it, because it was like, Whoa. That is shocking, but it's also true, because, yeah, most agency, especially when you're just focused on the deliverable side of this, it's like, you don't, yeah, you can say, I've delivered all of these things, all these blog posts, but like, what did that actually, like, translate to for a result, right? Just the act of doing something doesn't it's a random act of marketing. Like, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was tied to the bigger picture that you should be after. And so I think there's that's more or gives more credence to this idea of the big outcome,
Speaker 1 22:18
well, and but it's beginning clear on, what are you actually good at? And and you could say, well, we're good at SEO, but like, unless you can actually connect the dots for how this is going to be able to impact their KPIs in a very substantial way. And I'm not just talking KPIs like we increased traffic like, whoop do you do? Let me give you an example of one where we had an SEO company that worked with us, and they wanted to actually test the software that this really innovative, amazing software, and they put it on our website. And this was some some years back. Thankfully we got it we but they're like, Okay, well, we're we're gonna get you ranked on all these terms, and we're gonna drive all this traffic. So they go in and do all this work on our website, and now, like, look at this ranking on all these terms, and they were, like, the worst, most garbage terms that that I'm looking at that. And then we have all this spammy content on our website that's redirecting to all these other companies. I'm sure this was totally black hat and actually, so all the work that, here's the thing is it like, they're like, we just increased this amount of traffic for you. They used this to go and leverage to get more clients. So they used these results that actually were hurting our company. They were hurting our company. They're hurting our website. They use this to be able to sell new clients on their junk software that did not actually, they didn't take our feedback on I told them, these are not, these are not terms that we wanted rank for, and they just decided to go and do whatever they wanted to do. So here's the thing is, is that the work that you do, it can actually harm a company as well. So like, if you're just looking at and you're just turning the crank, turning the crank, we're gonna, like, check off these deliverables. And you know what we did our work? Like we're no longer in in a market where that's going to fly. AI can do so much that it that it makes obsolete all of those junk middle services and low end services. It makes them all junk. And in fact, it actually makes the lowest end services better, because the lowest end people, they might get smart and learn how to use AI to become better, but those middle services are like we have nothing to offer here. And actually we're seeing a dying off of these right now. There are agencies right now. That the weaker agencies are dying, right now, they're dying a death of not enough profit and churn. That's actually the biggest thing that we look for with clients. So if they have a lot of churn, we cannot work with them as clients,
Chris DuBois 24:55
right? Yes. I mean, it goes to show just the actual one, the reputation that you. Gonna have to battle in order to help get them a result. But then, if they can't actually get a result and keep clients happy, now it's like, that's probably something you should solve first, right? To, like, what you were saying about, like, the lower end type stuff, right? If, if an intern at your client's company can do the work you're doing. Like, are you like, you're pretty replaceable, right, right, right. But if you focus on again, on that, that outcome, rather than just these things you're you're producing, I guess, going like, deeper into the outcome, how can you then set yourself up to be kind of, like, closer to the revenue for, like, the metrics that you're actually able to move? Yeah,
Speaker 1 25:41
let's let me talk about why it's a little bit harder too, because it's easy enough to just say, Okay, well, we're just going to you could throw out all these ridiculous promises and say that's we're going to be selling these outcomes. That's not what you want to do. And you open up your inbox and you'll find tons of companies that are saying we're going to be able to give you 100 leads this month, yada yada, yada, all that stuff. And you don't want to do that. Well, what you want to be doing is saying, you know, what problems do we want to solve for what types of clients? And let's say that, you know, we're I'll give you an example of Wally's company. They now have gone through the Arizona process offer process a few times now, and now they're offering is they sell million dollar offers before they were in the low five figure offers. Now they're selling million dollar offers, and it's because there's there they're a growth partner where they're doing marketing and ex advising for the outcome of being able to help them to add 10 million to the actual value and sale of their business. That's a longer term objective. The shorter term objective is, we're going to be able to help you make a lot more money with your marketing right away. I mean, I'm, that's not exactly the same words, right? But, but they're, they're working with B to B manufacturing companies. They're helping. And the end outcome is a certain, a certain percentage of growth every year, and then on, and then working towards the end goal of adding ten million of value to the company, so that that's that's millions of dollars more that they're walking away at the ten million specifically at their exit. So when you're looking at that, who else is, if they're looking at that, what, what ex advisor can do that for them? Not very many. What marketing advisor can do that for them? No one. None of them. Right. So he is him, and his his firm, has created a complete category of one, and with that, that level of specificity to look at, look at all the different partnerships that that could open up. And they know where. They know exactly the type of clients they're looking for. They know the kind of problems they're solving. They can describe the avatar so carefully, they can build an entire messaging camp campaigns for them. I mean, like, this is shooting fish in a barrel. This is like, imagine how much easier it is to be able to market your business when you have a product that that's good, that is that good. So ultimately, we're looking at building really incredible products, not productizing based upon deliverables, but building an incredible product that actually gives them a very expansive outcome, and that expansive outcome that comes from some weeks of deep thinking. We take our clients to this irresistible offer process and, and what we're doing is we're helping them innovate. We're helping them be able to actually position their company as the top 1% in their industry. And and at first, like no one at the beginning understand where any anywhere where near where they can they can take things because they because they have all these beliefs of like, well, we have to do this. We have to this. We can't do this because of all these different places. So what we what we do is we walk through this like exercise. And it's a it's play. We have a play full time, and we and in this cohort, we walk them through with with other leaders at their level. We play and we look at, well, what are some different scenarios? How could we, how we run through, and we have a very structured type process that helps them be able to innovate and see what's really possible, to be able to look at within our skills, our expertise, based upon what we've already done, based upon, you know, what if we had these, these conditions for success in place? You know, if our, if our, if our clients gave us, gave us $20,000 a month in ad spend. Let's just throw that out there, right if they gave us this, if we had a marketing person in on there, on staff, that gave us everything that we needed, if we got approvals by this time, like just think about all those perfect conditions that you could create, what would be possible. I'll give you another example of this and the the another, another example here is Jamie, and he's since sold his company. But they were, they were in a place where they were noticing about 30% of their clients were not profitable. He shared this on our podcast, so this was nothing new, but um, and they, they recognized that, and said, We need to fix this. So we look at his his offering. Dollars, and we say, you know, what? How do we be able to get paid more for the same work that you're already doing? So, um, and because every dollar extra is pure profit, pure profit, and you can look at the it's a tremendous amount of profitable increase. So, um, what? So what it looked like was, you know, they were doing affiliate marketing. She's like, well, great, we're the best affiliate marketing, right? But here's the thing is, is that you're, you're having to, like you said, comparing against other affiliate marketers. So we need to look at what is, what are we actually doing, and who are we doing it for? What are we actually, what can we actually do? And what they found out? And here's another fun, fun numbers that was just like 10 they found that in three years, they can generate ten million of extra new growth for beauty and skincare brands. That's just one of one of the niches that they were and they initially looked at, and I know their offers has grown and changed, but that right there helped them increase their profitability. It was trying to remember off the top of my head, because I have the 40% increase. In net profit, a 40% increase in net profit from the from that change, they were able to get to double. They got paid double. On the first round, they got paid double the for the same work, double for the same work, right? That fixed their profitability issues right away, right? It's better for the client, because they have a very structured way, I mean, to be able to create that kind of outcome, you can't just, like, turn the crank and say, we're going to do this affiliate marketing when Fingers crossed. We hope it works. No, you got to put in feedback loops. You've got to be able to look at, are we actually getting the getting the results that we want? And at this point we hear a lot of people say, well, well, our clients don't give us that information. Just like, well, you ask your clients, like, do you want us to actually generate growth for you or not? You better give us those numbers then,
Chris DuBois 31:55
yeah, yeah, that's that one piece, right there something that's come up multiple times that I've heard of where each they're just like, Yeah, but we don't have that data. It's like, go get the like you're the strategic expert. Go get that data from the client, like you're doing it for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1 32:12
it's crazy, you know, you know. And if someone comes on a call, like, you know, initial discovery call with with someone on our team, or meeting, or someone on my team, and they're saying, Well, you know what? Like, they're being really vague, and they won't answer our questions about, well, this is where we're at. This is where we go. They're not gonna give us the number of stuff say, You know what? Like, what you're doing right now is, is, like, you're coming into the doctor here and you're saying, I hurt, but you're not telling me where in your body you're hurting, right so, like, how can I help you here? So I think we're gonna end this conversation right now, because there's no way we can help you. And, I mean, you don't have to be quite that straightforward at the end there. But like, I find that they turn pretty quick, or, you know, right away that this is, I mean, I'm talking to somebody who is so unbelievably skeptical. They don't trust us at all. We're never going to be able to get anywhere with them. And and I know that for sure, because, like, we have so much content that's on our website, and, you know, all over the internet. I mean, there's so much content that you can find about what we're doing and like, so it's a matter of, like, I know that we have plenty of plenty of stuff out there, and if you still don't trust us after all that, I don't know what to tell you. I don't think anybody can help
Chris DuBois 33:18
you, right? So let's, let's just break down quickly, like with 8020 principle, if you had to give what is that one thing that an agency could start doing today that would make a significant impact to getting them some of the results that you're after with with their businesses.
Speaker 1 33:37
So significant impact in regards to, what? Can you tell me more specifically what?
Chris DuBois 33:43
Sure, I mean, so I guess we can break it down to just like, how did they get their offer in the hands of more people that want to pay them these higher rates?
Speaker 1 33:53
Okay, yeah, because I want to just know, like, I mean, it's being specific about like, so the 80, but at the 80, the 8020 of that, it's looking at what kind of problem, what? What are the the biggest outcomes? I would start by looking at what outcomes have you created in the past? So look at your past case studies. And if you don't have case studies, well, figure it out and don't go and start like this point, a lot of agencies will say, Okay, we need to go and build this beautiful Polish case study right here. And they'll spend 1000s of dollars putting together all these really polished case studies that say absolutely nothing, that have like, the fluff, fluff, fluff, and then like the like second to last line is, like, it's like, buried in there. Like, Oh, we help them be able to increase like, like, put that goes in the headline, okay. Headline, don't bury the lead here. So you need to understand the impact that you can provide for clients. You have to know that, and you also need to be looking at what, what are the most ideal circumstances that. We could create such that we could create our top 1% results for clients every single time. And that's the Wonder question I would ask, and that's the 8020 there. And once you understand, really, the kind of results that you can create, and what's once you understand the results of the clients, you cannot create great results for which a lot of people try to avoid answering this question, because now they have the responsibility to actually turn those clients away. Yep, you gotta, you gotta turn those clients away. Don't take people's money that you can't get good results for. That's that is not unethical and um, but you gotta do the thinking to understand who you can deliver the results for what conditions that you need. And when you understand that, when you can really see that, like, if I had this thing in place, we can generate a million dollars for this, for these type of companies every single year, like, and you could look at that. Now you're no longer willing to take on those teeny, tiny, little projects. Now you're no longer willing to to to sell your services for far below now you're no longer willing to to when clients come to you and say, Well, you know, how about we go and add this on to the project, and let's go and do this. And you know what? Let's, let's shelve this right now and do that. And when they start doing all this crazy stuff, now you're gonna say, No, you said that you wanted this. We need to. We're here to help you create this result, and you will actually manage them to that, and when you manage them to that, and when you have those kind of big results with your clients, every single time, you will no longer be be selling your services for much for far below what you should be selling them. That's the 8020,
Chris DuBois 36:37
awesome. All right. Manny, this has been great. I got two more questions for you. But first, where can people grab a copy of the hands off CEO? If you go to hands
Speaker 1 36:47
off ceo.com forward slash book, you can buy yourself a copy for 499 and that you'll have an audio version of that, a digital copy, and also a quiz on what is your business worth. So you can go and get all those good goodies at hands off ceo.com forward slash book and and, and get access to to a deeper dive on what we talked about here today.
Chris DuBois 37:10
Yeah, awesome. All right, now, separate from your own, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?
Speaker 1 37:19
Well, I guess that that on what subject?
Chris DuBois 37:23
Yeah, I was literally talking to podcast guests earlier where I asked this question to every guest. And yet it's one that I hate receiving, because it's like, well, it depends on what their problem is. And so I kind of just hope that, well, people will ask Have something top of mind that's like, I you
Speaker 1 37:41
know what one book that I love is, u squared. I will say that it's a book for people who are watching the video. You can see, this is what it looks like. This is by price Pritchett, and this is about quantum leaps, and it's a different way of thinking. And what I'm talking about with the irresistible offer that's a quantum level thinking. And when you think about your business in a different way, instead of thinking about it in linear ways, and instead looking at, how do we like like leave that way behind, and think about, what would it take to be able to create, you know, a 10x type of growth experience, a 20x 5x whatever it Is you change the way that you're thinking and um, really magical things can happen as a result of that.
Chris DuBois 38:24
Yeah, awesome. And then the last question, Where can people find you if they want to learn
Speaker 1 38:30
more? Well, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Um, Mandy Ellis and Mandy I, E, L, L, E, F, S, O, N, you can also my direct email is Mandy at hands off ceo.com Again, Mandy with an i so you can just reach out and just, I'd love to hear your thoughts on on any or any questions you have on what was shared here. I know there was a lot. I will try to go pretty deep so that people can get an idea, and they're not just like, oh well, they just, you just just shared the surface level stuff. So we buy the book. Now I want to give people the goods so that they can, they could actually use this and get something out
Chris DuBois 39:11
of it. Well, I think the goods were shared. So thank you. Thank you for joining. This is great. Thanks for
Unknown Speaker 39:18
having me, Chris. I appreciate it.
Chris DuBois 39:22
You. That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.
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