Why a $10M Agency Needs Engineers to Scale — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hey, my name is Dominic and I'm
2. 0:01definitely a little starstruck right
3. 0:03now.
4. 0:06I'm here with my four partners.
5. 0:08>> Where are you at?
6. 0:10>> Over here.
7. 0:10And we do omni channel digital marketing
8. 0:13for dental offices.
9. 0:18>> Go buy a ticket.
10. 0:21>> We actually just a couple months ago we
11. 0:23merged our two companies. So, we're at
12. 0:25about 10 million in top line
13. 0:27>> Amazing.
14. 0:27>> at 5 to 8% margins.
15. 0:30Our goal is to get to 20 20 million 20%.
16. 0:34>> Real quick, on the 5 to 8% are you guys
17. 0:36all taking salaries?
18. 0:38>> Yes.
19. 0:38>> Okay, so that's probably what would it
20. 0:39be if you added all salaries back?
21. 0:40Nothing should be there. Sorry I
22. 0:42interrupted.
23. 0:42>> Around 15-ish.
24. 0:43>> Okay, still low. But okay, keep going.
25. 0:46>> Um so, I think what's holding us back is
26. 0:49lead flow for our business and
27. 0:51inconsistent results for our clients,
28. 0:54which I would say are both constraints,
29. 0:56but Tim can wipe his ass.
30. 1:00>> Um
31. 1:03I'm not going to comment on the irony of
32. 1:05marketing companies not having leads.
33. 1:07Um
34. 1:09So, from an omni channel approach, what
35. 1:11are you What different channels are you
36. 1:12guys advertising on for your customers?
37. 1:14>> So, all socials all all main socials.
38. 1:16>> What size So, it's dentists of what
39. 1:17size?
40. 1:18>> Two two million-ish, but we also
41. 1:21>> And up or two million the average?
42. 1:22>> Like one million to five million.
43. 1:24>> Okay, I got it.
44. 1:25>> We also do like multi locations DSOs as
45. 1:27well.
46. 1:28>> Got it. Okay.
47. 1:30>> We do We do websites, obviously, SEO,
48. 1:32paid ads.
49. 1:33>> So, what's costing you so much money?
50. 1:34>> Our team.
51. 1:36>> Okay.
52. 1:37>> We have about 85.
53. 1:39What's that profit?
54. 1:40Yeah.
55. 1:42>> I think realistically
56. 1:43like if I were in y'all's shoes, I would
57. 1:46probably take the next
58. 1:48six months and walk through this
59. 1:50process.
60. 1:51So,
61. 1:57So,
62. 2:01right now you have
63. 2:03people who report to people, right? And
64. 2:07this is how the structure of the
65. 2:08organization works.
66. 2:10But the reality is that this is actually
67. 2:12a very inefficient structure for
68. 2:14information transfer and for decisions
69. 2:15to get made. It's just the only way
70. 2:17we've done it. Jack Dorsey had an
71. 2:18awesome piece about this, but it
72. 2:20actually comes back from the Roman
73. 2:21Empire and how they organized legions.
74. 2:22That's why organizational structures
75. 2:24exist like that. And we haven't evolved
76. 2:25anything new, it's because humans have
77. 2:27the same level of confidence that we can
78. 2:28manage three to eight people or eight of
79. 2:30us, and you just ladder all the way up.
80. 2:31It means that every level everything
81. 2:33gets compressed, which is why there's so
82. 2:35many bad decisions get made from the top
83. 2:36because it's so far away from it. And
84. 2:38so, what we need to do is instead of
85. 2:40having what I would consider role-based
86. 2:44thinking from an organizational
87. 2:45structure perspective,
88. 2:47you need to shift to workflow-based
89. 2:49thinking.
90. 2:51And so, no longer is the work of the
91. 2:54company bound by the people's titles.
92. 2:57So, when we hire a role, we put this
93. 3:00title up and we have some sort of
94. 3:01description of what we think they're
95. 3:02supposed to do. But more realistically,
96. 3:04this person is going to do, you know,
97. 3:05step two of this six-step process,
98. 3:08they're going to do step one of this
99. 3:09other three-step process. And so, they
100. 3:11just do these couple of things
101. 3:14uh on a day-to-day basis. This is the
102. 3:15ones that they're responsible for. And
103. 3:17so, you have to get incredibly granular
104. 3:19to figure out what every role in the
105. 3:20company is doing right now.
106. 3:23Doing.
107. 3:25Doing. And you'll find out and it'll
108. 3:26make you sick because I almost guarantee
109. 3:28you that of the 85 people they have
110. 3:30right now, there's probably like 10 that
111. 3:31are really running the ship.
112. 3:32Right?
113. 3:33And so, lots of the people that are in
114. 3:36the company are not that productive. And
115. 3:38honestly, a lot of those roles can, and
116. 3:41I don't want to say be automated away,
117. 3:43and more so I'd rather have those people
118. 3:44learn the tools and then find more
119. 3:46valuable things to do.
120. 3:49And so,
121. 3:50I said earlier,
122. 3:52the next really dollar company is a
123. 3:53technology company that's masquerading
124. 3:55as a services business. You can keep all
125. 3:56your pricing the same, you can sell to
126. 3:58the same customers, but if your
127. 3:59operational complexity inside drops,
128. 4:01like if you have a team of 10 that was
129. 4:03running this, you probably love this
130. 4:04business.
131. 4:06Right? And the thing is the team of 10
132. 4:08can run this business
133. 4:09with more tech. And so I've looked
134. 4:11really hard at the team and see who's
135. 4:14leaning in there versus who's not. The
136. 4:16people who are leaning in, lean into
137. 4:17them. The people who are leaning away,
138. 4:18I'll lean away from. And you'll probably
139. 4:20need to be written in, I don't know,
140. 4:22three to five
141. 4:23development like engineering hires that
142. 4:25are actually going to help you like
143. 4:27take every workflow in the business. Cuz
144. 4:29right now there's a lot of that
145. 4:30gets done, but you should be able to map
146. 4:32the entire business if you were to erase
147. 4:35all of these circles into one continuous
148. 4:37workflow.
149. 4:38I mean fundamentally a customer sees an
150. 4:40ad of some kind, they click, they go
151. 4:43through a funnel, they get to a sales
152. 4:44call, and each then they get onboarded,
153. 4:46and from onboarding they get data
154. 4:48collection, from data collection they
155. 4:49have you know, they meet with an account
156. 4:50manager, creative gets gets made, photos
157. 4:52get spun up, they get their logos up.
158. 4:53Like literally it's just an endless
159. 4:55checklist until eventually they
160. 4:56get a customer that shows up at their at
161. 4:58their facility, right? And so every
162. 5:01single person that's touching that
163. 5:02process,
164. 5:03most of that can be automated.
165. 5:06And so we want to allow people to do
166. 5:08much more valuable work. So we have to
167. 5:09get them to stop doing the less valuable
168. 5:11work that technology can already
169. 5:12replace.
170. 5:13So I think for you guys, I would not be
171. 5:14like, "Hey, let's scale this thing."
172. 5:16Your margins are too thin. It's too
173. 5:17volatile right now. Because I mean 5% is
174. 5:20a hiccup away from losing money.
175. 5:21Especially for a service business.
176. 5:23That being said, it's my position that
177. 5:25like you should always be able to keep
178. 5:27your service business alive because like
179. 5:29the costs are variable, right? For the
180. 5:31most part.
181. 5:33And so
182. 5:34does that help?
183. 5:35>> Okay, yeah, agency basically.
184. 5:37>> If you want to win.
185. 5:38>> Yeah.
186. 5:40You want to win.
187. 5:42>> Yeah.
188. 5:46>> You can run an agency system.
189. 5:49You know what I all
190. 5:51All that a blessing to you, too?
191. 5:53>> Yes.
192. 5:53>> Okay.
193. 5:54Thank you.
194. 5:59>> Good afternoon, Alex.
195. 6:00>> Good afternoon.
196. 6:02>> I'm pretty new to this, actually. I only
197. 6:03came across you about 3 months ago. So
198. 6:04>> Oh, awesome.
199. 6:05>> Came in a month ago. We won't get to
200. 6:07that.
201. 6:09Thanks, dude.
202. 6:09>> I can't give you every single recipe.
203. 6:10That would be ridiculous. It would be
204. 6:11like this long. But these are the top
205. 6:13five recipes that we have used to scale
206. 6:15that Layla actually put together for us
207. 6:17cuz she's really been the one who
208. 6:18operates the business. And so yeah, I
209. 6:20don't know what's inside of it. But um
210. 6:21it's good. So you should check it out
211. 6:23cuz Layla made it and she makes good
212. 6:24stuff. It's free.