Episode 458 Agency Chat With Ryan Waterbury Making Decisions With Your Agency

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns and Ryan Waterbury talk about making decisions for your agency.

• How to grow your agency?
• When to hire.
• What types of clients to take on.

Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here. I hope everybody’s doing well today. I have my good friend Ryan Waterbury with me and we’re gonna do his monthly segment now Agency Chat.

 How are you today, Mr. Waterway?

I’m doing mostly good.

Yeah, you’ve had barking before the show you’ve had. Some, shall we say, payment challenges, to say the least.

Yes.

And and that it’s a perfect segue into what we’re going to talk about today and why I’m making some decisions around what I’m doing with my agency. And I finally feel comfortable calling it my agency again and not just. Solo preneurship that things are things are changing and changing for the. Sure.

And actually, as you know, I don’t call mine an agency anymore. Mine is a digital concierge, as you know, so.

You and Spencer both.

You can blame Mr. Foreman for that one. You want me to say that? But you know it does make some sense for how I how I’ve been positioning myself. It doesn’t really. It doesn’t rule. It actually suits me better to be fair and and yes, that came out of a podcast recorder, Mr. Spencer, and I did recently actually so.

Well.

Some really good ideas when he’s chatting so.

That was actually one of the catalysts, the final spark, when I when I thought about it that. I’m doing some of those things, but also doing more things and. Just the the history, I think I’ve talked about it. Where? There with Solo starting in 2016, slowly built up, started bringing on contractors in 20/17/2018 and for spot jobs, and then 2019 started doing some larger projects that you know the enterprise or the large business sector level and. Those projects are difficult to manage solo. You can do it, but.

You need to.

Employ contractors to accomplish specific goals within there and then after.

There.

They need help, they need support. There’s ongoing maintenance. There are marketing pieces to it, SEO, social media management. And so I was starting to build a team of of contracted employees going into 2020 and I talked with my accountant and looked at bringing them on full time, some in the states, some across the pond.

MHM.

And was really preparing for that. And then of course, I was deep into the hospitality industry. Local, small, independent owned businesses doing a lot of local SEO, web web design and and PC marketing and you know so.

Next.

Saw some really good returns in our market that has raised thin margins, you know and and seeing success there, while all those businesses shuttered and I had to pivot back to being a solo agency owner. Almost closed up shop. It’s pretty depressing time, you know, some couple of months there. I built $300.00. It was pretty, pretty bleak.

Yeah, it was a rough go for a lot of people, especially in the hospitality, as you know. Due to NDA’s I can’t name them, but I have one really large hospitality client and you know who there. We’ve talked to someone and I have to tell you and they’re a multinational and they went through hard times. The COVID screwed up a lot of people’s business, so we always talk. It’s funny we talk about. How the small businesses generated revenue from e-commerce and stuff, but what we saw was the big companies actually backed off their spend. And and they’ve ramped it back up because, you know, you were talking about PPC. I’ll tell you, PPC costs have gone up. And one reason, PP.

Oh, absolutely. Staff it, that’s.

Up as Fortune 5, hundreds have all jumped into PPC.

I absolutely and we saw the yeah, I just saw a large shift in spend even in the small to mid market companies with with some of my local clients that spending increased dramatically starting in June because SEO has become so volatile. With with what Google’s done with? AI and the junk content out there and it’s it’s been difficult so. A lot of. People went back to trying to and, you know, said OK, we’re going to spend our dollars where we know we’re going to get revenue back and not lose our our investment next month when Google changes and roll selling update. Well, that’s a very. Specialized skill set, and I’ve been fortunate that alongside doing software development and building websites, that was one of my, you know, niches that that I served. And starting to add that back and then doing back end development, front end development design, web care updates, my accounting is a few months out of out of date and I don’t have a ton of transactions. So it’ll be an hour to get back up to date, but you you start to look at where you spend your time. And I’ve constantly been dealing with patch updates and looking at journals and Hacker News. Because we’re not the only ones that take advantage of AI the.

Go to. Go to the hackers if I. If I had a dollar for every time I hack something, I would be 1 rich man my friend.

2nd.

So that’s starting to consume more time with security and just just keeping up on updates and making sure things don’t break during an update has started, you know, to take some time. So I started to look at. I’ve forwarded some strategic partnerships with other solo agencies and contractors, and that’s helped a ton with new project work, but the retainer work that we’re starting to bring back into the agency.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, it it? Sparked, you know, an idea that I was really gun shy to bring anyone on after I had told a couple of individuals. And I’m gonna bring you on either part time or full time as an employee. And then a month later, had to tell him. No, can’t do it because I lost all my business.

Yep.

So I’ve I’ve tried to avoid doing that for a while and not be a boss, but there comes a point where you hit that ball and you can only do so much as an individual and even with the good partnerships. So I I’ve made the decision to go back. And look at bringing subcontracting plays. Done on a trial basis, starting somewhere in the first of the year and really grow some of the recurring revenue and ongoing services like SEO, PPC and security that require that that attention.

Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. It’s funny because. You know, and what we’re talking about, this is really an agency chap, but this could apply to. Brick and mortar could apply to any business, and one of the hardest parts is small business. Owners don’t like to let go. I have that problem. You have that problem. We both and my mentor Paul, Toby and knows in the WordPress space don’t know he’s the father of Adrian, Toby of Groundhog fame. One of my mentors.

Any business? Exact. Yeah.

And she taught me and enforce, and I always had this philosophy, but he really enforced his. If you wanna come to do it, hire somebody to do it. If you don’t like to do it, hire somebody to do it. If you hate doing it, hire somebody, do it and concentrate on what you like to do and what makes you money. That was pulser. So. Let’s talk even more beyond hiring. Contractors, let’s just start with the business. I recently brought on a VA who’s Canadian part time.

Sure. OK.

Full time, actually 40 hour. This week, and not only my paying a reason why relation I’m paying health benefits Sarah, because I’m not big enough to have group policy, I’m paying individual health benefits. Only care is still worth it. That own has taken stress off me, so I’m not chasing clients for bills I’m not chasing clients for renewals. I’m not, I’m not. So that alone is the best thing I did. So that’s number one, both you and I use an account. I don’t even do my own accounting anymore. I don’t even enter my own blocks. I take all my scanned receipts every month and flip them to my account and say here you go. Fix my books each month and then by the way, Dr. Uncle. Good. And I’m using wave apps for accounting and he has access to it and he just goes in and does it when I move from QuickBooks to wave apps. I didn’t do the move I paid him to do it and just said do it for me. I want it done right. Just do it. Here you go. As you know, I have a lawyer on retainer for business and personal use, and that is a whole new ball game and that’s a minefield in my life, as you know. So there’s that. So here’s three big examples. And I haven’t even gotten into what I’m actually doing to make money. These are to support, to support my business and my lifestyle.

Exactly. Yeah. The the interesting thing is you, you point around all the reasons people hire initially and the ones that you think about and that’s just, you know, basic maintenance of you know your life and getting back to that 8 hour day on line. But it’s not going to happen even if you guys move things up.

In the 14.

You’re still going to have some long days, but. You know, take away the pain points 1st and I’ve built systems I’ve automated as much of A as I can and laid the groundwork to let other people use those systems. So the the first steps, you know in hiring are, you know, like your accounting, I have an accountant, but she files my taxes. She doesn’t do my books so.

Bye bye.

That bookkeeping is going to be offloaded because it’s something I don’t want to do and somebody else is better at finding the loopholes to save you money on taxes. Great. BA is next that like you’ve done to handle some of the admin. Asks great, but one thing that struck me is a fellow marketer. And you know, you talked about letting go. You said that the trick to growth is hire somebody to do the things that you like to do, that you’re good at. He said that’s when you grow. And when I really thought about that statement, that’s what it made sense. To to start looking at, I can design, but I know there’s somebody out there that can do it better.

Mm-hmm.

So my you know, my first uh, first are going to be a front end developer and the designer and to take care take take care of some of the project work and then we’re going to look further at bringing on some some help for PPC and SEO and really grow that part of the business. Because we’re seeing I’m seeing some good success just doing it on my own right now. And you know you can only do so much. So the first part that I’ve always done like you’ve done. Get rid of your pain points. Then the second part. That’s the much more difficult part, and this is where I think a lot of small business owners struggle is that letting go part and hiring someone to do what you’re good at doing and why you started the business but.

And trusting them, that’s the big thing. It’s the trust level. So it’s getting to that point. And you know, I’m at the point now where, as you know, I don’t like to inside design anymore. I can’t. I’m working on a a project right now because I like the client. But a lot of my big stuff, I just go goodbye. Add 30% and you know be done with it, right? And it’s like and I’d rather because I don’t enjoy the back and forth. I like the project management side of it. I don’t like to do it side of it and I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but I’m actually a peer of mine. Betrayed my background too. So that’s one of the 17 sets of letters that can throw after my name if I choose to. Get ****** *** at somebody tomorrow, like, but yeah. And and Project management is a is an effort.

I think.

But you know, it’s more than that. So we’ve got the accountant and the the administrator side of the way and now we’re looking at hiring. But I think more importantly, when we’re hiring, we gotta have our processes and procedures in place. Like, how do you do e-mail? What app do you use? The e-mail you use workspaces, I believe if I’m right.

Hmm.

And I’ve got. I’ve got a fast mail and my VA is on fast mail, I’ll tell you.

Exactly.

No. How do you do that? Do you? Do you want your VA to have access to your inbox? That’s always what I see. Well, with some people. Fortunately, my fee as a family member, so I don’t care. So got actually my inbox and she goes in and she’ll answer her.

You know, yeah.

E-mail for me on my behalf, that’s business related to personal stuff kind of, Lisa. So there’s, there’s that. And then and then. The the procedure the policies go more does is your invoicing procedure documented so that the person that’s handling all that your VA can they. Just follow it. Stuff like that because he those procedures down, you’re done. And then we get into the design factor. And it’s like what tool are you using to manage your projects? And you’re using a click UPS now if I recall.

I’m using clicker right now that is, I’m migrating into fluent boards and I’ve I’ve been into. I bought into the fluent ecosystem when I started seeing some of the tools independently that they brought out started to become interconnected.

OK.

And so you talked about the inbox and this is still a training thing with a lot of customers that don’t e-mail me directly because I have staff that does monitor the support at one dog dot solutions you. And that that’s been a hard one for customers to get away from emailing me directly.

How many times have I tried to implement a customer support portal in the last two years? You you know the answer that and you know, I gave up again. So my customers love to e-mail me directly. But the problem with that is the minute my VA gets involved. She just internally opens up a ticket and says, OK, We’ve opened up a ticket and here we go. And here’s your ticket number. We’ll get to. It so and. Yeah, matter. At this point, I’m not touching it either way, so it’s OK that is kind of solved my pain point because. I’ve lost my customer base. Things that they mailed to you direct. They they getting my personal attention and that’s. Just the reality. So there’s, but also the managing the projects you got desired a a front end developer working you as. A. Project Guy running projects want to know where they’re at, what they’ve done, what they haven’t. Run and the the phone ecosystem I use notion for that but same thing it it tells me I can look at a glance and say this is exactly where I’m at and I actually give my clients read access to those notion pages, not write access which is easy to share the link. And I’m gonna tell you 90% of the time they’d rather quick paragraph e-mail than looking at the board.

Yeah, exactly. I I tried embedding, you know, the clicker board or you know using different tools and it’s telling us. But I will tell you that you touched on it and I want to talk about why financially and project wise why I’m making the decision to shift again. You touched on it earlier when you, with your hospitality client that is now doing better and a lot of companies. And now are are taking this up forward to say it, we put this off long enough. We need to start investing in our marketing, our our, our aging website. We need support. This businesses are growing again. It’s not as fast as you know some of us would like. To see.

Yeah.

But I mean I’m. Having more work than I’m going out and being able to sell, then I can actually do now and I I’m just lowered that I have a 100% success rate this year on proposals. I plan on 66% that you know when I’ve sent out that’s traditionally been, you know, the close rate, which is great, but. I don’t plan on on getting all of them and that’s happened this year, so. I’m at the point where I’m forced to hire him, you know, to be able to complete and deliver the projects.

Well, yeah. And and the other problem I’ve got and you’ll understand this cause you used to play in the US political space, you don’t as much anymore. I am still heavily involved in the Canadian political space. You know that federal. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but the our elections in Canada, a little different than the US, the the ruling party can call an election or if there’s a minority government, the House could be brought down like in England and Britain, and then they go to election. Well, guess what? We have a minority government. The longest one we’ve ever had in the history of our country. And the NDP, who is supporting the Liberal government, has ripped up the agreement yesterday. So that means I can almost guarantee you we will be headed to a federal election very soon. The house is going to fall very soon and when the minute that happens, I go insane for weeks at a time. So and then and and this is the worst time, because what is this? Now it’s Christmas retail season. Welcome visit the fall.

I you know, you know we talked about the ticketing system and I’ve been remiss with sending out my e-mail reminders, but it took a little bit of training, but I have most of the clients submitting tickets and even my normal fall nonprofit. So. So if you left on my roster and also.

Yep.

Retail clients, they’re wise enough now that they wanted to start their marketing programs in July and start building the collateral. So we’re ready in October, November and December and we can, I don’t want to say sit back and put. Our feet up but. There’s no mad dash this year and.

I wish. I wish.

It, yeah. Yeah, I’ve been. I’ve been fortunate on that, that. We’ve we’ve had some good planning and are working on campaigns or Black Friday for off season for seasonal clients and it’s fantastic. You know we’ve we’ve had a few reschedules here and there, but we’re mostly on track to be ahead of ahead of the curve for once.

Yep.

I have no idea how it’s happening with all the work that’s going on, but it it’s me and me a lot happier going. Into fall.

Yeah, I have a a major retail client, actually two of them and what they’re doing next week. And their plans are pretty well in place for the holidays, except for one thing. They’re doing a migration from the current ESP e-mail service provider 2 Groundhog. So for those on the go, our friend Mr. Adrian, Toby will be happy about that, but.

Fantasy. OK.

They will be. Yeah, they’re going to Groundhog and they, there’s a lot of work involved in that migration, but at least they’re getting it done. In September 1 of the things that are really light, Speaking of migrations and prepping for the holidays is WordPress decided to move its last update out of December into. November I was guys doing e-commerce. Me, you we all screamed at them and say how could you right so.

End of. I saw that, but yeah. Yeah, you know. I have with my problem. Yesterday I have a little love hate with WooCommerce because that was the the core of my issue and the duplicate jobs between Tron and action scheduler and approach lightspeed cash but.

I like Lightspeed cash my.

I do.

My service like speed back end, so that’s what I want. OK and.

Hi. They’re fantastic, but sometimes they harden things a little bit too much and and you find yourself at 10:00 sorting through payment processor issues caused by, you know, a security patch update that needed to be applied immediately and that’s.

Not too. I’ll give. I’ll give you a better how about sorting out HP 8.2 point? It says 8.3 issues caused by hashing plug in immediately. I just want that this week too. So there you go.

I mean.

Yep.

And each and each of those things, when they come up, if there’s a problem and it and I’ve got a lot of I don’t have cookie cutter sites that you know they’re not pusher sites that are out there, they’re complex sites. So we have to do testing if there’s any issues and I’m booked all the project work Monday through Friday. An 8 hour or 16 hour issue just took out of my project schedule so that the all these little things that were were jamming about, you know, when they pop up.

I hear you.

When you’re solo or even in partnerships with other agencies, it takes a big hit and all of a sudden you’ve got customers. Why? Why are we missing deadlines? And where’s this and? And then you scramble. So for me, it’s growing, the agency is getting a little bit of sanity and my life back, I’ve had a a personal project that I have not been able to touch due to weather. Yeah, in three months and it it’s a weekend project and you know, little things have popped up personally.

Your car.

But mostly professionally, where? I haven’t been able to touch it so.

You know, I don’t I have 2D GI $2000 drones in the basement and I’ve phoned them like 2 days this summer.

Hmm.

And the reason that I bought those is, you know, one of my loves outside of work is photography. So I want to shoot photography from the air, and I don’t even have time to go drum flying. I mean, you know, between my partner and life and this and family and the ongoing health issues I’ve been through with the wound.

Hi.

I mean, how Sam doing pretty good. I’ve gone through some supper, you know, just time. What’s that?

Yeah. And you have to look at, I got I I left the 9 to 5 corporate world and you know director level just below C C-Suite life behind because. I was working 68 hours a week flying across the country and you know, taking a step down and doing some lesser roles and then finally. Opening up my agency, you know, it did that to get a little bit more freedom and then you find yourself right back where you were so. That’s why I’m gonna, you know, build my agency and and do it the right way and build a fun environment program of the work in and. Put some good work out there and help businesses.

Grow your your problem is you have two office staff that they think are sleeping through.

They’re deadbeats.

Yeah, there’s no help to this this mess. So let’s kind of wrap it up a little bit, so I hope. Some people get where. Your thought process of my thought processes in this cause we share a lot of the similar things Ryan and I talk in Slack or by e-mail pretty well every day, every second day. So. And the other thing I’d say, and I said this to California, it’s not really the top, but it’s really important is go find a gang of business owners that you can talk to about personal and business stuff. It’s good for your headspace to do what we do and it it kind of makes life easy. If you got three things you should do right away before you’re thinking about growing your agency, what are? The what’s happened?

Uh, one of the biggest things is cash flow and make sure that you plan salaries, whether their contract or full time and you have a minimum of six months set aside for that, for yourself and for your employees.

Yep. Good. Truth.

Secondly, solve your pain points first. Usually that’s outsourcing to an accountant for your bookkeeping, or VA for some of your admin things. Those are. Low Investment stakes to test the waters out when you’re handing off work and see if. See if you’re comfortable with that and if you are, then I think you’re ready to take the next step. If you have the work to support hiring an employee or you are in progress of acquiring that work. Just hire and you know, hire the person to do the job and fill the holes. You know in your project.

Thank you.

And the work will come. It will free you up to be able to go out and sell and project manage better. So you’ll complete your projects faster and be able to take on more work.

Yep.

Thanks, Ryan. As always, appreciate you appreciate your time and we’ll talk to you everybody soon. Thanks so much. And if you wanna find more about Ryan, go over the one dog solutions.com and just kind of links to everything Ryan does there and be sure to ask about why he hires 2 deadbeat. Office manager speakers. Thank you, Sir. Have a good day.

Yeah, you too.