 Good morning and welcome. Welcome to WordCamp Birmingham. Thank you Nathan for that fantastic talk earlier Nathan is now apparently volunteering as our IT coordinator for WordCamp Birmingham, so Glad to be here. My name is Jesse. I live in Minnesota I own an agency a website development agency called iceberg web design. We have 11 full-time employees and In the business track, I'm obviously here to talk a little bit about business growth And how we run our organization are and I'm going to talk a little bit about Creating a sustainable template for business growth Specifically focusing on some methods outlined by Gino Wickman in his book traction But first why do I speak at WordCamps? I mean obviously it's not for the money if you've ever spoken at a WordCamp before But I speak because I love to share my experiences I have been in business now for 17 years. I built my agency from just me and the one-off contractor today We have 11 full-time employees and I've spent a lot of time putting business processes and systems into place I've learned a lot. I failed a lot and every time I visit a WordCamp. I learned something new From all of you and so what I really love about WordCamps is the networking that happens before and after the talks I love sharing my experiences one-on-one with people after I'm done speaking and Just the rush that comes from knowing that I've been able to help other people is why I keep coming back and speaking So it's been a couple of years. Hope I'm not too rusty So a little bit about me. I live in Minnesota When I left yesterday, it was 70 degrees colder than it was when I landed in Birmingham So it was really nice to be here even though y'all think it's a little bit cool. I think it's perfect I'm an entrepreneur. I Have two children. Cedar is ten and that is also the Grand Canyon and River is eight He is up for a one-on-one trip this year I'm not sure where he wants to go travel is ingrained in my heart and soul and I am bringing that to my children and Everything that I do for my business And for others is really for them and for our ability to explore the world So who is this talk for this talk is for you if you're an agency owner Or maybe you're a partner. Maybe you're a freelancer looking to scale your business. You've got a lot of work You don't know where to go next Maybe you are the head of a team who wants to deliver results to your boss Maybe you are someone who struggles with systems and processes you heard Nathan talk a lot about putting processes into your system That's tough But this talk is also for you if you just have way too much of work and you don't know how to bring organization to your daily life Maybe you're working more than 40 hours a week Maybe you're working late into evenings and it's sacrificing your time with your family or your kids Maybe you're missing your daughter's fourth birthday because you're working too many hours And maybe you're just spending too much time focusing on getting the work done and you can't figure out how to start working on the business and so Three years ago at my agency I discovered this book called traction by Gino Wickman if you haven't read it pick up a copy This is gonna be kind of the cliff notes version of that just sort of the the too long didn't read version of this is We implemented in that this in our business in 2019 and saw a 50% growth the next year and a 50% growth the next year And I can disappear for two weeks tomorrow and it would take three weeks before our customers even knew that I had left And so if you're looking to bring order and structure to your business, this is a template for that EOS outlines six different components that you can master in your business We're gonna really focus down on three of them, but the vision the people data processes Issues and then traction is kind of the art of putting it all together. Hence the name of Gino's book traction When you do this you can really bring order to your business you're gonna work towards solving problems making sure you have the right people working for you in the jobs that they want to do and that they know how to do best and Even if you only implement two or three of these things into your business You're still going to see Nominal results and change in your business. So I'm going to really focus heavy on the vision and the data and the people portion in this talk And we'll just quickly overview the other So we'll talk about putting together a working business plan This is something that I have a template for that you can reference and update every quarter as you're working towards your business growth goals I'm going to talk about finding the right people talk about employees getting them in the right seats and What to look for when you're hiring and what happens when it's time to let somebody go and Then data what do you need to know what numbers you need to keep track of to make sure that your business is thriving? So to start this out with the first thing that you need is a vision. Why are you in business? What are you doing? A clear vision is your first step to determining what your business growth journey is going to look Like and this includes putting together your core values. What is your purpose? What is your mission? Who do you serve? Do you have a niche? Do you have a certain type of customer? Who's your market? Who's the person you need to talk to in order to close a deal? And what are your goals short-term and long-term goals? And so all of these things come together to make a really nice Two-page business plan so business plans can be daunting in themselves and you think business planning you think 2030 pages of information and statistics well, I'm gonna break this down and make it so much easier for you So that you can have a working business plan that you can reference like I said every quarter and update it as you go through your business growth goals So the first thing you're gonna start with is your core values. What's important to you? Why are you in business and think about your own personal values if you have business values that don't align with your values? It's gonna be really hard for you to be passionate about your business So at iceberg our core values are committed passionate Balanced and team players and we reference those core values in Everything that we do our head of operations is constantly reminding people of our balance value It's time for your vacation. Hey, you haven't taken a day off in three weeks Hey, you know, it's about time for you to go on a trip or something And so and we have people, you know who come into work when their kids get on the bus and leave so that they're home in time To pick them up So balance is one of the things that we really value in our business and when we're talking about taking on new clients We explain these core values to them, you know, we are committed We're going to be committed to you and your project. Are you gonna mesh with that? Like can you be committed to your project as well? your purpose and your mission are The reason that you're in business. Why are you moving forward and you can use your purpose and your mission to inspire your employees? So again, our purpose at iceberg is to create and foster a culture where people want to come to work Because we know that by creating that environment that people want to be at They're going to like their job in turn They're going to like the work they're doing and in turn they're going to treat our customers Well, which is going to lead back to business growth And so the niche now, this is who do you serve? You have a target customer some people niche down and go really heavy in the construction industry We have a couple of people here who build sites specifically for churches or religious organizations Do you have a specific customer or what does your target customer look like? And then from that draw out your unique selling proposition. What makes you different? So how do you stand out for us? We answer the phone and that's something that we don't find with a lot of local agencies But we actually have a full-time employee dedicated to answering the phone And so that's one thing that sets us apart and so we reference that in all of our marketing materials and Then you're gonna break down in your business plan to come up with where you're going Where do you want to be in ten years? Do you have a really big goal? What does your agency look like? Which is your freelance life look like? What is your life look like in ten years? We built this as a team effort you can sit down with your staff You can sit down with your significant other and just think about the future make it kind of a stretch goal Something that is going to be a little bit difficult to attain But you also want to make it a smart goal something measurable that you can achieve that isn't overly realistic So for us it was a thousand active customers. It's a stretch goal It's really hard to get that many active customers But it's not something that we can't see and then we can't reach you know within ten years And again build back on your core values when you're setting this up if your core values You know our Like leisure and passion and your ten-year goal is like world domination. I mean maybe they're not gonna mesh together And so how are you gonna get there to your ten-year goal? Well break it down What do you need to do what's a third of that goal look like so we've got a thousand customers Well, a third of that is 350 give or take so in the next three years. We now kind of our Systematically breaking down what we need to do to get to that ten-year goal And then we're going to take that into the one-year goal We'll break that down into one year and eventually as you keep moving with this system You'll break that into quarterly goals what you need to do this quarter to keep yourself on track to reach that ten-year vision And so all of these things together your core values your niche Your purpose your mission your ten-year three-year one-year goals they all come together to make a working business plan and The other things that you're gonna add to your business plan are what's preventing you from getting there So what are the struggles that you're having? Maybe you don't have enough developers to make the number of websites that you need to be turning out on a monthly basis So one of your big issues could be We need to hire another developer and so you're gonna list these all on your working business plan every quarter We've re-visit them and figure out you know is this an issue we can solve this quarter What can we do to move forward? What tasks can we put in place to move towards hitting our one-year goal? And the working business plan looks something like this again. It's just two pages I have a download link at Jessica comm slash WP y'all You can get a copy of this is just a Google doc you can save a copy of it, but it goes through it's got your core values your purpose your mission your target customer your selling points all Of the parts of your business plan and then again, we've got your full-year goal And so what we've got on here. We've got you know the due date So today is February 2023. So hopefully by the end of January 2022 you will You know be able to list what issues are currently preventing you from getting to there and your annual Measurable goals that can help you reach your one-year and your one-year target All right, so that's kind of the vision Purpose the vision part of this so the next part is people making sure that you have the right team members to keep your business moving forward and Help you reach your goals and again go back to your core values and what we did at iceberg was we disassembled a leadership team So for quite a long time it was just me and I was trying to get everybody on the same page and Business growth by yourself is really Really hard and so I reached out to three people who have been with us for quite a long time And I said hey, you know, here's where we're at. We need to grow I can't do it by myself Are you interested in stepping up and being part of a leadership team? And so as this leadership team we all work together on making sure that that core values are in check We sat down and had a really long brainstorming session to even come up with those We talked about, you know, where do we want to be in 10 years? We sat down together the four of us and wrote that two-page business plan And many hands make light work the more people you have chipping in the less that falls on just your shoulders And back to what Nathan said about finding out what your strengths are I mean, I'm pretty good at managing businesses and processes But I'm not great at building websites or picking out the tools And so I have passed that part of the business on to our head of production And she now manages our tech stack She keeps tabs on what we need to do for plugins and you know what we use for Software that we're building with and I don't need to be involved in that part of the business anymore because she's she's got it It's um, it's that's one of the things that she brings to the leadership team is her tech stack and her ability to manage that and then you know Similarly, we have our head of operations who keeps tabs on the budget and make sure every month that we are checking against our expenses and our income and So back in 2018 before we brought traction in we were growing pretty rapidly we actually had 10 people and I was managing everything I mean I was effectively acting as the project manager and reporting to me was the content writer You know a bunch of different developers Customer service and so anytime anybody had a question they came right to me and asked hey Jesse, how do I solve this issue with content that I have the customer isn't getting back to me With their with their about page yet, and I don't know how to move forward And you know ultimately it'll be me on the phone with the customer Trying to solve everybody else's issue and this is where putting the leadership team in place and creating an organization chart Really helps me kind of redefine what everybody's role was and help people understand who they should be held Accountable to so as I mentioned we have our head of production who keeps tab on the software Well, she also ensures that everybody working in her department Which is all of our developers and our content writers know that they can go to her for questions instead of directly to me, so That kind of takes the guesswork out of who do I approach if we have issues and this organization chart is something that you know Is widely circulated? We have quarterly team meetings where we review the organization chart So everybody knows kind of who they report to who they go to if they have questions And so things go up the chain and you no longer have ten people coming to you with issues You have three or four people who you have trusted to solve issues and are coming to you only when issues are Beyond what they are able to work work out themselves And so that looks something like this where you've got the actual owner of the team Which is hopefully you and then your managers that you have entrusted to different parts of your business And then all of the rest of your team there and so the way that Traction spells this out is instead of thinking about the people that you have in your organization Think about the roles that need to get done in your organization in order to provide the right service to your customers So we broke this out and instead of putting names here. We put what the roles are so we have you know the owner Who does the high-level finance? You know team culture vision growth strategy and then the various departments that fall under our agency yours might be similar It may be different depending on how large you are Or the types of clients that you handle, but we have our own internal marketing And so that is everything that we do to sell ourselves. So that's our own branding That's our own Facebook So we have someone you know who is in charge of that aspect and then we have a sales division And so this is the actual meeting with the customers taking phone calls writing proposals and closing sales so we have You know the high-level sales and marketing and then We've got the head of production who leads the production team does hiring and firing of developers designers content writers Does performance reviews? Again picks the tech stack and make sure essentially that our project production schedule is falling on track and our project manager falls under the production department and then we have the head of business operations, which is Owning the processes that we have for keeping the business running And then making sure that we are you know staying on budget She actually writes the budget for us on an annual basis and then every month we review where we at and so You know, we just reviewed our January budget last week. We're a 12th of the way into the year What percent are we at for the rest of the year and that budget again was developed in line with our growth vision from the working business plan for this year and Then the head of operations also since she's so tied into financing for us is in charge of scope writing and pricing And so while sales actually writes writes the proposals and delivers them Ultimately, there's some checks and balances there between the finance department and the sales department for what to actually put on the number line and So finding the right people to fill your seats again, you can train Technical skills, but if you are hiring and fire or if you're hiring employees are looking for new staff members Go back to your core values to your purpose to your mission If you cannot if the people that you're interviewing don't align with that then it's going to be very hard to train them to agree with your business vision and your growth vision and so We kind of take a little bit of a gut-check approach, but when we interview we bring out those core values right away Are you committed? You know, are you balanced? What is what is work life balance look for you? We have open and honest discussions about that Prior to even getting into the technical aspects of the job because it's so much easier to Train up the hard scales than it is to train up the soft skills and if you find the right people, you know, they're they're going to They're going to honor your vision and they're going to know, you know, what what you're looking for when you succeed I went to a chamber event And there was a speaker who spoke on EOS and traction and at the table There were those working business plans that I showed you sitting out on all the tables And I brought my content writer with me who you know Doesn't work with me directly on a daily basis and she grabbed one of those from the table And she looked at it and she filled it out before the speaker even started talking Because we revisit it so frequently that everybody on our team knows what our core values are They know what our ten-year target is they know what our issues for this year are and they know You know the things that we're trying to work on to get to our one-year and three-year targets So you've found some people that fit with your core values now You need to make sure that they're in the right seats And this really boils down to making sure that you write job descriptions That are spot-on for what you need to fill In our in our industry Everybody wants to be a web designer We put a job application up for an office assistant and we get 35 applications for people who want to build websites Or like yeah, you're just gonna be answering phones like we don't actually have a job in web design So making sure that people understand the jobs that they've been hired for is super important And be very clear with that when you hire and ask those questions, you know I know you're applying for a CSR role It looks like you have a lot of web design experience Are you are you trying to be a web designer in the future because we're not sure that there's a path for you here and It costs so much more money to continually turn over employees because they found that they didn't actually want the job They were hired for then to find the right fit in the first place So you might find someone with less technical skills who just really wants to answer phones And that's okay because they're applying for the job that they want and not the job that Might come someday because they're in the tech industry We had a really great developer who worked with us for three years Which is a nice long stint for a developer But you know it turned out that what he really wanted to do was software engineering and engineering and we we don't do C plus programming we don't write Python like we don't we don't write for AI Devices and so it it was a great way for him to experience You know getting into the industry But in the long run it ended up costing us quite a bit of money because we had hired somebody who wasn't in the right seat and Didn't like what he was doing and ultimately Was vying for something very different in the different industry and so traction outlines What's called the GWC test that you can run by all of your current employees and future employees and even as you hire So GWC stands for get it want it capacity. Do they get it? Do they understand the job? Obviously if you need a PHP developer and you hire somebody off the you know who's never had any experience with code They're probably not going to check that get it box Do they want the job again if you're hiring for someone to answer the phone and you have 85 applications for web designers? They probably don't actually want that position that's posted They want something different and do they have the capacity to do that job? I mean you may find someone who totally Understands the concept of answering the phone. They really want to answer the phone But their customer service skills are really lacking and beyond Train so if they don't have the capacity or the ability to do that position, they're not going to be the right fit for that job capacity also could be In in an over stretch Maybe you've got a job with way too many different things in it and you find that the person who's doing it You know, we've got someone acting as both a project manager and a developer and maybe they understand they get it Maybe they want to do both those things, but because they're in two separate roles They don't have the capacity to do both and so either their project management skills are lacking Which is losing your business money or the development skills are lacking Which is causing you to turn out crappy websites And so this would be an area that you can recognize if you've got a great employee and the capacity box isn't getting checked Just because of overwork. This might be a time for you to go back Revisit that organization chart and say hey, is it time for us to add another person here? so that we can have the capacity issue solved with this other employee and Then the fun part of having a business is sometimes employees just don't work out And anyone who's had employees before know that ultimately there is a time that you have to say goodbye and sometimes the employee may not necessarily just live up to the standards or expectations that you have and so address issues quickly is kind of the mantra that comes out of Geno's book and what we follow very closely in traction if we're having an issue with performance And it gets brought up. We address it within 36 hours and that might be putting a project improvement For our project improvement plan in place that might be simply just calling the employee and saying hey Let's talk about your job description. It's been a while since we've revisited that let's look over all the points Let's look look over the KPIs that we have for you How do you feel you're measuring up to these and maybe give them a chance to talk and explain what's going on You know, but if you let issues go on and on for too long in your business It's only going to cost you more money over time And so making sure that you're addressing issues quickly is going to help you stay profitable and it sucks I mean, we all you don't want to be great bosses We want to lead our team and we want to be supportive But ultimately we do have to look after the business and we have to make decisions that are right for the business And so you may find you know that you have to let employees go That just aren't measuring up All right, so the data point if you were on a deserted iceberg all by yourself and you could only get 10 numbers a week That told you what was going on in those business in your business. What would those numbers be? What do you need to know about your business in order to know that Your business is healthy And so by doing a weekly scorecard This is our set of data points touch points and numbers that we keep track of on a weekly basis And so we set goals for each of these numbers. We've got goals for each of our different departments So sales has a set of numbers. We've got production numbers We've got you know revenue numbers and every person in the business is responsible for at least one number So that at the end of the day our CSR jesse can say okay today I you know solve 10 support tickets and she writes that number down and she keeps track of them every day So you're going to go back to your working business plan to figure out what those numbers should be So if your goal is You know, maybe your quarter one goal Is uh $30,000 in new sales So that's $10,000 a month Which breaks down to $2,500 a week So what you're going to keep track is how much money and new sales are coming in on a weekly basis so that you can hit That number that you have On your quarter one goal back on your working business plan And so your weekly scorecard is going to look something like this. I also have a template for this You're going to want to break it down by department So every every department that you have in your business if you go back to your organization chart those top level departments You're going to want to have numbers for everybody there everybody has one or two numbers So for example, shane who is our head of sales? Uh, what is he responsible? He's responsible for proposals delivered, right? So we set a goal number of three because we know that if we you know deliver 12 proposals a month We'll have a 30 success rate and that is how many projects we need to do every month in order to meet our revenue goals And then we've got you know, marianne who's tracking our closed business How much are we bringing in every week and again back to what I just Explained about our you know our weekly goals for bringing in revenue if we want to hit $10,000 a month that's $2,500 a week. So we're keeping track of that number of websites live making sure that our Work is churning. That's a really important number if I was in another state for three months and checked out I would want to know are we are we launching websites? Are we still doing our job? And so we're keeping track of that on the production level The savings account balance, right? Are we dipping into our savings? Are we able to stay on top of our expenses? That's a big metric that we like to track. We also track incoming and outgoing expenses And then again everybody on the team should have a number that they're responsible So we've got you know, heather who's our content writer is tracking how many blog posts she's publishing We sell blog posts as a recurring service. So I need to know are those being completed Are you actually performing your job? And so we kind of have our our goal number and then we average it out week by week and we have A really good snapshot of how the business is going and of course your numbers are going to fluctuate, right? We're going to deliver two proposals one week We're not going to deliver any proposals the next week, but then we're going to deliver 10 And so we can kind of see where we are meeting our goals and where we're falling off track And this brings us into the issues section, which I will talk about in a minute But we can determine, you know, if if we aren't Read it you're reaching our goal number of proposals delivered Why is that like what can we do? Can we change anything? Maybe we need to do more advertising Maybe we need to get out there and do more marketing. Maybe we need to call through past leads You know, what can we do to bring that number up? If we're not writing enough content on a weekly basis, what's going on our customer is not buying the content Do we need to, you know, improve efficiencies in our writing department? You know, do we need to maybe take on another writer because we have too much complicated work And we're not able to reach those numbers So your scorecard is going to help you see that The other cool thing that the scorecard does is help you see business trends And so when you have scorecards, we've got, you know, we've got our weekly scorecard Which is just in google sheets and then every year we create a new one And we stack them on top of each other in one giant sheet with the most recent at the top And we can go back and we can look at our scorecard and we can say, holy cow Every year in august, it's dead We deliver zero proposals on average. We bring in very little money But after labor day, whoa, everybody comes back to work and you start to see these trends And like Nathan was talking about earlier and not wasting your downtime You can really start to do some future planning and future projecting for your sales cycle for your marketing And even for, you know, planning for your next vacation Maybe your developer wants to take a month off because they won tickets on willow fortune to go to a ruva And they don't know when to go and you say, well, we're super slow in august You should probably go then, you know, just by looking at your scorecard You can kind of start to see these trends in your business and This is really great for future planning and for business health So that you don't find yourself in a situation where you're scrambling to make up The money, you know in august to make payroll when you know in may you need to start saving up for that So again, you can discover your business trends You can course correct with your scorecard or set action items things that you can do to move forward and make sure that you're Reaching those goal numbers and don't change those goal numbers Your goal numbers really need to line up with your working business plan And so if you're really not bringing in that many proposals, you know Don't just change them on a whim and say, oh, we don't really need that money No take steps to actually solve The issues That are causing you not to hit those goal numbers at the end of every year You're going to recap and you're going to you know See what your average was for the year and you'll make a new scorecard for the next year And your goal numbers may change then based on your next yearly view Next yearly goals and based on trends that you saw from your previous year scorecard And you might say, you know, we actually only really needed two proposals a week to hit our Revenue goals, so maybe we can have a less aggressive goal Or actually we really needed to deliver eight proposals a week to meet our revenue goals So maybe we need to change that goal number So again, this is the business scorecard. What are the 10 numbers that you need To know that your business is thriving without you And then you can break that down into your individual departments as well So we've got you know for the marketing how many facebook posts did we post every week Or how many websites went live as we had on there And you can download that The link again all right, so processes And eos itself is kind of a big process for running your business But documenting your processes are going to help you keep your business running more smoothly And break down all of the little things that you do in your business Document them so that every time you are consistent. This makes it super easy to onboard new employees Then this makes it super easy to put performance improvement plans in place if you need to Because if something is going wrong in your business It's very likely that the issue could just be that an employee isn't following a process That's outlined. And so if you've got an employer that's you know, struggling or not measuring up It might be a simplest solution is saying hey, we have a process for that. Why don't you revisit the process follow the processes and Every business should have six to ten kind of high level processes So these are going to be things like your employees, you know, how do you onboard people? How do you how do you let go of people? What are your steps for onboarding an employee? What are your steps when an employee leaves what things you have to do? Um our exit checklist for example has things like collect the office keys You know make sure that they're logged out of all their accounts on the computer forward their email reset their passwords All of the little steps um your marketing process who is You know, whoever's managing your marketing accounts, you know, how many times do you post on social? What kind of content goes there? How frequently are you publishing blog posts? And then you've got your sales process. How does that look? What does that look like for your business? You've got your production process. How do you turn out or produce the widgets you sell or the websites you develop? And then you have your accounting process. How do you keep track of your business? How do you you know calculate your money? How do you bill your customers? And then your customer service process what happens when you have a support ticket? And so our in bond sales process for example includes language for receiving leads We actually do have templates as Nathan mentioned Written down so if somebody calls and they're interested in a website. We have a script I mean our CSR has memorized it by now, but if she's on vacation and somebody else needs to answer the phone They have a process right there What information needs to be connected when somebody calls in and then we've got you know a link to our crm and instructions We're using it built in that process And then we have a defined follow-up interview intervals So if we get a lead in you know, we want to follow up within 10 minutes And then we want to follow up the next day and then the next week and then the next month And so we have a process for that along with email templates in the events that we have radio silence Um instructions for writing proposals and what goes into that we have default language that goes into every single proposal We write and that's all part of our process And then what happens when the sale closed? What's the next step? And so we kind of wrap up the sales process and that leads you very nicely over to the production process Where we outline again all of the steps that go into actually working with the customer All right, so we've got your working business plan your vision your goals where you're going We've got your people who's going to help you get there forming your leadership team making sure you have your organization chart In place so people know who they're accountable to We've got your scorecards the data that you keep for your business so that you know what numbers you need to hit Uh, this is the on a deserted island what you need to know to keep your business running We've got your processes how things actually get done and now We get into the part of solving issues because every business always has something go wrong Even when you have all of your processes in place and your goals in place and the right people And if this sounds like you you maybe have 32 issues you might have a task list of issues and things that you want to solve that You can never get to them because you always have more issues coming up that get added to that list And your issues list just keeps getting longer It says you might have a you might have an issues issue an issues issue So How do we solve our issues issue? Uh, we're going to use what's called ids identified define and solve and so You've got a lot of issues This is something that you're going to want to do with your leadership team with your partner Maybe with yourself list all of your issues just everything laundry list. What is going on? What's wrong? What can I improve just list them don't put any weight on them yet Once you've got them all Really quick tally high medium low priority and not high medium low priority as in You know, this is the thing that's bugging me the most but high medium low priority as in This is the most important issue that needs to be solved to help us get to the next level or to help us reach that next goal And then after you've got them in high medium and low priority You're going to you're going to put them in order and you're going to solve them in that order So we have weekly leadership team meetings where we have our issues list every week We review the issues list we high and medium low prioritize them We use teamwork, which is just project management software. You can drag them up and down like a sauna Put them in order and we say all right Issue number one. We haven't had a sale in three weeks We're going to solve this issue before we go to issue number two And so you may not actually solve that issue, but you are going to be able to sit down and put some very Very good to do list down. All right. We haven't had a sale in three weeks. This is the problem How are we going to tackle this issue? And so, you know, what are we going to do shame? You're going to go to three networking events next week And we're going to find them for you today You know, Jesse, you're going to call through every single person who submitted a website lead request in the last year Just check in see how they're doing. We're going to write script for you We're going to put a process in place for solving that issue. Okay, so now we've got to do items We're going to move on to the next issue And we're going to do the exact same thing. We're going to work towards solving that issue Before we move on to the next one next week at our leadership meeting We're going to come back and we're going to regroup We're going to make sure that those tasks got done We're going to hold everybody accountable to working towards solving that issue and one by one We're systematically going to check those issues off the list And the final part of EOS is traction, which is really the art of pulling it all together This is the name of Gina Whitman's book is traction And so this is where you get into those like kind of the pulse of running the system, right? So we're having weekly meetings To go through the different parts of the business. We're reviewing our core values every week We're reviewing our growth goals. We're looking at our issues We're talking about highlights and then every quarter we sit down and we revise That working business plan We update it because now we've got a new quarter. We're going to come up with, you know New goals for this quarter new things that we need to do You know new tasks new issues for this quarter And then we have annual meetings where we revise our scorecard where we you know We shift our goals now. We're at the end of our one-year goal. Did we hit it? Maybe maybe not, you know, if not why why didn't we hit it? Those are issues to add to your next year's uh, working business plan and then You know rinse and repeat just keep hats on it So to recap the six components that you can master in your business to bring growth and change You've got your vision Which is Your core values why you're in business your goals for the future your people who is going to help you get there Form a leadership team if you can if you have the capacity and make sure you have an organization chart in place So everybody knows what their job is and who they report to We've got the data those high level numbers that you need to know to make sure your business is functioning We've got your processes the list of everything that you do so that you can onboard successfully And create a repeatable product for your customers and we've got your issues Solve one at a time and don't move on until you check something off the list And then attraction, which is just the art of pulling it all together So thank you again. I'm jesse. I am a business growth coach I also own a website development agency out of minneapolis, miss soda and I would love to chat with all of you After the talk in hallway and open for questions Okay Awesome, I I did that It's weird let's give jesse your own applause again great stuff So I'm gonna exercise the holder of the microphone for rocket to ask the first question So this was great jesse. Thank you So a lot of the things you talked about in the presentation related to team What if I don't have a team You can apply this to your business even if you don't have a team You do still want to put that organization chart in place because it will help you get clarity around what needs to be done in your business So we have a project manager who is also our head of operations And you know, we have a head of production who is also a developer So even though we have a really big team Our organization chart has the titles and the rules that need to be done And some people have their name in lots of places right now My name is ceo and head of marketing because we need to work on our marketing this year So you can still apply a lot of these things to your business Even if you're a solo business owner the scorecard especially is super helpful helps you know your numbers The processes again if you can follow your own processes every time then might when it is time for you to scale It'll be really easy for you to take that leap into getting your next employee and really just holding yourself accountable I have seen this applied to families I have seen families implement traction in their life and they're like, what are our family goals? What are our family values? What do we want to do this year? And they sit down at the dinner table and they talk about this stuff So it can be you know, you can make this Apply to you at whatever level you're at That's awesome. Sounds like you need like a hat tree with a hat like each of your roles is you can like put on your hat for your production All right questions back there My question is around scaling I guess so how do you make the decision and when do you know you're ready to hire another person? Yeah, I have a whole talk on that um so honestly It really boils a lot down to Go back to your scorecard and take a look at you know, your numbers. Are you not hitting them? And the capacity of the gwc if you put yourself Through that gwc test for everything that you're doing Do you have the you know, do you understand design? Do you get it? Want to have the capacity? Sure. How about development? Do you get it? Do you want it? Do you have the capacity? Maybe how about project management? Do you get it? Do you want it? Do you have the capacity? Well, maybe not anymore and so Kind of knowing when it's time for you to scale and Nathan talked about this as well Even just finding partners To offload some of that stuff too can help as well And then again back to the processes if you can document everything That you do and take a look at you know, what's taking up your time. What is most easy for you to offload? That's when you can look at you know, bringing somebody else on But keeping track of your scorecards and setting those goals if you think it's time to grow Maybe you're one of your goals is to hit a certain revenue benchmark so that you can Can reach that next level Great wait time for maybe one more question Hey, uh, so thanks so much for this. Uh, my kind of question is you talk about when you first got into traction And how it transformed your business. What was it like leading up to that because I feel like It's easy to be into that lead up And then you get this breakthrough and you know how to solve your problems But what was it like building it up until that kind of inflection point there? It was stressful and chaotic I mean it was exciting. We had a growing business and we were hiring left and right But everybody needed me for everything and they were like jesse. I need help with this jesse. I need help with this jesse I need help with this and everything was my responsibility. I had to make payroll I had to make website make sure websites got done Um, I mean we had really good up periods where it was like holy cow. We're growing super fast This is great, but there was no structure to it. There was no scalability to it It was every single week 7,000 things hit the fan and we had to figure out how to solve them all in order to just get to the next week And once we put this in place I mean for us truly it was the leadership team Just letting other people take accountability for things and completely completely giving up control It's it's hard to delegate. It's hard to give up control But when you take something off your shoulders and say, you know what I never Ever ever want to be part of the website development process ever again It takes some time to get there, but it's very freeing and it lets you focus on other parts of the business Very good Yeah, we can do one more question Okay, thank you. I'm steve golecine. I have a question about What to do when you have no sales in three weeks? We have a procedure for that When you build your recurring revenue to start with And this is again back to the scorecard and planning for you know and planning for slow periods and planning for You know fast periods or you know high periods and so when we have a good week We try not to spend all of that money all at once But no we do exactly like I said we go to do more networking events We pull out our crm and we look at all the leads that have come in We have we have sent out physical mailers to people like just postcards or even like We'll even like write out letters We haven't done a ton of cold calling fortunately We haven't been in that situation too too much because we do have an okay local presence where we do typically Tend to see business going in I should knock on wood for that but um But yeah, just a lot of you know hitting the ground running work and what what can we do what tools are our disposal Calling your past list of leads is a great way to do it. Hey, john You know, how's your chiropractic business going? I notice you haven't updated your website yet It's been a year like are you still thinking of that because I noticed this like problem in the footer We'd be happy to fix that for you like you know You know Let's give jesse the other hand of applause. Thank you great stuff jesse. Where are you going to be right after this? Um in this room for most of the day probably So one of the great things about wp y'all is uh, especially for a small camp We have speakers that come from all over the country. It's really cool So take advantage of that if you have questions Uh, take advantage of the opportunity to have a good conversation with the speakers and in the last 30 seconds Next up is nev harris stand-up nev Nev's back here in the back of the room nev in