Time is a luxury most busy agency owners don’t have. Between serving clients, managing team members, and growing the agency, it’s easy to see why. But, working through lunch and late nights is not a sustainable way to grow your agency.
Getting a handle on your time is the first step to scaling. You have little hope of earning more revenue when you’re drowning in your current workload.
The good news is that finding more time may be easier than you think. Dedicating resources to finding more time will free up massive amounts of resources down the road – specifically, more time and more money.
Here are three reasons you are running out of time (and how to fix it).
Your agency is disorganized.
A Dropbox filled with random docs and PDFs – who needs folders, right?
A desktop that’s so covered in documents that the picture of your cat you carefully selected as your desktop image is barely identifiable. (Is that a whisker?)
And 3 Google Drives you need to search every time you’re looking for a file (personal, business, email signup account, who knows!)
At first, it might not seem like a big deal, but as your agency has grown, you are likely beginning to find that this disorganization significantly slows down productivity and makes delegating tasks very difficult.
Cleaning up your files will go a long way to saving you hours per week. Not only will you stop playing Where’s Waldo every time you need a file, BUT your team members will actually be able to execute on their tasks. Just imagine assigning a task to your VA, and they can complete the task without asking you a hundred questions. Dare to dream.
You don’t have the right tools for the job.
The second biggest way I see agency owners wasting a lot of time is a lack of or inefficient use of tools. Whether they’re trying to use Asana for onboarding clients or cramming an entire website development project into one ClickUp task, poor use of tools is a major timesuck.
Think about how much time it takes to currently onboard a client. If you’re like a lot of my clients (before I help them, that is!), your onboarding process probably looks a little like this:
***First, you email your client with a contract from hellosign.
***Then you send your client an invoice from your accounting software.
***THEN you send your client an email with a link to schedule their first call.
***THEN you send yet another email telling them what to expect on said call.
I can just see the time adding up. This type of onboarding would put MacGyver to shame.
Tools should make your life easier.
A proper CRM will automate your entire client onboarding process with the click of a button.
Your project management tool should allow you to get a pulse on every project the agency is working on with the click of a button.
Invoicing and reminder emails should go out – you guessed it! – with the click of a button.
Click here to find the 6 tools every agency needs to scale.
Reinventing the wheel.
And finally, the last reason you’re running out of time – you keep reinventing the wheel (i.e., poor systems).
If you find that you are:
***Writing and rewriting the same email over and over again.
***Creating new ClickUp task after new ClickUp task.
***Making new proposal after new proposal.
***It’s time for some streamlining.
Creating (and saving in an organized way!) canned emails and project management templates will literally save you hours.
Start by outlining your core service offering. Identify which emails you write to your clients. Write out the steps you take to complete the work. Take note of any calls that need to be scheduled, invoices that need to be sent, and forms that need to be completed.
Once you have gathered your list, make your wheel! Type all the emails you’ll end up sending, create a master template in your project management tool, and gather (or create) any forms and questionnaires you’ll need along the way.
Create the process once – not every time you sign a new client.
Pro Tip: It’s ok – and encouraged! – to refine your wheel. As you send emails to your clients and take them through your new process, you’ll likely find tweaks and changes that need to be made along the way. And that’s ok! BUT, you shouldn’t be creating a new process every time you sign a client.