0:00

We are ready. Okay. So

0:03

today I have with me a lovely

0:06

entrepreneur by the name of Jodi Cook that

0:08

came highly recommended from a previous

0:11

guest, John Warrillow,

0:13

the author of Built to Sell, my favorite,

0:16

one of my favorite,

0:18

my favorite slash one of my favorite

0:21

business books. It's kind of my

0:23

business Bible, how I go about building businesses

0:26

and kind of the way I guess Jodi does

0:28

too, whether she did intentionally or unintentionally,

0:31

she was a guest on John's Built

0:33

to Sell radio

0:35

podcast, heard her story there,

0:37

John recommended I talk to her and was just super

0:39

inspired. I think there's a lot of synergies as well. We're

0:41

both kind of in the agency space. She sold a social

0:45

media marketing agency.

0:48

Let's start there. I like one of the things

0:50

I like to do Jodi, in medias

0:52

res, right? Into the middle

0:55

of something. That's kind of how a lot

0:57

of movies start out, right? I

0:59

think of like, you know, they start at the end

1:01

or the middle, the climax and it's like, okay,

1:03

how do we get there?

1:04

So that's what we're gonna do here.

1:06

So you ended up selling your company

1:08

what? A year or two ago? Yeah, two

1:10

and a half years, March, 2021.

1:13

March, 2021 and is there any number

1:18

that you can tell people? You know, I know that's

1:20

the juicy stuff. Oh,

1:23

sure. Yeah, I

1:25

can tell you that we were 18 people. I can tell

1:27

you that it was a seven figure exit and I can tell

1:29

you that my handover took two

1:31

weeks.

1:33

Yeah, there wasn't an earn out. There

1:35

was not an earn out, yeah. Which is crazy

1:39

for the agency space, service businesses

1:41

in general, as we know. Had

1:43

you ever sold a business before Jodi?

1:46

I was just about to say no. And then I remembered

1:48

I sold a tiny, tiny e-commerce

1:50

site that I set up to sell

1:53

stoicism t-shirts, but it

1:55

really was tiny. I think it was like a three figure

1:58

exit.

1:59

three-figure answers. So

2:02

basically no. Okay. So basically no.

2:04

The answer is no to that. Yeah. So

2:07

you had started this, I listened

2:10

to a lot of episodes, I don't exactly remember. I

2:13

think you'd been operating this agency for

2:15

a good five, ten years,

2:17

right? Yep. Yeah. So I

2:19

had it for ten, just under ten years when I

2:21

sold it. And actually, funny that you mentioned

2:24

John Warrillo's book, Built to Sell, as

2:26

being one of your top two favourite books,

2:28

because I know that your other favourite book is

2:30

The E-Myth. And if

2:33

you do want to start in the middle of the story,

2:35

I guess The E-Myth probably plays quite a

2:37

big part of that.

2:39

So it was 2014. It's 2014. And I realised that I was

2:41

running The Jodie Show,

2:47

and maybe a lot of agency owners

2:49

are also running the Insert

2:52

Your Name Here show, where the

2:55

entire business runs

2:57

because they exist as a person, and

2:59

it would not run if they didn't exist as

3:01

a person. And so it was a combination

3:04

of reading The E-Myth,

3:06

reading the four-hour work week, and

3:08

booking myself a five-week holiday

3:10

to Australia that was three months

3:13

in the future, that made me sort

3:15

my act out and create an

3:17

agency that didn't need me to run

3:19

it. So that's kind of how

3:21

it all started.

3:22

Yeah. And

3:25

one thing I want to highlight here, I feel like this is a relevant

3:27

point to highlight this, you

3:30

did it with

3:32

a general manager in place

3:35

and 65 SOPs. That's the number I really

3:37

want to highlight here. It wasn't 300 SOPs and trainings.

3:40

It's a very achievable number. Yeah,

3:48

exactly.

3:49

Yeah. 65 SOPs. Right. It's not a ton. 65

3:52

SOPs. And I made those in the three

3:55

months before that trip to Australia.

3:59

actual process of making those SOPs

4:02

was I'm going away.

4:04

I'm going to be on the other side of the world.

4:06

It's like a 10 hour time difference. I need

4:08

to sort out where my agency running without me. So

4:11

this was just, it built

4:13

into 65 SOPs. It started off as just a spreadsheet.

4:16

And the spreadsheet was

4:17

what do I do? What processes do

4:20

I currently run? And I wrote them

4:22

all down.

4:23

And then it was like column A was

4:25

the process. Column B was who

4:27

does it now. And that was just me. And

4:30

then column C was who's going to do

4:32

it in the future. And that was like

4:35

a person that was a role that I was going to hire.

4:37

That was like a software program

4:39

that I was going to start using. Or it was just like stop

4:42

doing this stupid thing because you don't need to

4:44

do it at all. And then column D

4:46

was like when am I going to get this sorted by?

4:48

So that kind of became the plan of action.

4:51

And then my general manager

4:53

came after that.

4:55

But it was very much as a

4:57

result of identifying I need someone to be

5:00

an authority here. I need someone to be in charge

5:02

of stuff. It's not just going to work if it's

5:04

just me running stuff with a bunch

5:07

of freelancers or just

5:09

other agencies.

5:09

Yeah. So for each

5:12

SOP, you had a current

5:15

and future owner. So

5:18

in essence, one

5:21

person owned an SOP. So

5:25

that was the original spreadsheet was like

5:27

the process spreadsheet. And then each of the 65

5:30

processes I'd written out, and I went granular

5:33

on these. It wasn't just buying

5:35

office supplies. It was like this is the company

5:38

credit card. Who's in charge of it? What should you do? What's the numbers?

5:41

What should you do if this happens? It was real,

5:43

if this, then that. Lots of granular detail,

5:45

probably too much detail, but I figured I'd

5:48

rather put too much because then they can justify

5:50

it and they don't need to use it. But yeah, it was

5:53

those 65 that were then followed

5:54

by

5:57

various other people. I guess a lot of people, I guess, were just like, I'm going to

5:59

do this. of them I wrote myself, but it

6:02

was better when I got

6:04

the person who was

6:05

now responsible for that process to write

6:08

them because I'd be like, hey, you're going

6:10

to be in charge of this. Or, well, I'd ask them if they wanted

6:12

to be in charge of it. Then they'd say yes. Then I'd

6:14

explain the process. And then I'd say, can

6:17

you take the notes and can you write this up?

6:19

And then I found that they had much more ownership when

6:22

it was them that had written it rather than following this

6:24

set of instructions that I'd written. So it was a mix

6:26

of me writing and other people writing

6:28

them as well.

6:29

Yeah. And then with the

6:31

SOP library or whatever

6:34

you want to call it, did everyone have

6:36

access to all SOPs or was it

6:38

kind of like sectioned out, you know, only

6:41

certain people can have access to the credit card,

6:43

SOPs and whatnot? What was

6:45

that? Yeah.

6:45

I mean, I'd probably do it differently

6:48

now, but back in 2014, it

6:50

was just a very simple Excel spreadsheet

6:52

with a bunch of tabs and each tab was

6:55

each of the different SOPs. And

6:57

then it got like exported into PDFs.

7:00

It was really that simple. And those

7:02

PDFs were in folders. There was a folder

7:04

that was for everyone. There was a folder that was

7:06

just for management team. There was a

7:08

folder that was maybe just for accounts.

7:11

It was like, yeah, it was exactly as you say.

7:13

It was, you only need to have access to the SOP

7:15

if you need to know it. Yeah. And

7:18

then it is interesting.

7:20

I see that working both ways. Like some

7:22

companies are like, oh, everyone has access to all

7:24

SOPs. Everyone should know how to do like every job

7:27

in the company and stuff like

7:29

that. And I've seen that work very well, but I've also

7:31

seen like, you know, your instance work

7:33

pretty well also. I don't think there's any

7:36

correct answer there. I was just more curious. And

7:38

then did you ever take

7:40

this from like Excel to a PDF

7:43

to ever a learning management system

7:45

of any kind?

7:46

No, didn't take it to a learning management

7:49

system. But I would say that the

7:51

entire ethos

7:53

of having a manual was

7:56

very much used throughout

7:58

the team. So me and Joanna

8:01

and the team leaders, it was very

8:03

much like if we got asked a question that we

8:05

knew was in the manual, we'd push

8:08

back and we'd say, it's funny

8:10

that you're asking me that. I'm sure it's in the

8:12

manual. And then we'd be like, have you checked the manual?

8:14

And then someone would be like, no. And then they'd go

8:16

the next time, they wouldn't want to be asked that question.

8:18

So they'd go check the manual first. So it started to become

8:21

this thing, like have you checked the manual, check

8:23

it first, because I think it's all very well having the

8:25

SOPs, but you have to actually get people to

8:27

use them. Otherwise it's no use. And

8:29

if someone

8:29

does ask you a question that you know full well

8:32

is already documented, the easy

8:34

thing to do is to answer it because it just, ticks

8:37

a box, they go away, you get that dopamine hit. But

8:39

really it's like, no, I'm not gonna

8:42

answer this because this is the reason I made

8:44

it.

8:44

And I'd say that ethos went further

8:47

as well with, especially Joanna who

8:49

was my general manager and who was

8:51

there from

8:52

probably about 2016 till like, she's,

8:55

I mean, she's still there now, even though the company sold.

8:58

And she was really good at

9:01

firstly her job that was

9:03

operational excellence. It was like she had one

9:06

job description, operational excellence, but

9:08

she was really proud of when

9:10

she could solve something and not bug me

9:12

with it. So she saw it as her

9:14

duty to protect my time.

9:17

And we had this,

9:18

we kind of had this like phrase, I guess. So

9:21

if something ever happened with clients or with team or

9:23

with anything that just can go wrong

9:25

in agency life, you know what it's like?

9:28

If I ever had to get involved, the

9:30

phrase we use was like, deployed, like

9:33

we're gonna deploy Jodi. And

9:36

we absolutely saw that as a last resort. And

9:39

so one of the things that she really tried to protect

9:41

for me, which I'm so grateful to her for doing

9:43

is protect my time and not have

9:46

anyone booking meetings with me. So

9:48

if she had ever said to me, Jodi, I'm

9:50

so sorry, but you're gonna need to get on a meeting with

9:52

this client. It was because she tried

9:55

like a million other things. She'd be like,

9:57

I've tried this, I've tried that, that hasn't worked, I've tried

9:59

this.

9:59

I've done much of this, I've tried this, but I just really

10:02

need you for this. And if that was the case, it's

10:04

like, yeah, okay, I understand, but

10:06

it was so rare that that would happen because

10:08

she really took it upon herself to do that.

10:11

And I think that's what you want in that

10:13

general manager or operations manager or that

10:15

person. They have to be proud of not getting

10:17

you involved. They have to see

10:19

it as their responsibility to put you out of a job. Yeah,

10:23

I wanna highlight here for any

10:26

role players, team members, people working

10:28

in an organization, not as the founder. If

10:30

you wanna be really good at your job, if

10:32

you wanna be an A player, if you wanna go far,

10:36

this is the Bible right

10:38

here. Don't deploy

10:40

Jody, don't deploy Jordan. Try

10:43

to avoid that. And I've thought about before,

10:45

I swear I heard this once, perhaps it was even

10:48

on John's show, an entrepreneur that was talking about

10:50

a KPI

10:51

that gets filled out on a weekly scorecard

10:54

by a team member, like how many times did you ask your

10:56

manager a question? And the lower that number, the better. But

10:59

I'm too scared to

11:02

implement something like that because of the obvious

11:04

unintended consequences of that.

11:08

I feel like.

11:08

I mean, split it out. Like how

11:10

many times did you ask your manager a new question?

11:13

How many times did you ask your manager an old question?

11:15

I don't want old questions because they

11:18

should be documented, but new questions, I guess.

11:21

Yeah, I want new questions, but I still want someone to come

11:23

to me with at least

11:25

a bit of the reason why

11:28

the

11:28

problem happened in the first place. And then at least

11:30

a few of the responses or the solutions

11:33

that they're suggesting. I

11:35

actually want to get more to your

11:39

origin story with the business. Like

11:42

I'm assuming you started it because you were, you

11:45

probably started as a freelancer. You liked doing

11:47

social media stuff. You're good at it.

11:49

And am I correct in my assumption? Yeah,

11:52

so I was, yeah. So

11:55

let's talk about like, because this is where people get

11:57

stuck, going from freelancer to.

12:00

to manager, to executive, to owner

12:02

of the business, you know, running a business

12:05

and owning a business are two very, very, very,

12:07

very different things. I just

12:09

feel like only 10% of five

12:11

or 10% of people in the agency

12:14

space ever really make that leap. So, geez,

12:17

it's like how, when did

12:19

you start? What were the factors that made you

12:21

start thinking about that? What was the year?

12:23

How many years in? Like,

12:25

when did you start thinking about making that leap? So,

12:28

I started the business in August 2011 with a very simple

12:32

business plan that was just two words, get

12:34

clients, and then started

12:37

rocking up to networking events saying,

12:39

Hey, I'm Jodie, I'm a social media

12:42

manager. At that time, social media managers

12:44

didn't, there weren't many of them around, they didn't really exist.

12:47

Social media was such a new thing. I was

12:49

setting up Twitter accounts for

12:52

clients because they hadn't really, they

12:54

hadn't got them. And I was convincing people why they should

12:57

be on social media. It was such a different ballgame

12:59

to what it's like now. And then

13:01

once I started getting clients, I'd

13:04

heard somewhere probably in a business book,

13:06

because I'd started reading them by that point,

13:08

that it was just a really good idea to get recurring

13:11

monthly revenue. And recurring monthly revenue

13:13

was great. And project based work was

13:15

rubbish because you have to keep quoting for

13:17

it. And even like, right up to

13:20

the day we sold, I didn't like doing project

13:22

based work. We were 80% recurring revenue because

13:24

I was like, this is how you do it. You just have have

13:26

this going every single month and you don't have

13:28

to think about it. So

13:30

I think I was about eight months in, and

13:33

I had 40 hours a week of

13:35

client work that I was doing. But

13:38

I still wanted to I still felt

13:40

like I wanted to go networking

13:42

and meet people and get new clients and work with

13:44

new customers, but I wasn't losing

13:46

any customers. So I didn't really know how that was going

13:48

to work. And so I'd say that was the crossroads.

13:51

That was the idea where, on one hand,

13:53

I could keep going as a freelancer, and

13:56

just maybe charge more or just keep

13:58

that client base and do that. And that would

13:59

that would totally find loads of people do that. Or

14:02

I could start hiring. So I

14:05

started, I started hiring and I

14:07

honestly didn't know what I was doing at all. I think

14:09

I got my mom to join me for the first person I interviewed.

14:12

I was probably more nervous than they were. It was

14:14

the first time I'd ever interviewed anyone.

14:17

I actually hired the first person I ever interviewed

14:19

because he seemed cool. I didn't really know what I

14:21

was practicing based on, but I guess

14:24

the idea was when I was sat

14:26

in front of him, I was just thinking, what

14:28

will my clients think of this person?

14:29

And I decided that they would quite like

14:32

him. And he did some cool stuff and he

14:34

done some cool projects and he seemed pretty nice.

14:36

So he was on board, he was hired.

14:38

And so what I did then was I just went

14:41

about passing my clients to him and training

14:43

him to pretty much do my job and

14:45

do exactly what I was doing. So I think

14:48

that was about eight months in. I hired the second person

14:50

pretty soon after that because I realized that once

14:52

I'd handed out, handed over my clients, I

14:54

had all this time to do sales. And so sales

14:56

came pretty quickly. So I think the second person I

14:58

hired within another

14:59

couple of months after that. And

15:02

then that's when I then

15:04

was not having any clients

15:06

myself and

15:10

focusing all on sales. And then

15:12

it kind of leads to another bottleneck where you're like,

15:15

well, I'm doing the selling. And

15:17

then sometimes clients don't really let

15:19

go of you when you do the selling. And

15:21

then you hit a new blocker. So it was like, this

15:24

is just the agency game, right? We're just finding

15:26

new problems to solve. And they're all expected

15:28

problems because every single agency owner

15:30

hits them in the exact same order. But that

15:32

was definitely the next one.

15:34

At the time when you hired

15:36

your first person, I'm assuming they were a

15:38

local hire or in an English

15:40

speaking country primarily and

15:43

not overseas somewhere. That's

15:45

what it sounds like.

15:46

Was there ever a thought as to,

15:49

maybe I should hire overseas or like, if

15:52

you, and you hired locally, what

15:54

was the percentage of revenue

15:56

at that time? Like roughly, I'm sure you don't

15:58

have the exact number,

15:59

but that's hard for a lot of agency

16:02

owners to square. Like hiring

16:04

someone in my country,

16:07

very, very, very expensive, like $5,000 a

16:09

month. What were the economics

16:11

of that? I don't remember exactly, but

16:14

I remember that hiring overseas

16:16

didn't even occur to me at the time. I

16:18

think I was way pre-all

16:20

that. I was pre-for-our-work week. I was pre-upwork.

16:24

Maybe that year was pre-upwork, I don't

16:26

know, but it just wasn't even a thing. So

16:29

I think I advertised with

16:31

a local university took on board a new

16:33

graduate who roughly spoke

16:35

the lingo of social media and who I figured I

16:38

could just teach my methods because, I mean,

16:40

at the time, and maybe even

16:42

now, there's not this giant rule book on

16:44

exactly how to do it. And I really

16:46

enjoyed that. It wasn't like we were starting an accountancy

16:48

firm where the rules of accountancy

16:51

has been the same for decades and decades.

16:53

It was like, we're making it up as we go along. And

16:55

so it's okay to get someone who is fresh out

16:57

of university. I was so

16:59

local at that point. I hardly did anything.

17:02

Even though we were representing clients online, I didn't

17:04

do that much online myself. It was like going

17:06

to physical networking events. We had a physical

17:09

office. I turned up to the physical office. So

17:12

it was

17:12

just not any question about

17:14

hiring someone who wasn't local. Out

17:17

of curiosity, I guess it was 2014 then or

17:20

whenever, what was the

17:23

retainers that you were charging people? Like $2

17:25

per month? Because that was

17:27

a retainer at the time before inflation.

17:30

So 2011 was when I first started. I'm

17:35

trying to remember, I reckon a kind of

17:37

small client would have been like $500 a month.

17:41

And at that time, probably a big client would

17:43

have been $2,000 a month. And

17:46

that was probably the range. Yeah,

17:49

I feel like the averages are double that

17:51

now. Yeah, for sure. Yeah,

17:53

it was super different. And it was, again, it was like

17:55

making it up because you go along because you're like, no

17:57

one had a social media budget because.

17:59

because it just didn't exist. So you were trying to convince

18:02

them that it should be part of their marketing

18:04

budget. And maybe even a lot of the

18:06

clients that we had at the time, they didn't even have a marketing

18:08

budget. It was just like, what do you mean a budget? We

18:10

want it as cheap as possible. So then you just test

18:12

out a few numbers and you'd see who said yes.

18:15

And then that was your price.

18:18

So you had, you know, $500 to $2,000 per month. I

18:21

mean, roughly you had 40 hours of

18:23

work per week. How many clients was that, roughly?

18:26

Maybe 20? No,

18:28

it wouldn't have been 20. It would have been maybe like 10,

18:31

but do various different sizes. Back

18:33

then, probably very

18:35

important to know. We didn't have

18:37

like a niche or a niche, as you guys call them. It

18:39

was like, we didn't niche down at all. It

18:41

was just social media and social media

18:43

management. And we were representing people across all different

18:45

platforms. I think if I was starting an agency

18:47

now, I would niche down platform and

18:50

I would probably niche down industry. So I'd be like,

18:52

we do Instagram for dentists or like we

18:55

do Facebook ads for

18:57

e-commerce or furniture companies or something like

18:59

that. Like that's what I would do now. But back then it was

19:01

so different. The kind of analogy I've used before

19:04

is rabbits, deer and elephants

19:07

to describe the types of client sizes.

19:10

And we were mainly going

19:12

after like rabbits and deer

19:14

as to the kind of size. So like the idea

19:16

with rabbits is that

19:18

they're those kind of $500 a month clients or

19:21

whatever your kind of lowest tier is. There's loads

19:23

of them around. Once you catch one, you can catch

19:26

loads of the same because they all talk to each other

19:28

and they just kind of multiply. Deer

19:30

take like a bit more effort to catch but they

19:32

can kind of feed you for longer. They're more sustained.

19:35

They're like a nice juicy size

19:37

but they're not like so sought after like

19:40

elephants and elephants might be those that you

19:42

pitch for. So it takes like maybe

19:44

two or three people to do this multi-stage pitch.

19:46

But once you have them, like they're

19:48

really big, they're really juicy. They can last for

19:50

a very long time and they can kind of feed you

19:52

very well. We were very much, we

19:55

start over rabbits. We went

19:57

on to deer and then throughout

19:59

the...

20:00

10 years, we had like a few elephants, but

20:02

we weren't really set up to look after elephants.

20:04

We didn't really go after pictures. We didn't really try and

20:07

get really big clients. At the time,

20:09

we had one that was 20% of our revenue,

20:11

but when they clicked their fingers,

20:14

everything stopped. And

20:16

I really hated the idea

20:18

that all our other clients would have to

20:20

suffer because this elephant was stomping around.

20:22

So I didn't really enjoy that. We

20:25

were much better deer hunters.

20:27

Now I'm going to go back

20:29

to this and you're going to see what I'm doing. I'm reverse

20:31

engine because I'm just so interested in this backtracking.

20:36

So you had

20:38

about 10 clients

20:40

and you made this first hire. I'm

20:42

guessing that's 15

20:44

to 20,000 dollars or pounds per month, perhaps. How

20:50

much did you pay your first hire if you don't mind? I have

20:52

no idea. I honestly have no idea.

20:55

It was such a long time ago. So interested. Yeah,

20:57

I don't know. I'll dig it out

21:00

and we can put it in the show notes or something.

21:02

I will find out.

21:04

So you have

21:07

an account manager at this point then. And

21:09

how do you... Did you transition

21:12

current clients to, hey, here's this new person.

21:14

I'm out. What was it like? Yeah,

21:17

so I started... I think I started bringing

21:19

him with me to meetings. I started

21:21

giving him

21:23

different tasks in the work

21:25

to do and started

21:27

seeing how he got on. I think at first

21:29

I was a bit scared about it and I definitely

21:32

at first retained being the main

21:34

point of contact for the client. So it was very much

21:36

he was a kind of assistant account manager.

21:38

And I guess I was still the main account manager until he

21:40

could kind of take over

21:42

completely and then take over communications, which

21:45

is a really big part of it. But I remember

21:47

that we had this one client

21:49

who was a comedian and

21:52

he had this act and he was doing all these shows

21:54

around the country and he just did an Edinburgh Fringe

21:56

Festival and he had all these ideas

21:59

and this potential.

21:59

and we were representing

22:02

him on Twitter. I remember

22:04

I got a call from him being like, hey, I want to

22:06

talk to you about your no team member. I was like, oh my

22:08

God, no, what's he doing? Because I just handed

22:11

over this person. He might have been the first one I handed

22:13

over. I was just really worried. I was like, oh my God, I

22:15

was prepared to be like, I'm so sorry, I'll take it back.

22:18

I'll never pass you over again. He went, no,

22:20

it's really good. He's actually written

22:22

some really good tweets for me. I'm wondering if you

22:24

would mind if I use them in my comedy show.

22:27

And so he actually used these tweets that

22:29

my team member had written. And

22:32

I went and saw him in a comedy show and he repeated

22:34

them back on stage as if they were his and I was like so

22:36

proud. And so I feel like that was the

22:38

moment where I just thought, this is going to be

22:40

OK if we can do it with that guy. We

22:42

can do this with anyone. It's not going to hold us back.

22:45

What was like the frame that

22:47

you gave to your clients, you know,

22:50

as to why they

22:52

should accept this new person

22:54

and you leaving? How did you frame

22:56

that? I don't think I said I was leaving.

22:59

I think I said I was getting help with their account. I

23:01

think I said that I would. You were still at the point of contact. Yeah.

23:03

Yeah. For to start with. And then

23:05

eventually I think I just slowly

23:07

started being like, well, hey, we've got this

23:09

meeting coming up or we've got this report, like are

23:11

you OK to send it to them? Like, what do you need from me? Are

23:14

you comfortable with this? I guess I was making sure the team

23:16

member was comfortable first because I figured happy

23:18

team, like they come first. Your

23:21

team members are happy, your clients are happy. And it just it just

23:23

works like that. So that started happening. He

23:25

became more confident. He realized that this client

23:27

was like not some dragon that

23:30

was out to get them, but just a nice guy.

23:32

And then and then it worked from there.

23:34

Yeah. What was that again? Long

23:37

time ago, you might not remember, but one

23:39

to three months transition period. But what

23:41

was that time frame?

23:42

Probably about one to three months. Yeah. At first,

23:45

it would have been he was kind of an assistant. And

23:47

then it would have been gradually take on more clients

23:49

and and gradually speak to more clients.

23:52

And then after that, it was like, Jody, who's Jody?

23:54

And then that allowed me to do more sales and that

23:56

allowed me to hire more people. And

23:59

I think probably something.

23:59

to mention as well is I really

24:02

wanted to be irrelevant at

24:04

this point because I think I'd probably figured

24:06

out maybe from reading the e-myth or from reading

24:09

the for our work week that it wasn't

24:11

a good thing to want to

24:13

be so important that everyone needs you all the time.

24:16

I think I was kind of past that and I

24:18

named the agent because my name is Jodie Cook and the

24:20

agency was called JCSocialMedia so at the start

24:22

I probably hadn't been thinking about that but

24:25

by that time it was like no this

24:27

is really good the more invisible I am to clients

24:29

the more I can be visible like online

24:32

and at events and things the more that we grow but the

24:34

more I don't need to do all the work all

24:36

the time.

24:37

So then

24:39

when you had some account managers

24:42

in place what was like what

24:44

were some of the operational or fulfillment

24:47

service delivery challenges you started encountering?

24:49

So

24:52

I think getting people

24:54

up to speed given that we were doing

24:56

such a wide range of services

24:59

was probably a

25:00

big challenge and so what

25:02

we found in the team was that people would

25:05

naturally just be good at some platforms and less

25:07

bothered about other ones and

25:10

then eventually that was to do with the sales team because

25:12

they'd make sure that they were giving the account

25:14

managers the

25:15

platforms of the clients that suited their

25:17

skills. What else? I think

25:19

that once you as the owner

25:22

are not involved in the communication you

25:25

still want to make sure that it's

25:27

in your

25:29

style on brand you still want to

25:32

make sure that it's like someone's carrying through the

25:34

reputation of the company in the right

25:36

way but that was a lot to do with the training

25:38

I think. No one's going

25:40

to join your team and just know exactly

25:43

how to run a client meeting how

25:45

you want them to they're just not going to know you have to

25:47

train them and that starts by it

25:49

starts by them seeing what you do because they'll just

25:51

mirror it and they'll just they'll just shadow you and

25:53

they'll repeat back your phrases

25:55

and then you kind of don't need to worry about it because they'll

25:58

work it out from there but the manual

25:59

was a really big part of that because we

26:02

went down to such granular detail that it didn't

26:04

leave anything to chance. So it was things like,

26:07

you know, when you open a conversation with a client, tell

26:09

them about something exciting. Don't tell them about your really

26:11

long commute. Don't tell them about how, like,

26:14

ill you're feeling or like that, that,

26:16

you know, tell them something positive. Ask them about them.

26:18

Be interested in them. And we would put such,

26:21

it sounds like such basic stuff to you and me,

26:24

or it might sound like such basic stuff to a business

26:26

owner. But if you include it, it's just like,

26:28

Oh, okay, that's what I do. And then someone follows it

26:30

and then they just take it as normal. And

26:32

then all of a sudden they're running meetings that you're like, you're

26:35

really, you feel really proud to have them as part of your

26:37

team. So training and then trusting

26:39

was like a big ethos, just a

26:41

big kind of mantra that I had there, all of that.

26:44

So then going along

26:46

the journey here, you've replaced yourself

26:49

in fulfillment, essentially, you

26:51

then replace yourself in sales,

26:54

perhaps because people are having

26:56

trouble detaching from you like, Oh, what

26:58

you're, you sold me on the process. Now you're going away. Like,

27:01

so

27:03

what came next? What was the next phase?

27:05

I think detaching

27:08

myself from sales is probably a bigger

27:10

job than my government

27:12

weirdly. And what I

27:15

realized is that

27:17

I was the main person who did sales for

27:19

quite a long time for probably about the first four years.

27:22

And then after that, I had

27:24

one sales support, and then eventually

27:26

two, and one was business development manager, and one

27:28

was kind of an ops manager, and they both did a fantastic job.

27:31

But then they both kind of did

27:32

almost like did the same role as each other. But

27:35

just at different times, they were both part time. But

27:38

both of those people had never been account

27:40

managers. So no matter how close they got

27:42

with a prospect or how close they got with a client,

27:45

that client would never ask them to write a tweet.

27:48

But they would ask me to write a tweet because they knew that I could

27:50

do it. So

27:52

that was the hard thing. It was like, Yeah, I know,

27:54

but that's not my job anymore. And people

27:57

always want like past versions of you, they

27:59

want the version of

27:59

view that's in their head, not the version of you that

28:02

actually exists. So if someone sees it as,

28:04

oh, this business owner is selling me this contract and then they're

28:06

going to deliver it, that's what they believe. And then they're going to be disappointed

28:09

when that doesn't really happen. So what I figured

28:11

out was just that

28:13

it wasn't really going to work unless I

28:15

wasn't in that process altogether.

28:18

And so then I became really behind the

28:20

scenes and those two ran it amazingly.

28:23

And then it was a similar situation

28:25

as with Joanna. It was like, do you need

28:27

to deploy Jodie? Do you need help with this proposal?

28:30

Do you need help with something else? And

28:32

we had this goal within the sales

28:35

team where it was like they would, if

28:37

they could

28:38

take an inquiry, because all our inquiries

28:40

were inbound, so they would take the inquiries that came through each

28:43

day, they would speak to them, they

28:45

would write a proposal, they would follow

28:47

them up, do all that kind of stuff, and then sign them up and

28:49

hand them over.

28:50

Their goal was to do all of that without me.

28:53

And that's their measure of success. That

28:55

was their kind of KPI. And so because we

28:57

were always tending towards this right perfect

28:59

proposals or do things without Jodie, it was like

29:02

they're both very competitive and very motivated

29:04

to do that. So it worked out pretty well in

29:07

the end, but that had to be the goal in order

29:09

to get there.

29:10

As you're talking, I'm realizing in a

29:14

mini epiphany about myself that I've

29:16

been doing recently, I think

29:18

for much of the past year, I deploy

29:21

myself sometimes without even

29:24

my team asking. I got kind of like

29:26

a parent that solves their

29:28

kids problems for them.

29:31

I'm kind of, in a way, doing that

29:33

sometimes. So now I'm aware of

29:35

it. Yes. I hear it's so normal.

29:37

It's so normal because you're,

29:40

I mean, with everyone, not just

29:42

you, but with everyone, it's going to be ego getting involved

29:44

because we like feeling needed. We like

29:47

solving problems. That's probably one of the major

29:49

things that I kind of missed after

29:51

I sold. It was like, oh my God, no one needs me anymore. And

29:53

it's really strange because at the time you're like, it's

29:56

nice to have that buzz of your email or your phone

29:58

and being like, oh, we've got this really hard.

29:59

only you can solve it. It's like, who wouldn't want

30:02

to hear that? But the thing is, you just keep

30:04

yourself playing so small if you do

30:06

that. So then you just have to,

30:09

as hard as it is, you have to find the

30:11

bigger problems to solve and stop delving

30:14

in and trying to solve smaller ones.

30:16

Well, this is wonderful.

30:17

Your, just your voice is a pleasure

30:20

to listen to. You've got a very nice voice.

30:23

I appreciate you coming on and sharing

30:25

today. I want to talk about

30:28

Coach Vox here because I'm pretty

30:30

intrigued by that. And that's coming out

30:32

September 1st. We'll talk about that. But is

30:34

there anything, any bow that you would put on

30:37

your agency journey?

30:39

And of course people, I would recommend, I

30:42

just, here's my thing, Jody. Like I don't,

30:44

I don't

30:46

try and repeat, you know, I hear someone on another

30:48

interview and I did this early on, you know, five

30:50

years ago. I'd hear someone on another podcast and

30:53

then I'd try to replicate like the same podcast. I

30:55

don't do that anymore. You can go listen to Jody on Built

30:57

to Sell, hear how

30:59

she achieved selling a business without an

31:01

earn out

31:02

and stuff like that. I highly recommend that interview

31:05

on Built to Sell radio with John Worrillo and Jody

31:07

Cook. But is there any, any bow that you'd

31:09

put on your agency journey here?

31:10

Yes, for sure. I think I

31:13

would say if there are any agency owners

31:15

listening, not sure the direction that

31:17

they want to take their agency in, I would say, decide

31:19

what game you're playing

31:21

because you can play any game with agency.

31:23

It's kind of a magical business. You can use it

31:25

as a lifestyle design business that you can go

31:28

and travel the world while someone else wins it. You

31:30

can use it as a performance business that you could grow

31:32

to be really big. You could acquire other agencies.

31:34

You could play that game. Or you could use it as

31:37

a,

31:37

this is my art. Like I really love what I do. I'm

31:39

gonna be the artist and I'm just gonna build a team

31:41

around me that helps me be an artist. Or

31:44

you could play the, I'm gonna build

31:47

it and sell it game. It's

31:49

like anything, you can do anything

31:51

you want, but it's just decide the game that you wanna

31:53

play for us because I don't think that you

31:55

should straddle and

31:58

it's so easy to do that when other people are running agents.

31:59

with their idea

32:02

in mind of what success looks like. But I'd say

32:04

decide what it is to you first and then

32:06

work back from there.

32:08

Quick question actually, I meant to ask this earlier. Do

32:10

you ever have doubts early on

32:12

about the business model or maybe

32:14

I should pivot and do something else? Like,

32:16

do

32:17

you ever think about that? Yeah, all the time.

32:19

One of my first bosses actually

32:21

was a owner of a print and

32:24

promotion company. We would sell promotional

32:27

like mugs and t-shirts and like

32:29

merch, like swag basically. And I

32:31

remember he was always talking about

32:33

how many

32:34

easier ways they were of making money.

32:37

And so when I was running an agency, I had that in my

32:39

head, like, surely there are easier ways of making

32:42

money. Like there must be other than, you know,

32:44

clients and team members and all this stuff that

32:46

we have to deal with. But then I just thought, everyone

32:49

thinks that. Everyone thinks there are easier ways

32:51

of money. Everyone thinks there are easier ways

32:53

of making money. It's far better to just shut up and

32:55

just make money.

32:56

Yeah, exactly. And I'd always be having

32:58

the doubts and letting the doubts take over. Yeah,

33:01

even an example yesterday, a shiny object

33:03

that crossed my path, it was this tweet.

33:06

You know, this guy, you know,

33:08

I know this guy who

33:09

came in, bought car dealerships, turned

33:11

them around and sold them

33:14

at his peak. He did four in a three year span

33:17

and he had a private jet and all that. I was like,

33:19

and the point of the tweet was, do

33:21

you really need to start a sexy

33:24

like tech software business?

33:27

Like, no, like boring businesses win.

33:29

And I was just like, maybe

33:31

I should do a boring business too. Sometimes

33:34

I'm like, but just

33:36

shut up and continue the path that you're

33:38

on. And yeah, it's

33:41

working. Like just whatever,

33:43

the grass is always greener, of course. Yeah,

33:45

stick to that. So

33:48

Coach Fox, I

33:50

want to call it like, I guess your

33:52

new product, I'll call it a product coming out on September

33:55

1st, 2023 here. And

33:57

what it takes me about it, basically what

33:59

it is is.

33:59

is you're replacing yourself with

34:02

artificial intelligence. And I think about it in

34:05

the business sense, having

34:07

a knowledge base or a customer service

34:10

agent, literally embedded

34:12

in Slack, a user in Slack that you

34:14

can just ping and be like, hey, what's

34:16

the answer to this question? It understands your entire

34:19

knowledge base and all the call synthesizes

34:21

every call you've ever had. I don't know how far

34:24

your product goes. I haven't talked to you about it before, but

34:26

that's what I think about.

34:28

Yeah, that's exactly it. So Coachbox

34:30

AI is that. We're

34:33

making artificially intelligent

34:36

coaches and mentors based on

34:38

real people. And it's actually quite

34:40

funny. I've just realized how connected it is to this

34:42

whole story because we've just been talking about

34:45

how much I tried to take myself out of the picture

34:47

by writing manuals. And now

34:49

it's like helping other people take

34:51

themselves out of the picture by cloning themselves

34:53

with AI. So it's very in line

34:56

with

34:56

just the whole freedom thing. Don't

34:59

answer questions twice, train in AI to answer

35:01

the questions for you and then be free forever

35:03

to do whatever

35:04

you wanna do. Sit on the beach, doesn't matter, start

35:06

a bigger business. But yeah, that's exactly what

35:08

we're doing. So we've got 80 founding

35:11

creators on board who we have cloned,

35:14

who have AI versions of them out

35:16

there talking to their clients, acting

35:19

as lead generation tools on their website. Some of

35:21

them are charging for access to the AI

35:23

version. I mean, talk about scaling

35:25

yourself to infinity. It's like there is no

35:28

work involved other than the training and they're charging $10

35:30

a month for access to an AI coach version

35:33

of that. And then yeah, September

35:34

the 1st, 2023, we opened 250

35:37

more spaces for creators who wanna do it as well.

35:40

Wonderful and that's coachvox.ai,

35:43

V-O-X of course.

35:46

Yeah, I'm excited about that. See

35:48

that, try that. I think that for

35:51

reference for people, I think that ranges from 99 to $1,000 per

35:54

month or

35:57

something like that, I have no idea. Yeah, it's

35:59

big.

35:59

For creators, it's $99 a month. And

36:04

it's, I mean, it's specifically for people who've already

36:06

done the hard work because they've already got content.

36:08

So they've already written the book, written

36:11

the articles, recorded the podcast episodes.

36:13

It's like, this is where all that hard

36:15

work they put in in the past now works

36:18

for them because it can be

36:19

literally like delivering on their behalf, looking

36:21

after clients on their behalf while they're not working. Cool.

36:25

Again, thank you for being here today. Coachfox.ai,

36:28

Jodie Cook. You can find her on Twitter,

36:30

probably LinkedIn too. I

36:33

think particularly she's a good Twitter follow.

36:36

I've been following her for the past month and

36:38

I've enjoyed that. So, thank you. Anyhow,

36:41

thank you again.

36:42

I appreciate you being here. And

36:44

my last question for you would be, if

36:47

you could share one or two or even three, whatever you got

36:49

in you, golden rules for business

36:51

and or life, literally anything,

36:54

what would those golden rules be?

36:56

Ooh. So I would

36:58

say the first one is something

37:01

that I've been very much practicing

37:03

in the last year, especially, and that's

37:05

just simplify, simplify

37:08

everything. Last year I heard

37:10

of this bias that humans often

37:12

fall for and it's called addition bias.

37:15

And it's where whenever we're faced with any kind of

37:17

problem or challenge, just our natural tendency

37:20

is to add stuff. So we're like, oh, I'm not

37:22

very happy. So I'm gonna go shopping. Or

37:24

we're like, oh, I've got this like problem with

37:26

a

37:27

relationship or a friend or something. So I'm gonna,

37:29

we're gonna go for food or we're gonna go add things. And it's

37:31

always like add, add, add, like task, responsibilities,

37:33

everything else. When the solution

37:36

is nearly always to cut stuff out. And

37:38

so in line with simplifying

37:41

a big exercise that I do just a lot,

37:43

whenever I'm feeling a bit like, oh, something's not

37:45

right here, take a blank piece of paper,

37:48

draw a line down the middle, horizontally

37:50

and a line down the middle vertically and

37:52

right start, stop more and less.

37:55

And just focus on stop

37:57

and less and do this big audit

37:59

of your entire life.

37:59

life and figure out what is in there

38:02

that shouldn't be in there and free up

38:04

the space for actually matters. So

38:06

simplify is a big lesson,

38:09

golden rule for life that I definitely want to share.

38:11

Jodie Cook, thank you. Thank you so

38:13

much for having me. There

38:15

you have it, my friends. This has been another

38:18

episode of Building Freedom. My

38:21

only hope for this podcast, my aim

38:23

is that this inspires you to

38:25

build a freer, fuller life,

38:28

one where you're not enslaved by

38:30

a business, whether that be your business or

38:32

any other business, whether you're a

38:34

business owner or self-employed. The

38:37

aim of this show is to help you build

38:39

a freer, fuller life. And there are many

38:41

ways to do that. And that's what

38:43

we showcase

38:44

on this show each week.

38:46

Thank you so much

38:47

for listening. And until next time, be well.