Profitability Is an Operations Problem, with Sarah Still

Well, I want to dig in now to some of the fun questions for today that really get to, I think, the core of your experience.

And the first one is, what is something that most people get completely wrong about building an agency that you've learned through these nine years building to 10 million plus and then in your time since then helping a multitude of different firms?

Yeah.

I don't know if it's something that they get wrong as in they have a choice or they see the choice and they say, well, I'm doing it this way instead of this way.

And they make the wrong choice.

I think it's more a matter of not even realizing what can be done.

And so then not intentionally doing it.

And the core thing I'm talking about, and that's everything really, but the core thing that I see missing is, in agencies is operationalized leadership.

And that starts with as a founder, as a leadership team, depending on the scale of your organization, defining the specific values and behaviors that are expected within your organization, and then aligning all of your standards, all of your best practices, all of your leadership cadences and conversations to those values.

So that they are enforced over and over again, they're advocated for, they are protected.

And that's really what then as you build out your strategies and as you build out your delivery systems, as you build out your admin systems, overall, that's the bubble that protects everything.

But first off, people don't typically define exactly what that means and what that is, which means that then you hire people who come from all of these different backgrounds, all of these different experiences, often have a lot of their own traumas coming out of their own, you know, agency work experiences in your culture.

Like you might have these.

Values in your head that you live and act by, but it's not what is clearly stated, clearly defined, and then everything's rooted in and attached back to.

If you don't have that, how do you hold them accountable to it? And so defining that is core.

And then operationalizing leadership, not having it be a fly by the seat of your pants, deal with a situation when it comes up.

Being inconsistent, like this time I handled it this way, this time I handled it this way.

Having very, very, very clear structures makes it easier for everyone because people struggle with hard conversations.

They struggle when it's going to be awkward.

It's hard to get the words out of your mouth and it's hard to get it out clearly.

We get in the moment and we feel fuzzy and we feel blocked off and then you get the response.

You don't know what the reaction is going to be.

So how do you stay very clear and focused? And how do you do it in a way that shows you care not just about the business success, but also about that other individual person's success? But it can all be systematized just like a delivery system can be.

And then that's what protects everything.

You know, I think that this is a really important perspective.