Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're talking with Alyson Caffrey from Nashville, Tennessee, about something that is very, very pivotal to growth in your business.
So, you've figured out something that works for your business. You figured out how to do it. You figure out how to get clients, and it starts to grow and get traction.
But as an entrepreneur, you start to get busy, too busy. Too busy to do it all yourself, so you start to build a team, and that can be the most freeing, or it can be the most frustrating experience.
That difference between it being freeing or frustrating is having the right process, the right standard operating procedures in place
That's what Alyson specializes in helping people do.
She helps people get off the operations or agency hamster wheel… finding yourself running crazy, trying to keep up with everything, and bring a sense of calm, peace, and order to your day to day operations.
We had a really great conversation about the role of operations and procedures in a business and what to do to really get some traction in that area.
It was a fun conversation, and you're going to enjoy it, no matter what stage of growth you're at.
Show Links:
Find our more about Alyson at OperationsAgency.com
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
EmailMastery.com
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 176
Alyson: Hey Dean, how's it going?
Dean: I'm so good, how are you?
Alyson: I'm doing well. Can you hear me okay?
Dean: I can hear you okay. How about you?
Alyson: Yeah, likewise on my side.
Dean: Okay. Good. That's the most important thing when you're recording a podcast.
Alyson: Yes, it is. I just wanted to double check.
Dean: Where are you calling from?
Alyson: I'm in Nashville, Tennessee.
Dean: Okay, wow! Did you get hit by the tornado?
Alyson: Thankfully, no. Actually, I was traveling that day too, so we got in just a couple of hours before the storm started and it was a few miles away from us, so we were okay, but unfortunately not the same for some of our other folks that live in town, so ...
Dean: Wow! That's pretty scary, huh?
Alyson: Yeah. It's crazy, because I'm originally from the East Coast and I didn't realize that there were actually a lot of tornadoes in this area, but since we've lived here we've had a handful.
Dean: Oh my goodness! Well, you've got to move back.
Alyson: Yeah, it's crazy. Too crazy.
Dean: Well, I'm excited to talk to you. I-
Alyson: Yes, likewise-
Dean: Know just very little bit about what you do, but I would love to hear all about it, and then see where we can go.
Alyson: Yeah, I'm very excited, and I super appreciate the time and just being willing to collaborate, and yeah, I'm super excited.
Dean: Cool, so what's the ... Tell me the Alyson story here.
Alyson: Yeah, so super high level, I was an ops manager at a PR and marketing company, and basically what ended up happening was I was moving and we had a really natural parting, and then once I was finished with that company I got approached by a bunch of folks in a freelancing capacity, to be like, "Hey, will you do for me what you did for him?"
I was like, "Yeah, totally," so I started freelancing and fell into entrepreneurship, and founded Operations Agency about two and a half years ago. And since then, basically, what we've been doing is helping agencies, service providers and coaches structure their businesses at that kind of inflection point.
Ideally, right before they've hit a million, but are on their way to a million, just to make their lives a lot easier, make scale less difficult and just retain key team members, really effective team members, so that's what I've been doing for the past couple of years.
I'm at the point right now where I've got a good team, I've got some great infrastructure on my end from my business, and I'm really looking for that scalable offer. I think I've got it down, but at this point my biggest kind of issue I think is just the marketing side of things. I think my business could use some Dean marketing juju, and so I applied to the podcast. I'm very excited, yeah, to dive in there.
Dean: That's awesome, so tell me about the business of what you do, and how you help people, and how you work with people, and outcomes kind of thing.
Alyson: Totally, so our main offer is called Operations Simplified. It's a 90 day program, and basically, when I first started my business I dabbled in the, "Hey, let me coach you on how to structure your ops," and that only got mixed results. I had the keeners who did really well, and then I had the folks who just had no time and really were too busy still running their business to get results, and so I shifted to the 90 day program, where we, my team, we review everything.
The first thing we do is identify key needs for structure, so SOPs, new workflows, new pieces of tech. Then we implement those things, and then after that we create some operating elements for just operational transparency, so things like team scorecards and KPI for team members, clear job descriptions, clear lanes.
And then that way what we can do is, if they have team members that are there and able to get amazing results, we can really empower them to rise up, and if we don't have team members in there yet what we do is we can create really great job descriptions for future roles, so that when they have the budget or when it makes sense for them they feel ready to take that next step.
Dean: That's really interesting, so it sounds like you're working with people at a level where they've already got employees, they've already got people, and everybody is ... A lot of times, when people do their first layer of hiring, what I find is that they look for and maybe luckily find extraordinary people who are able to take something and put it into a process, but then the big frustration comes, if they ...
They're not going to have any gaps, so if that person leaves, now they've got to reinvent or figure out how to do stuff. I would say to people it'd be better for them to invest time in documenting the process as the first step, before hiring somebody to do it or working with that person to document the process. Really.
Alyson: Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head there. That's exactly what we recommend, in terms of the strategy, in terms of the actual order of things. That we just tell our clients, "Hey, listen. The process will always be yours. The team member might not always be yours." Right?
Dean: Right. Exactly, so that way at least you know now how you want that done. It's your fingerprint on it.
Alyson: Exactly.
Dean: This is the way we do it here. It's funny, this took like a lot of time to figure out through trial and error, so I'm talking about lessons that I've learned now from observation, that a lot of times people will hire one person as an assistant or their staff to take some of the workload off, and the big distinction that I learned about people, it's project based people versus process based people.
And what I found with that is that if you hire one person odds are they're either the kind of person that loves to create order out of chaos, like you give them something, they want to organize it, they want to create a process, they want to document how everything gets done, but then as soon as they're done with that they don't want to do it anymore.
Or you hire a person who is a process oriented person and they want to follow a process, and if you don't have one, then they're looking to you, constant questions, to get your idea of what the process is, and that's frustrating for the entrepreneur, because then it gets to where, I'll just do it myself. It's just easier. Too many questions, you know?
Alyson: Oh, yeah.
Dean: Getting the right people. Do you do any sort of, do you use the Kolbe or Myers-Briggs, or any of the strength finders, any of the instruments to find the right people?
Alyson: We only very mildly come in and help our clients find the next person, and truthfully, it's up to the client, so some clients might like Kolbe and some clients might like Myers-Briggs, or the different types out there, but I find that it's the most important to, almost exactly what you said, distinguish the process creators from the process maintainers, and really take a look at what exactly their KPIs are first.
We run a kind of unpopular hiring process, where we take a look at just the first 30 days, so I typically, if someone comes in and their process is clear and our KPIs are clear, I'm happy to give them 30 days of time in the business, at least on my side of things. And to me, it's really, really clear in the first 30 days, whether they're going to make it or not, and to me, I tell my clients the same thing.
I said, hey, listen, process really just builds clarity and comfortability, and so I'm comfortable inviting someone to come into the business and say, "Hey, look, run this process," or, "Hey, create this process for me," and if they don't then really no harm, no foul, right? I've just spent just a little bit of money and a little bit of time with this, but for someone who doesn't have a process, that could be a little bit more daunting for them.
I know a lot of folks and a lot of clients that come to me, they're just petrified to hire, and I think we use things like Kolbe as stand ins, to shortcut the process a little bit, but really, I think the only thing that tells us whether someone is going to make it in our business is first the KPIs. Are they hitting what we're expecting them to hit? And then second is obviously time. You just need time.
Dean: Yeah, you can't tell intelligent, both traditional and emotional intelligence from the Myers-Briggs, so there's a lot that goes into it. You're right.
Alyson: Yeah, because even if you look at someone ... Sorry, go ahead, Dean.
Dean: I was just going to say what's the outcome that you're delivering for people, in terms of your business? So we can get an idea of what, who you're trying to attract.
Alyson: Yeah. I think my big outcome, in one word, it's clarity, right? So clarity in SOPs, meaning they have a whole playbook of standard operating procedures for all the services that they offer, the way that they market, the way that they sell, so those things.
I'm looking to work with folks who have a proven concept. They build a thing multiple times. They're clearly on a trajectory for scale. They have solid offers. They've got a solid fulfillment on the backend now, whether or not they're super involved. They being the business owner is irrelevant. We can really help get them out of that, identify gaps for team members.
Those types of things, and then like I mentioned, my other big outcome is operational transparency, so we create a team scorecard for them, saying if we have major outcomes from each of our products or our services, and we have major outcomes from our sales process, and we have major outcomes from our marketing channel, what are those numbers? Let's look at them all in one place and have our team as a unit own these numbers.
Dean: That's great. That's something maybe we've talked about on our podcast, I called proprietary metrics, where every business has its own. We look at breaking this into the before unit, the during unit and the after unit, and have metrics for all of that, because that's what drives everything. All of our processes are really in service to driving the metrics and-
Alyson: 100%.
Dean: Right, and it's so interesting to really think that through, so do you work with, have you done work with emerging franchises or companies where they're looking to prototype a position or an operating system that they do duplicate or tried scaling, or what's your ...
Alyson: Yeah, I've worked with a handful of companies like that, companies with multiple locations. One of our clients right now is opening a third location and they really just want to standardize everything, but my actual main focus is agency owners, service providers, coaches. Folks who are their own project managers.
I feel like agencies have a very similar story to a lot of business owners, where just like me in the beginning, right? They get approached, because they have a specific skillset, and then they get better and better at it, and more and more people come to them. And then they end up being the salesperson, the project manager, the marketer and the customer service person, and all those things.
And so it's really, really challenging to grow a business and manage every single aspect of it, and hire, and market, and do all of it, so it's my thought that if that person were to just step back and hang out with me for a little bit, we can say how does this work and what can we put in place to really help make sure we can get above the business, instead of stay in it?
Dean: Okay, and the way that you do that is through this Operations Simplified, which is the 90 day program.
Alyson: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: Okay, and is that a one on one type of program, or do you, is it part of a group learning?
Alyson: It's a one on one program.
Dean: Okay. All right, and the outcome of that, what would be, how are people evaluating this? What's the result that they're getting as on the other side of this 90 days?
Alyson: Yeah, so the first thing is a finished playbook, so what we do is we look at all the standard operating procedures that they'll need and we'll write as many as we're willing to identify with them, so we just do all of that, done for you, and then in the project capacity we take a look at their standard projects, so we'll say you have three services are three main services. Here are your standard projects. Like I said, we mostly work with agencies.
If it's a coach, what we'll do is we'll take a look at the program and we'll say let's create a dashboard for you based on the results in the program. Something that a coaching team could manage and not just one coach, right? We'll look at something like that, and then the third big thing, like I mentioned, is the scorecard. Really honing in on those numbers, so if we're running our SOPs correctly and we're hitting projects on time, or we're managing the dashboard correctly, what numbers should we be seeing?
Dean: Wow! What have you seen? What would be the dream scenario that you're able to create? I'll back into it this way, because one of the most clarifying questions that I ask people is what would you do for someone if you only got paid when they got the result? What is the result that you know if you go in and create for somebody as a way to monetize or evaluate, put a value on what it is that you do?
Alyson: I would say the main thing is SOP creation, 100%. That's one of the things that I think when folks see an SOP from us, they're just like, "Oh my gosh!" It's like putting money into your savings account. It hurts to do it at first, but then once you see that number start building you're like, "Okay. This is great. I feel confident. I feel happy. I feel like this is going to give me longevity," so that's my-
Dean: Would you look at that SOP as an asset of a business? Is that something-
Alyson: Yeah, 100%. If we think about it too, when we were just talking about hiring, right? It's your proprietary information, right? Really, nothing else to you is proprietary other than your processes, right? Clients can come and go if you don't have a good process, teams can come and go if you don't have a good process, money can come and go if you don't have a good process, so really processes are the blueprint, the framework for how we get clients, for how we retain clients, for how we get team members, for how we keep team members, for how we get money, how we keep money.
Dean: What would you say is the difference, economically? How does this move the needle for people?
Alyson: Well, economically, they can, if you're the founder and you're spending time project managing, which in my opinion is a $15 to $20 an hour task, you can get out of that and you can make sense of someone else coming in to structure your project, then you can spend time closing, networking, speaking, doing those types of things, creating content. Those tasks are obviously where probably in some businesses with larger followings thousands of dollars an hour.
Dean: Yeah, you look at the ... Yeah, I just wonder, so part of the thing is trying to create an idea for return on whatever, we'll call it your process, right? Return on Simplified, on the processes there. Can you give me a couple of case studies of before and afters, or things like the best result that you're able to create for people?
Alyson: Yeah, I think that, so one of my clients did a white label agency kind of deal. They were getting paid for a funnel that they created, and before we came in he was doing all of the funnels on his own and it was a situation where it stunk. He was taking his Saturdays and doing these funnels, and then what we did was we created a really simple process along with a workflow that they could follow and we hired two people, so two VAs. We ended up making, I think we ended up pocketing most of the money that we got from the agency as the white label, and then I think we only paid out about $75 for a funnel -
Dean: Right, so -
Alyson: You can imagine from spending time and from spending whatever he was spending to get that done.
Dean: Yeah, you look at the ... This is part of the thing, what we have right now in just what's going on in the world, it's that actual execution has been commodified more than anything ever, and I mean that in a good way, in that you can buy execution, but what drives that is the process, is what you're able to quickly get somebody up to speed, to be able to deliver the result by following the recipe, right? That's really what you're looking at, is follow the process and be able to scale quickly that, like all the BPOs that do things offshore, follow the procedures, right?
Alyson: Mm-hmm -.
Dean: I'm wondering, there, it's like some, you create opportunities that way for people, right?
Alyson: Yeah.
Dean: Like an asset, if you find a way that is a very ... Something that a lot of people would want, there's a cool opportunity to do that. I'm a big fan of process. Everything that we do is really just like that. I own a company called 90-Minute Books, and you can imagine that, that is a very process oriented thing, in order to move people quickly through a collection of mini projects with different people in order to put a book together, so I'm just thinking out loud, in terms of trying to get my mind around how you may be able to package this up in a way that's even different than working with people one on one for that. Do you ever syndicate processes?
Alyson: I'm not sure I follow.
Dean: Okay, so one of the things, I do a lot of work with real estate agents. We have real estate agents all over the world. We have one program, for instance, called Getting Listings, which is a whole turnkey procedure that people can follow to send this postcard, and then follow this process, this package to people, and then a monthly newsletter and we've got the whole process mapped out for people, that if they just execute it, that they end up getting listing, and we also offer in a way that we can do it for them. Like, well, they just say, "This is what I want to get to this," and we can do, because we have the process of it, everything for them.
We call it our - and that, because I know there's a lot of people who want that outcome and we've got the process of it, that I have a team of people that can do that for people without me being involved in doing the process, so I wonder if there's a way, if you start thinking about what would be some outcomes that you could create that you could deploy for other people? Just to truly get the result. It's almost like what you're creating and what I'm looking for is the economic outcome, which is always what drives things in the end, that people have to be able to see how this is going to affect their income, in order to make the investment to do something, right?
Alyson: Yes. That makes sense.
Dean: How much does it cost to work with you?
Alyson: Our 90 day program is 10,000.
Dean: Okay, and from that, if a company, and so you're saying that typically they're on their way to a million dollars, is that's where they start to get some complexity, and I see that a lot.
Alyson: Yeah.
Dean: You can't take the ... You can get to a million with charisma and extraordinary people just working together as a team, to do stuff, but to go to $10 million you have to really organize things into a system.
Alyson: Yeah, and we've worked with multimillion dollar businesses, but it is a lot more difficult to take apart and pull together. It's just like that, so I always recommend that they come a little bit prior to that, just to make their lives a lot easier and the whole thing a lot easier, so back I guess to the syndication question, now that I understand.
I think I do have something similar to that. We've got the agency process suite, which is just about 150 common procedures that agencies need, so any, everything from project management to onboarding clients, and building funnels, and setting up traffic in Facebook, and setting up YouTube videos.
Those types of things, so we have that and we're currently selling that for just 299. It's in one of our funnels, and my main kind of goal, in terms of the main thing that I'd like to offer, is a membership. Think Design Pickle for processes. We can do unlimited processes for a monthly fee.
I've got the infrastructure already built for that, because we do a lot of that in our private client work, so if I were to get let's just say 40 members tomorrow under that arrangement, it really wouldn't change my day today. It wouldn't change the business very much, so I think from a scalable offer perspective, that might be my lowest hanging fruit.
My big challenge though, Dean, I've talked about it in the past, and I currently have it. The membership exists. I've talked about it in the past and I think there's just a big gap in me talking about it to someone saying, well, I totally get this and this is amazing, but everyone who's on the other side who's received the profits from it, in the membership or as a private client, they look at the first one or the second one and they say, "Oh my gosh! I can't believe I didn't do this sooner," so I think that's my challenge. Is that. I think-
Dean: How much is the membership?
Alyson: I did a founder's launch back in September for $390 per month, and now it's $500 per month, but if I'm being totally honest, I haven't sold any additional since the founder's launch. A; it hasn't been a total focus, which I'd like to change, and B; I just have, again, this big gap about how to talk about it, how to market it. What they might need to know before they decide to take action with me, because, I'll be honest, I know Design Pickle for processes doesn't exactly sound the sexiest in the world.
Dean: Right, especially, even if you do know what Design Pickle is, it's still - I wonder if this'll be helpful, is that there's a couple of things that I'm really seeing going on. Like in the last year we've seen some pretty amazing things, and one of those is that Kylie Jenner became a billionaire, and-
Alyson: Right.
Dean: Right, and I think that's pretty amazing, in that she doesn't actually do any of this stuff. When you look at what goes into that, she just sold 51% of her company to Coty for 600 million, and that was a ... Now she still owns 49%. That's what's the other 600 million, but she has really outsourced. Not outsourced, but collaboratively partnered with people to do all the other elements on it, so her, if you look at the modular pieces of what you have to figure out for business, like what you just described about Design Pickle is like design as a service, right? A module, which you can plug into your capability suite, right?
Let's look at what Kylie has done. Is the components of having a cosmetics company, she's got a ... You have to actually make the cosmetics and package it, and do all that stuff, and to do that she partners with a company called Seed Labs, which make a lot of the makeup in the market right now, including ColourPop, which is their own brand that they brought out. And I've found a video that was a tour of the ColourPop factory, which is also where they make the Kylie Jenner stuff.
That it's 200,000 square feet and they do every single element of the whole process under one roof. I mean from simulations, from experimenting, from making all the individual components, manufacturing the makeup, compiling everything, packaging it, refilling it, taking all the orders. Doing everything under one roof, and then Kylie has a team of 70 people. That's it. She's got 70 employees, and if you look at there's also a Kylie Jenner office tour, and the contrast between the two is just ridiculous.
I mean have this art studio office basically, with her - conference table is what they usually go to, to come up with the ideas for what they're going to do, but then every step of the process is handled by Seed Labs. Now, the business side is another module that's run by her mother's company, so Kris Jenner's company does all the business management of it, from all the accounting, and the administration, and the bookkeeping, and all of that stuff.
Now, when you start to look at that, that's a real thing that's available to anybody right now, right? Is this capability that you can tap into, and so what I see that you're doing right now is it sounds like you're taking an individual business, you're doing original work for them, and at the end of it they get their $10,000 operation simplified playbook that is all of their processes, and then they go on, and then you get another client and do the same thing, but it's original work, right?
Alyson: Mm-hmm -. Yeah, exactly.
Dean: Yeah, so you're going to at some point run into your own scalability issue, because you're doing one off work. You're doing marginal work, meaning there's no leverage in that. In order for you to grow with that current model, you have to get 10 people to pay you $10,000, and so you have to do 10 individual units of work. That's why I like this idea of if you've already solved a problem, like some of these agency things that you're talking about, what are some of the ... Tell me about this $299 product that you have.
Alyson: Yeah, so it's basically all of the common SOPs that we've seen agencies need, so we basically break it down from onboarding fulfillment and maintenance, so onboarding meaning what happens when you get a client? A lot of agencies freak out when they get a new client, because there's 50 steps to do to onboard someone, so we talk through setting up their projects, getting all their documents signed, what they should be sending out to folks, how they communicate scope of project with your team.
Then we obviously talk through the fulfillment stuff, so building funnels, building webpages, setting up Facebook pages, those types of things. Putting up YouTube videos, and then the maintenance stuff, which may or may not include traffic. We do talk a lot about how to set up specific traffic avenues just from a basic perspective, because it's my opinion that, even if they know how to do it from a basic perspective, they could have someone else on their team do it and not them. Ideally, they can get that result immediately, so they can ask with that.
It's 150 about now and growing. We add new ones every time someone asks. Every time someone's like, "Hey, do you have something about [CARTA 00:38:10]?" We're like, "We've never used CARTA, but let's go get familiar and then we can write one."
Dean: Okay. Great, and that's all for this, is that $299 a onetime thing?
Alyson: Yeah, onetime.
Dean: Pay for a library. Yeah.
I wonder now, if there was a way, I look at that as a capability that you have, right? That you've created those then. Now, if you were to take that to the next level and partner that up with somebody who could actually execute those, I was wondering about the agency business. That it seems like the people, there's going to be the people who want to start an agency are probably people who like or are attracted to the strategy part of it, more than the execution part of it, and then realize quickly that the strategy, the actual time involved in the strategy stuff is maybe 10% of what the actual execution stuff is, right?
Alyson: Yeah.
Dean: 90% execution and 10% strategy, and so they have to, I find that in most agency models, that the end user is underpaying for the strategy and overpaying for execution, because it's blended in one thing, you know?
They're burying the strategy cost into, or into the execution, so I'm wondering if you have a capability or a capability partner that has the ability to execute these SOPs that you've created, that you could offer it as a service, like the backend of an agency.
Alyson: Yeah, so we actually create all of our SOPs in-house. I have a VA team of about five people who write all of our SOPs, and it's basically I've built it like a ticketing system and we've got our SOPs who are creating SOPs, and we've pretty much got that on autopilot, so I've actually created that within my own business.
Dean: I'm talking about the SOPs that you've created for the agency. I'm not talking about the SOPs for creating the SOP. I'm talking about executing the SOPs that you've created.
Alyson: Okay. You mean like if there was someone who offered a VA agency or something that compared-
Dean: Yes.
Alyson: Folks that could execute. Okay. Yeah, I've definitely thought about VA agencies as a really great partnership opportunity, especially because we precede them in a lot of ways and they'll likely stay with-
Dean: That's what I mean.
Alyson: With the VA agency, so yeah, I think that's a great idea. I just ...
Dean: That's what the entrepreneur wants, right? This is why, when I was looking at you and I know it's almost unfair for me to ask you to, I always look at, to see can you point to the economic impact of what people are working with? I know that's not the way that you think about it or measure it, because it's not, you're talking about a process. Your deliverable is this playbook.
Now, what they do with it, they're going to have peace of mind that it's going to allow them to do other things, but the terminal result of their relationship with you is not more money per se. It's not an outcome like that, but in order for them to engage you, the entrepreneur ultimately has to believe that an engagement with you and the outcome that you're going to create is then going to free them up to move forward to have an economic impact, right?
Now, with this new capability that you helped them create, that they'll be able to recoup that investment through efficiency or multiply the investment through scaling easier, so I had a really interesting visual coming to me a little while ago - Rubik's Cubes and can you solve a Rubik's Cube?
Alyson: I have before, but I don't know if I could do it now.
Dean: Right, exactly, and did you figure it out yourself or did somebody show you, or how did you solve it?
Alyson: There was an article I had to write about tactics you can use, and so I used those tactics.
Dean: I got you. Okay, so I started thinking about it, like could I solve it? I played around with it for a while thinking I'm pretty smart and I'm pretty strategic, and maybe I could do this and maybe not, but it would take me hours to figure it out and I might not ever get it, but when I started thinking, okay, I wonder if, somebody must know how to do it.
I wonder if there are article or tutorials, how to solve this Rubik's Cube, and it turns out that there is an algorithm that's 28 moves, but if you do these 28 moves in order, that at some point between the 20th move and the 28th move it goes through a solve state, so as long as you know these 28 moves you can just do it and solve the Rubik's Cube, so it would take a while through even trial and error of learning to do the moves before you got it, but you would get it.
And then I thought to myself what would be even easier is if somebody was there, somebody who knows the moves was there and could encourage and coach you live, like what you're doing with helping with the SOPs, right?
Going through the moves. They're going to end up with the SOP, with the playbook, faster than you would, they would figure it out on their own, right?
Alyson: Right.
Dean: And then I thought, now, in terms of where this sits in the cycle of entrepreneurship, investing capital and time and energy for a return, for profit, that the Rubik's Cube, solving the Rubik's Cube is not the end result, but if the Rubik's Cube is solved, that allows you to go now and take that into the market, and a solved Rubik's Cube may have a value of $10,000 for instance, right?
What would it be worth if you could just buy their solved Rubik's Cube to trade in for the end user? Will that arbitrage kind of thing? That's what shaped the way that, think about our Getting Listings program. I do our Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast and we talk about it, and people see these things. I have a membership program at - where we'll just give them an access the program to do it all themselves, but then we also have the easy button, where somebody can pay us to just do it for them and just take the phone call when somebody calls to say, "Can you come and list our house?"
I start thinking about where the value is, why am I not just executing the Getting Listings program and giving, selling the listings to the real estate agents? That's our latest thought on this. Now you know, and so I think about this, the agency stuff, and it seems like that's the thing you've figured out the most. Is if you take those things, what would be the most valuable SOPs that you have? What is the, if you look all the way down now, the retail value?
A funnel, for instance, or the way you were describing that you've got an SOP for delivering a funnel that maybe costs $75, right?
Alyson: Yeah, and truthfully, some of the funnels that we have SOPs for are really detailed, so some agencies charge a couple grand for them, do you know what I mean? If I'm charging [inaudible 00:48:09] so this is a person who is let's just say not a marketing agency. They're an entrepreneur who wants to really dial in the marketing hand of their business. They can come in, get this playbook and say, "Wow! Okay, now I know how to set up all my online assets."
Dean: Yeah, and it's an interesting, I mean, when you look at, where do you want to go with this? What do you see as the end result for you? What is your hope for this?
Alyson: Honestly, views of the business, I like my business right now. I think that a lot of people can't say that. I really like who I work with, I like what I'm involved in, I like my team a lot, and I've always thought that my main thing I really want to do is I want people to like their businesses. That's what I want.
I just want someone to start something that they feel really called to do, and feel like it compliments their life and not takes from it, and so mostly what I've done in the past couple of years is I've really resonated with agency owners, because again, it's really hard for them to get out of the project management of their business.
I've worked with a lot of family men. Dads who open up agencies, who are trying to provide for their families and change their families lives, but they get sucked in and things get a little out of control, so I just feel called to work with those people, because I think that, ultimately, they have probably the most impact on their families firsthand, right? They can change a lot of things about their life, about their family, about their client's life.
Think about how much traffic agencies bring to businesses, how much they could change a business, and so if they just got that bottled up and really codified to where they could repeat it, and rinse and repeat those results, then everyone's life could be different, so that's where I feel like, right now, where I feel like I would love to serve that market the most.
Have I worked with coaches? Yes, because I love working with coaches, absolutely, and I definitely can help them and get a great result for them, but to me, I also work with coaches who are family people, who want to really create impact, to just spend more time with their families. That's really I think the time, the unmeasurable monetary aspect of time, to me, is just amazing, if I should get someone that back.
Dean: Yeah, that's so funny. On our Listing Agent Lifestyle philosophy, which goes that we're basically showing real estate agents how to build a listing centric business and still have an amazing lifestyle, and the three elements that we've balanced are daily joy, abundant time and financial peace, and having those three in harmony is really, that's the foundation of it all, and that's what sounds like, what you're helping people do. SOPs are definitely a foundational piece of being able to get that abundant time and daily joy.
Alyson: Yeah, and just not to feel like a slave to their business, right? Where you wake up and you're like, "I have to do these 800 things," where instead you wake up and you say, well, I get to do this today, right?
Dean: Yeah, right.
Alyson: Just that simple-
Dean: What are the things that you really love?
Alyson: Yeah. I hope I'm giving that to my clients. I've hoped and really, really done a lot of work to be able to just deliver that, so I guess in terms of growth of the business, I would also like to have that for me. I think opportunities-wise, in a situation, again, where I've been able to create a great business and I just see opportunity to be able to do even more with what we have in place already, so ...
Dean: Let's bring - so the marketing side, you just need or want more people to work with. That would be a good outcome for you. You've got capacity to work with more people.
Alyson: Yeah, most definitely. I think especially, like in the membership or obviously with these agency process suites, just being able to show folks I think before they take the leap and make a big investment, right? That even just maybe a handful of processes could change their business, right? Even if they're not ready to take this big leap and really reorganize everything, maybe if it's just one key process, maybe they could spend Saturdays with their family again or maybe they could make an extra 10K a month, or whatever it looks like for them.
Dean: How do you find people? How does your before unit work? What are you doing to get new prospects?
Alyson: Yeah, so right now I run a traditional webinar funnel. For the most part, it's a training on the agency hamster wheel basically. How agencies stay at six figures and they can't get to seven, and it's mostly through structure, so it's a great training. I've run a webinar funnel for the past couple of years and it's worked pretty well. I also have a pretty solid - my clients refer a lot of business to me, so that's the main way that I get my 10K clients.
The two funnels that I'm playing with right now for filling a lower ticket offer, which again, haven't been totally tested, are I have a playbook template. The template that I've used to put in SOPs for all of the high ticket clients I've worked with, so I have that as my lead magnet, and then I'm thinking that my secondary thing is the process suite, so I say, "Hey, listen. Here's the template, but if you want SOPs today, to get started to move forward, here's the agency process suite," and then after that I'm thinking maybe they say either book a call with me, it could work, or I just find a way.
Again, I'm brainstorming here, but I just would like a way to potentially get them a win, get them a quick win, so they say, "Wow! The process really is really valuable," so then that way, when we have a conversation about the membership potentially, if that's how we plan to sell that, is over the phone, then we can say, "Hey, look, this is really valuable, if you have proprietary processes," because to me, the agency process suite is a great, great tool. However, it's not proprietary.
For example, if you have a nine step funnel and I'm showing you how to create five of those nine steps, then to me, it only gets you right so far in the process. We need to make sure that's proprietary to you, so if they were in the membership they would say, "Hey, listen Al. Here's how this works. This is my funnel process," and then we would write one that's proprietary for them.
Dean: Let's compare the two for a second. How much does it cost you to generate leads for the webinar funnel?
Alyson: Between $20 and $30, depending on the quarter.
Dean: Okay, so $20 and $30 per lead for the webinar funnel, and it's an interesting progression then, because then it falls into not everybody's going to come or complete the webinar, so you go from webinar to strategy session, and then - and how much does it end up costing for a new client using that model or that method?
Alyson: Per client cost is about $1,000 at the highest. We typically spend about $250 to $500 a call, which I know it doubles. That's a lot. It does double sometimes, depending on the quarter, but truthfully, again, because I'm spending, because it's a higher ticket offer, I usually am totally correct with those numbers.
Dean: Okay, and so one of the things, have you ever experimented with a book, in terms of-
Alyson: I haven't.
Dean: Then I can tell you what will happen, is that you could probably get the cost per lead down by a tenth. We're seeing across the board to be able to get booked leads for $2 to $3 per lead, and then that changes the economics of it, because you're saying, and I think that people who are the proponent of the webinar funnel will say yeah, but you get a more serious prospect, and that's I think what we're saying is that you get a closer prospect right now who's not any ... You end up, you're officially in the same pond basically. You're on Facebook, is this where you're getting the leads? From Facebook, or-
Alyson: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, so you're officially in the same pond, and what we want to do is with a book funnel, get people off of Facebook into an email dialog with you, where you can now create an asset of the same number of things, so let's say that for $20 you're able to generate one lead, but with the same ad spend to the same audience you're able to generate let's even call it $5 leads, so you're able to get four times more, four times or five times more people and build a relationship with them over a longer period of time, without sacrificing the immediate people, because the people who would come to the webinar, you would show them the webinar immediately after they opt in for the book, or a subset. Just defacto, subset of the people who would be attracted to get the information as a book, you know?
Alyson: Yeah, 100%.
Dean: As long as you've got the title, right? Now, remember, if you've got the title of the book right and somebody downloads a book called whatever your, what do you call the webinar that people are signing up for?
Alyson: The 6-Figure Agency Hamster Wheel.
Dean: Okay, so there we go, so if we had a book called the 6-Figure Agency Hamster Wheel, or How to Get Off the 6-Figure Agency Hamster Wheel, that is a resonant tone, right? That's something that somebody who, they know what that means. They've realized, wait a minute, I'm still ... Every time I do a new client I have to get a new one, and another one, and another one, and it's not - so that anybody who would be attracted to the webinar would also be attracted to the book.
Alyson: Are you considering ... Sorry, go ahead.
Dean: Yeah, so that way, instead, so the same $1,000 ad spend you would get a, if you say $20 leads, you would have 50 webinar leads for $1,000, or you could have 250 book leads, of which the 50 people who would have come on the webinar are a subset. Miss out on them, those 50 people are still there, and if you don't change anything from the moment that they opt in, the same, you still get those 50 and everything else should still play out exactly the same way, but you also get the 200 people that you can nurture for the next six, 12, 24 months, and at every different time interval people will be jumping out of that, to start book with you.
Alyson: Right, and are you thinking that this book is an eBook or a physical book? Would it be a free plus shipping funnel or would it be, what are you thinking there?
Dean: It doesn't matter. I don't make the distinction. We do physical books.
Alyson: Oh, no.
Dean: We do physical books, but I call, we still call it a book and we deliver it as an eBook, and the reality is it doesn't matter. The reason we do 90-Minute Books is that it's once somebody asks for the book it's done its job, and the odds of somebody reading the book are very low no matter what, whether they pay for it, whether it's a physical book, or whether it's an eBook. The odds are very low that people are going to read anything, and what's more important is that we get them in this dialog.
Alyson: Right. That makes total sense.
Dean: Yeah, and so I think that would be a pretty good experiment for you. Do you do anything with all the leads that don't convert? What's your lead conversion strategy?
Alyson: Yeah. I can definitely do a better job with this. I don't have a huge list. I do mail them. I do mail my list here and there, if I create something new, or if we add a new something or other to the process suite. Then I'll actually say, "Hey, listen guys, this is ... " I'll make them exclusive offers, meaning it's going to be less if you're on the list than it would be to cold traffic or what have you, but honestly, I could do a lot better with nurturing them with just pure content and not offers.
Dean: Yeah.
Alyson: Yeah, so I could definitely do better there.
Dean: Yeah, and that's an asset, but now you've got, the great thing is if you had more people on the list, and you are unpacking and educating, almost creating I call them contentimonials, is if you're talking to people and sharing case studies, SOP case studies about just people who are getting off the hamster wheel, and every week there's a new story of somebody who is celebrating the fact that they're off the hamster wheel. It's a pretty compelling thing.
Alyson: Yes, that's a great idea. That could just be a simple email, one person a week. I think that's a great idea.
Dean: Yeah, and I think that might be a really good opportunity for you, for that element of it, but I really think that the big opportunity for you is thinking almost like your capability as an asset to invest in pairing it with other opportunities, with other businesses that can execute things and show them the end users kind of thing. Instead of being one, you're selling a process in the line. What you're helping people with is two, three, four steps removed from where it actually makes an economic impact, where they get the ROI.
Alyson: Yeah, that makes total sense to me. I think that's great. I like being the before factor, VA relationship. I think that would make a huge difference for folks. It would make a huge difference for VA companies too, because they would probably see people sticking around a little longer.
Dean: That's the thing, right?
Alyson: Right.
Dean: That's part of the thing, is I've often found it's so much, sometimes it's way less expensive to get a result for somebody than it is to convince them to give you money to get the result for them.
Alyson: Yeah, totally.
Dean: That's just the truth, because part of the thing is you have to spend so much time educating somebody how to do something that literally it would be easier to just deploy your SOPs through a VA, to actually just do it for them.
Alyson: Yeah, it totally would be, and [inaudible 01:07:49] for sure. I think too, the operators and entrepreneurs don't always speak the same language either, so sometimes it's really difficult to give an entrepreneur a process, and then have them know exactly what to do with it. Sometimes it's really beneficial for them to have us take it straight to the team member and say this is how it works, and they get it immediately.
Dean: Amazing! Well, I'm happy to have been able to meet you and spend some time getting to know what you're up to here.
Alyson: Yeah, likewise. I super appreciate the time and just dedication to helping me think through some of this stuff, and I also appreciate the hard questions you asked. It definitely made me think about my strategy and what 2020 looks like for me moving forward.
Dean: Yeah, it's great. You're doing great stuff. Let's stay in contact and we'll get to know each other. Be great.
Alyson: Yes. Likewise. I'd really like that and appreciate that. Thanks again, for having me on. I really enjoyed this opportunity.
Dean: You are very welcome. Just keep me posted, because I definitely want to see how this unfolds.
Alyson: I'm sorry?
Dean: I said yes, keep me posted, because I definitely want to see how this all unfolds, and I think where can people find out about you, if they're listening and want to get some help with their SOPs?
Alyson: Yes, so my business is called Operations Agency. You can just head to operationsagency.com. I have a ton of resources there. You can decide where you're at and how quickly you want to move. For the most part, truthfully, Dean, I think the book idea is such a great idea, so I definitely will keep you posted on that and let you know how that changes, how people come into my world.
Dean: If only there was somebody who had a process and place to help people write books. That would be a dream come true. If they put it together in a SOP in a company called 90-Minute Books, that would be a dream come true.
Alyson: I suddenly know how I'm going to spend my afternoon.
Dean: That's so funny. Okay. Have a great day.
Alyson: All right. Thanks Dean. You too. Appreciate being on.
Dean: Thanks Alyson. Bye-bye.
Alyson: All right. Bye.
Dean: There we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation and go deeper in how the profit activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now, you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the 8-Profit Activators are part of the Breakthrough DNA process, and you can download a book and a scorecard, and watch a video all about the 8-Profit Activators at breakthroughdna.com, and that's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there, so that's it for this week. Have a great week, and we'll be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.