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[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello hello how are you can I just a second pulling up my notes I'm ready for ya hi what a day what a crazy hectic busy fun day I love days like today I had a coaching call with my master mind my agency accelerator mastermind and I had a call with my integrator to talk about all of the cool things we're gonna be doing for you guys through the rest of the year and then I had I'm doing this I have a call with my copywriter at 2:00 who is helping me write a book for you guys just a really cool um ebook we're putting together that is going to be seriously awesome I'm not gonna tell you anything more about it and then I am recording a podcast in for a show that's very popular in Australia which will be really really fun I'm such a great audience there and I actually have quite a few women in my program that are in Australia and New Zealand so it's fun to connect with that audience um the days like this that are so hectic for me fly by in two seconds I love what I'm doing there's such cool stuff in the works for you guys and it's kind of crazy it's like what can I do to clear my plate on my PR agency side so that I can focus on coaching strategies and teaching you all of the like newest latest and greatest ways for you to increase profitability in your business one of the things that came up today on a coaching call was really thinking about the skills that you need to have in order to make your business the most profitable and also the services that you need to offer and one of the things that has come up time and time again is you know I coach a lot of people in different types of agencies different marketing agencies and they are finding the most margin the most profitability on their PR services that's what I'm trying to tell you you want to optimize profitability in your business if you have a social media agency other sort of digital marketing agency adding PR services into the mix of what you're doing is going to help you optimize your profitability and if you're offering PR services I have strategies that I can teach you for how you can really leverage time effort energy we talked yesterday about getting into this flow state and figuring out your niche in a way where you're able to leverage relationships your contacts your ideas and strategies to benefit multiple types of clients in Nisha's that are aligned that overlaps somewhat and allowing you to get into this amazing flow state so these are the strategies that I think really set apart profitable successful agency owners these strategies where they're able to really optimize their their efforts so you're not doing more work to make more money you're actually doing the most work the I guess the minimum amount of work possible to make the most money possible right I want to get you in a flow state your business is frictionless your clients are aligned your work flies by that's my goal for you and one of the things that I wanted to kind of share with you through that is the skills that I believe are important for you to have in order to run a successful agency right and one of the things I will say is that you don't really even need to personally possess all of these skills the great thing about running an agency is you can you're out for your weaknesses and then just work in your Zona genius doing the things you love doing the things that lights you up that you're great at and clearing your plate of the things that you don't enjoy and that's the beauty of this business it's that you don't need to do it all and you can bring in your team to help you but what are those things that you do need to do in a PR business and um kind of worked on some of this to really think about the most important thing and I spend a little bit of time kind of putting this together and the thing that came up over and over again is that there's two things that are the key most important things the number one thing is storytelling this number one skill is storytelling and that's being able to look at product or service for an expert and see the different ways that you can fit that client that content into what an editor might be talking about so there are different story angles different ideas and you need to present that to the editor in order to get coverage for your clients so it could be different trend angles seasonal story angles any kind of unique journey that that entrepreneur took in founding their company are developing their unique process for how they get the results that they get for their clients that unique journey is probably useful for other people to know these are where you find the little gems and the little nuggets in your kind of stories right the this is kind of interesting and I've always been told like why did you go from bought a PR it makes no sense this is like such a weird 180 it's kind of a nonlinear path and it's definitely not totally logical but this is a key thing that does relate to my role as a litigator when I was in law think about this both sides of the case have the same information the same facts the same evidence and also the same precedence so the same law that applies to them and it's your job to tell the right story in a way that makes you and your case more compelling over the opposition so you're taking the same set of facts and you're positioning your clients argument in a way that's more compelling you're positioning the facts to align with what argument your client is making you have to paint a better picture for your version of what happened and that's basically what PR is it's looking at all aspects of your clients business the products the benefits the ingredients the journey to get here the reason why they do this business if they have a charitable angle all of that are the elements that you can use to tell great stories right and that's how you write compelling pitches and that's how you get an editor's attention storytelling is the number one most important skill to have in running an agency or doing you know providing PR services you need to be able to kind of look at the thing and see all of the different ways that you can talk about it that are compelling newsworthy so you can stick around year after year and you're not just kind of continuing to launch like a one-hit wonder right you want to kind of justify your existence like for example I had a client a haircare company that did not launch a new product for two years two years with no new products but we were able to take their existing products come up with new story angles come up with new ideas one of the things we did is we took a like a deep conditioning hair mask we came up with a new idea like let's put it on a little dish stick it in the microwave warm it up for 30 seconds and now it's a deep penetrating and you know conditioning hair mask and we came up with like a summer angle for you know hair that's been damaged by the pool you can do this with this hair mask and make it like a deep conditioning hair mask so we were able to continue using the same products that were not new for two plus years and get new story ideas new ankles going for this client so one thing to kind of think about too is if you are not great at this that's okay if you're not if you're not a good storyteller you can find people that are really good at this and if your skill is managing building a team and moving projects forward that's where you focus your zone of genius and you bring on the team members to do that now in my own agency I'm not doing the pitching anymore I'm rarely coming up with the story ideas maybe I do the overall strategy but I'm not actually doing all of this story pitches and the day-to-day execution so I have to elevated my role to the visionary in the company and I kind of oversee the team doing that but that's how I serve in my business I'm not in a storytelling role anymore but I really like sales and I do business development which leads me to the number two skill that is the most important is sales so for two reasons essentially PR is sales right it's like a glorified sales position it's convincing editors producers podcasters bloggers influencers that your product is great and instead of buying it and paying money for it they are going to write about it cover it use it talk about it or whatever right so it's similarly positioning a product in a way that is kind of like how you would convince a consumer to buy it so just like when you're selling a product or service service you're convincing someone to buy it and in PR you're convincing them to present the client the to to share the clients information because you're pitching it in an interesting and compelling way right and so it's our job your storytelling and to kind of have the media consider unique ways of featuring the product right and coming up with something new that's like kind of a sales approach it's storytelling and it's also like giving a compelling sales angle but also I happen to be very good at client development and business development and that is a sales function I'm really good at figuring out how to position our services so that we're not selling based on what we the client can afford but really positioning the value that we provide in order to get the clients to buy into our rate and happily pay us our premium rates right and so this these are some of the strategies that I teach because that sales process is so nuanced I actually have like a ninja sales strategy workbook we go through a whole training on it because I want you to optimize your revenue and minimize the amount of effort you're putting into things and that goes down to knowing how to position your services when you're on those discovery calls getting the most out of the clients you know discovery calls and and all of that so that you can present your rate and they don't bat an eye you're not going to be discounting you're not gonna be pricing out of fear all of that right so that's something to kind of also think about that if you're great at sales then you will not only be able to position your clients products really well in the media and kind of convince the media to pay attention and write about them but also you can sell into your agency for premium retainers and your clients are gonna like happily pay them and this is something that can be taught okay so if you're not great at it or you there's a lot of like psychology around selling and you know actually talk about it and share that but it just know that it is something that can be taught and it is the way for you to kind of optimize profitability in your business and it's a very important skill to learn how to do the right way and another skill so I'm on number three time management is really important because you're managing a lot of clients you're managing a lot of pitches and you are going to be the one that's kind of driving these projects forward so you have to be really good at managing your time and keeping track of things that's number five is actually being organized but figuring out how to allocate your time in a way where you're you're optimizing the efforts that you're making for clients in a minimal amount of time right because if you have a retainer I don't want you basing it on the amount of time you're spending on account the real margin the real profit that you're making in your business is that you with a retainer are not you're providing a service and getting results you're not giving them a bundle of hours and so if you do something in an hour versus something in ten hours you have all of that additional time for other clients other projects more profitability in your business so if you're excellent at time management or you learn the skills to be a great time manager you can optimize profitability in your business another skill so we have the number one skill storytelling sales time management number four is persistence and I want you to realize that you can be persistent in a helpful way and a not annoying way so a lot of people are afraid to follow up because they feel that being persistent is annoying but it's not and being persistent is helpful if you are offering something of value to the person on the other end and you're persistently following up in a way that provides value that reminds them of something that's beneficial to them and their readers that's persistence in a powerful in a positive way and not annoying and nagging and like you know you're not gonna say something like was it something I said I mean if you send an email like that you're you're not great at what you're do I think I get those emails all the time and I'm like what I'm a hold on one second my light came in then hold on under the desk pause I'm like operating with this like tiny little this tiny little like cord here so just because I have a window coming at me this way and there's like no light over here so anyway persistence is where the transactions happen this is where we get our stories to convert it's never usually on the first pitch it's always on the follow-up so if you can be persistent in a helpful strategic way not an annoying way then you are possessing one of the six key skills to running a successful agency so number have I mentioned earlier but to elaborate on it is being organized and that will help you keep track of all of your client leads all of the new business leads and opportunities you have the different stages your client development is in and all of the clients that you're managing and all of the pitches that are going out so it does take organization however I teach ways in order to manage all of your client sales development all of your new business development so that it's not overwhelming and the way that I that I coach you through how to run a profitable agency which is based on my path to profitability framework it's like strategy sales service and scale when we get to that scale and that strategy piece I'm having you focus on developing your agency in a way where you're working in a flow State I mentioned this at the top of the call too and it allows you to optimize your profitability minimize the effort so there's less to keep organized plus I teach like strip frameworks and strategies that allow you to just take are they're called SOPs right standard operating procedures it's literally like how we run our agency how we serve our billion dollar brands five figure monthly retainer clients these are our processes and you literally take that and you give it to your team and you say this is how you do this piece so it's less to get organized but it's really all there for you and if you are really great at Oregon it staying organized you can keep track of all of the different things that you have going on in your business or again the benefit of having an agency is you can outsource that piece of it to be really honest with you I am not totally organized I'm not great at file structure and saving things but my you know in like an illogical organized way my team is excellent at it and so they keep me organized by helping create these strategies and structures so that it's just like turnkey right and then and I have this like flow state that we get into because we have a very strategic approach for how we're bringing in clients I have very clear vision and values for my company so I know without a doubt the second I see something whether it's a hell yes and if it's not a hell yes it's a hell no right and I'm very comfortable to turn down work because it doesn't align with my company vision and values and part of that is staying organized and being really clear with what I do in my business who I serve and how I serve them and getting everybody into like a really consistent flow state and having a really kind of smooth onboarding process it's part of my framework for how you come you serve clients in a way that gets them to stick around long term because we're looking for predictable recurring retainer revenue that's what the agency life is all about predictable recurring retainer revenue we're getting away from hourly I don't even want you to like ever talk about hourly you're never calculating dollars for hours and you're also going to move away from project based services you want to go for predictable recurring retainer revenue that's the model and then number six so we've got storytelling sales time management persistence but not annoying right helpful persistence not annoying persistence and being organized and the sixth skill is customer relationship management can you be a people person because there's so much that goes into this I like don't even know where to start there's so much but I have seen agency owners ruin relationships over non-consequential things because they are adamant about a contract or like I've had clients that will say you know what for whatever reason the budget didn't come through or we're not going to continue or can you terminate our contract early my answer is always yes my number one goal is getting the customers to feel getting our clients to feel taken care of and that even means up they're leaving early I want them to leave our agency and always have nothing but things to say about working with us I'm never gonna I'm always gonna accept responsibility um take blame I'm always gonna share credit with the team and I want my team to look really good so that it helps me look really good and my agency look really good and that all comes from like customer relationship management being a really good people person you also want to kind of endear your team and yourself to your clients because when you become an extension of their team they feel like you're part of their company they feel taken care of and also by the way it's like harder to fire somebody that they view as a friend right they really like you and they you can have candid conversations we have inside jokes with our clients like we get in there and start talking with them as if we are part of the team like we will say our business you know this client editor or this influencer is gonna post this picture for us our brands you know it's like as if we are internal at the company we want them to feel taken care of we want them to feel like we are in part of the team so that we are invested in their success and we also then you know kind of crack inside jokes and like get get that kind of camaraderie going because I'm telling you that's the key to longevity with your clients is having them feel like you're in it to win it you've got their back you're part of the team and my whole goal for you and your agency with my framework is to establish a really solid foundation of consistent recurring retainer revenue so like if clients come and go like in my group somebody posted yesterday in my mastermind that they lost a client and she looked at it like a win and she said instead of panicking she was like this clears my plate to really seek out the kind of business that I want to have and she knew that because she has this framework for bringing in new business for maintaining those other clients that she's working with that losing a client here and there it's not a big deal it's really not a big deal you can easily replace it so nobody panics when they a client and that you know kind of also goes to the fact of making these deep solid relationships so your other clients are sticking around and clients come and go it's never personal you never have to make it mean anything about you if a client leaves it's never personal and if you make it personal you're going to continue playing small in your business you have to elevate yourself to a role in your company where the outcomes that you get for your clients or whether somebody chooses your agency or not or whether a client leaves it doesn't mean anything about you you're running a business and that's just what happens in business but when you have the solid framework and the solid foundation and you have these six skills of storytelling sales time management persistence being organized and having really great customer relationship management skills you or you hire out for them you will have the elements that you need to run a profitable agency where you have really great leverage of your time you're not trading dollars for hours and you're working with your dream clients I'm making more money than ever or working with fewer clients than ever which is great it's exactly what I want and that to me is the ultimate like definition of success is like I had enough time for you know try I just went to Yosemite with my kids I just went to Chicago for my mastermind I left and my business did not skip a beat I was in the woods for four days with no cell service and really spotty Wireless and I completely checked out and had the time the best time with my family I don't know if you guys saw my insta stories I had the best best time with my family and that's the kind of business I want to set you up for is great revenue predictable consistent recurring revenue knowing you can always go back to the well turn on the tap and bring new clients into your business whenever you need more money and keep those current clients happy and taken care of and have a solid foundation of that predictable recurring revenue so you always have a profitable business so hopefully this is helpful to you let me know in the comments which skills do you think that your great which skills do you think that you could use some help with um it's really interesting for me to see and again I'm not great at all of these things and I actually have hired out for my weaknesses and I run an agency around my strengths where I'm working in my zone of genius and the things that I don't love doing I don't do it in my business I have somebody else do it and we make money on it so let me know in the comments give me a little give me a little comment here where you feel you have the best skills that I mentioned and where maybe you think you can grow and improve a little bit so I'll look out for your comments thanks so much for being here live I've got another one coming tomorrow actually we have another really good live topic tomorrow and please please grab my agency owners toolkit it is some of the tools and resources that I use in my business to serve our billion dollar brands they'll help save you time make you more money there's a an onboarding process for my clients of all the things that they need to run a successful campaign and a whole document for how we leverage our results it's part of the this service model that we do to keep clients getting more out of the things that we're doing for them and get them sticking around a lot longer okay it's it's easier to keep a client than it is to find and get a new client so let's keep those clients sticking around my agency owners toolkit you can grab it here there's a link it's generation academy.com slash agency accelerator toolkit you can see it at the top there so at that link grab my toolkit and leave your comments let me know what are you the best dot in your business and we're gonna get some help alright guys I'll see you tomorrow thanks so much for being here