Engineering Calmer Agencies & Consulting Firms: Calm is the New KPI

These days, we're all looking for a way to cut costs, shore up our foundations, and make our businesses just that little bit simpler. I was in a small group call the other day and one of the women on the call compared this moment in our businesses to when a jigsaw puzzle gets knocked to the floor, scattering pieces everywhere. The great thing is that we don’t have to pick all the pieces – we get t...

Most businesses grow on the fly. We add software and processes and systems here and there – patching in tools “for now” because “it’ll do”. But “for now” almost always turns into “forever”. Because who wants to spend time picking out (and setting up) project management software when you could be out closing clients or delivering white-glove service? You probably picked your project management soft...

For a service business, every single task and touchpoint – from the initial contact to the final payment – should be considered as part of the project that needs to be managed. And you've got a lot of projects on your plate. Projects for clients, projects for your own business – there's always more stuff to do. That's the nature of running a business. When we talk about 'project management', we're...

"Everything sucks at first, very few things suck forever.” – John Gorman Being an entrepreneur is a roller coaster. Some days you’re excited, some days you’re terrified, and every day there is something new – something you’re testing, improving or changing. For me, this is a reminder: When you're on that roller coaster it might a day when you're heading up and it might be a day when you’re heading...

You don’t have to look like the other businesses in your industry to learn from them. In my work as a CFO, I've have had the privilege of looking behind the scenes of a lot of different companies in a lot of different industries. And what I've found is that most tend to look toward businesses that are similar to their own for ideas on how to operate. This is something that has always been my goal...

"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." My guess is that you've probably heard some version of this Peter Drucker quote. It’s a widespread idea for good reason: it's true. Luckily, there are tons of ways to gather good data on your business and track the metrics that really matter. But having access to good data isn't the only hurdle to measuring growth. It’s the day-to-day realities of r...

Are you creating space for growth in your business? You might be measuring every metric–collecting every piece of data and then turning it into a strategy for growth–but do you have the operational foundations to be able to handle growth? Does your team have the capacity to take on more work? In the last 2 episodes– episode 20 , episode 21 –I talked about two different approaches to collecting dat...

It’s easy to get caught up in all the numbers you can track to measure growth. You might be measuring your time, your profit & loss, the number of new clients closed, or even profit per hour per client like we talked about in the last episode . But not all of the useful information in your business presents itself as a number. When it comes to measuring the more murky, squishy, qualitative inf...

Is there one metric you could track that would ensure the success of your business? A lot of startups would like to think so. Some call it the “One Metric That Matters,” or the “North Star Metric.” It’s basically the idea that you focus on measuring and improving one thing at a time. By focusing on a single thing, you can filter for decision making and ensure that the actions you're taking in your...

How you choose to price your services and accept payments is one of those business design choices that we don’t always make conscious choices about. But it is a choice that can have a profound impact on your business and how it feels to run it. It just simplifies everything: from your team composition to how you work to even what project management software you use. We’ve been talking this month a...

Getting paid more for your work, up-front, and without the hassle of tracking your billable hours or issuing invoice after invoice sounds like a dream scenario. But how exactly do you make that happen? Luckily, like so many other aspects of making a service business more efficient: there’s an app for that! In our last few episodes, we’ve talked about some business design choices with pricing and p...

Getting paid by clients is the #1 most important part of the workflow in a service business. If you don’t get paid, eventually, you won’t have a business. But how you go about getting paid – now that’s where some magic can really happen. In our last episode, we talked with Dana Kaye about transitioning from hourly to value-based pricing. The choice to make that switch to value-based pricing then a...

Switching from charging by the hour to a value-based or flat rate model can dramatically improve your workflow. Value-based pricing is a great way to boost profits and to keep your value separate from the hours you work. It allows you to charge your clients upfront, creating a business that is more efficient to run. Take the payment and go do the work. That's it. Most of the time, I'm not a big ad...

Sometimes, when you get really specific about the one thing you do, client meetings become unnecessary Even one-to-one services become unneeded when you've streamlined and productized your service. But how can you keep that high-touch, high-value feeling and still be ruthlessly streamlined behind the scenes? Today, we're talking about an evolution that moves almost completely away from client meet...

Monthly client meetings––they’re a requirement of service retainers. Or, are they? There's an expectation that if you're working with clients on retainer, in an ongoing, recurring way, that you have to have meetings––ya know, just to touch base. Conventional wisdom says that meetings should be included in the service because they seem to deliver inherent value. But meetings are a huge limitation w...

Client meetings can easily fill up your entire calendar–sucking away all of your available time. This time is a valuable asset and it is often the single most limiting factor to the growth of service-based businesses. So what if there was something you could do to reduce this time-suck? All this month on the show we are looking at alternatives–unique ways to communicate with clients and opt-out of...

I make no attempt at hiding my personal dislike of meetings.  I’ve spent more time in meetings about meetings and meetings to prepare for other meetings than I can count. I’ve even suffered through long staff meetings where my boss literally just read printed out emails.  I’ve truly felt the pain of being in meetings that could have just been an email.  But are meetings really inevitable?  All thi...

Even a small, one-person business becomes more profitable and efficient with a solid, repeatable process.  So what happens when we double down on process? In our last episode, I talked to Lacey Stites about how she does this in her agency using a revenue share model. Today, we hear how Jake Jorgovan takes a bit of a different approach and focuses on productizing his service delivery so he can oper...

The messages we get about scaling a service business are pretty one-note.   We’re told that we can’t scale a service business profitably and sustainably while sticking to a one-to-one service delivery model.  We're told to do a bit of client work, spin that into a few digital courses or membership groups, and then sit back and let the money roll on it.  But this isn’t a great fit for everyone. And...

What if instead of spending tons of time creating complicated proposals for prospective clients, you just didn't?  Maybe you believe your complicated, customized proposals help win you more business. But there’s a good chance you’re sacrificing profit and efficiency--without truly seeing gains in real revenue. All this month we are talking about opting out–choosing not to do certain things in your...

We have the freedom to design just about any business we want. We can work with clients in a hundred different ways to deliver our service.    But how that works has a lot to do with the boundaries you set in place.    Boundaries are expectations, guidelines, and frameworks around how we want our work and our lives to happen. They're a really effective way to both deliver better customer service a...

Opting out of business-as-usual practices  or deciding to buck your industry trend can be a really powerful point of differentiation for service businesses    When you opt-out of using corporate jargon or ridiculously complicated implementation processes, you can really stand out from the crowd.    And, making this choice can also be a really great tool for increasing your operational capacity beh...

If you’re struggling to keep your head above water in your business and you can’t figure out how to break the ceiling and scale your business, then you should listen to this Break the Ceiling podcast with ScaleSpark Founder, Susan Boles.  In the first few episodes of this series, Susan has focused on tackling default decisions, those decisions that you might have made in your business without thin...

In this special podcast episode, the shoe is on the other foot - Susan herself is on the receiving end of the interview. And she’s talking to Tara McMullin (who you might remember from the first ever Break the Ceiling episode.) Bottlenecks in a business workflow process and complicated workflows can combine to create huge business growth headaches, not to mention potentially impacting your quality...

Are you looking to break the mold with your business model? Are you one of those business people that make very deliberate decisions and knows that default decisions just can’t apply to your business? Then you need to meet Pia Silva.  If you haven’t heard of the powerhouse that is Pia Silva, then you’re in for a treat. Pia is the founder of Badass Your Brand and Worst of All Design, and she made a...