Growth and Managing Change for Agencies

Kyle Prinsloo, Brad Hussey, Catherine Madden at UXDX Community: Freelancer and Agency Growth. Video: https://youtu.be/uukAhFIDyaI

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Takeaways from each other's talks

[00:00:06] Catherine: We're going to get stuck into questions now, if that's okay, so I would like to invite Brad back to the conversation. Both of you took quite a different angle to these talks, and a lot of it resonated with me. Did either of you have any big thinking from each other's talks, or a key takeaway that you liked or want to comment on? Maybe, Brad, I'll start with you.

[00:00:35] Brad: What I really appreciate about Kyle's approach is that it's very practical: do this and try this thing. Low-hanging fruit is a really important step when you're starting and when you're looking to get that initial batch or base layer of clients. Like I said at the beginning of mine, we get too in the weeds and we overcomplicate things. But what's nice is what Kyle's done has shown: okay, spend the next 30 days doing just this and get yourself five clients. Then of those five clients you can start building your reputation, and you can start growing that way and getting that network effect to go into motion. Kyle provides a really practical approach, and there's no excuse not to try it. That's what I like.

[00:01:28] Catherine: And I love the rawness of it, the realities of it. I think that's what I liked about both of your talks: they were from different angles, and you can very much see that they're the daily grind. Kyle, did you have any thoughts on Brad's, or your key takeaway?

[00:01:46] Kyle: First of all, I think about a month ago Brad had an amazing mustache. He's not really having it now, so I've missed that from the presentation. But besides that, look, I've seen a lot of Brad's content. A fun fact: I think even in early 2016 I actually studied a course of his on Udemy[?] and stuff, so I've always been a big fan of Brad. He knows that I've watched a lot of his stuff.

[00:02:16] What I admire about Brad as a whole, and it's also in this webinar, is we're essentially saying a lot of the same things, but just in different ways, and it can resonate with different people. That's what I love, because if you type in any topic on YouTube you can have ten different people talking about the same thing, but it's how they do it that resonates with different people. I liked how Brad went into a lot of the realistic expectations on how you can feel about running it like a business, working on it, not in it. Incredibly underrated. Those are the points that I would personally highlight, because that resonates with me as well.

Client acquisition through communities

[00:03:00] Catherine: Fantastic. I'd like to go through, starting off, client acquisition. You both took, as you said, two different angles there. Kyle, you focused very much on the realities of sales and the day-to-day grind. Brad, you focused on the community side and building relationships. Brad, I'll start with you: can you give a specific example of a community that you would recommend getting involved with, that's been quite successful for you?

[00:03:39] Brad: The reason why I'm singing the praises of communities from the mountaintops is because I, in practice, have seen its benefits. I joined a community that's essentially for creators: content creators, bloggers, podcasters, authors, speakers. They create content, they create courses. As a content creator myself, I know a lot of the issues and the struggles that they suffer with, because I have also dealt with those things in that industry and in that space: trying to make money selling courses, or trying to build an audience, or email marketing, all of these things. Now I also happen to be a web designer, and as Kyle just said in his last slide, start with what you know and then grow as you go.

[00:04:42] In this community I took an active approach to listening to what people were saying and what they were struggling with, and I would just volunteer my answers. I would jump in and answer the questions, I'd help them out, I'd shoot a quick video and attach it to my comment to show them how to do it. I'd do this all for free, just to say, "Hey, here's how you do it, here's how I do it, try this." A lot of the time people would say, "Hey, I need help hooking my website up to my email marketer. I'm not really sure what to do here," and they'd have a question.

[00:05:16] A lot of the time people would then jump on that like piranhas, thinking it was a way to get a little bit of money out of somebody, and say, "I can do this, I could do it for super cheap. I'm a web designer, or I know a little bit of coding, or I know email marketing. You can hire me, hire me, hire me, please, please, please." It was really pathetic, that's the way I saw it. And as the original poster, that's repulsive: I don't want anything to do with this. You're not actually trying to help me, you're trying to get a little bit of money out of me. Not even an honorable amount where you're trying to make a good living; you're just trying to squeeze a few dollars out of me, and it's kind of gross.

[00:05:53] What I would do is turn on my camera. I've invested in a nice little setup here, and I'd shoot a high-production, really good, thoughtful, thorough answer showing them how to do it, right in front of everybody. Something that you would pay for. I would solve it for them right there in front of everybody. Then inevitably what would happen is, "Oh my gosh, that was amazing. I'm going to DM you right now." That DM would lead to, "Can we get on the phone?" Yes, exactly, that's what I offer. Let's get on the phone, we talk, we figure it out, I make an offer, deal signed. I carry on and I serve them very well, and that leads to referrals.

[00:06:39] That's how communities really help you. Put in that work of helping, offering, adding value, answering questions and just being completely valuable for free, because that leads to building a great reputation, and somebody landing in your DMs saying, "Please help me, where do I sign up?"

Cold outreach and what no longer works

[00:06:57] Catherine: Great, thank you for that. It's really insightful. We've had a number of questions on both sides, coming from two angles. I want to now go more into a different angle, the reality that many freelancers face, which is going into the weeds of cold outreach, which, Kyle, was the angle that you went to. What outreach platform has been the most and least successful for you? If you take LinkedIn, email, is there any one that has been the most successful, or is it a combination?

[00:07:37] Kyle: That's actually a good question. I'll give my answer, but before I do I want to preface it by saying this doesn't mean that it'll work for you, because every niche and every industry is very different, and also what you say and how you say it. With that said, for me, what works very well is LinkedIn and Twitter as outreach. Instagram and Facebook are not as good as LinkedIn. That's my answer.

[00:08:10] Catherine: Great. And just a follow-up: what was one of the approaches you used that was once your most successful outreach? What was your go-to, and what is the one that you no longer use?

[00:08:29] Kyle: I love that one. What I don't use is cold calls. It was embarrassing, it was sad. I'm just glad it wasn't recorded, that's all I can say. So I'll answer that with that: no more cold calls. I think I could do it better now, but it just scarred me, so I wouldn't be able to do it anymore. In terms of the approaches, it's literally exactly what I said: I would go to a landing page of a client that I want, record a quick Loom with some suggestions, and just send it: "Hey, here's some suggestions that I have, no obligations, all the best." It's amazing what opportunities have come from it. Very lucrative monthly retainers come from it for clients. So that's exactly what I said.

[00:09:29] Catherine: Really great. I think people forget, pre-2007, I remember reaching out even to speakers with no LinkedIn, no anything, and you'd have to call up the reception and try to find somebody who works in a certain job title. So it's nice to see how things evolve.

Quality versus quantity in video

[00:09:46] Catherine: Going on to the recording. Brad, I believe it was you that was talking through the recordings taking 15 to 20 minutes. No, actually this was you, Kyle. Forgive me, it's because both of you covered these topics and both of you can answer. How do you get the balance of quality versus quantity for recordings and pushing them out? Brad, I might get you to answer that one first.

[00:10:16] Brad: Is that in reference to creating content and publishing content?

[00:10:22] Catherine: That is in reference to creating videos and video snippets. You covered it, but Kyle also covered it as well. So say, sharing that with a client or a potential client.

[00:10:31] Brad: Yes. Any helpful video is more valuable than a very pretty unhelpful video. Let's say somebody asks a question in a community, or a LinkedIn post, or in a forum of some sort, and it's something that you can genuinely help with. Just firing up your webcam, or shooting an iPhone video on selfie mode by a window, honestly, that's better than nothing, so long as you can actually genuinely help. With something like loom.com you can create really easy screen recordings with your webcam in the bottom corner, and you can send a shareable file. It's very, very easy.

[00:11:11] Now for me, in terms of making that good answer and the good subject matter more palatable, or more enjoyable, or very pleasant to look at or listen to, that's where, as a content creator myself, I've invested in a nice light and a nice camera and a nice setup, and I figured it out that way. But the main important key aspect is you should have a good answer, and you could be able to do that with just an audio file. If you've got a good answer and you do this more and more and more, there's nothing wrong with looking and sounding nice while doing it, because it's just delivered in a more palatable package. That's a priority that I have. But I've seen people who've done the same strategy with a real sketchy webcam video, and it's been amazing because they solved the problem.

[00:12:04] Catherine: Great. Kyle, can you answer the same question?

[00:12:07] Kyle: Sure. I would just say that a video is better than no video. As Brad was speaking, it reminded me of Picasso, because there are actually a lot of studies done, especially by a guy named Malcolm Gladwell, and Adam Grant, and those sorts of psychologists, where they studied the whole concept of quantity leading to quality, and they justify that that is what happens. I would actually challenge most people in the chat to look at their favorite YouTubers. If you look at the very first video, if they still keep it live, very often it's quite embarrassing, and they actually feel a little bit embarrassed about some of their content. I think that's a good thing, because it's progression.

[00:12:59] But again, I would circle back to say a video is better than no video, because I think the issue with a lot of people today is perfection. If you worry about perfectionism and overthink things, you just don't do it. You overthink it and you just don't do it. So take action, do it and improve as you go, and I think the quantity will lead to quality.

Committing to sales and knowing your why

[00:13:20] Catherine: Great, and a quick follow-up, Kyle, for you on the commitment. You get down the funnel of sales. You obviously want to spend the majority of your time doing the work and not having to do sales, but it's a fact of life. How do you best secure the commitment? How do you get to that sales step?

[00:13:45] Kyle: I think it's important to understand why you are doing it. As a freelancer, or as an agency owner, or whatever you do, you've got stuff to do. Let's say you work eight hours a day. You can't be working in your business; as Brad said, you need to work on your business, and to work on it you have to do sales, you have to work on getting more clients. I use an example of the valley income: freelancers get this big client and they're like, "Yeah, amazing," and they just keep working one month, two months, three months. Then the client leaves for whatever reason, and they're like, "Whoa, what just happened? I'm starting over from scratch."

[00:14:27] I think it's so important to prioritize it and have the mindset of when my client leaves, not if. That will give you perspective to always do continuous outreach. Even if, let's say, you've got eight hours in a day and you just do two hours a day to focus on getting those clients, you have to do it. Otherwise eventually you're not going to have a sustainable business. That's my opinion.

[00:14:51] Catherine: I love that. Brad, do you have anything to add to that?

[00:14:55] Brad: Like I said, my motto is "go for no." Don't be afraid to just push forward and do something that is likely to fail, or not lead to you getting a client. I think it's just really important that you see the whole thing as a business owner, understanding your why, as Kyle said. If you're doing a hard thing, like you're on a call with a lead (maybe you don't do cold calls, but you have someone who booked a call through your site, or they heard about you through a referral), and you're on the call and they're asking you questions like, "Well, why would I hire you? Why do I need a website?" or "Oh, I didn't know you were going to charge that much. Why that much, when I could get someone cheaper on Fiverr?"

[00:15:39] If you don't know why you're doing it, you don't have a good anchor to draw from, and then you're going to be really easily knocked over, or washed ashore. You want to have a good anchor and a good why. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this hard thing? If you have a good answer for that, like it's providing for your family, or it's freedom, or it's venturing into an area that allows you to build a lifestyle that's really meaningful to you, or it contributes to something bigger than you, then you're like, "Yeah, I'll do the hard thing. I'm happy to be embarrassed on this call, I'm happy to be shaky on this call, because the more I do it, the better I'm going to get." And the more hardy you will become, because it's all in service to a bigger objective and a bigger why.

Work-life balance

[00:16:29] Catherine: That brings me on to something, Brad, that you touched on almost at the very beginning of your talk, which was work-life balance. Being either a freelancer or an agency trying to constantly please multiple clients, work-life balance is a challenge for everybody. What is the single most important change that you have made for your work-life balance? And Kyle, the same question would come to you too.

[00:16:59] Brad: The single most important change is something that I think has evolved, and I've gotten better with it over time, but the idea was planted a long time ago when I first started freelancing. I figured this out pretty quickly, and it's probably taken me years to get great at it, and I'm much better at it now. When you first start, you have this abundance of time. You're no longer working at a job and you're running your own business, and especially if you're running it from home on a computer, you can never stop working. You can always be working: you can work all day, you can work into the evening, you can work on the weekends.

[00:17:42] Now we've got these really incredible devices in our pockets, but that also means you're working in between moments. You have moments where you're constantly jabbing yourself with a little bit of work, and it's never escaping your mind, and it's actually brutal. It's like torture. As much as I love what I do, I actually love my family more, and I love being able to do things with my family more. The only reason I work and do what I do is because it's in service of my family. It's not the other way around. So I have a clear priority set.

[00:18:20] When I started realizing, and my wife was realizing, "Hey, look, you're always in work mode. I can see you're not there. We're eating dinner, or we're out, or going for a walk, and you're not there." "Oh, I'm thinking about that client, or that email I just looked at after work hours, and they were angry, and now I'm thinking about it and have to solve it." And you're like, no, there are boundaries. The client can wait. The job can wait, the project can wait, the initiative can wait, the career can wait. Take it, put it in its box, and give it its proper attention when you're doing it.

[00:18:56] Set those boundaries. When you're done, it's just a hard cut-off: "Oh, sorry, I'm not working. I am Dad Brad right now. I have nothing to do with any of that." That's taken time to really implement, and I'm much more disciplined and better at it now. But I realized that a long time ago, when the two blurred together: create some clear boundaries and stick to them.

[00:19:22] Catherine: Great. Kyle, what about you? What's been your single biggest change for a better work-life balance?

[00:19:30] Kyle: I actually like what Brad said. I'll maybe say exactly what he said, but in a different way. For me it's very much about being intentional about it, and also, like him, I just got better at it over the years. I came to the realization that I need to create a business around my desired lifestyle, and not the other way around. I had to be intentional about that, whereas a lot of people will have their lifestyle around their business, but that's not what I wanted to do.

[00:20:08] Look, at the moment, for transparency, it's extremely busy for me, because I'm working on very different stuff at the moment, managing quite a few people and everything. And it's amazing, I love what I do, and I think that's also a problem, when you really love what you do, where it's actually a hobby and you wake up excited on a Monday morning to actually get started. So just to wrap up: intentional, and a business around your desired life.

Managing growth from freelancer to agency

[00:20:40] Catherine: That leads on to a perfect transition. You've hit the jackpot on your freelancing, and you have now secured many clients, and you're moving into almost an agency world. How do you manage that growth, or what do you think is the key in that intermediary stage? Kyle, maybe you could start first on that transition, because you touched on it there.

[00:21:08] Kyle: Sure. I think there are many ways to do this. For me, I've been bootstrapped the whole time, and I'm very intentional about ROI, growth strategy, time. At the moment I work with about 10 or 12 different people, contractors slash full-time employees and stuff. It's a tactic; you have to be intentional, as Brad explained. What was it, the EDAK or something? Brad, you can touch on it, because I think that explains it: outsourcing, delegating, and that type of thing. I think you have to be intentional about that, so that's the way I'll leave that. I think it's important to outsource. You don't want to be the one really doing the work. You want to also utilize a lot of tools. You want to work smart, not hard, as cliché as that sounds, but it's true. I'm curious to know what Brad's practice is.

[00:22:17] Brad: That's great. If you're growing, you're inevitably going to bottleneck. You're going to reach tension, there's going to be friction, and it's going to be problematic. Now, that's a good sign of a growing business. If you're like, "I've got so many clients coming in right now, and I can only do two of these projects at once, and I've got this, and there are all these emails," you're like, "Hey, congratulations, that means you are growing." But what are you doing about it? You're just trying to manage it all and trying to put out fires. Well, guess what: that growth turns into friction and tension, and if it's not addressed, it's actually going to create a big issue for you. It's going to implode, it's going to catch fire, whatever metaphor you want to use. It's going to be a problem.

[00:23:05] Right now it's a sign you're growing, but you need to say it's a garden that's growing. You need to give it more space, you need to create another box and transplant some things over here, you need to expand something. Or you need to cut back. Maybe you've already reached "this is all I need, this is enough, and I don't need this extra," so maybe I need to cut clients, maybe I need to turn off the funnel, or maybe I need to pause. But more realistically, what's going to happen is you're growing and you're bottlenecking.

[00:23:36] That's where you trigger the EDAK method: eliminate, delegate, automate, keep. Revisit that when you feel like you're getting overwhelmed and things are starting to pile up and your to-do list is getting bigger than your "to done" list. You've got to look at it and go, "Okay, this thing I'm doing this exact moment." Let's use this presentation, for example. It's on my to-do list today and it needed to be executed. I would look at it and go: is this something that is necessary? Yes, so I'm not going to eliminate it. What's next? Is this something that needs to be done by a human? Absolutely. Does that human need to be me? Yes. Okay, that's on my keep list. I will give that attention.

[00:24:17] Now, let's say I'm publishing a bunch of YouTube videos. Do I need to be the one coming up with all the descriptions and the thumbnails and the tags and the SEO and all that stuff? I can spend days doing that. I don't need to be the one doing it, so I pay for somebody else to do it for me. So it happens in tandem with me doing something like this. While I'm doing this, five or ten other things are happening as a part of my one-man company, because I have delegated by hiring subcontractors and people to help, or systems and automations. Eliminate, delegate, automate, keep: revisit that as you start to get overwhelmed and as you grow. That'll relieve the bottleneck temporarily until you grow further, and then you do it again, and you keep going.

Parting advice

[00:25:05] Catherine: Love it. That is amazing, thank you both. I will finish up because we're out of time, but I would like to ask you both: is there anything that wasn't covered that you might like to touch on, or leave a lasting note for people who were watching?

[00:25:23] Brad: For me, I'll just really hammer down the point of joining a community. There are lots you can join. I would be remiss if I didn't recommend both mine and Kyle's; they both serve similar but different areas of this type of business. creativecrewcommunity.com[?]. These people, if you're growing in this industry, are your peers, or your partners, or your referral sources, or your mentors: people you can learn from, people you can serve and help, possibly even potential client sources. Doing this not in a vacuum is really important, because you might walk away from this with all these cool, inspiring ideas, but then as soon as it gets hard, which it will tomorrow, you'll just go back to flatline. You need help, you need guidance, you need support, and that's what a community does.

[00:26:10] Catherine: Amazing. And Kyle?

[00:26:13] Kyle: I would also highlight that, with Brad. When I started freelancing in 2015, I had an accountability partner, a friend, and we would meet once a month and chat about the goals and the journey and the progress and everything, just for a year, and that really helped me. So I think communities are underrated. Accountability is underrated: you don't have to feel like you have to do it alone.

[00:26:39] In terms of parting advice, there are many ways to do it, and people have different opinions about how to do it, but I think it's important that it gets done, that something is done. A lot of the time, what I've seen as a big hurdle is often a mental hurdle. People are worried: what happens if I fail, what happens if it doesn't work, and all of these things. I think freelancing, slash building an agency, building a business, whatever it is, is incredible. It's amazing if you look at what comes from it. But the hardest part is the starting part.

[00:27:18] I would want to encourage everyone to give it an honest attempt for a year. You can even do it on the side; that's exactly what I did, on a full-time job. It was difficult, but trust me, I'm grateful to my younger self for making those compromises along the way. And don't be afraid to fail. Making mistakes and looking a bit weird in doing things, that's how we grow. I want to encourage you to do it. Again, start with what you know, and learn as you go. That's what I would say: get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

[00:27:54] Catherine: I think what you've both summarized really demonstrates today that you brought two totally different angles to two very similar perspectives. For me you've been some of the most complementary speakers together, so I hope you do more stuff together. One of the big topics that we didn't get a chance to cover, that maybe you could cover on your blogs, would be the common mistakes agencies and freelancers make in their first year in terms of failure. That has been a big one in terms of people asking, that we didn't get to cover.

[00:28:29] Thank you both. I would strongly recommend everybody check out each person's website. This is live streamed; it is also recorded and it will be available on the UXDX site and on our YouTube channel as well. The links to both Brad's and Kyle's communities will be at the bottom of each profile on our website, which you will most likely be watching right now. Thank you both again. I really, really enjoyed that, and I hope to get to talk to you again soon.

[00:29:02] Kyle: Thank you so much. Thanks, Catherine.

[00:29:04] Brad: Thanks, everyone. Thank you.