Building a 7-figure agency isn’t easy.

You’re probably growing like a weed, and killing the competition, but if you’re like most 7-figure agencies, you’re probably growing your revenues which is great. But your costs are probably growing as fast or faster, shrinking your profit margins.

If you want to meet your demand without sinking your profitability, you’ve got to stop thinking about “growing” and start thinking about scaling. They aren’t the same thing. Growth is about increasing the size of your business. Scaling is about increasing your profitability as you grow.

To start scaling, you’ve got to standardize your processes, find your waste, use “force multipliers”, and stop doing work you shouldn’t be doing.

Standardize Your Processes

Standardized processes don’t mean you eliminate all room for creativity or templatize everything. It means that you create a standard flow through which all work passes to ensure all your bases are being covered so your team doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel on all the work that comes through the door.

Custom work is by definition unscalable because every job is 1-off. Standardized processes are fundamentally scaleable which means you can do more with the same team, which increases your profitability.

Find Your Waste

Waste can come in many different forms. It’s not just wasted time or money. Those are just the overarching categories. You can waste time and money overprocessing things, requiring products to pass through more hands than is necessary, or working out defects, just to name a few.

When you find your waste you can get rid of it. That frees up time and money for your team do more work than they were before.

Find “Force Multipliers”

Force multipliers are tools that take whatever work you put in and amplify it. While there are plenty of tools out there that claim to be force multipliers, context matters. Not all tools are created equal.

Both a hammer and a power drill are force multipliers, but I wouldn’t use a hammer to turn a screw. Nor would I use a power drill to hammer in a nail.

Focus on learning where your team needs to multiply their effort. Then find tools that do that and invest in them. And, remember the old adage: hire slow, fire fast can apply to force multipliers, too.

Stop Doing Work You Shouldn’t Be Doing

Your team’s ability to meet demand is a zero-sum game. That means that unless you add resources, the team is only able to do so much work before they’re tapped out. Motivational speeches aside, you can’t ask for more than 24 hours from 1 day. So, if you want to meet demand, you may have to prioritize the work you’re focusing on.

On an agency level, a Revenue Stream Analysis is a great tool to find your most profitable work and clients, so you can focus on your most profitable work and cut the stuff that is harming your profitability.

On an individual level, your team shouldn’t do work that doesn’t move your organization or their client work forward. Cutting unnecessary work frees up time to meet all that excess demand.

Let’s talk about your agency’s profitability and how this applies. Schedule an appointment here or reach out to zac@homericconsulting.com.