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Verbatim text
Lee: Before we kick off the show, can I encourage you to listen back to episode 200, where I share how to transform your agency? It’s a combination of my own story, but also five pillars of transforming your business. Really, really useful episode. We’ve had tons of amazing and encouraging feedback, so I just want to encourage you, if you’ve not listened to episode 200, please download that and go ahead and check that one out. Now. Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show we have the one and only Mr. Handsome. That’s Troy Dean on the show explaining how we can scale our agencies. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride and the Australian accent. Welcome to a conversation today with my very handsome and Australian friend, Mr. Troy Dean. How are you, sir?
Troy: I’m very well, Mr. Jackson. How are you?
Lee: What I love about when we have a conversation is how good your voice sounds. You know. You know, that is that ASMR thing they have going on. It’s like you’ve got that therapeutic effect. When I listen to your Voice, the the. Yeah, just like that. That was it.
Troy: Well, my wife’s a psychologist, you see. And so. And we’re on a mission to stay calm. So I don’t always sound like this, but it is the end of the day, and I’m just about beyond giving a shit, so I’m about as chilled out as it comes. And can I just say, my friend, the admiration seriously just goes one way here, so I do appreciate it. Thank you. I’m kidding.
Lee: I was just thinking I was imagining you, like getting a packet of matches or something and starting to shake it either side of the microphone to give it that kind of effect. ASMR guys like, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, just go on YouTube. It’s like going crazy at the moment. Anyway, enough about YouTube and everything. Troy, you’ve been on the show a few times. There’s loads happening over the next few months with you and with us, etc. what I would love, first of all, is to just have a little catch up. Tell us, what are you up to nowadays? Since our last episode together, which I think was one month ago, wasn’t it? What’s been going on in the Troy’s world?
Troy: Well, I am traveling a fair bit, running live events, which is probably the most fun part of the job, really doing a lot of podcast. We’re WP Elevation continues to grow. We have our Mavericks Club Mastermind, which is our high end mastermind for our high performers, which is going really well. We’ve got a whole bunch of new courses coming out in 2019 for our audience. We’re on a mission to make 5000 WordPress consulting firms profitable by the end of 2019. That’s our mission. And it all comes down to I kind of coined this phrase. The other week while I was driving home from the office and I left a message, a voice message on slack for our team. And I said, you know, I think it comes down to this. The reason that I keep doing this, because let me tell you something like, this is the hardest freaking thing I’ve ever done in my life. It also happens to be the most rewarding and the most fun, but it is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And the reason I keep doing it in the face of adversity. While everyone is telling me that I’m crazy and that you know that we can’t do it with the resources and the team that we’ve got, and that we’re punching above our weight and all that kind of stuff. The reason I keep doing it is because I believe the underdog needs a champion, and I want to be the champion for the underdog. I am the underdog. I’ve done this against all odds. This should never have worked in a million years. And it has. And it’s going to keep working. And I fundamentally believe that that having your own small business is an incredible vehicle through which to express yourself as a creative human being, and it’s also an incredible vehicle for you to carve out a very solid and secure financial future. And that might be a little bit controversial for a lot of people listening to this podcast. But I know, hand on heart that that having your own small business lifts the ceiling on what you can earn and the impact that you can have on other people, and the difference that you can make in the world and the success that you can enjoy. So for me, there’s no going back. I’ll be doing this for the next ten or 15 or 20 years or however long they’ll keep letting me broadcast on the internet. I’ll be doing this awesome. Until somebody comes along and says, all right, that’s enough. We’re sick of listening to you and just turns me off. But until that point, I will keep I’ll keep sharing the message and spreading the love and helping people.
Lee: Absolutely. And if it’s any encouragement whatsoever, if you just look at me and then look at pictures of my wife, you’ll realize that punching above your weight actually works out. And in the long run, which is good. And also, um, so I joined with elevation. I’d say like 4 or 5 years ago, it was just me and I had one person working with me, and it really worked for us even four years ago, being able to just, you know, really focus in on who we were serving, etc.. You were giving us the documentation that we needed. So we started off with your contracts and everything, and we were able to build our business at rapidly to profit. We were able to travel well, not the world, because Florida to me, well, in theory of the world because Epcot has got the world inside of it. So we’ll say the world because we go to Disney all the freaking time. But it really has. It’s for us, it’s been about creating a business that allows us to serve other people. But most importantly as well, we’ve been able to create so many amazing times together as a family. Yeah, which has been phenomenal. And I’ve always attributed so much of that to the amazing content that you’re putting out even four and five years ago, which is phenomenal. And every time somebody new comes to us, maybe a new WordPress consultant or someone who’s just getting into this space or someone that’s just stressed out, I say, go to WP elevation.com and go and check out the content. So folks, if you’re listening, if you don’t know who Troy is, go check out WP elevation.com. I have this guy on a pedestal. He knows that I think he’s a legend.
Troy: I appreciate.
Troy: The kind words and it actually like it really does make a difference. Like, I can’t tell you how much it makes a difference when people acknowledge, you know, and thank us for the work that we’re doing because we all work extremely hard and you don’t get you don’t get that kind of acknowledgement very often. You get, you know, if something goes wrong, people tell you straight away if there’s a link that’s out of date or some resource you mentioned that doesn’t work anymore. People tell you straight away, but you don’t often get the thanks. So I do appreciate it. And what is amazing is the community that we’ve managed to build, that the global community that we’ve managed to build. So I’m now in this very, very, very, very, very fortunate position where I did some research recently and realized that our podcast has been downloaded over 500,000 times in 145 different countries. So I kind of figure that I can pretty much travel the world now and never be lonely. I can just turn up anywhere and, you know, reach out on Twitter or email or Facebook a couple of weeks in advance and probably have someone local that can show me around and take me to a pub and have a beer together. So that’s a pretty fortunate position.
Troy: To be in, Brilliant.
Lee: I think as well. We should test that by pushing you out of a plane with a parachute randomly over the earth somewhere. If that works, it’s amazing. PR stunt.
Troy: Yeah, just. Tweet on the way down.
Lee: Yeah. Ah, that would be my tweet on the way down, mate. All right, so you recently did an event in Santa Monica. Tell us all about that. What was the event about? How did it go? You mentioned earlier that you enjoy the event side of things. So tell us a bit more about that.
Troy: So we ran a four day event actually two events. One was a three day mastermind event for our Mavericks club members. It was in Santa Monica at the Shore Hotel, right opposite the Santa Monica pier. Three days in a big room, masterminding and learning together, improving different areas of our business. And I can talk more about that in a moment. And then day four. So that was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Wednesday, Thursday is really teaching and masterminding and coaching, you know, to a group. And then Friday was um, implementation day, which is really fun because we kind of just open our laptops and kind of operators like a super agency and just to help each other get stuff done off our to do list and then the Saturday day was WP Elevation Live, which we had about 55 people in the room. We had some guest speakers. Chris Lemon came along. Adam Preiser came along. Actually, I think his name is pronounced Pariser. I learned on the day Adam Preiser. Of course I liked your version.
Lee: It’s quite. It’s quite Australian.
Troy: Makes.
Lee: Well, the A does come before the AI.
Troy: So.
Lee: Exactly.
Troy: Dan, Dan and Polestar from boss mom came. She’s an absolute rock star. That girl. And, uh. Yeah, we had a we had a fantastic event, uh, helping a bunch of WordPress consultants, kind of, you know, change their thinking and set bigger goals and get some strategies and implement some ideas into their business that will hopefully make a difference for them. And it was so much fun, like just being in a room with like minded people, talking about marketing and technology and design and education and I mean, I just couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing, to be honest.
Lee: I think I got goosebumps just then.
Troy: Yeah.
Lee: It’s awesome. Sound pretty awesome.
Troy: It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time and we’re going to be doing that. It will be doing at least two of those a year in the US, 1 or 2 in Australia, and as our membership grows, I’ll be looking forward to, you know, coming to the UK once a year and doing it as well. And last year in October we went to Thailand and did the same thing. So yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh, definitely a lot of fun.
Lee: Fantastic. I love how you’ve managed to, uh, kind of input your love of travel, traveling around the world and also being able to do these as well at the same time, which is wicked. Now tell us about the Mavericks club as well mate.
Troy: So Mavericks is is something that we started last year. We found. So there’s a natural evolution of things where people go through the WP elevation program. They stay in the membership for a period of time, and at some point they’re like, you know what, I need to move on. And we frankly, we didn’t really know why. We made an assumption that they, you know, weren’t making enough money. They couldn’t afford the membership. They decided they just wanted to save their pennies or they’d moved on to a different business model. We started doing exit interviews of people leaving WP elevation, and it turns out a lot of people were leaving because they felt like they’d outgrown it and they needed more help. So they just got to a point where, you know, my business is doing pretty well. I’ve got a team, but you know, I kind of feel like I need some more accountability and some more help. And we actually did some research and we got some feedback that people were leaving to join other people’s mastermind programs. And I said, okay, well, we just need to respond to what our audience are telling us. The timing was perfect for me on on a personal level. We’d, uh, my wife and I had had our little boy, Oscar, and the timing kind of worked out that, okay, I’m now in a position where I can travel and I can put a lot of effort into this because it is a lot of work running a mastermind program. And so we launched in 2018, and it’s really for our high performers. So it’s for our agencies that kind of go through. And they get to that six figure mark they’ve maybe got you know they’re looking at bringing on some more staff. Maybe they’ve got a couple of part time contractors they’re looking to hire full time. They’re really looking to scale up. And we just help them refine their business model. We help them standardize what they’re doing in their business. One of our members has got this great phrase where she says, we basically teach our members to do less of the hand freaking crafted stuff and more of the standardized, solution based stuff. She uses more colorful language than that, but I’m sure you get the point.
Lee: Oh, okay.
Lee: So I was going to say, did she actually say freaking or are you just. No.
Troy: No. She no, no. Yeah I’m just being PG. So yeah. So it’s it’s really about scale. Whereas elevation is about kind of getting you profitable, getting you to a point where you’re where your business is is sustainable. It’s smooth. You can, you know, start to grow it. And then Mavericks is, is, is like, okay, hey, I really want to scale this thing up and, you know, have it operating like a well-oiled military machine. And that’s what Mavericks Club is all about.
Lee: That’s so cool. And, well, we’ve already been having conversations. That’s something that will be being a part of pretty soon as well, which I’m looking forward to. Now with regards to the scaling side of things, people will often think of scaling as growth, which includes essentially throwing more people at the situation, throwing more technology at a situation, and potentially tons more stress, which I know isn’t scaling. But that’s what people will often think of it. And if if they’re already feeling stressed right now as well, and busy as it were then, the idea of scaling seems almost abhorrent. Can you just, uh, just take the scales off our eyes and just share with us what scaling means for a business?
Troy: Sure.
Troy: So. Well, it depends on the business owner, of course. You know, scale means to grow. So so the in Silicon Valley, right. If you are funded then scale is all about growing your user base. And so the magic number that comes out of Y Combinator is which is a tech accelerator in Silicon Valley. And this is just one example. And I just get this out of the way so that we can put it to rest. Their number is 7% per week. So you need to basically grow your user base by 7% per week. Now if you’re these are really aimed at software companies these metrics. Right. So if your Twitter for example, you want to have you want to grow your your new users or your user base by 7% a week. They don’t care about revenue or profitability. They’re just all about fast growing companies. And 7% growth per week is their number. So that’s one definition of scale. The way that the way that I think about scale is how do I have more impact? How do I help? Either help more people or increase the way that I’m helping my existing network. So how do I either take the, you know, 20 clients that I’ve got and help them double or triple their business or their impact if they’re nonprofits or charities, for example, how do I help them double or triple their results? Or how do I double or triple the amount of customers I’ve got and help everyone you know achieve their goals? In terms of the stress levels, there are five metrics that we measure for all of our Maverick’s club members. One is monthly revenue. That is a barometer that tells you how the business is performing. It’s one barometer, but it is a it is an important barometer that tells you how the business is performing. The second metric is monthly recurring revenue, because recurring revenue is a barometer, which tells us, as your coaches and mentors, how likely you are to burn out or how much security you’ve got in the business. The next metric is net profit, And there’s a number of ways you can measure this. The way we measure it is we leave your pay in the business, and we include that in your net profit. So your net profit is basically your revenue minus the expenses to run the business. And any direct costs that you have that are project related. And then whatever’s left over that you actually take out as a business owner, that’s what we measure as net profit, and that’s measured as a percentage against overall revenue.
Lee: Which is also what the taxman does.
Troy: Yeah, that’s right.
Troy: We also measure days off a month and days off a month means that you don’t check emails, you don’t check slack, you don’t read WP tavern, you don’t read talk mag, you don’t think about work. You don’t talk about work. You actually disengage for a 24 hour period from midnight to midnight. Uh, we measure that, and we also measure hours per week that you spend in your sweet spot. Now, these are all barometers that tell us how the business is performing and how likely you are as a business owner to burn out, because there’s no point in the business growing if you burn out. The whole point of building a business is to build an asset that either pays you a dividend as the business owner, or you can sell at some point because it’s worth something. Now, let me just let me just touch on the page you a dividend. Just because it’s paying you a dividend as a business owner, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be working in the business. If working in the business is actually something you really enjoy, right? So one of my greatest fears would be selling this business and then not being able to work in it, because I absolutely love what I do right now. If I could partner with an organization that would allow us to do what we do at a much larger scale and reach more people and help more people, and therefore create more revenue and have a bigger team and have a bigger impact on the world. Happy days. But if we were acquired by a company, and then I had to sit in a room for three years and have meetings and not actually get anything done, well, that just sounds like hell. So I want to work in the business. For me, I’m not building a business that I just want to, you know, take a shareholders dividend at the end of the year but not actively be involved in the business, because at this point in my life, I really enjoy being involved in the business. Later on in life that might change. So the way I look at scale is, you know, first of all, why are you in business? What is the vision that you’re trying to create? What is the mission that you’re on? And then how do we help you achieve that through a range of different levers that we can pull in the business to make sure that that you don’t burn out as a business owner.
Lee: And just thinking back all those years ago of, of my burnout and, and breakdown and everything, because I was just doing way too much. It was toxic for the business. This was back in our old agency. It was just absolutely ridiculous. We had 15 staff as well. Everything was going on around us. It felt like it was just a house of cards, and it was an awful, awful experience. And I didn’t even know I was going to burn out. You know, I was just working hard and thought this was just all part of the core, you know, part of the course. This is what I have to do to grow this business and then hit a wall. And it’s the worst thing ever. So yeah. No, I absolutely agree. Now you, young man, are flying on a jet plane all the way over to the UK. I believe for a young, handsome man who’s putting on an event called Agency Transformation Live. That’s amazing. I’m very excited to to catch up with you and actually give you a proper man hug in person. Unless you’re a handshake, you know you need to warm me now.
Troy: No, I’m a I’m a hugger, dude. I am a hugger. I’m a hugger from way back.
Lee: Just imagine the Awkward
Troy: So Yeah. Yeah.
Troy: It’ll it’ll be big. Your feet will be offering. It’ll be big.
Lee: Oh, brilliant. Well, good luck with that. I think I’m, I feel like I might be a bit heavier than you, but anyway, um. Yeah, I, I’m just thinking of all those awkward moments where I’ve gone up to someone with my arms wide open and and and you see their shoulders tense up for like, I try and change it into a handshake. Like I was never gonna hug them, ever. That’s brilliant.
Troy: No, dude, we’re totally hugging.
Troy: You know what? We should live stream. We should live stream the first time we meet.
Lee: That would be cool.
Troy: That would be very cool. Yeah, I’ll just leave that one with you.
Lee: You running. Towards each Other?
Troy: Yeah. Yeah, exactly like a long lost friends.
Lee: Uh, man. I’d feel the pressure, though, then. Like to to make it the most emotional and then it would probably look staged.
Troy: Yeah,
Lee: well, I don’t know. Hey, if anyone sees this live streams, that’d be fun.
Lee: You’re going to be talking. About all this, though, aren’t you? You. You are our keynote opening keynote. And you’re going to be talking about scalability in business. So we’re going to be hearing an awful lot more of you on that. So I’m really, really excited.
Troy: And so the other just the other thing on scale is that, you know, scale doesn’t necessarily mean throwing just to answer that question. Actually, scale doesn’t necessarily mean throwing more people at the problem because you can actually.
Lee: Absolutely.
Troy: A good friend. Of mine, James Franco, has actually scaled his business down like the revenue down, but profit up and impact up. Right. But revenue down because he’s basically cut off a whole bunch of his business model that just really wasn’t profitable, which meant that he’s had to say goodbye to a whole bunch of stuff. He just kind of sold a part of his business that wasn’t working for him. So his revenues down, but his profits up. He’s having more fun, and he’s actually having more impact with the clients that he’s working with. So scale doesn’t necessarily mean building a massive team.
Lee: Amen. And folks, if you want to hear a real life example of that, check out episode number 196 with Bob gentle from up North with a beautiful Scottish accent because he shared that exact same style of story. He had a big team building multiple websites every single month, found it really, really stressful and then carved all of that out of his business and has been able to create a digital based business where there’s only a few of them and there is is earning more money than he’s ever earned, and he’s a hell of a lot happier. Yeah, unfortunately, he did all that after he lost his hair, so there’s no hope for his hair there. Well, I guess all that’s left for us, because this is only a short episode. We’re going to hear more from you in a few weeks time at the event. With regards to WP elevation, I think you mentioned earlier on you are going to be doing some more stuff. Can you give us any teasers?
Troy: We have a whole bunch of courses coming out this year. I can tell you what type of courses we will be producing. I can’t tell you exactly which order they will be in, but we have courses around. This is what’s on the production slate at the moment. And the good news is that we’ll be having other subject matter experts coming in to teach these courses. So we’ll actually be partnering with practitioners, people who are actually doing this or have done it in business, not just, you know, big gurus who read something in a book. Well, we’ve got a course coming on how to scale your SEO agency or the SEO part of your agency. I’ve got a course planned on how to run AdWords campaigns for clients. We’ve got a course planned on content strategy, how to design a content strategy for yourself, your agency, and your clients. We’ve also got one on head around Facebook ads for yourself and your clients. So there’s a whole slew of them. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff coming as well. The whole slew, of course, is coming to brilliant, basically help our customers achieve the things that they need to achieve.
Lee: That’s brilliant. Lots of really good practical stuff as well, which you can use not only for your own agency, etc., but also to use on behalf of your clients and add more value. Loving it man. Folks, you can find out more on WP elevation.com or follow Troy Dean on the socials. Check out the show notes. We will go link crazy and you can find out as much as you can about this beautiful Australian man. Troy. Thank you for your time.
Troy: Thank you once again, Leon. I’m looking forward to meeting you in about five weeks.
Lee: I was That’s insane. See you in five weeks, buddy.
Troy: See you brother. Bye.
Troy: And that wraps up today’s show. Folks, if you want to hang out with Troy Dean and learn more from him, then you can do in just a few days time. On April the 25th, here in Wellingborough, United Kingdom, Troy will be our opening keynote and we’ll be hanging around for both days of the event. You can find out more information at agencytransformation.live. That’s agencytransformation.live. If you want a special offer, then be sure to check out episode 200. I shall say no more. Anyway, if we don’t see you at the event, that’s cool. We’ll also see you in the next episode. Have a great one!
