The Agency Profit Podcast

Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.Guest Links:TwitterFacebookLinkedInducttapemarketing.com/blog/About John...John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of several books, including Duct Tape Marketing; Duct Tape Selling; The Commitment Engine; SEO for Growth; and The Referral Engine.His latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business, is a daily reminder to entrepreneurs that a better you makes a better business!He doesn’t spend all his time speaking and writing books; he’s also the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network and has had the honor of being featured in a TEDx Talk.In his spare time, John can mostly be found outdoors enjoying nature, woodworking, and strumming his guitar.

Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.About Me:I am co-founder and CEO of Parakeeto and fractional COO at Gold Front – a creative agency working with top tech companies in San Francisco, including Uber, Slack, and Google.In addition to being an agency profitability consultant – specializing in helping agencies get a handle on their gains – I’m also an in-demand keynote/virtual speaker and podcaster.When I’m not helping agencies make more money, I’m either watching The Office or Parks & Rec on a loop.Want to see more from me? You can do that @…ParakeetoAgency Profit PodcastMy LinkedInParakeeto’s LinkedInTwitter

Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.Guest Links:LinkedInTwitterYouTubeTrainual.comAbout Chris:Chris Ronzio is the founder and CEO of Trainual, the leading SaaS company helping fast-growing businesses automate their onboarding and training.Chris is also the host of the Process Makes Perfect podcast, author of 100 Hacks To Improve Your Business, and contributor to Inc. Magazine.On the weekends, Chris and his wife take their two kids on little adventures to lakes and hiking trails. He’s enjoyed getting out of the house with COVID going on! Did you learn anything new from this episode? If so, let us know in the comments below – we value your feedback! Our next featured expert appearing via our #APP is John Jantsch on September 16th. Meanwhile, Marcel will share more agency profitability insights on September 9th. To view our previous blogs – with Marcel and Jeremy Jackson – please make your way here…

Parakeeto Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.Marcel's Quick Links:ParakeetoAgency Profit PodcastMy LinkedInParakeeto’s LinkedInTwitterAbout Me:I am co-founder and CEO of Parakeeto and fractional COO at Gold Front.In addition to being an agency profitability consultant – specializing in helping agencies get a handle on their gains – I’m also a respected keynote/virtual speaker and podcaster.  

Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.Guest Links:LinkedInTwitterShiftLab.coAbout Jeremy:As the founder of Shift Lab, Jeremy focuses on projects that couple excellent design and technology, resulting in beautifully-designed digital products for clients as wide-ranging as Google, Comcast, Microsoft, and BreastCancer.org.Jeremy has worked in product development, UX, graphic design, and development for the web since the mid-’90s and was previously Director of Technology at Method.In his spare time, he’s allegedly a magnet enthusiast…

About Marcel:Marcel Petitpas is co-founder and CEO of Parakeeto.In addition to being an agency profitability consultant – specializing in helping agencies get a handle on their gains – Marcel is also a renowned keynote/virtual speaker and podcaster.Expect to see more from Marcel over the coming weeks, as he shares important insights for agency owners who want to earn more while working less. Points of Interest…There’s more information regarding each point in our blog notes beneath below.Identifying high ROI processes 2:12Four-step Flywheel Framework 3:20The Benefits of Tracking Tools 7:57Identifying High ROI ProcessesMost agencies struggle at some point with going over budget on projects and potentially working evenings and weekends due to a looming deadline.Unfortunately, things can take longer than expected. Since the deadline isn’t moving, you and your team inevitably find yourselves trying to make up time by working late or weekends. Obviously, this isn’t sustainable.There are processes to help deal with such situations, ones you could be building and optimizing, but you never seem to have time to define and implement them – or identify which ones are going to generate the highest return on investment.Well, all that is about to change! Four-Step Flywheel FrameworkI want to share with you our tried and tested Flywheel Framework which will help you identify the highest ROI investments. Its implementation will, in turn, help you protect your time – and your team’s time – as well and your profits.Then, I’m going to show you how you can embed this in your business. Over time, your team will learn how to run this process and tune your business for you – essentially making your agency self-optimizing, because it’s a feedback loop.Our four-step Flywheel Framework consists of…Capturing AssumptionsMeasuring RealityRunning MeetingsInvesting in Your Process Assumption > Measure > Meetings > Process = Profit + PredictabilityCapturing AssumptionsIrrespective of what your agency does, assumptions will be made pre-project. From ‘time and materials’ projects, to ‘flat rate’ projects; from how much time a project is going to take, to prospective external costs – blind assumption-making can seem part and parcel of a project, but it doesn’t have to be.You need to analyze IF those assumptions were correct or not. By capturing these assumptions, and ensuring there’s a consistent format to how they’re tracked, you can compare how your pre-project presumptions stack up against reality over time – horizontally. Measuring the Reality of AssumptionsWhether it’s a spreadsheet or a tool like Parakeeto, define a consistent format and methodology by which you can estimate – or capture – the assumptions about your projects.Now that you have a reference point, measure the accuracy of those assumptions. By way of example; compare your assumed costs to your actual costs; compare the time logged in your estimate against the true time spent; and so on. Then you can ascertain if there is a mismatch between your initial assumptions and the actual data. This process is simpler than it sounds – especially if you use an accounting tool, or a time tracking tool.Make sure, when tracking your time, that it’s mapping back to the original assumption because that’s the purpose of the exercise! Run Team MeetingsThe goal of these meetings is to sit down with your team to measure quantitative data. Discuss what matched up to your initial assumptions and, more importantly, what didn’t match. That’s where we’re going to surface qualitative data.For example, you might ascertain that you went over budget on design hours. Why was that? Did you assign too many designers to that task, resulting in duplicated work?In short, the objective of these meetings is to identify what is going well, what is going poorly, and what is taking a different path to what was expected! Invest in Your ProcessThe result of these captured insights include ideas on how you can overcome those things, then how best to implement them in your process backlog.This will inform you what needs to be done in order to solve these problems that we’re seeing in our data and in our meetings that will help us make more accurate assumptions over time. Over time, if you continue using the Flywheel process, you’re going to have more profit and increased predictability.In our business, profit and predictability are the holy grail of goals! While profit obviously means there’s more money in the bank for you, for your team, and for potential investments, predictability denotes less time spent working on weekends and evenings, better resource planning, more accurate timelines, etc. Simply put, predictability gives you better visibility into your business. Key Takeaway: The Benefit of Tracking ToolsTime Tracking and Cost Tracking are two of the most important pieces of data for you as a service business owner – or as an agency owner – to optimize your business.It’s about shifting your mindset regarding Time Tracking. Tell yourself it’s not just something you do for a client. Applying time tracking to your team will, in the long run, lead to an enhanced work/life balance.If you want to dig deeper into this stuff and get some free resources to help you implement this flywheel in your business, download our Agency Profitability Tool Kit – it’s loaded with free resources to help you do everything described in this video! Want to see more from Marcel? You’re in the right place! Follow him @…ParakeetoAgency Profit PodcastMarcel’s LinkedInParakeeto’s LinkedInParakeeto’s TwitterDid you learn anything new from this episode? If so, let us know in the comments below – we value your feedback! Our next installment of #APP, on August 19th, will see us chat with Jeremy Jackson. To view our previous blog with Rachel Gertz, make your way here… 

Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.Guest Links:Twitter @TheStrayMuseLinkedInLouderthanten.comSuperhi.comAbout Rachel:As well as being the co-founder of Louder Than Ten, Rachel is also a digital PM trainer at the company. Louder Than Ten helps digital agencies and product studios train their Project and Operations Managers to deliver healthy and profitable projects. Rachel trains tech com­pa­nies how to knock their old project man­age­ment flows upside down, by refin­ing the most valu­able steps in the process. She helps com­pa­nies under­stand what project num­bers real­ly mean, and how to turn blocks into oppor­tu­ni­ties.Her mis­sion is to trans­form the tech indus­try by train­ing dig­i­tal com­pa­nies how to give back pow­er to the peo­ple lead­ing their projects. 

Quick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.Guest Links:TwitterLinkedIncontentsnare.comjimmyrose.meAgencyHighway PodcastAbout James:James (Jimmy to his pals) is the founder of Aktura Tech, ContentSnare, and the host of the Agency Highway podcast.Via his Zapier Mastery automation course, he enjoys finding and sharing ways for you to automate parts of your business so you can spend your precious time tackling things that really matter.In addition to sharing his knowledge of better processes via automation, James co-founded a tool for digital agencies to get content from their clients via ContentSnare, while Aktura builds custom software and mobile apps. One of his previous projects, SaaS application SilverSiphon, was sold to an angel investment firm based in Silicon Valley.When this Brisbanite isn’t informing people just how much “automation freaking rocks”, he can be found conversing with dogs; something he’s particularly skilled in.  

About Andy:Today, Andy is the co-founder of Postaga.com; an all-in-one SEO research platform for link building and email outreach that helps agencies and marketers build traffic and relationships.Aside from being a digital marketing professional, he is a speaker, lawyer, running enthusiast, and has enjoyed cooking up a storm for the family during Lockdown in New York.Plus, he’s officiated quite a few weddings on occasions (available for bookings!)Quick LinksThe Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link. Guest LinksTwitter @andycabassoTwitter @PostagaAppLinkedIn

 About John...As well as being Founder and CEO of Credo, John is also an independent growth marketing and SEO consultant, who’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, TheNextWeb, Moz, TechCrunch, CNBC, WIRED, Entrepreneur, and many more.When he’s not beavering away at work, John’s probably spending time with wife Courtney, daughter Tatum, and dog Butterbean, or cycling the mountain ranges of Denver, Colorado!Guest LinksTwitterLinkedInYouTubegetcredo.comQuick Links:The Agency Profitability Toolkit - Get the templates, formulas, and frameworks we've used with our consulting clients to help them double their profitability in under 60 days, absolutely free.For more information on our Agency Profitability Systems and Consulting, check out https://parakeeto.comLove the podcast? Leave us a review on the platform of your choice at this link.