in this video I want to share the simplest and most effective business model that I've discovered the alt agency I've used this model to transform my agency from a timec consuming grind into a thriving balanced business now my team and I are helping hundreds of other agency owners and Consultants to build a wildly profitable sustainable and fun business and we're doing so without sacrificing your personal lives to 80 hour plus work weeks without constantly putting out client fires without feeling trapped by the very business that you've built and without burning out all while taking Fridays off if you're ready to get off the hamster wheel and enjoy your business and your life again then you're going to want to keep watching this video and if you want the guide this 33 page case study that I'm taking you through here today make sure you make your way into the description or click the button around this video to download this guide the alt agency model what you're going to discover is how to reclaim control of your time and your schedule freeing up 20 hours a week or more for family for hobbies and personal Pursuits boosting profit margins to 50 plus% while creating predictable consistent revenue streams that don't rely solely on your time and to simplify and systematize your business eliminating the consistent stress and complexity that's been weighing you down you're going to learn how to scale your agency to serve more clients and increased Revenue without proportionately increasing your workload or your team size and I think most importantly reignite your passion for your work and for your craft transforming your business from a source of burnout into a vehicle for personal and professional fulfillment and most importantly do it all in today's marketing and economic climate now look I know that that's a bold promise I'd be a little bit skeptical too but at the same time if I had built myself a trap and I was looking for a better way to grow I would want to understand how this thing worked and if it was actually right for me or not so that's exactly what I want to do with this case study for you I want to break down how the alt agency model works by using my own business as a case study while introducing you to some of the other owners that we've worked with so that you have all the information that you need to decide for yourself if the alt agency business model is right for you but first if you don't know who I am why listen to me in the first place hi my name is Greg Hickman I've been in the agency world for almost 20 years and the first 10 years were in more of that you know quote unquote traditional agency model I worked with Pepsi Unilever AT&T a handful of professional sports teams I've worked at large agencies that were a part of Omnicom as well as startup agencies and Boutique firms before finishing clients side as the head of mobile for Cabellas which is a large retailer where I was responsible for hiring and managing our agency partners and vendors to execute many of the digital strategies the last 10 years I've actually been working for myself so my first agency failed my second system Le had me building sales and marketing funnels for people like Dan Martell John Lee Dumis Chris Ducker Jasmine star nerd Fitness Betty rocker Jay bear and dozens more and we were really the marketing and automation team behind tens of millions of dollars in online sales and while my agency grew we had a lot of problems that you probably are facing right now and if I'm honest I realized that I was building the very thing that I had escaped when I was going out on my own I escaped that traditional agency model now in early 2017 I accidentally stumbled into what is now this alt agency model and I've helped over 700 owners build a better agency that focuses on big profits impact and fun with a lean and mean team with little stress and headaches now we've done this for ourselves too everything I do for and with my clients is actually something that I've already done you'll see that in my own businesses where we generate over a million dollars per year in Revenue with 40 plus% margins and that's after paying me a very healthy six figure salary and we do it all with a team of four full-time employees and a few contractors working 25ish hours most weeks and I personally like taking Fridays off you get to choose your schedule but I think most importantly I get to take both my kids to and from school every single day I mountain bike on Wednesdays and Fridays I take multiple vacations with my family each and every year and I get to work with and serve the people that I love and so this is just a little bit of me and my family hiking This Is Us with clients in a retreat out in Colorado and I don't tell you any of this to try to impress you or pretend like I'm God's gift to business or entrepreneurship because that's not the case there are plenty of people who have bigger businesses than me and way more accolades and if that's all you care about then I'm probably probably not your guy but I am optimizing for profit for fulfillment for fun and for Freedom so I'm telling you this so that you know that I actually do this stuff I'm out on the trails climbing with you I know what it's like to sacrifice my health my sanity my relationships with the people that I love really because of quote unquote scale and I'm on a mission to help others avoid the same mistakes that I've made and really the truth is that you don't have to so let me ask you this I want you to answer this honestly do you feel trapped by what you've built do you feel trapped by the agency that you've built now to help you answer this question let me ask you another one have you fallen out of love have you lost the love for the day-to-day of what you do I want you to be honest if the answer is yes then it's time to admit that you've been building your business by default Not By Design some of our clients Call It The Accidental agency the crappy part about The Accidental agency is that you actually hustle and grind your way to maintain it and because it's the only way that you've ever known thinking that someday things are actually going to be better and we hear this from our clients all the time and they say things like you might be saying like I'm always customizing services for each client and it's exhausting I'm constantly dealing with the feast or famine cycle of getting clients I'm making good money but I have no time to enjoy it or spend time with my family I'm struggling to scale Beyond a certain level of income I'm not enjoying my work anymore and it's not fun like it used to be I have no systems in place so everything feels chaotic and ad hoc I've hit a ceiling and I can't seem to break through to the next level I want to get paid what I'm worth I feel like I'm a glorified freelancer with 10 bosses I've felt many of these things too and I want you to know that your business success doesn't have to come at the expense of your personal life but you have to understand this the agency and Consulting game that you are in right now has fundamentally changed it really wasn't optimized for smaller Studios small firms that solo consultant and it surely wasn't optimized for today's market Andor economic conditions so right now you might be experiencing this this might be you right now many agencies struggled in 2023 and 24 after seeing record growth just years prior many invested in that growth like we did but then that growth didn't happen and it made all of the margins really really tight sales Cycles are longer there is lower trust and higher skepticism depending upon what Market you're in the marketing environment itself is way more competitive now there's a bit of economic vulnerability so the quote unquote old way or the traditional model as we've seen it and as we know it leaves you with one income stream now you might say but Greg I do have multiple income streams we do websites we do SEO we do paid ads I hate to break this to you but quote unquote full service is when your client uses all of your services I hope you understand that like we all think that we're like being Fancy by saying hey we're a full service we can do everything but then what ends up really happening is you're getting them into this annual retainer but the problem is that most agencies aren't full service they're actually allart which allart looks a lot like selling one piece at a time or an individual service to anyone willing to buy and pay you for it and the reality is that you're not expert enough in any one of them to make it work and you feel trapped and what I really mean is I'm not trying to insult you cuz we've been there you're too small to do too many things you're big enough to do one to two things extremely well and if you want simple which I think you do why keep adding more stuff to the puzzle I believe that the traditional agency model is a trap to the expert found ER most of us got into building an agency because we had some level of expertise or a skill that we knew way better than our buyers way better than the people that we were working with that's why we got hired in the first place because we actually knew stuff but as we get closer to the client's business like embedded into their business because we think we're being Partners we become more and more like an employee we get stripped of our most valuable asset which is our Outsiders perspective so I want you to remember this manual labor is easily replaced but great thinking is difficult to find here are five reasons why the traditional agency model isn't for you if you truly have expertise and you have experienced getting client results with your craft number one low profitability and scaling challenges let's face it the traditional agency model is a tough game you're working your tail off but those profit margins they're paper thin and when it comes to scaling it usually means hiring more people which just eats into your profits even more and as you've seen it's probably a recipe for Burnout not the finan fincial Freedom that you've aimed for when you got started in this journey number two is time intensive client work I bet you started this business to have more control over your time right but now you're caught in this trap where every dollar is tied to your time and your effort and it's like you've built yourself a job not a business that supports the life that you want that's not why we got into this number three limited revenue streams when you're solely focused on your core Services you leaving money on the table plain and simple you want to grow but the only way seems to be working more hours and then hiring more people that's not leveraging your expertise that's running faster on the hamster wheel number four is difficulty monetizing expertise you've got a wealth of knowledge in that head of yours I know it but the traditional model doesn't let you cash in on it instead you're likely giving away your best strategies for free in proposals or Discovery calls I want you to imagine getting paid for your thinking not just your your doing that's where the real value is number five is the client acquisition and retention challenges the client treadmill is real I know you know it and it's exhausting you're either scaring off potential clients with high prices or you're constantly worried about keeping the ones that you already have and it's really a NeverEnding cycle of chasing new business just to keep the lights on maybe it's just me but I don't believe that that's a way to build a stable growing business that gives you the peace of mind and the freedom to enjoy the success so if you're Solo or run a small firm and want to escape this you should consider building an ALT agency and I'm going to break down what that is the alt agency consists of a handful of models I'm going to be walking you through them each and every one of them in the rest of this video the alt agency is totally different from the traditional agency model that you either have come from that you have been taught or like many have accidentally fallen into this is the business model that you need to increase your overall profitability and your income expand your business offerings to get paid for your expertise instead of just labor and create a more sustainable and scalable business and we've proven its Effectiveness by helping hundreds of owners like you take more time off from their business without ever having it fall apart it often starts with simple things like dialing in your business so you aren't working nights and weekends and that's exactly what one of our clients Nathan was able to do we just caught up at a retreat of ours and he said I actually had a Saturday like I didn't do anything that Saturday truthfully I just sat on the couch and was just like a lazy bum but it was the first Saturday I'd ever had where I was just like I don't have to do something today and the best part is less than a year later he joined us at this Retreat and he didn't have to work from Wednesday to Sunday and at that time his business has already doubled from when he got started working with us now look I don't know what your business lifestyle Freedom actually looks like maybe it's simply not having to work nights and weekends like Nathan maybe it's working Monday to Thursday and leaving every single day by 300 p.m. maybe it's buying something nice like your dream mountain bike like me maybe it's just taking some nice vacations with your family where you can do absolutely nothing or feel like you have to get everything done maybe it actually is working 80 plus hours a week because you only spend time on the activities in your business that light you up and that you love so you will gladly work more hours whatever it is I want you to have that and this model can truly help you get it so if at any point while we're going through this case study and this video you agree and you want to work with me and my team to help you design and build your alt agency I recommend booking a demo call with my team now there's a link below this video in the description Andor by clicking the button around this video for you to schedule a call with my team my goal for writing this case study is super simple I want to educate you on what the alt agency model is but my real hope is that as we walk through this together you not only think that this is exactly like what I need and I want but you also think that I should get Greg and his team to help me build this thing the right way so as you'll see the alt agency model is simple to understand but it's not just a one siiz fits-all type of thing this isn't a business in a box and I say that because that's a good thing in this world of copy paste an ALT agency has clear principles models and Frameworks that runs it but it leaves you with plenty of space for you to make it Uniquely Yours so that you'll hit your goals designing something specific to your wants and your needs does give you the ultimate lasting business Advantage now fortunately for you you don't have to figure all of this out on your own we do work closely with with owners to design and build our all agency because we know that's the only way to get it done right by doing the work together we can virtually eliminate all of the complexity and obstacles of doing this on your own and I'm not trying to sell everyone on this believe me not all agency owners and Consultants are even ready for the programs and the services that we offer but if you think you might be ready there's zero risk in booking a demo call and speaking with an actual human being on my team to see if building this model is right for you so what is the alt agency model this model model can help you generate High six or seven figures in Revenue with 40 to 50 plus% in profit depending upon how far you want to take it it adapts to your goals but prioritizes profit freedom and impact so for me my ALT agency generates a high six- figure income while taking Fridays off thanks to my lean But Mighty team and working with clients I love doing the type of work that I love an ALT agency is built on six key principles and Frameworks I'm going to high level each one and then we're going to dive deep into each of them for what it actually means for your business first we leverage multiple income streams one for each buyer segment there are four types of buyers we develop intellectual property working with clients that's one of the types and then we package our IP for members and customers to other types so that we can stay lean and we're going to gain traction and maintain Simplicity by focusing on what we call the foundational four and we're going to create and convert Demand by demonstrating our expertise so we don't want to Chase and hunt and prey and hope for clients we want to to actually have them coming to us the fifth principle is that we build our business around our desired lifestyle we operate in quarterly TXS which is really just prioritizing one to two key priorities to move the business forward continually so let's look at each of these in a little bit more detail multiple income streams revenue from each type of buyer so while the traditional agency model only has one income stream and all agency has multiple at least one income stream for the four different types of buyers or at least three there's clients subscribers members and customers and so when we look at this model you'll see that at the top of the pyramid we have clients then we have subscribers right below it then we have members and then we have customers let me explain the difference between these here for you so here's how we break it down at the top of this pyramid we have clients these folks get our core services or your core capability this is really probably where your bread and your butter is it might be for you like you do killer ad campaigns or social media or you have some sort of strategic Consulting offer it's really kind of that core skill that got you into this game in the first place so clients typically have high access to you which means it's probably higher labor and lower volume as you can see right over here because they have high access to you there's probably a decent amount of customization or at least enough to where you wouldn't want a 100 people at this level and so this is why we recommend 5 to 15 clients at this level ideally and in the best case scenario they're worth minimum 30 to $50,000 a year now subscribers one level down these are the buyers of more of your product TI recurring Services they're getting fixed deliverables every single month that may or may not be a part of what you deliver to your clients at the next level up so this might be something like done for you ghost writing or video editing services or social or ad content assets and these tend to be recurring services but often tend to feel and end up being a little bit more commoditized over time which leads to higher churn depending upon how commoditized these service deliverables actually are now members this is where I think things get really interesting this is where we start tapping into our intellectual property through training through coaching or Consulting programs this is where it's your expertise packaged nice and neat and at this stage you can work with members in a one-on-one capacity or you could work with them in a small group environment or even into a on to many program which gives you a lot of Leverage and profit potential lastly we have our customers this is where kind of scalability really starts to come in these are people that are buying your knowledge products courses templates a book if you've written a book The Beauty here is that once you create these things they can be sold without the need for a human being being involved in labor so typically we don't start monetizing customers until we have a growing audience which is why it's one of the last things that we do Andor that we're trying to acquire customers through lower priced products that strategically prepare them to become a member m a subscriber or a client as you can see at the top of this pyramid we have fewer clients right the shape you can only fit so many in here that's because this is high labor lower volume you literally can't serve that many people there as we move our way down the pyramid we make our way down to customers we now have lower labor and in some cases zero after we've already built and made the offer but we need a higher volume of sales to drive meaningful income As you move from the top of the pyramid to the bottom delivery Bec comes way more leverage so you can see here clients and subscribers they really get more of that like uh done for you service then we move into a done with you for members and then DIY for the customers so this is what I meant by like increased leverage so if we kind of look down here clients get Services services are done for you which Loosely speaking is all do it for you that's your client levels at the product High service which is your subscribers you'll say I'll do this one thing for you you when we move down to our members which are getting Consulting coaching training programs we're saying I'll show you how we do it and we will do it together and then lastly products which are for our customers is I'll show you how to do it yourself so you can kind of see as we're moving down we're getting more and more leverage so you might be asking why multiple income streams great question and I think there's a few key reasons why you should be considering having multiple income streams versus just your traditional agency retainer first and foremost you get to say goodbye buy to feast or famine multiple income streams mean you're not living and dying for each client project it's like having multiple faucets of income and when one slows down you can you know kind of tap open the other one the other one keeps flowing so less stress about where that next client is actually coming from number two is you can scale without killing yourself you want to grow but you want to do it without working 80 plus hour a week so adding things like training or digital products lets you serve more people without being the hands to keyboard it's growth more on your term terms not at the expense of your sanity number three is that you can have bigger profits with the same or less effort here's a crazy idea what if you could make more money without working more hours products and programs often have juicier profit margins than traditional services and it's like getting a raise without having to beg your boss which again that's you if you forget you are Your Own Boss number four is to get paid for your smarts not just your time if you're watching this you probably have years of experience and knowledge all locked up in your head and mult M income streams let you turn that expertise into Cold Hard Cash profit Beyond just billing for your time it's about getting paid for what you know not just what you do the next one is that you get to serve more people without losing your mind having different offerings at various price points mean you actually help more people without having to take on every client that comes your way it's like having a menu or instead of a set meal so clients can choose what works for their budget and you still get to make an impact and a profit number six is that you actually break free from the client hamster wheel so diversifying your income means you're not constantly chasing the next client project just to keep the lights on it gives you breathing room to be pickier about the clients and the projects remember when you got started in this business you got started for freedom and this is actually how you get it now and lastly you get to maximize your value per client you're going to be surprised that you're going to find out that some buyers will purchase multiple of your offers we've had clients that have bought our service but then bought our training because they wanted to know how to do it in house we have many clients that are the same that can significantly increase the lifetime value of each and every client you're already working with them they likely and could potentially when designed correctly buy more of your stuff which is infinitely more costeffective than going to find another client all together by adding leveraged offers to your mix you're not just solving problems you're opening up a whole new world of possibilities more profits easier or simpler scaling and creating value without burning out it's about building a business that works for you not the other way around so those are the reasons why you need to consider multiple income streams let's look at each of these because each of these broken down is extremely important we develop IP with those clients so like I said earlier these clients which is are likely the people that you have now you've been in the trenches for a while you've probably figured out what works and what doesn't all of that can be packaged as agency owners you should try to avoid jumping from the services all the way to customers too quickly I just want to call that out because I know a lot of people that they see this and they're like oh yeah zero fulfillment down VI we're going to make this leap and that leap isn't always the wisest the challenge is that most agency owners are strapped for time and money due to the problems that we've already mentioned so the idea of customers zero fulfillment is really really desirable because like I said there's no fulfillment the problem is that most agencies most service providers don't have an audience and like we said down the pyramid up here it's high volume low labor and in order to get a high volume of customers you need a large audience an email list a social following to go sell the customer offer to this is why we use our work and our experience working closely with clients at the top of the pyramid to package up the intellectual property and then slowly move down the pyramid I want to call this out we do not roll all of these offers out at once you do need to have enough experience to have figured out your methodology your approach of how you actually get cents the results if you're still figuring that out you're probably not ready to move down the pyramid we call it building down to scale up as you can see here we build our client offer first we get some reps we might realize that they need a lot of the same things so from that we derive our subscriber offer that productize service that productize recurring component then we've done that enough times where we realize hey I can actually show someone how to do this give them some tools and resources and that becomes Our member offer then you might unbundle pieces of that and sell to customers we build and create these internally by building down the pyramid but it's having all of these that allow us to scale up so customers members everything below this line is actually where most of your profit and scalability is going to come from as an expert driven service provider so I wanted to call that out here in this document so in my marketing automation agency new client onboarding to operational automation we did all of this work in the form of a monthly retainer which many people are common with but it was still very custom like every client got different things we saw some Trends but every client was coming to us for a different reason we realized that many of our clients were at some point requesting a webinar funnel either a live webinar or an evergreen webinar which we packaged up we charged 7,000 to 8,000 and we LED with that offer so we said no more jumping right into this customer retainer we believe that our ideal client wants an needs a webinar to sell their products and services so we're going to kick that off after delivering that we rolled clients into a new modified retainer that was more consultative and they turned out to be way better clients having gone through such a choreographed product like the webinar build outs before instead of just hopping into the retainer they went through a very choreographed productized system then they played by our rules as it got more and more leverage due to our efficiencies our pre-built templates we were able to turn this into a train meaning an implementation program that was done with you and we started bringing in members in a small group environment who wanted to get these funnels but they couldn't afford the done for you service and so we gave them the campaigns and templates and we guided them through how to implement it and we helped customize through a series of Leverage touch points like group calls and Community we got started with that pretty early we sold beta spots for 2,000 and that program slowly got to 7500 and that one stream alone hit a seven fig run rate in 11 months finally after that moving into customers we were able to package up the stuff we were doing there and do promotional campaigns and bundle up some of these pre-built automations and sell them as Standalone digital products now in today's world at all agency we sell a variety of courses and workshops that range anywhere from $100 to $1,500 and when we have a book I don't have a book yet but I'm working on it that would be a perfect example of a customer offer I'm taking you through a 33 page Manifesto right now that's breaking down all of these things someone who reads and consumes this and say would something like this would be in a book would probably be a good candidate if they want help for us to build it out with them as you can see we start with the highest level client offer the service and through Mastery were able to roll out more leveraged delivery vehicles that were based on our process and our systems and our experience AKA intellectual property that didn't require much of a larger team in order to deliver it this brings us to the rule of the foundational four one Avatar one solution one conversion vehicle one traffic Source the idea of having multiple income streams is super enticing but again if we haven't dialed in our foundational 4 first we could be doing things out of sequence the foundational 4 means you focus on one ideal client profile right here and you figure out one solution to offer them you design one conversion vehicle which simply means your sales pathway and you focus on one traffic Source like I'm only going to work on one way to get attention on using one kind of social platform that's really what we mean when we talk about the foundational for many people are trying to serve too many different types of clients so if you follow the foundational four it sets you up to serve enough clients to formulate that methodology and your approach that can be packaged into the more leveraged offers like training programs and like Consulting when you're ready now I want to talk about creating and converting Demand by demonstrating our expertise I'm going to get to this visual here in a second cuz this is kind of our acquisition flywheel but most agencies Chase clients an ALT agency actually attracts them by showcasing their expertise and building trust think about it would you actually hire a heart surgeon from a cold email of course you wouldn't you'd probably look for someone who already had a solid reputation and a proven track record that's why we built our Authority flywheel and it actually has four key Parts the first part is focusing on one main social Channel I prefer LinkedIn the social channels that we all tap into are usually way better for shorter form content more on that in a second so we also need a long form piece of content you're watching this on YouTube that is my long form piece of content we also have an email list which we send three to four emails a week and then we focus on our one conversion method meaning we sell through a consultative sales call in the beginning if you're on too many social channels and you're on all over the place and you're also trying to sell from webinars sell from your calls sell from events and you haven't gained traction yet that you're going to be spread more thin and it's going to make everything take longer these four parts of the authority flywheel play together to help us attract engage and convert people the short form social content brings people in the long form content like this video will build deeper trust our emails keep the conversation going and our consultative call turns prospects into buyers now the key metric here is expertise exposure the more time prospects spend with you and with your content the faster they will trust you that's why long form is crucial this video is long one of my longest videos yet but the small percentage of folks who watch the entire thing and are bought in on the same beliefs and are trying to build a similar profitable and freedom-based business this is helping them understand what this all looks like and more likely to want our help the more time they spend on your content the faster they'll trust you so the content strategy really becomes simple our short form content creates insights and we do that on our po social platform then we use social to drive people to the deeper content we can do that from our email we can do that from social driving them to YouTube once our organic content is gaining traction we can amplify and accelerate that using paid ads paid ads let us grow our channels get new eyeballs Drive traffic to lead magnets retarget to move folks to longer form content and invite the most aware people to work with us remember 99% of your effort should be on one platform if you're trying to figure out LinkedIn Instagram Tik Tok Twitter Facebook all at the same time and you're below 50k a month in Revenue stop please just focus on one you don't want to be a professional marketer you want to have a business you don't want to always be running campaigns you don't want to spread yourself too thin by trying to be everywhere I want you to build that Authority flywheel on one platform and watch how getting clients becomes effortless over time and when you do this sales conversations are simpler because it's more about fit the whole point of authority marketing is to do the heavy lifting before anyone ever hops on a call with you so when it comes to converting demand if you're doing all of this stuff in your content you can use a really straightforward consultative sales process and once you've really dialed that in you can actually even get fancier and sell without sales calls using offer invitation documents I highly encourage you take dozens and dozens if not hundreds of calls before you start doing that because that language is going to be really helpful for you to ever sell without a call this this really starts to simplify that process it took me really far too long to realize that the key part of a healthy sustainable business was having new leads and opportunities flowing into me each and every day now before I get into some of the other principles actually I want to walk you through creating converting demand and sales demand so kind of our whole system we focus on creating demand first we're creating content really consistently this is organic content short form LinkedIn my long form YouTube then we accelerate with paid ads once this content works we can drive ads to that specific content I can drive ads to this video which will then get people to download the guide that goes along with it we can also create other lead magnets and run ads directly to that we can also look at having partners throughout the years we've always aligned oursel with certain software companies that had our audience Andor complimentary service providers that were able to bring people to us so we use these three methods to create demand and that demand gets pointed to where we convert demand so we want to get people into our email list because like I said that's where we get to keep the conversation going and often times we find ourselves in conversations in the DMS LinkedIn messenger for example and this is what we call the Social selling system conversions happen in conversations and so when we can get our content to start a conversation we might find oursel in a conversation instead of just having them on our email list and so from either one of these things we can drive them to a call and eventually 2.0 potentially invite them to working with us with a simple document either way from one of those conversion of demand methods we can then serve demand through the many different types of buyers that we've discussed already now before I get into the next two principles if you've seen enough and you're ready to book a demo call there's clearly no need to wait so you can book a call with me and my team right now find out more about what it's like to work with us to build your alt agency and remember this is a demo call this is not a sales call our success rates are high because we're super selective about the clients that we work with so our main goal in this demo is really to learn more about you make sure it's a good fit so that we can both make an informed decision and if we mutually agree that it's a good fit we can discuss next steps but like I said there's no risk in booking a call to discuss how we can kind of Custom Tailor your expertise to your lifestyle goals now I promise you'll also get a ton of value from this conversation even if we choose not to move forward we'll really help you point you in the right direction now for those of you who are interested but considering alternative Solutions let's keep going because there's more and for those of you who are interested but want to understand a little bit more let's hit the last few principles so the next principle is that we build our business around our life too many people get this backward unfortunately and so everything that we do team leadership product marketing sales delivery are really around building a business to cater to the type of life that we want to live and if we do it right we get the freedom the impact and the profit that we are looking for by building the business around our life not the other way around and look years ago when I got started I actually just focused on scale and money and not the other thing things and it wasn't until I met one of my early mentors who introduced me to this concept that we've now called the business lifestyle return and so we created a tool called the business lifestyle score and it's actually a test that helps you see how close you are to having your dream business and we look at your business through three key currencies time energy and money time is where you ask yourself the question of are you working the hours you want are your nights in weekends free if desired are you taking the vacations that you want do you have time for personal Pursuits and hobbies when it comes to our energy we have to ask are we spending our time doing the things that we love I love teaching coaching training and creating content I don't want to do the admin work right so I want to spend as much time as possible on creating more and more content for you guys what do you not want to do well based on what you don't want to do we need to figure out like what role I'm going to have as the founder in the business and then what type of team we need around us to complement that desired role and then we also need to look at like other rules that you might have for your business like I'm not willing to go speak at conferences if it has me away from my children for too long that's a part of the rules that I have for my business now money which notice is last time energy then money money is when you say what do you want to take home each and every year and I want to emphasize do not make this arbitrary a number of Founders that I talk to that are like I want to take home a million dollars I'm like why and they have no reason or understanding as to why I say okay well what does a $1 million a year business get you that a $700,000 a year business wouldn't get you and answering that question really starts to reveal like how much you actually need now I'm not saying go minimalist maybe if you are that's fine but you actually have to do some work do some work to figure out what does your dream lifestyle cost I can guarantee you if you added it up it wouldn't be a round number like a million what sort of monthly profit do you want what sort of income do you want your team to have what are you going to do with your wealth see most people plan money and then the time and energy come second this is completely flawed because you can always make more money but if it costs you your time and forces you to do things that you don't love to do for a sustained periods of time you have to ask yourself is this worth it now look there's going to be plenty of parts of your business where you have to do things you don't want to do but if your entire business is built around things that you don't want to do and you don't like and you don't enjoy just because it's making you a certain amount of money that is not sustainable this is why in our world money goes last the goal is to get a business that gets you saying something along the lines of if I got to work my dream schedule and I only spent my time doing the things that I love and I made a minimum of $250,000 a year doing it I would happily do this for the rest of my life I would ride off into the sunset if I'm making exactly how much I want to make and working the schedule that I want then we design around that now from here look you can do all this but business is the long game right so we operate at all agency in what we call quarterly tracks every quarter we create a 90-day plan we call it the quarterly Trek and we found that 90 days is is long enough to hit a big goal while short enough to keep you focused and both Implement and start optimizing what you've built because you need both it consists of one to two key initiatives with measurable outcomes that we can actually track each initiative has a couple projects to help us hit our goals so we use a tool called the bottleneck finder it's a diagnostic tool for identifying what the biggest strategic constraint is in your business right now for some of you this might be capturing demand getting leads optimizing your sales process creating more leverage fulfillment then we look at our quiver of plug-and-play systems and we prescribe a few relevant projects for the next 90 days we touch base frequently to make any adjustments to the plan as needed while you're implementing it now here's the deal you might be like hey Greg that sounds great but I was really going to try a couple other things first so I want to quickly share seven things that I tried before all of this that actually did not work so that you can save some time one going on a hiring spree when you're drowning in work you think I'm just going to go hire an army the next thing you know you're running a daycare for adults and that's where you really start to create a job for yourself and look I'm not against a team I have a team I love my team my team is likely going to grow a little bit more you definitely can't do this solo but most agencies hire the wrong people in the wrong order and then they're also not great managers so you're trying to get traction early on and you're adding a bunch of operational complexity around not knowing how to onboard not knowing how to train people on stuff because you're selling them services that you're not even an expert in right we talked about the power of specialization and focusing on one offer well it should be one offer that you already know how to deliver thus you shouldn't have to go find other high- paid experts to go deliver it because you should already have that expertise I see a ton of agencies selling stuff they know nothing about just because some Prospect said that they needed it when it's time to hire you should also always hire to hire your time back first the second thing I tried that didn't work is to put together an sop for everything you don't need to turn into a Wikipedia for your business everything you do does not need a 10-page manual and in fact your team won't even read the 10-page manual once you've created it guess how I know so here's the deal don't make yourself so busy just documenting when you've simplified your business following the foundational for and what we've talked about already you only need a handful of Sops to run a healthy and sustainable business most agencies end up this is might be you where you have an sop for every single allaha cart thing that you do that you spend more time creating Sops than you do actually doing the thing that you just made theop for I'm just saying that's what happens a lot of times the next one is to White Label provider everything oh it's the white label Wonderland you don't know how to do it someone said they they need it you go find a white label partner to go put your logo on it and then go sell this service here's the thing if you're an expert they're coming to you because you're the expert you know how to get it done you shouldn't be Outsourcing the most important thing the result to another person now look there is a time in place for white labeling but most agencies that we run into a good percentage of their services are just white labeling to somebody else they're basically a glorified salesperson for three to five different white label service providers if that's the case you probably don't have a craft that you're trying to master and maybe the alt agency model won't work for you or isn't for you but if you are truly an expert you're going to care about fulfillment for being the Jack of all trades we've kind of beat this with a dead horse you know we do everything so we're become a master of nothing you're spreading yourself thinner doing that I'm not going to go more onto that just getting more and more clients everyone says like Sal solves everything well not if every time you sell you go into pain in fact most human beings will not grow into pain if you're treating new clients like Pokemon cards you're going to try to go get them all it's like my son Meanwhile your existing clients start to feel more and more neglected and that doesn't lead to a long-lasting client relationship loyalty isn't just for Punch Cards at coffee shops the reason most of us got into the mess that we're in is cuz we took on too many people doing too many different things which led us to hire more people because we didn't know how to do or create the thing that we just sold please stop it more clients requires more team reducing your offers to specialize solves this problem especially when you start to sell the leverage thing to that same market number six Automation and project management tools are helpful but they're not a silver bullet yes you've got more project management Tools in Home Depot your team might even need a PhD to log into it I've been through just about every single project management tool my team hates me for kind of changing it up all the time software helps when you're offering your service in your business is already simple if you have a complex business putting a new automation or bringing a new project management tool will not make your business less complex than it already is yes you will need project management yes you will need a marketing automation tool in CRM but they will not be your savior and lastly being the cheapest did not work that's how we started out we're like we're going to be the most affordable slashing your prices like you're always hosting a Black Friday sale isn't the best pathway especially when you sell expertise so if you want to be a commodity you can play the price Wars game but like you cannot pay rent with that exposure and like with just Goodwill so when you start this business like I said I started our business like the wp curve of infusion soft 100 bucks a month we'll do anything and very quickly we realized that was a horrible idea so these aren't just mistakes this is literally the greatest hits of how to torture yourself while running an agency if any of these sound familiar do not worry you're definitely not alone but there is a better way that's where we come in one of our clients Casey he tried most of these things too and here's what he had to say everything got pretty big pretty fast which brought a lot of operational challenges and that's where things started to break and clients started to churn we built a machine that was too big to handle and I realized I wasn't even having fun so I say all that because growing through more just more clients more everything is rarely ever the answer here's why an all agency will work in the traditional model you start as the expert the guru the person with all the answers that's why your agency got hired but then as you get deeper and deeper into their business you lose that Outsider perspective that made you so valuable in the first place suddenly you're not the expert anymore you're just an employee and let me tell you that's your one-way ticket to chville they're going to think that they can get it cheaper somewhere else they're just going to go hire someone internally this is the Trap that most recurring service models fall into especially the way most people design their producty services they get too close and ingrained into their client's business and they think that that's a value ad but it's taking away their objectivity and their Outsider perspective which is why they're so valuable and so once they see you as an employee you're Expendable just like an employee you got to keep becoming more of an expert and that's what the alt agency model is about you're adding different ways to make money your expertise is filling your pipeline each month you always bring new and helpful ideas because your work with those highlevel clients will keep trickling down your intellectual property into your members and your customers it's about staying ahead it's about being adviser and never just doing what other people tell you to do because if you were truly an expert your clients would be looking for advice from you not telling you exactly how to do your job now look I've shown you how it's worked for me I'm really confident that it can work for you too at this point I want to formally invite you to book a demo session with me and my team to discuss how we can actually help you build your alt agency we intentionally limit our intake to really ensure personalized attention for each client our program is designed and tailored for small agencies Consultants B2B service providers who are doing at least $10,000 a month in Revenue have a team of fewer than 10 employees provide B2B Services consulting or agency work I'm going to break down the different phases of how we work but if you envision yourself building a business that you're actually passionate about with a lean team where you're compensated for your expertise and you can enjoy 3-day weekends I really think that we should connect again due to the high touch nature we can only onboard a select number of people at a time for the rest of this guide I'm going to break down exactly how our process works so that you can understand before you even start chatting with us here's what you need to know this model works if I can leverage this and hundreds of our clients can to build a business that they love without sacrificing their personal life or working 80 plus hour weeks without constantly putting out client fires without feeling trapped by their very business that they've built without burning out and all while taking Fridays off then I believe this model this system will help you create the income and the freedom and the impact for your business and your life life if my story isn't enough you can also read and watch some of our client stories on our website so again if you haven't downloaded this guide yet below this video you can download this case study or visit our website and look at the reviews we have tons of people sharing their experience Andor you can share check out some of those after you book your demo call second there is no one right way to build an ALT agency which is the beauty your business should fit you not someone else's I don't need you to build my business I want you to build a business that works for you using the ingredients that we've talked about so far that's what we want to help you create I've seen people copy and paste other people's business you know the business in a box program that's not what we want you have special skills and dreams your business should demonstrate that we don't give you a rigid Playbook that is only going to work if you do everything one very specific rigid way okay if you've tried to organize your business before and it didn't work you might have just missed that important part you just built something that wasn't really doors a business that helps you live the life you want should not take over your life and third this is not just a course when we work together this is a program where we work with you it's a perfect mix of one-on-one strategy small group consulting The Proven playbooks and curriculum and personal guidance and direction from me and my team yes there is training there is self-paced videos in curriculum to get you implementing but this is not solely a course there is a lot of Consulting involved both small group and one-on-one so the question is why not bypass years of trial and error and trying to figure this out on your own yourself when you can just access a proven system with people that have already done it let's get into exactly how this works because when we do our work together we break this down into two phases most of our clients when they come in they start in phase one but if you're already above 30k a month and your core thing is Cash flowing and you already have availability in your schedule and you're looking to expand your income streams you could potentially jump and get started in phase two we have a handful of people do that from time to time so phase one is what we called the foundational for we talked about that earlier we're going to build out your high converting offer align it to your target market that positions you as an expert making sure it sells itself it's easy to understand it's easy to buy and it's easy to deliver then we're going to deploy one of our Revenue Rush campaigns this is to bring you leads clients and cash to validate that new offer very quickly we're going to run the reclaim time formula we want to unlock 5 to 15 hours per week reducing that time suck from needy clients and managing your team so you can again focus on your zone of Genius then want to set up that content engine and that social selling system this is that organic Marketing System that's going to get you connected with your perfect prospects so that you can start driving connections that turn into conversations that turn into qualified buyers this system alone is responsible for five figures worth of new business for our clients each and every month once that offer is producing cash flow we're going to work with you to get that to consistent and stable 30 to 50K months by optimizing the marketing the sales and the delivery and really doing that in a way where it's with the minimum amount of you so that we can unlock your schedule and your bandwidth to focus on phase two that being said the first 90ish days of working together is pretty tactical and implementing these things getting these offers off the ground so that there's less pressure to take on the wrong clients so phase two is where we expand those income streams and start to scale The Profit like we've talked about members and customers this is where we're going to design and launch your members offer which is A5 to $30,000 leverage program that's done as training consulting or a hybrid we're we're going to then create and deploy your first customer offer so we're going to show you how to use high converting small intimate workshops or small digital products to acquire customers and then Ascend only the right ones into either a member and or a client increasing their lifetime value and look as you scale you need to scale your marketing scale your delivery so we need to upgrade your infrastructure in phase two so as you scale your marketing we want to make sure that we maintain healthy margins and that it doesn't suck you back in so getting the right help and the right systems there all the while we're really on this mission to pursue Financial and lifestyle Independence so we're going to work with you to get your business to produce your desired cash flow and profits so the goal here is really simple a wildly profitable business that lets you remove yourself from the day-to-day grind and live a life on your terms you're going to be getting a mix of direct one-on-one strategy and accountability and there are options to get more one-on-one personalized help as you might need it so you're going to have personal guidance from me and my team each and every week and together we're going to track your progress celebrate each and every Milestone Andor refine the strategy in order to get you there so to do that we run things like weekly Consulting Jam sessions covering all sorts of topics like leaden strategy CRM ads we run monthly implementation workshops along with other live and virtual events so you'll always have the latest strategies tactics and tools from the best in the industry you'll also have our hand guiding your strategy and smart capable eyes critiquing your campaigns and your offers so if you get stuck you're a quick post away to the group in the community to get clear and get moving forward in order to help you win faster every single 90 days we're going to do that quarterly Trek we look at the bottleneck finder figure out what the biggest opportunity is give you some of the plug-and-play systems and have you go out with clear objectives and key results for the next 90 days so the point here is we're really trying to keep you from ever getting stuck because you got a team of mentors advisors other consultants and your peers to guide you each and every step of the way in phase two when we start expanding income streams you do have the option to get more support from us a one-on-one blueprint call with me tickets to our orderly Retreats that are all over the country and potentially internationally here in the future and a call just with our Trailblazer level members who are all already out there on the pathway to monetizing their expertise through training and their customer offers so when you have access to all of this stuff it's not uncommon for you to create and sell a 5,000 $10,000 or $20,000 offer and get one to two clients within the first phase so the membership will pay for itself pretty quickly no guarantees or anything like that we can talk with you to like what the likelihood is of that being applied to you but considering the high touch nature of our program we do limit the capacity of the owners that we intake every single month so the sooner you book that call using the links here Andor below this video the better when you do book that call you're going to fill out a couple questions just so that we can do some more research on your business be fully prepared for that conversation so guys if you are tired of that agency hamster wheel not getting paid what you're worth and working crazy hours in the process take a few minutes book a demo call with my team right now while all of this is still fresh in your mind I genuinely cannot wait for you to experience the difference of running an all agency and how that can make a huge difference in your business and your lifestyle so I sincerely look forward to the opportunity to work together in the future hope you got tons of value out of the business model that has worked for me and now hundreds of our clients so you know what to do schedule that demo call and we'll see you next time