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Everybody has a Jesse Gilmore agency transformation coach and founder of Niche and Control, author of the Agency Owners Guide to Freedom and the creator of leverage for growth. I’m the host of the leverage for growth podcast, and I know that in order for you to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within your mindset, skill set, and leadership style.
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I am on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy, and money to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies at niche and control e-commerce assets that is niche in control.
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Decomp case study.
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US.
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Jesse, thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here.
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Yeah, it’s. It really goes back to my to my story. I started in corporate, and when, began to lead other people and lead teams, I realized it was not a lot of great material to help me develop and grow, much less the people that I’m trying to raise up and develop and grow into leaders themselves. And so I started I started coaching leaders in teams almost 30 years ago.
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Now that seems hard to believe. It’s amazing how quickly that moves. As, as a, as I began to to do this in a lot of different contexts, first in corporate business settings, then in nonprofit and church settings, and then my own practice, I was like, this is this is something that there’s a real need for. People start a business because they’re good at something.
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But hiring people and leading people and leading yourself, these are skills that most people don’t have intuitively. How can I help? And that’s why we started it.
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My goodness, it flies.
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You know, coaching is is such an incredible profession because what I get to do is I get to work with people where they are and help them move toward where they want to be. And I start with the raw material. Right. And so often people have the answers already to the questions that they’re asking. They’re just not asking the right questions.
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And so what I get to do is I get to come alongside them and help them see what they just can’t see. You know, it’s really hard to see the whole picture when you’re in the frame. You need somebody on the outside who’s going to ask you those questions that maybe nobody else in your world is asking you so that you can see those things.
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So you can’t overcome your blind spots. Who do you talk to when you have no one else in your world that understands what you do? Entrepreneurs are special. I’m a third generation entrepreneur. I watched my grandfather and my dad do this, and they didn’t have somebody who came alongside them to help them to see what they couldn’t see, you know, one wildly successful one, not so much.
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What was the difference? It was the people around them. And so now what I get to do is come alongside, ask those questions, help people to overcome what’s in the way, the obstacles in the way which most often are between their ears, and then get into the level of success that they know they’re capable of.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah. So, you know, it’s funny, I started working with some people in the agency space, quite a few years ago now, and really found a resonance there. And I wasn’t sure exactly why. Until I really started to to do some, some deeper work myself. And you would think this is so obvious and self-evident, but it really took me some time because you can’t see the whole picture when you’re in it.
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That goes for me, too. You know, my dad started a traditional advertising agency back in the 70s, and he ran it for 45 years. Traditional media, you know, digital didn’t exist, of course, in those days. So, so billboards and radio and TV and newspapers, etc.. And I watched him build and grow an agency from nothing. Just an idea.
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Build and grow, create jobs. That’s what entrepreneurs do. Creating jobs for other people, building a team. But he couldn’t get out of his own way. And the difficulty over time was that he became the lid on the business growth, and he would grow to a certain point and then just beyond it, and then it would drop back and then grow and grow and then drop back and grow and drop back.
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Because he became the lid. He didn’t have somebody alongside of him. He didn’t have a trusted thinking partner, if you will, that he could lean into. And it it really did not occur to me is so crazy. And, all these decades, it didn’t occur to me that what I was doing was tapping in with other entrepreneurs and business owners and business leaders, and then specifically in the agency space.
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It did not occur to me that what I was doing on a subconscious level was becoming for them what my dad never had.
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Yeah.
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Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah.
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You know, I think you’re the hardest person you’re ever going to lead. You know, it’s so easy to point a finger and say, oh, I had better team members. If they just worked harder. If they just do what I tell them to do. If we had better systems, if we had better client mean, you can point the fingers all day long, but but the reality is, in my experience, most often the problem comes with the leader and how they’re leading themselves.
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Most leaders, most business owners, most agency owners are firefighters. They are moving from fire to fire, to fire, to fire. It’s time to time to call it a day. Go to bed, get up, rent and repeat. Do the same thing again. And this is this is how they’re leading and people follow. Your team follows how you lead and they follow in what you lead.
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So what’s going on is, is because of how they’re leading themselves. This is now influencing not just them, but it’s influencing their team, which is touching every one of their clients. Okay. Nobody likes to be in a fire. That’s not anybody’s dream. Okay. And so when you create an environment where the firefighter is just doing this all day long, you’re creating an environment where you’re going to have high churn, you’re creating an environment with low retention.
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You’re creating an environment that is going to cap and severely hamstring the results that you’re able to get with fulfillment, all because of how the leader is leading themselves. Now, why do they do that? Oh, there’s a lot of reasons for this. One is what I call the Cape syndrome, right. And this is that you think there’s a cape hanging in your closet, and you think if you strap it on, you can swoop in and save the day, right?
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You like putting out fires because it gives you a dopamine hit, right? Oh, I solved another problem. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You’re the hero. That’s great. If you have a cape hanging in your closet. Let’s talk. Most of us don’t. And yet, when you operate that way, you create systems. You create systems that are dependent on you. Where you were at the center of the spider web, where everything’s dependent on you swooping in and saving the day.
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Well, that doesn’t scale, and you’re never going to be able to sell it because you can’t sell yourself. Okay? So you got to ask yourself, what is it that you’re trying to bill? What do you want to Bill? What’s the system you want to live in? So much of this goes back to how you’re leading yourself.
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Yeah.
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Yes, 100%.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Yeah. Where? I start with a client. When they’re. When they’re in these spots. You know, if they don’t have systems yet, that’s critical. If you want to build something that’s healthy and sustainable for you and for your team and for your clients, you have to have systems. That’s an absolute non-negotiable. It’s not as complicated as it seems. It’s not as intimidating as it seems.
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You start where you are, not where you think you should be and not where you wish you were. You start where you are and you build the systems one at a time, right? What is it that you’re doing that somebody else can do? That’s where we start and we start with that list. What are the things you’re doing that no one else can do that only you can do?
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That’s a separate list. We’re going to build that out. My goal is to have you working on that list right? Right now you got all of it. We’re going to start to really focus. And by building systems you’re able to delegate. And by delegating you’re able to then breathe because you have margin. Margin is where creativity lives. Creativity is how leaders solve problems.
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If you feel like, I just don’t I don’t have any space. I don’t have any creativity because you’re any margin. So that’s that’s where I start. I’ll start with a client. We’ll start with those two lists. We’re going to build those two things out. And then we’re going to say okay one at a time. Let’s build a system so that this then becomes delegate able to make sense.
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Yeah. You’re right. What are you doing all day? Right. You.
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Yes. I love that.
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Yes.
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Yes, yes.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Do you find people are really surprised when they do that exercise? And they look at the results and they see where they’re actually spending their time.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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It’s so good. It’s a fantastic exercise. I love that a lot. I’m so glad you do that.
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Oh. The cape. Oh, yeah.
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Yeah. That’s right. Here’s some Kryptonite. Here. Just hold this right.
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Yeah. Yes.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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That’s right.
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That’s right. That’s right.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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That’s right.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I would agree completely. I think I can see every one of those stages. Talking with somebody yesterday, and they just crossed the seven trigger mark. Right. So they’ve been building and working very hard systems. Exactly what you’re describing, right? Training other people. Right. Slowly building them up. Systems. All right. Now developing leaders. All right. Now putting together a leadership team.
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And shockingly as they have built all those things that the company has continued to scale and grow, it’s amazing how that happens. And as they do that, they’re able to take their hands off and they’re able to, in theory, do less right but accomplish far more. And and the way, the way I often describe this is, is you have to move from being an individual contributor right into being a CEO.
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Right. And what that means is that your job is no longer about getting things done. Your job is about getting things done through other people. You are investing in your leaders, your leadership team. Your leadership team is then investing as it goes down into the organization until everybody is touched, right? Your job is not to do it anymore.
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And that is the term that I find most entrepreneurs have trouble with. Most people will not make that turn because they find again the dopamine hit, the k swoop in the doing. They will not make the turn because they don’t want to give that up. And when I have this conversation with the way I frame it is, I say, here’s the thing.
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If you want to build a lifestyle business where this is all about you, you want to build something where you’re doing that’s fine for your business. You get to decide, you know, as you wrote about in your book, you have agency, right? You get to choose. But if you want to scale and if you want to build this thing into something that becomes a sellable asset, this isn’t going to get you there, right?
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Because what you’re doing is everything is still touching you. You got to get out of.
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Yeah. Yes.
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Yes.
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Yes. Yes.
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Yes.
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Yes. Yes.
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That’s right.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely. And I think you have to be honest with yourself. What do you want to build? What is the. The business you want to build? What is the life you want to live? You get to choose. You get to choose that right. And whatever you choose, great. Just be consistent. Have the integrity to be consistent and operate in accordance with what you say you want to build.
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Does say you want to build something that scales and is sellable, but say I have to touch everything. I’m got to work, right? You have to. You have to have the integrity to have consistency. Consistent. A friend of mine says consistency is the mother of momentum. Everybody wants momentum. Consistency is how you get there.
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No, I don’t think a.
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Mom.
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Yeah.
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So good.
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Yeah. Oh I love that. Oh that’s brilliant. Consistency. Quality I’m going to check that out. Thank you. That’s brilliant. You got me thinking now.
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You know one of the things that I talk about with clients is the importance of a teachable spirit. You know, one of the commitments that I make every morning is I want to be the most teachable person in every room I walk into, in every conversation I’m in, because I believe you can learn from anybody.
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And sometimes you learn what not to do. Great. That’s still valuable. But sometimes if you’re receptive, you can pick up all kinds of stuff like this. Did I come into this expecting to learn about CQ? That I did not, but I’m going to be thinking about that for the rest of the day. Thanks to Jesse. Thank you.
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So good man. That’s so good. I love it. I love it.
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You know, you can go to our website, the Catalytic Leadership dot net, and see all the different things that we do. Do one on one coaching group where I work with teams and different masterminds and companies with offsides and retreats and all manner of things, speaking, a lot of different agency events. And you can always connect with me on LinkedIn.
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I’m pretty active over there, and I would love to connect with your listeners. And if there’s a way that I can be of service and assist, I’m always happy to do that.
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Hey, Jesse. Thank you for having me. I always loved our conversations. This was no exception to that. So good.
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Agency owners. If you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and start working on the business, where you can free up your time, delegate work more effectively, price and position your services to finally get paid for what you’re worth and have the team run the day to day.
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Go to niche and control dot com slash case study. Now to learn more about leverage for growth and also to book a free strategy session with us, we’ll look at your systems determine exactly what you need to do in order for you to scale this year and to create a strategic plan so that you can live the life of entrepreneurship you’ve always dreamed about.
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Go to niche and control dot com slash case study now.
(Transcripts are auto-generated and may not be 100% accurate)
