This may sound like the most obvious of statements; of course your agency should work for you.
But all too often we as owners feel like the reality is the other way around; that we work for our agencies.
So instead of enjoying a business that caters for our needs & wants, we find ourselves desperately trying to “feed the beast”.
But how does this come about?
And more importantly, what can we do to reset that relationship?
In the beginning...
We all start our agencies for personal reasons.
Be that for more control over our time, our money, our creative freedom or any other reason, it is always personal.
And so whether consciously or not, what we have set out is this:
Our personal goals were not being served in our previous job, and so we created a new job for ourselves (as an agency owner) to allow for those personal goals to be met.
So at the outset of the agency at least, it is our personal goals that then dictate our business goals.
For example:
“I want more control over my time” → “I set up my own business so I don’t have my working hours dictated to me.”
Or
“I want more creative freedom” → “I set up my own business where I have the final say on creative direction.”
Simple right?
Then comes the fall...
There’s no specific timeframe in which this change happens, and it affects some owners more than others, but almost without fail, it happens!
And that change is the inversion of those goals:
Now the cart is really driving the horse!
Our personal goals are no longer dictating what the business does, but rather that the needs of the business are now dictating the attainment of our personal goals.
For example:
“We need to hit £30k / month in revenue” → “Then we can hire a project manager” → “Then I’ll have more control over my time.”
Or
“We need to sign clients with bigger budgets” → “Then we can work on strategy & not just execution” → “Then I’ll have more control over creative direction.”
Now if you’re reading this as a micro-agency owner and you haven’t found yourself having thoughts like the above, then believe me, you are lucky!
And you’re almost certainly in the tiny minority of owners who haven’t fallen into goal inversion.
Ok, I've fallen - so what do i do?!
Firstly, don’t beat yourself up about this - most agency owners experience it.
Secondly, recognition is half the battle - many owners go on living & working with goal inversion for a long time before they realise it. And some never realise it before they close their business down. Without the recognition, there can be no solution.
But most importantly of all, you need to look at those personal goals that you set out for yourself in the beginning - and what you’ll probably realise is that most (if not all) of them still apply to work…!
They aren’t truly personal at all, but rather personal-business.
"I want more control over my time / money / creative freedom”; none of these are things that you would say to a friend or family member if they asked you what you really wanted out of life. You very well might if they asked you what you wanted out of your job, but not your life.
And so we need to peel back the layers of those personal goals in order to meaningfully reorientate our relationships with our agencies & get ourselves back in the driving seat.
Through the peeling process, we can shed their restrictive work-focused nature, and reveal them for what they really are - proxies for things we actually want for ourselves.
let's get peeling...
There are two methods we’ve used to get down to those genuinely meaningful goals. And we’ve developed two as our experience has shown that not every owner gets on well with each method, so it’s always good to have a fallback!
The first method is the most literal one; easiest to do, but requires more regular review to keep it working - we call this the Thematic Method.
The second method is more abstract; harder to do (for most owners), but with its roots in your personal values & desired feelings, it is significantly less likely to change - we call this the Driver-Feeling Method.
Here’s the basics of both methods:
Thematic method
This method is the most straightforward because it starts with a simple list of “things” you want from the next 12 months; and frankly, most people are able to provide a list like that! We don’t ask that you make a distinction between what you want at home vs. work, just that you rattle off a list of things you want. And from that, we can establish the themes that are most important to you, and therefore should be driving your business decision-making.
So the principal outcome of this method is to place a list of themes in between your personal goals & business goals like so:
Those themes enable a simplification of the myriad personal & business goals you may have, and offer a more streamlined method of translating between the two.
So how does this work in practice?
Imagine this was your list of “wants” for next year:
As mentioned above, this is clearly a mixture of personal & business Goals, just fired from the hip. And some of them (Take home £5k / month, for example), are somewhere between business & personal - the money is personal, but assuming it is coming from the business, this one is a little murky as to where it sits!
So our next job is to group them up into three (yes, three 🙂) types, so we can ask the right questions about them:
For the wants under PERSONAL, the question we need to ask is How do I get that? - these are goals that your business should be assisting you in achieving, not creating blockers for you.
We’ll use one of them as an example:
Have a week’s holiday every 3 months - “How do I get that?”
- Holidays cost money; therefore this one is tied in your Take home £5k / month want too. So we can park the money element of it for now.
- Taking a week off requires your team to operate without you; to do that, they need to be able to work independently for a week
- So it looks like TEAM INDEPENDENCE is a theme for you; it represents a business goal that allows for your personal goal to be achieved 🙂
For the wants under BUSINESS, the question we need to ask is Why do I want that? - these are goals that should be translatable into a personal element for you; the “business” has no value beyond its ability to provide for your needs, and therefore each business-focused want should have a personal benefit attached.
Here’s an example:
Reduce % of revenue from top client (currently 40%) - “Why do I want that?”
- 40% of revenue in a single client is risky; it makes you nervous that if they leave, you’ll struggle to be profitable & that makes the business unstable
- That instability could also threaten your Take home £5k / month want too, as well as impacting your mental health with the worry of that client leaving
- So it looks like STABILITY is a theme for you; it represents a Business Goal that is required to offset threats to your Personal needs
And for the wants under BUSINESS-PERSONAL, you need to ask both questions, starting with the Why.
Take home £5k / month - “Why do I want that?”
- That level of income would alleviate all reasonable money problems, making your personal financial situation stable
- It would also provide for the kind of holidays that you spoke about as another want, as well as cover the monthly rental on the new Tesla you want too
- This is important as the money has purpose for you - it isn’t just money for money’s sake, and therefore it has more personal meaning & value
Take home £5k / month - “How do I get that?”
- Simplistically, you need to be making more than £5k in profit each month to allow for at least £5k in dividends alongside your salary - minus your tax liabilities, this should meet your take-home goal
- Most micro-agencies have reasonably fixed costs month-to-month, therefore you have an average monthly revenue target to hit: total costs + £5k + £1k (20% buffer), with the buffer being there to offset any cost fluctuations month-to-month
- With this target, you may realise that you need to sell more, either with higher frequency, or at higher average value - and so SALES may also be a theme for you, where you need to consider what % of your time goes into those activities
So from this example, we have divined three key themes; Team Independence, Stability & Sales.
These themes are the links between your personal goals & business goals that will help you to achieve them.
So when you’re looking to assess what your business goals should be, you can reference those themes to help you to prioritise & keep you on track.
Driver-feeling method
This method is generally more challenging as it requires you to be able to answer the Why do I want that? question repeatedly, until you reach one (or sometimes more) defining driver.
The method also involves confronting feelings that you desire, and sometimes those can be a little embarrassing to talk about, even with a trusted advisor!
The exploration of this method can be lengthy too, as it is drawing on deeply-held desires that aren’t often easy to express in words - sometimes it can take a few weeks of mulling the Why do I want that? question over before the answer appears!
But the major advantage of this method is its longevity - in tapping into those deeply-held beliefs, desires & feelings, you are setting a firm basis for steering your business because those things rarely change. Unlike the Thematic Method above that relies on tangible things that will change year-to-year, or even month-to-month, the Driver-Feeling method is firmly rooted in who you are, and therefore requires significantly less frequent revision.
So what we’re eventually looking to produce is something that works like this:
So let’s get into an example based on one of the same goals that we used above: Take home £5k / month, and for brevity, just one of the reasons we had for wanting it:
- That level of income would alleviate all reasonable money problems, making your personal financial situation stable
And now we again ask Why do I want that? question of the financial stability point.
There could of course be myriad answers to this depending on your situation, but one might be:
- Within reason, I don’t want to have to worry about what I spend
And now we have hit upon a deeper layer; a feeling that you want - so why do you want that feeling?
- I don’t like feeling like I can’t do something just because of money
And if you flip that statement around, what you get is:
- Money shouldn’t be a barrier to doing what I want to do
And this statement is now bordering on a driver; CHOICE.
You know when you’ve identified a driver when you reach the end of your ability to ask the Why…? question without the resulting being a cyclical argument:
Why do I want choice? I don’t like being dictated to.
Why don’t I like being dictated to? It makes me feel like I am not in control of my own life.
Why don’t I like feeling like I am not in control of my own life? Because I want to believe that I choose the path I follow.
Following this process, we have identified that money is not really desired in & of itself, nor is it desired for its ability to allow for specific expenditures, but in fact it is its ability to provide for generic choices - if money is never an object, then more choices become available.
Once you have established something you believe may be a core driver for you, you can then work forwards again from there to ascertain whether it is something that applies to you more broadly.
What else impacts your ability to choose things?
Available time is clearly another factor, alongside the money - so how many of your personal goals revolve around how you spend your time?
How are those reflected in the business goals that you have talked about, even before you had a conscious realisation of your potential drivers?
The Driver-Feeling Method can take a long time to work through, but the real carrot of it is in that realisation - once you have it, it becomes significantly easier to sketch out the longer-term vision of your agency.
Because the great game is really in making it work for you - otherwise you may as well go back to salaried employment!
the round-up
Making your agency work for you is a critical element of your success.
If you are letting your business dictate terms, it saps your energy & enthusiasm, and leaves you feeling like the future holds little promise - and ironically these are some of the principal reasons why we as agency owners chose to take our own path in the first place!
But the first task is recognition - recognising, and accepting, that you’ve allowed the business to take the rudder. Without this, you will not take meaningful action.
And that meaningful action requires you to peel back the layers of your business & of yourself to get down to the “stuff” that genuinely holds value to you.
Because when you know what those things are, you can repurpose your agency to deliver them for you
