The Compounding Value Of Focus transcript

[Music] foreign to the Andrew Ferris podcast thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the show today I'm going to give you a little check in on my business which is actually the very first episode of the universe podcast was about what I'm trying to build kind of throw it back to the old Ecommerce Playbook days where I give you a little bit of clarity about what's going on with me as well as the lesson that I am taking away the most right now that I think will be helpful to you no matter what your business is like relative to mind if you're not an agency if you're not a consultant if you're on the brand side whatever I think I have learned something that will be exceptionally helpful to you it will not be rocket science but I think it'll still be useful let's dive in and talk about Focus all right so I started interferrous growth HF growth is actually what it's called don't even know the name of my own business whoops agf growth about a year and a half ago a little over to that now essentially it was January 2022 is when I got it going and and then I didn't even register the LLC honestly until like Midway through the year because I wasn't sure how long this is the thing I was going to be doing about Midway through last year I I relaunched my podcast in my own name out of the CTC guys took back over the Ecommerce Playbook which you should be listening to if you are not there's definitely no bad blood there that is all good feelings go listen to that it is great Taylor and Richard Geffen getting at it all the time but I kind of fell into building my own thing and you may or may not know that like I was unsure what I was going to do after being the CEO of 4x400 the aggregator that I used to run Downstream from sort of a sister company daughter company of Common Thread Collective after coming from contact Collective myself if you don't know my story that's where I came from and after running for over 100 I really loved what I was gonna do I I was thinking about a lot of different things I was interviewing with brands at the time considering taking a house role I was talking with common thread Collective about coming back there you Taylor and I still talk all the time so that would have sort of been an easy fit and and you guys love what they're doing so so yeah so that would have been using fit but as that started happening a couple things happened one of them was I started talking with my friend the simple modern about a project with them another one was that I started talking with Taylor about doing a little outsourced work for common thread collected and at the same time you may have heard my episode with Driveline baseball Mike Rothwell CEO of driveline baseball a number of months back I had got talking with them as well and that was sort of a dream client for me I'm a huge fan of driveline had been a fan of driveline baseball for a long time if you don't know that about being a big baseball fan and suddenly where I found myself was with a few very good clients who worked really well for me all the same time and I became a business owner now the thing about that is I am not the entrepreneur's entrepreneur I love dealing with entrepreneurs but I'm actually not the kind of person who really wants to go start my own thing from scratch and take on all the risk with all this big Grand Vision I think of myself much more as an editor of things than a like a true creator and the distinction I'm making there is that I tend to take an idea and try to chip away at it until it gets better and better and better and more efficient Etc and so for me to go be an entrepreneur and have my own business really like it was not what I was looking for at all in fact I barely considered it at first and I just really wanted to buy myself time I just my my wife and I just had our second son it's just kind of an in-between time and I thought I'll keep a Consulting client on the side you know kind of take some work and and then see what I'm gonna do long term but but I'll at least engage in sort of a three-month project or something well as that happened these clients started to pop up and suddenly I had a business and suddenly I was creating a website that said AJF growth on it and suddenly I had a podcast that was mine and whatever these things just kind of kept happening and I had clients that I liked and I mean I have good relationships with all those Driveline baseball still a client of mine at the time recording this like they've been with me for a long time now it's just been really fun and it turns out that I love it I love having my own thing I had no intention to bring on help now I've got like a little bit of part-time help some overseas help with my friends via more Staffing who you've heard me talk about on this show they connected me to and then I've got one full-time employee now actually working with me as well I don't intend to grow a lot more but suddenly I have a business that's the point after not that suddenly after a year and a half of doing this I have a business and because of the way this thing happened that business has developed sort of unintentionally at times like I've I started off with some ideas about what I think would help grow a business in the ways that I could I thought about could I help this brand over here with this particular set of things I mean when I first started honestly I was doing sort of an outsourced head of growth thing where it was like trying to manage Google meta and email all at the same time for Brands while sort of not taking on too many clients and uh and doing all these things and really trying to think about could I help grow a couple brands at a time and that worked to mixed success I would say to those Brands saw experiences with all those Brands but like the scope of Works would sort of shift and change and I'd find myself giving much more attention to one thing than the others and gravitating in a lot of cases towards meta ads Etc and then you know as that shifted more I started to work more also or even as I started to move towards meta ads towards the things that I thought could work I would engage in projects that were not really consistent from client to client so I was already doing Southwest set of growth thing but then as as like you know I worked with simple modern for about six months and and that project shifted in the middle of it and that was really like an assess what you need and see how I could help kind of project but then from there I looked at another brand and said like hey I could give you like an audit and like a deep dive but I'm not going to sell you anything serious afterwards and that means it could be maybe more useful to you and and really try to put a separate set of eyes on so I worked with a client and did that and so that was like a one-off project that I had no internal process or way of doing I just kind of like did what I do you know and worked on the brand and dug deep and try to figure out what I could do to help and then I had another client you know working with where I was like just trying to help with creative strategy and and do that for a little bit sort of support their media buying team Etc and then you know again all of these things just kept shifting in all these different ways and I still had Driveline where I was doing all this different stuff across the board and what has happened for me in the last three months especially is that I have now gotten to a point where I have narrowed my scope of work narrowed my ideal client profile and done all these things in a way that I think has made me the best version of myself that I've ever been and that's really one that I wanted to talk about today and get to and I gave you that context you understand sort of how I got here if you've been listening to show for a while you might have noticed that I like never talk about Google ads or just like reference it in passing I was you know I still do some Google for clients but it's a it's like a smaller part of the engagement that's probably the only thing that's going to not fit with a lot of the rest of the narrative I'm going to tell you about I mean I I'll have some email episodes here and there but it's always an interview if I do email it's not me just kind of telling you solo what I think that's because I'm not that good at email and I really realized that doing email in fact I don't think I'm that good at Google ads and I've told my clients for whom I'm running Google ads that same thing I've told them you don't want me to be be the person to really scale your Google ads like I'm just not that great at it what I can do is probably save you from losing money there and do that pretty cheaply for you without it being a big time expenditure for me but I probably can't be the person who meaningfully scales your Google account I should probably set you up with somebody else to do that and that that would be like better for everybody and so that's the way that I've begun talking and what I've landed on is that I now believe I have the best Clarity I have ever had to what makes an e-commerce business grow particularly in e-commerce business that is already at say a million bucks somewhere in that range or or is doing a monthly pace of of around you know over 100 Grand a month or whatever somewhere in that range trying to get up to 20 plus that part of the e-commerce journey is unquestionably where I have spent the most time in my professional career where I have the most point of view where I feel really clear about what it is what is required to grow that brand I have a good sense of where the landmines are in that journey I know about the cash needs I know about the need to set up infrastructure for tracking and processes I know about how easy it is to start wasting money on bad Opex spends I I understand how to run a meta account and how to power your growth with that I understand how to think about forecasting and cash flow forecasts and and really getting on top of those kinds of issues with Clarity really think of a contribution margin we can week out all the stuff I'm talking about all the time on this show I now feel like I am crystal clear on that stuff and so I can be really helpful there and so what has happened for me is that I have now sort of shifted I've actually off-boarded a couple clients I mean you know over a multiple month process or in like in one case significantly scale back my work like like I've been doing with Driveline baseball I mentioned them before you know I was doing sort of Outsource kind of growth there now I've worked with them to find a new internal head of growth who's awesome and it's like a really Joy a great joy to work with and in the midst of that what I've done is really narrowed my scope of work to just a couple of things okay the first is meta as bio by the way I've also gotten rid of almost my entire coaching business because I found that even though it isn't a huge time suck and it actually pays really well hourly at the same time it just requires my brain to go into too many places and it's too difficult for me to stay on top of all that so I've narrowed and here's what I've narrowed to I now call it executive growth management and the idea is Media buying meta media buying plus coaching for Founders who are trying to scale their business along that part of the 20 25 million dollar Journey now it's not like I would get rid of a client who's gets past that part of the journey I think it'd be really useful for them as well in fact part of the reason I've staffed up a little bit is to support one client in particular who I'm going to tell you about in a couple weeks on the show I've got an interview with uh with Curie dinner and Company Sarah Moray about how that brand has just smashed every forecast it possibly could have set up we're growing really fast and and now it's really gonna probably pass that point in Revenue well I've staffed up in part to work with her and to work with some other folks to to make it so that as we start to scale the needs for creative and for for more creative output and and all that I've actually got the resources to do that because you know the larger the spend the more the more there's a requirement to be able to have more ability to Output creative quickly okay so I've scaled that to work with some clients so I can definitely go past that 20 stage but my my the part where I feel like I can be like the rocket fuel in the business and a really good coach to Founders and to entrepreneurs is in that Journey that I was talking about earlier and so what have I done I have offloaded clients who don't fit that bill I have instead replaced them with I've got one last client starting at the beginning of October but if you were to go to ajfgrowth.com right now you'd see everything is a wait list I'm not taking on any more clients and I've got that one more client starting entirely because it's sort of the last area where I can fit somebody and feel like my service remains at a high quality level and I built all of those on scaling percentage of spend deals that scaling percentage of spend deal maybe in terms of how they compensate Me Maybe doesn't work very well if you were like a large agency if you listen to Taylor holiday talk about or tweet about this he you know he's moved Common Thread collectives contracts almost all over to Flat fees and that's because for for an agency it makes a lot more sense especially you know I think their ideal client profile is like a little above the 10 million plus range somewhere in that kind of kind of area and so he's realized that the best way for them to build their business with a fixed fee every month they deliver the work and and there you go for me when I'm dealing with smaller brands that scaling percentage of AD spend fee structure works really really well because then I can actually probably take a little less money on a client if I'm really confident I can grow them and in that stage like I said I'm at my best I think and so I feel pretty confident I can grow them and I do like a month-to-month deal I don't even need a lot you know I don't do a long contract if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out that's okay everybody can still be friends afterwards and and we can go try and find each other the right fit why do I say all that why am I telling you all those details well partly because I think some people are interested in hearing what's going on but there's actually another reason for that and it's that there has been this Revelation this light that has gone off in my life as over the last few months I have worked very hard to sort of move my business around transform it in a way to fit where I am really running meta ads with ongoing operator coaching essentially as the as the core of the business when I am doing that with clients what I am finding is I can deliver for them and I love the work and it doesn't eat up my whole life it doesn't weigh on me in the same way I don't have the sort of latent anxiety of all the work I'm supposed to be doing for brand or whatever it is like little things come up but still work right but the mix between my compensation my quality of work and my latent work anxiety is at its best when I am focused in this one area of work and the reason that I that I mentioned that is because what I have come to think and you know I talked about this after I left forever 100 but it's just so clear to me how true this is right now what I've come to think is especially at the revenue level that my own business is especially at which is like you know under seven figures let's be really clear right it's like not a huge business or anything like that especially at that Revenue level and especially with my desire to not have something particularly big and while while we're there Focus is so powerful it is so powerful at this stage of my career I now believe I am really really good frankly in this one area and and I can be helpful in a lot of areas and I can be conversational a lot of areas but there's one area of the business that I think I can be really good on which is growing your brand profitably with meta ads from 1 million to 20 million plus okay that part of the journey I just think I'm nails at and and it's not like I'm going to be 100 hit rate or whatever nobody's perfect and there's stuff I'm gonna miss like everybody else doesn't I found some mistakes I made this last week for a client right so don't don't hear this another way but I just know that by focusing that area I have that right mix of stuff and what I've come to think is almost every business including especially including operators at the stage of business precisely that I am talking about one of the big constant problems is focus drained and it's so interesting when you build your business when you build your brand around contribution margin and around a bottom line after that contribution margin as the core thing that you're trying to build and if you keep your eyes dead set on that then suddenly what you realize is that lots of things that could be grabbing your attention are not worth doing and you should not remove your focus from them this is like the constant shiny object syndrome thing that happens for Brands right what happens is they there's like this issue somewhere where our retention isn't good enough and so like oh can we do a loyalty program and so they imp they'd use the Loyalty program app or could we like make our email way better and they go and they start digging into that well like maybe you should do that maybe you should you know add a loyalty program I've never actually seen one of those work any Commerce but maybe maybe you should spend a much more time on your email and SMS that's definitely possible but what happens is you start a project like that you add the software you start paying the monthly fee and then you don't really have a plan to seriously build it to like invest real time and effort into making it good because almost nothing works that well if you don't try that hard if you don't focus on it if you don't give the attention that it deserves and that is the big thing that in my Consulting business I'm realizing when I am in this zone of of client when I'm in this space the work comes easy I can be focused and I can do a great job when I'm elsewhere the work comes slowly I don't have good process for it and and I don't do that good of a job and the process thing is really interesting if you have ever been an executive and tried to build process one thing you may realize is that it takes forever it's like me I'm adding one full-time clock I've got one full-time person working with me it's a creative strategist okay who's helping me output additional grade work and then I've got design and edit help in the Philippines that I that I got via my work with more Staffing okay brought them on through there and then I have an ad Builder who's like an early career person who's basically is building the ads for me that's my whole team you could see that team is set up structured around growing brands on meta ads that's what it's for Creative strategy creative execution and then ad building all built around that so when I go and do those things it requires a ridiculous amount of work to get a good process to move from client assets into my creative strategist hands so so she knows like okay what assets do I have to play with or what assets do I need to get produced she's got to have access to that Library when she has an idea and she and I work really closely with her so my eyes need to get on it how does she submit it to me for review how did she submit it to the client for review how did she get the right uh submitted over to the how did she submit it over to the creative team to the design and edit team how does she make sure that they have all the information they need to do a great job so that when they deliver it then she reviews it what about client revisions in there what software do we use what Asana boards we built and you know what happens it takes forever to build this stuff it takes forever and then if we do this if we take the time required to build all of the processes internally and use the sauna correctly and frame and whatever software we're using to make sure all these things are all the people have all the information they need to deliver all of this and and ultimately somebody go build it in ads manager for me to know and for me to check in blah blah and then for me to communicate to the client that actually just those few people on this pretty small team I have it requires a whole bunch of work to set up that process and so if you start to multiply that out you start adding team members across all these different parts of the business and you have to get this person talking to that person and make sure that the forecast is here what happens every process gets more complex and harder to build and the work takes longer and there's more latent anxiety about the amount of things to do now sometimes you have to do that depending on the kind of business you've gotten yourself into but sometimes you actually don't and if you can resist chasing down all of these potential things that may or may not work but that you just think might work right if you can resist that and focus on making your core brought product better making your core customer experience better getting them what they need doing a better job with the things that are really driving the value of your business like the core stuff right Facebook ads that the basics of your email your website experience your unboxing like all of the things that are really Central to the growth of your business the profitability of your business Etc if you can do a great job with those things then ultimately a lot of times growth will happen and you only need to go chase the next thing once you're really stalled out now like I'm speaking in general terms there's exceptions to this and I get it okay but I am amazed I'm amazed at how much better I am at building internal process and and I'll call it product for me even though it's really services when I focus because it turns out there are actually a lot of problems to solve even in a relatively simple Business Like Mine there are a lot of problems to solve all the time and and to go solve all of those it requires real effort and real work and so having the right resource to put towards those things is partly a matter of being set up as well as possible to give the time and attention to those things that that are required now why is it so hard to stay focused at to your best opportunities why is it so hard the answer is so simple it is this there is something else that looks like it may generate some money especially if you don't know what to do next there is something else that looks like I may generate some money and so you try the next thing you try over here you try over there you try over here you try over there and the Temptation is that when you have a problem like you have to bring in this other strategy you heard about from somebody somewhere like don't instead do these basic things right understand your contribution margin make sure your product is good as being delivered your customers on time track carefully everything that goes on your p l so you know what's there and eliminate the waste build your business with meta ads build your business with your basic email flows and get a couple campaigns out per week ideally three like do those basic things as well as you possibly can measure contribution margin and your bottom line profit relentlessly against some goals built within some forecasting some cash forecasting and that's your eCommerce business in the early stages at least now product development's going to be in there as well that's going to be a huge part of the process if you're actually in a product business if you're an operator et cetera but those are the things that make the the conferences work if you listen to this and you're in the agency Consulting that kind of side like like the question I would ask you is how good can you make your products you know another reason that I'm able to focus and generate additional value for myself is because a lot of agencies suck that's why a lot of Consultants aren't that good so I regularly inherit an account where either it's an operator who didn't know what they were doing and they suck at this part of the job that's not their fault there's a lot of things to do for an operator or it's taken over from an agency or consultant or somebody new who didn't know what they were doing and because they all have the same problem they all have shiny object syndrome and Chase a million things down and hire people whatever and so if you can make your service and your product good you can probably charge more for it you can do a better job deliver great work you can build better process and that will be the thing that maybe over time creates more scale it's possible that I'm going to have a 50 person team at some point down the line I'm not trying to build that right now like in fact I don't even like the idea of doing it but if I do here's how I believe it will happen in my business relative to my goals relative to all those things and that is a big important thing here I'm not trying to build a nine-figure business right so my goals are smaller which means that the things that I can uh push on and focus on here are also smaller okay but as I seek to build my business at the stage it's at right now and and the focus I I can pursue as I do that I am able to generate the best value for myself in part by just being as good as possible in that one area and if I ever get to if I ever start growing to a you know a team of 50 people or whatever here's how it will happen it'll happen one little movement at a time Downstream from the quality that I can produce I will be able to say okay I have now built good process for all of these things I actually probably could now invite somebody else into this hand them a baton and they could actually run with it because my process is good enough is not an answer to the problem of having too many people and not knowing what to do it's how you scale up I think and so by Bill by focusing on my the places where I'm very best building good process internally there and beginning to deliver a great service there I think I'm setting myself up for the best possible outcomes in the long run now on in the midst of this there's one other part of my business which is this whole podcast thing and the media buying side era excuse me the media machine that I'm a machine that's way too big of a word the media creation I'm trying to do to help other entrepreneurs learn and help other e-commerce people learn but that is its own thing and frankly I'm not pushing that hard growing that much I've got my my one main sponsor and more Staffing I love working with them because I fully believe in them and I'm gonna try and keep that another area where I'm focused I don't I'm not looking for tons of new sponsors maybe I'd have a second one but I'm not gonna go crazy on that because it will be too much of a focus train I have a sponsor that I love and I'm happy to put my name next to and that that's what I push and so this part of it you know and I'm not going to push that hard I'm growing this part of the business until I can do a really good job of it and in the meantime I'm just going to try and put out the best content that I can to go from there because I have to build up the internal process first before I can really regret so that's where things are at the point of all of this and the point of this little reflection on my business is this as I have made that transition to offloading work that was I was I think perfectly fine at delivered a solid service on and replace that with the stuff that I think I'm really best at I like my business more I'm making more money and I'm set up for the most success in the long term and have the least late and anxiety about business it is a good setup and a good combo I recommend it hey before we close this episode out I do want to mention my friends at more Staffing I just mentioned them a second ago on the show but I really mean it when I tell you I love working with these people and I'm proud to put my name next to them they are high integrity they do a great job and if you're looking to expand your team in the Philippines they are the place you should start if you are looking to expand your team at all in e-commerce I don't know why you wouldn't be looking in the Philippines as the value is there to get incredible super good hard-working high integrity highly competent talent in the Philippines for a much lower cost than having those in people in the US I have worked with them myself in my business as I mentioned in this show they're great go to morenow.co even just take a call just see if it's the right fit for you and see if the resumes look good for you it's it's really an easy process they do so much work for you to go recruit train on board coach all those things that need to be done to get great eCommerce Talent from the Philippines into your business more now dot co go check it out right now [Music] all right thanks for listening I hope you didn't mind if this was reflective in a way that was about my business and didn't translate to yours I think it will I've run the conferences I know how hard it is to maintain Focus if you liked this episode you will like a lot of my other episodes as well please subscribe you know rate review all the usual stuff and don't forget to visit the sponsor that I mentioned there at the end more Staffing they are great if you are adding to your team you should be thinking about doing that in the Philippines with more Staffing go to more now.co to go check that out link is in the show notes there as always and of course you can reach out to me I would love to answer your questions on an episode at some point you can email me at podcast igfgrowth.com I responded I think pretty much all those you can also DM me or follow me on Twitter at Andrew J Ferris again links are all in the show notes thanks so much for listening for watching I'll talk to you next time [Music] description [Music]