My SECRET Plans for My Agency

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I own a 7 figure Recruitment Agency based in the UK and the US.
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TRANSCRIPT

(00:00):

Hi, everyone. Today I wanted to share with you my 10 goals for 2020. After reflecting on 2019 I feel the year went really well. There were some rocky challenges throughout the summer months of the year. After assessing everything that we did in 2019 overall the business managed to hit seven figures, which I’m really pleased about. We hit just over the million pounds revenue mark, which again was a fantastic achievement. Bearing in mind the business really only has now five to six billable recruiters. The rest is the marketing team as well which is going to be the big transition that we’re working on 2020 is providing clients a lot with marketing strategies, digital and mail marketing.

(01:04):

After reflecting on last year what I realized was once you get past that point of 13 staff it is really tricky, so you go from a boutique agency into the wilderness stage as such because going 13 to 25 to 30 staff, that is really, really tough. Because obviously you’re building the systems, the processes that you do with 13 staff and below but also it’s looking after the operational, having different tiers of management. It is really tricky and what I’ve tended to find looking back and speaking to many other agency owners as well, their biggest frustration is going past that point as well and actually scaling up.

(01:47):

Now there’s a lot of people that talk about scaling up and getting to 20, 30, 40 staff but then you look back over what are your actual goals? What do you want to achieve in life? Because I think a lot of business owners, especially agency owners, get into business for freedom, lifestyle, being able to do what they want when they want and having pretty much unlimited income. But when you’re getting into the day to day stuff of being an agency owner it’s very stressful. There’s long hours. It’s full of ups and downs and it is really challenging.

(02:23):

What I’ve managed to do for 2020, I’ve got a crystal clear vision of my business now. I’m really fortunate to have some fantastic employees in my company. It’s took me over four years to get the right culture fit and the right type of attitudes in the business but I feel like we’ve got a great, healthy balance now. I think we’ve got a good split between females and males as well, around about 50/50. But also everyone is on a mission to achieve what Ronald James and our marketing agency wants to achieve in 2020. So I am looking aspect of I have Mondays off so here I’m working from home on Monday but not necessarily work. It’s more focusing on my EntrepreneurJames channel which you’re going to be finding out a lot more about shortly in this video.

(03:12):

But also the business can pretty much run without me, at least for a day because it’s important to have that time to think, self reflect, blue-sky thinking, being out of day-to-day operations and being able to strategic think and grow the business. So that’s really important if you are an agency owner make sure you’re taking time outside of the business to work on that stuff because it is important.

(03:40):

Going into our goals for 2020, my number one goal is to make 750,000 pounds net profit. That’s actual profit with the business. It’s a big task. I think realistically we might get 500K but if we stretch to 750, brilliant. That’s the number one goal. The second goal is we want to have 10 clients on a recurring revenue for our marketing agency spend, between five to 10K per month per client. So that’s the second goal. The third goal, I want to go to the gym three times a week every week. So I’m consistently dropping between going once or twice a week, sometimes three times a week. I think it’s very important, health and well-being is really important, especially as a business owner. You’re in a stressful environment. You’re nonstop, never get a chance to switch off, which is why going to the gym is important and I meditate every morning as well and I’ve stuck at that probably for the best part of five years now. Feel great from it.

(04:47):

20 minutes in the morning. I’ve mixed up between doing guided meditation and also silent mediation, so it depends what works for you. There’s loads of apps out there. I actually just use … I haven’t got the phone on me but I use a YouTube channel and there’s a Bob Procter, Abundance Mediation, which works really well and he has also got another one which is like a mindfulness meditation. Both around 20 to 22 minutes. So just sit in my chair in the dark and put the headphones in and go through that guided meditation. I find that works really well.

(05:24):

The fourth goal is for my YouTube channel, EntrepreneurJames, I want to really grow that with some awesome content in 2020. I want to make sure we’re doing a vlog, video every week. Showing you behind the scenes at the agency and into my lifestyle and into being an entrepreneur. Want to make sure that I commit to one video post every single week on this channel. If you’re not subscribed there should be a subscribe button popup now. If you’d like to just click subscribe so then you get an update on as and when the new content comes. I’m going to be sharing a lot around how to build an agency business, how to build a lifestyle business as well, whilst also scaling to the magic number 12 to 13 staff, but being very, very highly profitable.

(06:13):

Goal number five is reaching 10,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. I’ve only just started to give EntrepreneurJames channel a big push. So over the coming months I’m hoping we can reach 10,000 subscribers. First earmark I think, recording this video, I think we’re at about 600 subscribers, all organic. First target is 1,000. Then the next target will be 5,000. Then hopefully by the end of the year we can reach 10,000. Spread the word guys. Make sure you’re commenting below. I would love to hear what your thoughts are around growing an agency or wanting to get involved in running an agency. It will be interesting to see what your thoughts are and I’ll always make sure and try to respond to as many comments as possible.

(07:00):

Number six, the goal is we are launching a agency owner mastermind. For those of you that know me I’ve spent over the best part of 250,000 pounds over my lifetime so far in personal development masterminds and education. I feel like I’ve got our business to the seven figure level very predictably now, so we’re in a great position and I get a lot of requests around doing one-on-one coaching, which I haven’t personally got the time for but what I’m going to make time for this year is to do a mastermind. If you are interested in that check out entrepreneurjames.com, there should be some deals there where you can find out a little bit more, hop on a quick call with me, and I can show you what we can bring with that into your business and help you systemize, automate, and turn it into a highly profitable agency without having to put in 60, 70, 80 hours a week.

(07:57):

Goal number seven. I want to have six holidays this year. Very greedy. I remember my first year into starting an agency I actually managed to get six holidays in, funnily enough. A lot of agency owners are probably listening thinking how the heck did he manage to get away for six holidays? Being honest, second and third year in the business as we were growing and hiring staff and managing etc, moving into office space and bigger offices, I couldn’t get those holidays in. But I think it’s important. When I’m including six holidays I’m including two trips to LA to a mastermind I attend so it’s sort of work but a holiday. Then four personal holidays I want to go on. I want to make sure I go, I’m going back to Los Angeles a couple of times. I already booked up with my partner to go away for a lovely all-inclusive in Mexico, Cancun, which should be nice.

(08:50):

Then I would like to go away with all my family again to a villa probably in Malbert. I’d like to hire a villa as well in the south coast of the UK in the summer, maybe for four-five weeks and work down there. So that could be quite good and that will be a big test for the business as well, to making sure that all of the systems that I’ve put in place over the last three to four years are actually going to work and that the team we’ve got can deliver. That will be a big test.

(09:20):

Number eight, I’m going to share with you anyway but probably does sound a little bit of an ego thing, is buy a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. I already have nice cars. I’ve got a lovely Porsche Boxster sports car and nobody Range Rover is the day to day. But I am tempted by a Ferrari, McLaren, or Lamborghini or maybe another Porsche. So we’ll see. I love cars so I know when I’m in business and hopefully for yourselves, creating a good lifestyle for yourselves, because that’s what we’re in business for. It’s to have a good life, to make profit. Provide value first to your client and customer number one. But for that you want to reward yourself so, yeah. I do love cars so that’s my little guilty pleasure as such. I think I’m going to be maybe at the backend of year, if targets are hit, then we’ll see how I will reward myself.

(10:17):

Number nine is enjoy every day of work. Stop doing anything repeatedly. So I work on this every year and I work on it every single week with my PA and office manager Melissa, is what am I doing that is repetitive that I can outsource either to her, the team, or somebody else so we can systemize it? I’m constantly tweaking to get time back, time back, time back, time back, because as you’re growing a business as an entrepreneur you are pulled from pillar to post all of the time and time is the most valuable currency. I’m always working on what am I really, really awesome and excellent at and then I try and outsource anything that I’m not excellent at and that’s a high-value task as well.

(11:07):

So I was part of a strategic coach program Don Sullivan One of the modules was listing out everything that you do day to day. I’ve actually got it in this book here around my goals. I’ve got a new focus planner which is called Full Focus Planner by a guy called Michael Hyatt. Brilliant planner. I know I did a video on this earlier last year around my day plan but this one seems really cool. I think at the start of the year what you can do is you map out your ideal week and what that looks like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday from 6:00 AM. So a bit like that. See how it’s laid out as an ideal week? So I’m going to be working on that today to plan out my ideal week and what that looks like.

(12:00):

Because you want to make sure that the business is running for you. A lot of the mistakes that some business owners make, depending on what your desire is, yeah? If you want to scale your business and eventually sell one day then it is going to be a lot of hard work and you’re not going to probably have the luxury of planning your ideal week and being able to take time out of work, etc. But a lot of business owners, if you look, I think the stats are crazy in terms of … I mean, only 5% of businesses go past the three-year period, so we’ve already passed that. We’re only one of the 5% that have actually done that. So we give ourselves a pat on the back for that. But I think from there once that 5%, I think only 5% of that 5% actually sell the business successfully.

(12:44):

I’ve to’d-and-fro’d around my business career whether I should build a business to sell, which I do in the mindset build a business to sell. Great book. John Warrillow. Build to Sell. I think I’ve recommended that a few times. It’s a brilliant little book. Great story how a creative agency owner was sick of doing the same thing all the time, running his business for 10 years. Had a good lifestyle but the business wasn’t worth anything and how he systemized and processed his leads, his sales, and eventually sold the business I think for five or six million pounds. It’s a story but it’s a great story. It depends where what you want to get out of it longer term. Always have the mindset of building a business to sell but remember that you only do get one life so it’s having that balance between running your business day to day but also enjoying what you do.

(13:38):

Going back to that goal for me is I want to make sure that I’m coming into work loving what I do every day. If there’s certain tasks or certain things that are annoying me and I really don’t enjoy them I’m going to get them off my plate because what’s the point? Goal number nine was enjoy every day of work. Stop doing anything repeatedly that I don’t enjoy and have Mondays off. I’m having Mondays off. I’ve had that off for quite a while now and being strict at that because the business should be able to operate without me. When I say “off” I’m working on passion projects, working on obviously EntrepreneurJames channel. Working on things for the mastermind that is coming soon, which I’ll have a link that will pop into the end of this video.

(14:23):

Finally, goal number 10 is to spend one quality weekend away each month with my partner. So she knows that we’ve got on the calendar in the kitchen to make sure that we actually spend some quality time together because I’m guilty of weekends just working on things that I enjoy doing but I never really switch off as much and we don’t always have that quality time together. So family is important, so making sure that we do that.

(14:52):

Those are my 10 goals for 2020. What I’m going to be doing now is I’ve printed them off and I’m going to get those framed and put up on my office wall in the office just so they’re there and I’ve committed to them. Question is, what are your 10 goals? They don’t have to be 10 goals. I know out of those 10 I’m going to trim down to three big goals. What are the three main goals that I can focus on because when you have too many goals they’re very, very hard to focus on. But as you’ve seen with the goals I’ve shared they’re both personal and professional. So I’ve got one, two, three, four, four to five that is professional business and then five that is personal as well. I think it’s a good balance of goals to work towards.

(15:42):

I would love to hear or share with me what your goals are for 2020 because it’s funny. When you write them down and when you put them up and you visualize it. I’m a massive believer in visualization, they will come true. Just do it. So write your goals down. Now is a great time to start, even if the goals are small put them down. Stretch them a little bit. They want to be achievable. Remember, your brain doesn’t know the difference between conscious and subconscious so just tell your brain that you are going to achieve them and they don’t know the difference whether you can or you can’t if you believe you can achieve. Make sure you’re writing down the goals. Put them in the comments below and I would love to see what your goals are for 2020. Remember to subscribe to the channel.

(16:28):

If you want to find out a little bit more about working with me one-on-one as an agency owner reach out to me on entrepreneurJames.com. There will be a link in there to book your strategy call. From there I will spend the best part of 45 minutes analyzing your business, giving you some key tips and the blueprint to take away for free and then you’ll have an option if you want to work with me and I feel that you’re a good fit for me as well. I’m only taking on a limited number so there’s only between five to eight spots on the Mastermind. It’s going to be an intimate number of people that I’m going to be working with in 2020. Reach out to be on EntrepreneurJames.com and I’ll catch you on the next video. Thank you.

(17:11):

Hi. Thanks for watching today’s video. If you’ve liked what you’ve seen please like and subscribe with the button with EntrepreneurJames so you’ll keep up to date with all of the updated videos. If you’ve got any questions or comment I’d love to hear from you so please drop a comment in EntrepreneurJames below and we’ll look to answer those on our weekly Q and A video. Keep an eye out for any future videos that we’ll be posting. I’ll be popping a video in here probably every one to two days. Thank you.