The agency owner's role audit: how to work on the business, not in it

When an agency owner needs this

The owner's role is one of the very first things I look at when I start working with an agency. Usually the agency has grown to a point where it's either outgrowing the owner or it's stagnating because of the owner. What I mean by that is their role has reached a point where they're no longer having a materially positive impact, and it's usually because they're trying to do too many things, or they're spending too much time on the wrong things and not enough on what have now become the key things for them.

When you first start out you do everything, and for a while that's what grows the business. Then you reach a point where you've got people around you who are doing certain things. From there it's a combination of letting go, so that those people can do the job really well, and then supporting them, almost acting like an employee of the business as opposed to its owner.

These are the kinds of things I hear from owners when they've reached that point:

• "I feel like I'm working longer and harder, but it's not growing."
• "I'm doing more than ever, and things are getting worse in terms of revenue or client churn."
• "I've hired people, but I don't really feel like the business has improved."
• "I don't have the time to do sales and marketing, even though I've hired people."
• "I get pulled into things with the team because they keep asking me questions."

If 2 or 3 of those sound like you, this is probably worth 1 to 2 hours of your time.

Start with where you want to be in 12 to 18 months

Before you look at your week, I'd take a step back and ask yourself a few questions. Why are you doing what you're doing? What direction are you going in, what do you want from this, and why are you running the agency in the first place?

Once you've got an answer to that, set a marker. The question I ask owners is this: what would you love to be able to say to me 12 or 18 months from now, over a coffee? Tell me how things have gone, and what you're doing then compared to what you're doing today.

Then ask what role you need to play to get the agency on track for that. It helps you work out what the key things are for you over the next 6, 12 and 18 months, and it gives you clarity on why it's so important that you do certain things and not everything.

Write down where your time goes now

Write down the top things you spend your time on each week, with a rough number of hours or a percentage of the week against each one.

I'd set it out in 3 columns: what you spend your time on, the hours or % of the week it takes, and whether it moves you towards your 12 to 18 month marker.

Then look at the marker you've set and ask yourself, will the business get there if I keep doing what I've written down every week?

After that, write a second list of what you'd ideally like to spend your time on each week. There might only be 3 things on it, and that's fine. The more differences you spot between the 2 lists, the more opportunity there is to get you and the business moving towards where you want to go. If there aren't many differences, it's likely a case of fine-tuning what you've already got.

Keep a log of what gets brought to you

The first list tells you what you plan to do with your week. This one tells you what gets added to it. For 5 working days, note down everything that comes to you that you didn't plan for, whether that's an approval, a question from the team, a client message or a "have you got 2 minutes?".

Against each one, note the day, what it was, who brought it and what was at stake.

For each one, ask the person who brought it why it came to you. In my experience it tends to be 1 of 3 reasons. They didn't have the clarity to make the decision, they didn't have the knowledge to make it, or there was no process telling them what to do instead of asking you. Write down their answer and not yours, because it shows you where the gap is.

Sort everything into keep, change or stop

Go through both lists and mark each item.

I'd say it begins by looking at the things you're going to stop. Most owners go straight to what they want to start doing, which I understand, but the time for those things has to come from somewhere, and it usually comes from the stop list. If your keep list is longer than your stop list, it's probably worth another look.

Decide who takes it, and by when

For everything you've marked as change or stop, ask yourself 2 things. If this has to be done, who or what can do it instead of me? And can it move now, or does something need to be put in place first?

Some of it can move this week. Some of it will take longer. As an example, you might spend 15 hours a week writing copy for clients, and 15 hours of client work is quite high for an owner. Could you spend that time on sales and growing the business instead? Of course, but you need a person and a system in place to take it off your plate, and that will likely take around 90 days. The first task might be writing a job spec.

For each item, I'd write down whether it's a change or a stop, who or what takes it, whether it can move now or needs something set up first, and by when.

Where owners get this wrong

This can be quite difficult. It's a huge change, and some people really struggle with it.

The most common pitfall I see is this. At some point during the change there'll be a moment where the agency starts to struggle, and the owner's natural reaction is to roll up their sleeves and get more involved again. That's usually the moment the whole thing comes undone, so it's worth deciding in advance what you'll do when it happens.

It also takes longer than most owners expect. What I rarely do is tell an owner that we'll flick a switch and they'll have 20 hours free next week. Moving from where you are today to where you need to be will take time, maybe 3, 6 or 12 months depending on your agency.

Questions owners ask about this

How long does it take for an agency owner to step back from the day-to-day?

In my experience it's somewhere between 3 and 12 months, depending on the agency. Some things can move in the first week, but anything that needs a new person or a new system will usually take around 90 days to set up properly.

What should an agency owner be spending their time on?

I don't think there's one answer to that, because it depends on where you want the agency to be in 12 to 18 months. Once you've set that marker, the question becomes what role you need to play to get there, and that gives you your key things.

If you'd like a hand with it

This is where the Founder Focus Sprint starts. If you'd like to talk your list through, drop me a note or, by all means, book a call and we can look at it together. If you're not sure whether your own role is the biggest issue in the agency, the Agency Health Check will give you a quick read on that.