The Wake Up Call

The following article is from The New Agency eBook, a guide for digital agencies to use business automation to reclaim your creativity and freedom.

Radical transformation typically begins one of two ways...

You either manufacture a wake up call, for example, by setting a meaningful goal with a fixed deadline (ie. I’m going to earn 6-figures profit by June so that I can take a 3 month vacation and volunteer trip) or you wait for the universe to deliver a wake up call (more common/painful). 

This almost always happens after you ignore repeated warnings and delay being proactive. However, once the wake up call is delivered, you are forced to decide to either continue suffering or to change. 

Throughout my life, I have experienced both types of wake up calls.

On February 3 2015, my grandpa tragically and suddenly passed away while I was working a desk job. A few months later, my role model Scott Dinsmore passed away at only 33 years old! WTF. These tragedies both served as a wake up call for me to stop trading the most important years of my life for a paycheck. 

So on March 25, 2016, after months of delaying due to fear and uncertainty, I finally quit my job to pursue my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.

Fast forward a year after I quit my job: I was a full-time freelance web designer, burned out from 80-120 hour workweeks, in debt and desperate for wisdom and guidance. 

I decided to manufacture my own wake up call and hired my friend Ian Luebbers to become my business coach. Within a few months my entire business and life had transformed. 

I went from scraping by as a solo freelancer to breaking the elusive 6-figure milestone as an agency owner while delegating 90% of the work to my team.

Over the next few months, momentum continued and the business grew from single 6-figures to multiple 6-figures while getting featured on Forbes, Inc, The Next Web and more. 

I thought I was killing it so my ego grew. The problem with ego is it leads to complacency and complacency becomes an invisible prayer to the universe saying, “Dear Universe, please fuck my shit up.”

That’s exactly what happened and how I received my worst wake up call to date...

Overnight, two of our biggest clients cancelled services (they made up 50% of our business) and our revenue plummeted. 

Since my ego was so big, I had been blinded to the warning signs. 

I only had a few months of expenses in the bank, we had no prospects in the pipeline, no predictable lead generation and our referrals had dried up.

I could no longer support our payroll or contractor expenses and within a few weeks, I had to lay off my entire team, including Shubhham, my first full-time employee who had managed and overseen our entire company operations.

Shubham didn’t do anything wrong but now he didn’t have a job or income because of my ego and careless mistakes. Like me, Shubham was scared and I had no words to console him since I couldn’t even figure things out myself.

Damn yo, that remains one of the hardest experiences I’ve ever been through to this day. I still choke up when I think about it. I would never wish this on anyone.

Instead of being proactive and manufacturing my wake up call as I had done before, I let my ego get the best of me which led to complacency, and ultimately, one of the most painful wake up calls of my entire life.

I was forced to move home with my parents and to be honest, I was a depressed wreck for the next few months. Some days I couldn’t even get out of bed.

It took me several long, brutal months to stop being an emotional wreck and start being logical about my situation. 

But once I did, I was able to clearly see the harsh reality and the warning signs I had ignored for so long… 

I didn’t have a business, I had a job. More specifically, I was trapped by my business. But not in the way you might think...

I was free from the daily grind as I had managed to outsource 90% of my operations to Shubham but what kept me trapped was that I had zero methods to reliably find leads, book calls and add new clients to grow our business. 

I was stuck relying on one-off projects and inconsistent referrals which is basically like hoping a boat with holes in it won’t sink. 

It was just a matter of time before disaster struck and caused massive suffering - not only for me but for my team, friends, family - basically everyone I came into contact with.

While it was painful as hell to go through this process, it was essential because it forced me to change my perspective and adopt a new model for my life and business. 

My new perspective allowed me to see my blind spots and the holes that were in my business. After months of hopelessness and heartbreak, the results came fast.

Within a few months, we had added 8 new retainer clients while maintaining a 57% net profit margin. 

The best part? The business only required a few hours of management per week so I had the time and space to spend on sales, be social with friends or invest time into my creative projects.

So what exactly changed? 

The first and most important shift I made was a shift in my perspective. I realized I had to fix my broken business model with something new and different. I began fixing the broken parts of my business piece by piece...

Instead of relying on one-off campaigns and projects, I built my new agency on monthly retainers which provided predictable, consistent revenue.

Instead of sitting back and hoping for referrals, I leveraged proven organic lead generation strategies on a daily and weekly basis to keep my calendar and pipeline full.

And instead of offering something new and different to every client, I productized our services which allowed me to easily automate, delegate and effectively replace myself in the business.

I wrote this book to serve as YOUR wake up call.  

If your business cannot grow or operate without you, suffering is inevitable. So why wait for disaster to strike? Why not prevent it by building a business that provides the level of freedom and abundance you truly desire? 

Replacing yourself in the business is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Anything less is irresponsible. So instead of using your time to stress out, worry about where your next client is coming from and do everything yourself, why not invest some of that same time to build systems that make yourself replaceable? All I ask from you is an open mind to a new perspective. 

Over the next few chapters, you will learn exactly what the transition from operator (er, slave to your business) to owner (replaced in your business) looks like with the new agency model. I know that if a 19 year old dropout or a busy father of 5 can do it, you can too.

Much love. Matt

Click here to get your free digital copy of The New Agency. You can thank me later ;)