Your Team is Killing Your Productivity

To the 2,658(!!) of you that subscribed, commented, and sent personal messages over the last 30 days - YOU'RE THE BEST. I appreciate you reading and I’m now doubly excited to continue publishing Scale to Sell.

To those who are just reading for the first time, Scale to Sell is a monthly newsletter meant to help digital marketing agency owners build systems and processes that will enable them to scale their business to a point where it is a sellable entity. As this is the second edition of (what I hope to be) many, your critique is welcome and will help make this newsletter more valuable to readers and subscribers.

Before diving in

This month's edition of Scale to Sell is relatively short. Over the last month, I’ve spoken to many founders that are facing a similar problem; they are bogged down in the business and have to answer a lot of questions from team members. This was written to help give those founders a blueprint to solve that problem.

Now onto the good stuff...

While the end of December is a wonderful time of the year, there are many founders out there, you may even be one of them, that are anxious about taking this time off.

You may not be present during these festive times because your? list of “to-dos” continues to pile up or you? didn’t accomplish all your? goals this year.

The key to solving your problems and reducing your list of “to-dos” is not to work harder, but smarter.?

Your team is killing your productivity

The number one thing that kills productivity is distractions. In the US, the average person is distracted (at least!) once every 31 minutes.?

You likely have a PILE of to-do’s and the biggest thing that is preventing you from continuously working this list down, other than your phone, is the amount of questions you have to answer!

Your Employees have a lot of questions. As a founder, one of the worst things you can do with your time is spend it answering questions. Answering questions is a low leverage activity that is a one-to-one tradeoff that has a very low ROI. When you take into consideration the opportunity cost of answering questions, this quickly turns into a NEGATIVE ROI.?

In this month's edition of Scale to Sell, I'm going to walk you through a simple 8 Step Guide on how to build a process that will answer questions and, as a result, create an internal Wikipedia; a database that houses all questions & answers for your team members.?

If you are a founder that has been bogged down by questions in 2021, the first step you need to take with your team is to put a barrier between you and your team. To do this, you will have to? create a new rule with your employees.

New expectation to set: Employees are no longer allowed to ask you questions unless they come with a proposed solution AND document questions in a form you provide to them (shown below).?

If you implement this one rule over the course of the next year, you will document hundreds of questions (and answers).?

As the questions begin to compile, it's your job as the founder to set aside time to answer them. I suggest you answer these questions via loom and place the answer in the database with the question (shown below).?

If you follow this process, by December 2022, 95% of all questions that will be asked in 2023 will have an answer and no time will need to be spent answering them. In addition, you will gain back multiple hours each week which can then be used to focus on growing your business.?

You may be thinking, this is freaking awesome. How do I actually do this?

Here’s how.

Quick note: I use airtable for all of my project management and database needs. In the pictures below, I reference how I use Airtable, and how you can, to solve the FAQ problem. If you have any questions on this software, please feel free to DM me. I'm happy to share my knowledge.

Although Airtable is the software of my choice, the same process can be used across many software platforms as well.

A Step by Step Guide on How to Build a Process to Build an FAQ Process (Using Airtable

Step 1- Create a new base

Step 1.1- Name your new base

Step 2- Delete all existing columns in your new base by right clicking on the column and then clicking “delete field”

Step 3- Add a form to your new base & add relevant questions to the form

Step 3.1- Name your new form (Suggested name= FAQ Form)?

Step 4- In your new form, add in all questions you want employees to fill out and the areas you will fill out once questions are submitted.

Step 4.1-? Click add a field to this table to add questions

Step 4.2- Add all form ‘questions’

Suggested questions & type of form:

A- Question, long text

B- Department, Single Select (so employees can filter through questions in the future)?

C- Answer- SOP, URL (So you can have a written document with answers hyperlinked)

D- Answer- Video, URL (So you can have a video reply hyperlinked)

Step 5- Distribute the form to your team & create new expectation

FAQ Expectation: all questions that are asked must first be:

A- Checked to see if they are in the database

B- If they are not, enter the new question into the database through the form

Step 6- Copy and paste link in an email to the team

Step 7- Go through and answer questions!

Once this process is implemented, you will begin to have to block off time weekly to answer the questions your teams pose. Don't worry though! This time around, your time will be highly leveraged.

Each time you make a training, it will be a one to many tradeoff, something that you haven't had in the past!

Step 8- Ensure this process is followed forever

That is it.

Short and simple.

If you build this process in the next week and run it for ALL of 2022. I guarantee you will have a different business in December of 2022…

One that is more optimized, streamlined and does not require you to operate it.?

If you follow this all year and I am wrong, I will pay you $1000.

If you enjoyed this an want further assistance in scaling your agencies operation, lets connect.

Book time for a free agency audit here and we will uncover what you need to do next to scale your agency.