How to Scale Up Your Agency When You’re Already at Max – In Just 7 Minutes with Breanne Dyck

Resources/Links:

• Check out Breanne’s Website: http://www.VisionaryCEOAcademy.com/MarketingTheInvisible

Summary

Does it feel like it’s nearly impossible to grow your business once it has reached its maximum? Do you want to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and overworked?

Breanne Dyck is the co-founder of the Visionary CEO Academy, visionaryceoacademy.com. She helps coaches, agency owners, and consultants who are overwhelmed and burning out because they’ve hit maximum capacity.

In this episode, Breanne talks about how to grow your business even if it’s at its maximum without feeling overwhelmed. She also shares tips on how to avoid feeling burned out when it comes to handling your business using her instant scale assessment.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 1:11 – Breanne’s ideal client: “When I think about the perfect client, I think about this woman we worked with named Amy, who is a Facebook ads agency owner. She came to us and she said, every time she would get an email from a new client, she would say, “Oh God, I don’t know if I can handle another client.” She knew how to market, she knew how to sell, but she was completely overwhelmed and maxed out. So that’s who we help best, people like Amy. Whether they got an agency or they’re selling courses or programs, we help them to get out of the day to day so they can grow their business without the overwhelm.”
• 1:49 – Problem Breanne helps solve: “Well, I think it’s really important to figure out what burnout looks like and how it shows up because it’s not always obvious if you’re dealing with this problem. The common symptoms that we look for are folks who, you know, between delivering the clients, doing sales and marketing, they’re probably trying to manage a team. Maybe they’ve got some contractors that they’re forming work to, that kind of stuff. They’re trying to do all these things, and they want to have a life. And it’s the life that starts to slip away first, right? You end up working harder and harder.”
• 3:23 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Breanne: “I would want to know when’s the last time they actually took a vacation. And in our business, we have a concept that we call uncontaminated time. Now uncontaminated time is time that you spend not working on or in the business. So that’s concept number one, when did you actually take a vacation that gave you uncontaminated time? Where you weren’t looking in on your computer, you weren’t checking to see if things were blowing up.”
• 4:31 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Breanne’s solution: “Tom, you said exactly the right thing here, which is that they’re going to try a bunch of things. And so often we jump into automating, you know, a new funnel, or building out some new marketing, even though they’re super busy with clients. It’s like, we have this story that, you know, oh, it’s going to dry up. And of course, go on Facebook and those are the ads you’re going to see, right, is you have to automate your marketing, get your funnel set up, and yadda, yadda, right?”
• 5:57 – Breanne’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “Well, I’m going to make a couple of maybe bold, not so bold, assumptions about the folks who are listening. The first assumption is that they’ve got a business that’s working, they’ve got something, you know, they’re listening to this about scaling up, something’s working in your business. The second thing that I’m going to assume about you is that you’re fairly smart, right? You’re no dummy, you’ve been able to figure a lot of stuff out.”
• 7:23 – Breanne’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Breanne’s Website: http://www.VisionaryCEOAcademy.com/MarketingTheInvisible
• 7:36 – Q: How will you know when you’ve solved the right problem? How do you know you’ve got the right problem? A: The answer is when the problem no longer exists. You’re putting all of your time and energy into solving a problem and you still have it; you haven’t found the right root problem yet.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“The fact that you're still overworked and overwhelmed means you've identified the wrong problem.” -Breanna Dyck Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 0:09
Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by Breanne Dyck. Breanne, good day, a very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Breanne Dyck 0:20
Well, I’d say, good day from the West Coast of Canada, on Vancouver Island.

Tom Poland 0:24
Vancouver Island, oh, that’s a beautiful place. Oh, you’re lucky.

Breanne Dyck 0:27
Gorgeous.

Tom Poland 0:28
It is gorgeous, and Vancouver is not too shabby itself either.

Breanne Dyck 0:31
That’s right.

Tom Poland 0:32
Both worlds there, and a short trip to California, or the Washington State, I imagine.

But enough of geography, Tom. For those of you don’t know Breanne, she’s the co-founder of the Visionary CEO Academy, visionaryceoacademy.com, in fact, to help coaches, agency owners, and consultants who are overwhelmed and burning out because they’ve hit maximum capacity. And that brand brings us beautifully to the title of today’s interview which is, “How to Scale Up Your Agency When You’re Already at Max,” and you’re going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. Our time starts now. Question number one is, who’s your ideal client?

Breanne Dyck 1:11
When I think about the perfect client, I think about this woman we worked with named Amy, who is a Facebook ads agency owner. She came to us and she said, every time she would get an email from a new client, she would say, “Oh God, I don’t know if I can handle another client.” She knew how to market, she knew how to sell, but she was completely overwhelmed and maxed out. So that’s who we help best, people like Amy. Whether they got an agency or they’re selling courses or programs, we help them to get out of the day to day so they can grow their business without the overwhelm.

Tom Poland 1:39
Perfect. Thank you. Question number two and six and a half minutes left. You’ve described the problem that you solve, but is there anything else to that problem that you want to tell us about?

Breanne Dyck 1:49
Well, I think it’s really important to figure out what burnout looks like and how it shows up because it’s not always obvious if you’re dealing with this problem. The common symptoms that we look for are folks who, you know, between delivering the clients, doing sales and marketing, they’re probably trying to manage a team. Maybe they’ve got some contractors that they’re forming work to, that kind of stuff. They’re trying to do all these things, and they want to have a life. And it’s the life that starts to slip away first, right? You end up working harder and harder.

And the question that folks in this situation often find themselves asking is, “What am I doing this for?” You know, “I’m not really making much more money. I’m not really getting time. I often started this business so I get to have time. And I don’t have time, I don’t have money, so why am I doing this?” So that’s really the problem we solve which is, how can we get your team, and your client experience, and your profitability into alignment so that you can get your life back while scaling your business without the stress at the same time?

Tom Poland 2:54
Right. So, they kind of jumped the job track started of their own business, but they have less time and less money, and more stress than they had when they were employed. So that’s not working out quite according to plan A. So, question number three, five minutes left, you’ve got this ideal client that’s, who’s got this practice, or this agency. They’re maxed out, they don’t have enough time. What are some of the other symptoms, other than the lack of time, that they’re going to be experiencing which would tell our listeners right now they’ve got this problem?

Breanne Dyck 3:23
I would want to know when’s the last time they actually took a vacation. And in our business, we have a concept that we call uncontaminated time. Now uncontaminated time is time that you spend not working on or in the business. So that’s concept number one, when did you actually take a vacation that gave you uncontaminated time? Where you weren’t looking in on your computer, you weren’t checking to see if things were blowing up.

And then, the second part of it is, and when you are working, how much time are you spending doing the stuff you want to be doing versus the stuff you have to be doing? Those are the two kinds of equations we look at how much time you’re spending, not working, and when you are working, are you down in the weeds, or are you actually doing the stuff you want to be doing?

Tom Poland 4:05
Excellent description. Thank you for that. Four minutes left. Question four, we’ve got this person that’s maxed out, they’re working too long. They’re probably working more in the weeds than they are on the business. They’re not having enough uncontaminated time. They’re smart enough to know they’ve got a problem. They’re going to try and fix the problem, but they’re probably going to make some mistakes before they find your solution. So, what are some of the common mistakes that people are making to try and get out of that trap that isn’t going to work for them?

Breanne Dyck 4:31
Tom, you said exactly the right thing here, which is that they’re going to try a bunch of things. And so often we jump into automating, you know, a new funnel, or building out some new marketing, even though they’re super busy with clients. It’s like, we have this story that, you know, oh, it’s going to dry up. And of course, go on Facebook and those are the ads you’re going to see, right, is you have to automate your marketing, get your funnel set up, and yadda, yadda, right?

It’s the story that life will be better if you build systems. And maybe you even go to the point of saying, “Oh, I need to change my offer, I need to build a course or a membership site,” Or maybe I need to hire more, a project manager, someone who can take care of all of the logistics. And, you know, we get all of these different things to try, and it ends up being a grass is the greener situation.

Course creators always come to me saying that the solution is to hire as an agency would. Agency owners always come to me and they think their solution is to build a course or leverage. But none of those things actually get to the root problem because, and this is the mistake, no one stops to ask, “Why am I burning out and what’s going on underneath this?” We just try all these tactical solutions and we haven’t even done an assessment to figure out what the real problem is.

Tom Poland 5:44
Right. So that might bring us quite nicely to question number five, just over two minutes left. What’s a valuable free action you could recommend that someone can take that’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction?

Breanne Dyck 5:57
Well, I’m going to make a couple of maybe bold, not so bold, assumptions about the folks who are listening. The first assumption is that they’ve got a business that’s working, they’ve got something, you know, they’re listening to this about scaling up, something’s working in your business. The second thing that I’m going to assume about you is that you’re fairly smart, right? You’re no dummy, you’ve been able to figure a lot of stuff out.

And what that tells me is two things. Number one, when you know what your problem is, you can find the information and get the results. And number two, the fact that you’re still overworked and overwhelmed means you’ve identified the wrong problem.

So, the solution, the action I want you to take is to do a root cause analysis. List out all of your symptoms and then ask, what is actually causing this? The best way to do this is to get into the details. Look and break things apart. Break your process apart, break the way you work with your team apart, break your calendar apart. Look underneath it to find where the problems are. If you don’t know how to do that, if you’re too close to it, you need to get some help.

Tom Poland 7:04
Thank you. Two questions left, one minute left. I’m going to cut to the answer to the next question just for the sake of time. Question six is, one valuable free resource we could help people more with, VisionaryCEOAcademy.com/MarketingTheInvisible. Real quick, Breanne, what will they find there?

Breanne Dyck 7:23
You know, it’s an instant scale assessment to help you figure out exactly why you’re running into problems.

Tom Poland 7:28
Perfect. Which is going to help them with step five which is the one free step. 27 seconds left, what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Breanne Dyck 7:36
How will you know when you’ve solved the right problem? How do you know you’ve got the right problem? The answer is when the problem no longer exists. You’re putting all of your time and energy into solving a problem and you still have it; you haven’t found the right root problem yet.

Tom Poland 7:50
That part is not complicated. Breanne Dyck, thank you so much for your time.

Breanne Dyck 7:54
All right. Thank you.

Tom Poland: 07:56
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.