My Team Is Spread Too Thin and I Can't Scale

0:00Hi Alex. My name is Tanya Cazal and I >> Tanya, was it? >> Tanya, Tanya. >> Tanya, got it. >> And I pretty much am fighting the cut-off culture. So, I help families reconnect their parent-child relationships. >> Cut-off culture? I have never heard of that. >> It's a growing epidemic, apparently. So, and we do about just under 1.5 in revenue. By the way, we started this new avenue in June of last year. >> Amazing.

0:23>> We want to hit 10 to 20k the next 10 to 20x in the next 24 months, ideally. And I think my biggest problem is really talent. Like we have a team, but I feel like everyone's wearing so many hats and it needs to kind of be narrowed in so everybody knows what they're doing and become A players. >> Okay. So, can you handle more customers today? >> Yes. It's all digital, though I should say.

0:48>> Okay. So, the fact that your team's not good enough is stopping you from getting more customers? >> No, we have enough customers. The issue is scaling. >> Okay. >> Ability to actually scale effectively based on what we have right now. We're not leveraging the leads and the audience that we already have. Or like we're doing paid acquisition, but we're just getting by. We're doing, you know. >> So, if we walk through this, >> Yeah. >> you're doing paid ads? >> Yes. >> And

1:14>> 80% organic, though, but yes. >> Okay. So, fair. So, you've got I could say more content or more ads, but more front end. >> Right. >> Um you can't do that because what? >> Um I just feel like we're all wearing so many hats, so I don't even know where the constraint is. That's what I'm saying. So, we're running ads, for example, my right-hand lady who's here also does also does like ops management, writing copy, doing all that stuff. So, we don't have anyone running ads completely, so it's hard to scale to watch it every single day.

1:43>> So, you can't run enough ads because you don't have somebody who can actually run the ads. >> Full-time, pretty much. >> You can't do more because you're spread thin >> That's what I'm trying to say. Everyone's spread thin, right? >> Okay, got it. So, what are margins right now? >> They're pretty high. I would say 60-70%. >> Okay, got it. Um And are you the one who's who's writing the copy and running the ads, like media buying and stuff?

2:05Amazing. Congrats. Um what are you doing that is not that right now? >> Everything. >> Okay. Well, of the everything, are there some things on that everything list that are less valuable than bringing in more money? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, of those things, which is the least valuable that takes the most time? >> Managing Well, making sure that everybody is showing up and doing their job.

2:35>> Hm. >> I feel like if they were stronger and we had more of them stepping into their leadership, I could efficiently do my job. >> What's head count? >> There's only five of us. >> One, two. And so, there's three other people. >> Right. >> Okay, so you're like, if these other people were stepping into their leadership and I was managing all of >> [laughter] >> I'm like, so the other three people. >> She should probably be up here with me right now.

3:01>> Okay, so these other three people, are these are they I mean, they'll watch this and be like, I can't believe it. So, do these people soccer or what's going on? >> No, one of them's a full social media management because we've got a >> So, she posts or he posts? >> She does the Yeah, market research and that kind of stuff. >> So, makes clips and then posts them. >> my sister, so I can't really do anything about that. >> Yeah. >> Um IT because >> to cut her off cuz, you know, on brand, right? >> Um I'm against the camera.

3:26Um IT and because we're all online, the IT is always like fixing sales pages, email automations, all that fun stuff. And then the >> does that? >> He does that, yeah. >> He does that. Who's she again? >> The IT. >> I just He's IT, got it. I don't remember who >> And then a VA just because of the amount of emails that we >> Okay, so you have your sister and an IT guy. >> And a VA, right. >> Well, the VA, right. Um nameless, right? They're not real people. >> [laughter] [gasps]

3:51>> So, what I'm what I'm trying to get at is you're saying that you're spending your time trying to figure out why people aren't doing their jobs, right? And it there's basically there's workflow that needs to get organized. And so it's likely that if everyone's doing everything, it's probably a roles and responsibilities exercise, which is more of a Layla had if she were up here. She'd be the person answering this, but I'll just take the you know I'll pretend I operate. Um but fundamentally, marketing is super important for the business you're in. The delivery is digital, so you're basically never going to be supply constrained unless you're adding services on top, are you?

4:29>> Kind of, but not really. >> Light enough that it's not an issue today. >> Correct. >> Okay. So, the IT guy is the martech guy. They're doing the marketing in the funnels and the upsells and whatever. Okay. Um I'm just struggling to figure out what you're spending your time on that's not making the business more money that you're saying is everything, but it's like two people. >> So, I can clarify that. It's It's really the making sure that the metrics are in place. What are the like emails going to go out? What's the next launch strategy?

4:56All of that stuff that's still moving the business. Just ads is only 20%, so it's and it's profitable, >> Yeah. >> but we're just not scaling because we're not spending enough time learning about it cuz really the only learning that we've done is from like your second book, and that's just very amateur, obviously. >> Well, very amateur, okay. >> Right. No. >> Excuse me. >> I MEAN LIKE TO FULLY run ads, it definitely needs a lot more depth. And so, I'm thinking like bring on someone for full-time just paid acquisition and actual growth because she is great at operations.

5:25>> Okay. Seems like a director of marketing, something like that for this role, and you would prefer to let that person do that rather than you run it. Great. Okay, so your director of marketing, you're running 70% margins or 60% margins, whatever it is. You're making a million bucks a year on your one and a half, somewhere around there. Is that right? >> Correct. >> Okay. So, your marketing director will probably cost you 150 to 250 depending on the scale. And at 250, they should be able to do this whole thing. And then you would make $700,000 a year, but then hopefully they should be able to scale you way more than that. So what's stopping you from doing that?

5:54>> No, that's why I'm here. This is all like figured out in the last like month or two. It's It's less than a year fully running it, right? So >> So does anything stop you from doing that? >> No, 100% no. Just a matter of finding the right talent. I do think though now based on the round tables that I have to do better leadership and cultural building before I actually bring another body in. >> So what I would recommend, um if you want a recommendation, >> Please. >> is is who do you look for for that? Um one of my favorite sources of finding good marketing leaders is finding small agency owners.

6:26Because typically agency owners really like marketing. They spend their free time doing it. They got good enough at it they could sell a couple people uh on it. And they can run a tiny team typically. Um but the margins in agency work, especially if you're not as good at business, are typically dog And so they can leave their, you know, mid-six-figure agency that they're only taking home maybe $100,000 a year with a lot of stress. And then start working for you and they've never had an organic brand behind it, which gives a huge advantage to their skill set because they probably were doing it cold with no brand. And so you want somebody who never had a brand who learns how to make money without a brand to then apply it to a brand. And I would say that's that's a good avatar to go after if you're looking for that kind of like starter, little bit scrappier uh marketer who's probably the person who you need for this level.

7:10>> Okay, that's great. Thank you. Thanks. >> [applause] >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Someday I'll be legit enough to write an advertising book that's good enough. If you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at. And the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team, and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas, and we'll do this in person live.