How many hours per week do you spend working IN your business? Do you need a better work-life balance? Would you like to focus just on the work you really like? One agency owner went from dedicating 50+ hours/week to her agency to working 10-12 hours per week. She did it by recognizing her strengths, setting up the right systems and coaching her team. Andrea Jones is a social media strategist who runs OnlineDrea, a digital agency operating done-for-you social media services. They handle all social platforms and do content creation from video editing and graphic design and primarily work with online business owners in the coaching services. A big shift in her personal life limited the time she could dedicate to the business. Therefore Andrea drastically changed the way she ran things. Fortunately, she managed to do it in record time and found it was just what her agency needed. In this interview, we’ll discuss: Transitioning out of client work and into the CEO role. Scaling back from 50+ hour workweeks to 10-12 hours. Coaching your team and building the right culture to take a step back. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Are You Afraid of the Word “Agency”? Andrea has always loved the internet and the process of content creation. She started a blog in 2004 and even a YouTube channel in 2007. What really jump-started her career was moving to Canada, where she started freelancing and slowly built a team. However, she admits she was scared of the word agency; so for many years she thought of herself as a freelancer who “just happened to have a team”. Her work as a freelancer started as a necessity while she worked on her legal status in her host country. Nonetheless, in time she realized the repeatable nature of social media had landed her a really good agency business model. Removing Yourself from Client Work and Scaling Back to 10 Hour Work Weeks If you’re an agency owner, it’s not uncommon to work 50+ hours a week. Maybe you love your agency and don’t even realize you also need a break. Andrea went through a similar situation where she was working 50-60 hours per week. She says she wasn’t looking for a way out because she really enjoyed the work. However, when she got pregnant, she knew she couldn’t get through such long work days. She made a decision and started removing herself from client calls, hired more staff to support clients, and hired her first official employee. This made a real difference, although she admits it was a long journey. In the past, every time she iterated the structure of the agency she was still at the center of it. It was only after she got pregnant she realized everything was still going through her. The real change came once she accepted this wasn't sustainable any longer. Making this change was no walk in the park. It was easier than it could have been thanks to getting super clear about agency culture. She took the Clifton strengthsfinder test and her second strength turned out to be positivity. She had never seen it as a strength before, but she realized that’s why some people worked really well with them. So when it came time to remove herself from sales, she knew she needed account managers with the same energy and she leaned on that in their training. Andrea knew she got it right when she got a message from a client praising her team’s work. It is a difficult realization that clients don't need you, but it is exactly what frees up your time to do other things! Transitioning from Owner and Strategist to Agency CEO Changing the agency's structure also meant changing Andrea's role. She went from leading strategy to coaching her t