Are you struggling to get a handle on your agency’s growth? Have you established the right strategies for formalizing growth beyond referrals? Today’s guest grew organically for a long time but eventually saw the need to clearly define his agency’s direction and business goals. His team lacked a clear understanding of the overall direction, resulting in the constant need for guidance. He talks about the moment he knew it was time to hire an operator and how having clear processes and systems benefitted his team. He also shares how starting a podcast revived his agency, fueled their social media, and helped him become a better leader. Paris Childress is the founder and CEO of Hop Online, a performance marketing agency for SaaS companies. Having run his agency for 14 years, he’s seen many ups and downs and come out stronger. Today he shares how to identify and navigate the hard times of entrepreneurship and advice on how to overcome challenges and make informed decisions. Tune in for an inspiring conversation with a seasoned agency owner. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Becoming a manager of systems, not people. Formalizing growth with a three-fold marketing strategy. Establishing a brand and leadership through podcasting.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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.   Learning to Manage Systems Instead of People to Grow Beyond Referrals Paris is an accidental agency owner who rushed to create a company once he realized invoices were an important part of getting paid. At the time, he didn’t fully understand what he was creating but luckily organic growth soon followed. As time went by, Paris realized the agency was not set up to see real growth past initial referrals. The challenge now was to get the systems and the structure in place to grow his small team. It was time to move from managing people to managing systems. Basically, managing the agency was getting harder because he had to manage more and more people who didn’t always know what to do. They needed systems to fall back on. He needed to clearly define their services, implement SOPs, and figure out what they were good at. Step one was hiring an operator. As the agency’s visionary, he recognized it was time to get someone to focus on processes and execution. His agency greatly benefitted from that clarity and setting up the systems for real growth. More recently, the pandemic presented new growth opportunities as SaaS businesses were red hot during COVID-19. Now, Paris is getting ready to tackle new challenges as SaaS businesses are seeing their valuations go down. It’s definitely a tougher environment with marketing budget cuts so they’re focusing on developing their brand. Formalizing Growth with a Dedicated Team and a Partner for Outbound One of the first steps to have a more serious focus on their marketing was formalizing a growth team working on generating more leads for the agency. It includes two full-time marketers, one salesperson, and himself. With a decrease of new business coming their way, Paris made the conscious decision to dedicate agency resources to the problem. This helped them avoid downsizing. With the margins being way too low for way too long, he had been pondering that option. However, he realized it was not a marketing problem but rather a sales problem. In terms of strategy, Paris was clear he needed to develop the 3 marketing channels: inbound, outbound, and partnerships. To tackle their lack of inbound strategy, he launched a podcast, which has become his favorite part of his week. It’s still very small but it’s starting to attract the right audience. A podcast can make a huge differenc