How Can You Scale Your Business?
When you're first starting a business, it can feel wildly overwhelming. From ensuring that you have the right partners to making sure that you have the building blocks to create something successful, it can feel like you're drowning. Scaling your business is an important first step in starting a brand, and Alexa D'Agostino is here to give you some advice as to how to do it best.
With multiple successful 7-figure businesses in her portfolio and hundreds of clients, Alexa has become a trusted source in terms of scaling a business. In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares the different techniques that you can use for scaling a successful company in order to reach new heights with less effort than before!
A Little More About Alexa
Alexa is the founder and CEO of Thynktank Coaching & ThynkFuel Media, a multi-7 figure Marketing and PR agency. With a Ph.D. in business, she has helped over 300 clients generate over $5 billion in sales. A serial entrepreneur, Alexa is additionally a partner in 11 other companies in industries across beauty, ed-tech, pet, health, and technology–as well as a marketer, business coach, consultant, and investor.
Interview Transcript Highlights
Question: How did you get to where you are today, where you have all of this expertise in the world of scaling?
Answer: It's so funny; everybody always hears my story and gets so intimidated, but I've made a ton of mistakes. I always say, "the more times you get up to bat to swing, the more times you'll have the opportunity to hit the ball." That's exactly what I did in my career; I just kept getting up to bat, and I didn't care how many times I missed it. I just kept getting up to bat and getting up to bat and getting up to bat, so I could land one grand slam. The more times you hit the ball, the more you learn how to do it right. Once I figured out how to do it, then I started hitting grand slams all the time. Everybody gets so anxious and they're not persistent or patient enough to wait to learn how to hit the ball correctly. The reality is that I made a lot of mistakes, and I still make mistakes. I've had failures, but I've learned from them.
I started my career early — at the age of eight, mostly because my family's Cuba. When they came to America, they couldn't speak English, so they had no choice but to be entrepreneurs, so I grew up watching entrepreneurship my whole life; I had a little bit of an unfair advantage. I was always that nerd that was ripping computers apart and putting them back together; I always had that little techie flair in me. I started my first official business when I was 18; I started a marketing agency. What I did is I threw up an ad on Craiglist, before it was creepy, and told people that I would create their website for $300. Someone wrote back to me asking for help, and I immediately set out to learn how to make websites. But the point is that I did it; I went out there and said I could do certain things because I knew I would figure it out. I just went out and did it, and the next thing I knew, I fixed a mayor in our county's wife's computer, which led to me doing some government work. Then, the mayor started referring me to other people, and from then I had a full-blown business that grew very quickly; it took me about three years to hit seven figures. Essentially, I did this through relationship building and by doing good work and getting referrals.
Question: When you're working with an agency, to start, what is the first thing you tend to do? Is it a deep=dive into all of the processes and systems and who they are, or are you taking a different approach to finding out where they might have some things that could be shored up that may be a little broken?
Answer: We just took on an agency about four weeks ago; they're one of our legacy clients who were doing are seven figures, so pretty well, but they wanted to hit that eight-figure mark. There were so many things that were missing from their business, so we did a bunch of audits: on the brand, the team, the messaging, the lead generation, and your sales proposals. We truly audit everything in your business and then work with you, one-on-one, to essentially scare your business by helping you fix your processes, your automation, your lead gen, and your team. Sometimes, you might just have to make small tweaks and changes, and sometimes you might have to start from scratch. It's hard to see when you're in it; having a third-party perspective come in is so important.
Question: Throughout our interview, you've used the "G' word: goal. This is something that I think a lot of agencies forget to do; they forget to actually establish what their goals are, and kind of just chug along to nowhere. I've talked to so many agency owners who don't necessarily have referral engines or new business strategies, and just think that things will keep on happening. When this hit a rough spot, they immediately;y get in trouble. How do you approach setting goals with people?
Answer: There are three types of goal setters that I've seen. There are the goal setters who are like, "I want to make a million dollars in six months!" and I have to let them know that that won't happen. Then I have people who just want to increase their revenue by 10%, and I have to tell them that that's too small of a goal. Then, I have people who don't set any goals; I work with these people to figure out what they really want; from there, we look over everyone's skill sets, setups, and networks to figure out what is practical. While I may have a roadmap to help you get to your goals, everything ultimately comes down to your drive and your tenacity. Typically, I like to set up yearly goals, quarterly goals, and monthly goals, and have them all ladder up to the one before. This allows you to see where you are and aren't hitting your goals.
Question: What are some of the common mistakes you've seen made by agencies in their efforts to scale?
Answer: I would say several different things. Number one: they sound like everyone else. If you're a marketing agency that tells everyone, "I can make you a brand that sells;" well, everybody says that. What's your selling point? What makes you unique? Our selling point is very unique and there are very few people saying the same thing, so when we're on a sales call, it's quick to see if we will be the right fit for the client or not. Our pitch is that we're not just marketers, we're entrepreneurs. We've scaled businesses in every single industry, we own equity in companies, and have exited over 50 businesses; there are very few agencies that have that type of experience. When you pitch, what is your differentiator? It can't just be that your stuff looks good; it is to have ROI and get results. You have to be able to get on the phone and say, "Hey, give me $15,000 and I'll make you $50,000."
The second thing is onboarding. So many people don't have an onboarding process; clients decide in the first seven days if they want to work with you or not, and if you don't have the right onboarding and communication process set up, you're going to lose clients. You have to make sure you have the right onboarding process set up to actually make sure the client is successful. A lot of times agencies think that the onboarding process stops when they get the lead in the door and they close it, but it doesn't. They have to go all the way through, because it's easier to keep somebody and way more expensive to try to get other business.
The third mistake that I see is that people stop prospecting when they think they have enough business, but when they lose that business, they have no prospects lined up. I'm always prospecting; I'm always speaking and I'm always out, and we have more business than we can handle right now. However, I'm out getting my name and my brand out there because that's what you have to do; when we do need business and I have space to bring people on, I don't have to scramble to find prospects, because they're already there.
The last thing I'll say is to not be afraid to ask for a referral; if you have a client that is happy and is doing well, don't be afraid to plant the seed to them and give them an incentive to do so.
Check Out The Podcast!
Alexa has so much great information from her experience in graphic design and branding. Check out the podcast below to learn more about creating great visuals!
Every week we have a marketing professional on our show to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned from their professional experience. Check out some of our other podcast blogs from earlier this year:
- How To Best Measure and Track Behaviors to Drive Sales
- How To Gain the Highest ROI
- Build Your Brand Around Your Best Customers
- Manage Your Media Strategy With An Ever-Changing Climate
- Market Your Online Course Like A Master
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