11. Scaling Yourself While Scaling Your Business: Anna-Vija McClain’s Growth Journey
EPISODE 11
Did you know that systems, processes, and delegation are essential to scaling your business? Ten years after accidentally starting her business, Anna-Vija McClain and her team have helped hundreds of business owners scale and grow their brands.
Julie and Anna-Vija discuss business scalability, strong systems for delegation, and stepping into the CEO role.
Catch the Conversation
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Anna-Vija McClain is an expert in small business efficiency and growth. She is the Founder and CEO of Piccolo Solutions, a development firm that provides businesses with numerous ways to scale, from lead generation to workflow solutions that just celebrated their 10th year in business.
Anna-Vija is active in the Nashville community through numerous charities, Boards, and volunteer efforts, including serving as the President of the Nashville Emerging Leader Board. As a long time Mentor with SCORE Nashville, she is honored to have been selected as the host of the SCORE Connect television show on News Channel 5+, connecting business leaders and resources. She has been named to Nashville Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, Most Admired CEOs, and Best in Business Lists and was selected for the 2022 Forbes Top 1000 List! And just recently, Anna-Vija was named Nashville Business Journal's 2024 Woman of Influence.
She and her team have helped hundreds of business owners grow their personal and professional brands.
Connect with Piccolo Solutions on their website and with Anna-Vija
on her website or on her social channels:
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Julie and Anna-Vija discuss:
**Helping small businesses and building her own (00:02:17)**
How to help small businesses grow, accidental entrepreneurship, and building a team.
**Leadership practice and the CEO role (00:08:15)**
The evolution of oneself as a leader, how to shift into the CEO role, and the importance of clear company vision.
**Delegation, systems, and taking on new projects (00:18:54)**
Anna-Vija discusses creating systems for delegation and scaling, implementing a four-day workweek, and how transitioning to the CEO role enabled her to focus on expanding the business in new ways.
**Business Scalability (00:30:06)**
Scaling a business, including the impact of introducing new packages and the significance of taking a step back to move forward.
**Group Coaching Program (00:36:16)**
Anna-Vija introduces her new initiative, a group coaching program aimed at providing guidance and support to small business owners, focusing on scalability, systems, and marketing.
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Julie (00:00:04) - Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them, and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur, and a growth in leadership coach who co-founded, grew, and exited an eight figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book, Big Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Figure Eight podcast. Today my guest is Anna-Vija McClain. She is an expert in small business efficiency and growth, and she's the founder and CEO of Piccolo Solutions, a development firm providing businesses with numerous different ways to scale, from lead generation to workflow solutions. And they just celebrated eight years in business. I'm super excited to talk to her today and welcome.
Anna-Vija (00:01:34) - Thank you. I really appreciate you having me. I actually realized you just read off my intro and I must have given you an outdated one because yesterday was my ten year anniversary in business.
Julie (00:01:48) - That's so awesome. Yeah, ten years is a big accomplishment. It is, it is.
Anna-Vija (00:01:52) - Now I'm going to have to go back and update my bio clearly.
Julie (00:01:55) - There you go. It's my mind. Well, I'll make sure we update it. Yeah. For when we post the episode.
Anna-Vija (00:02:01) - Oh that's awesome. Thank you for having me.
Julie (00:02:04) - Well, I imagine that in the ten years you've been doing this that things have changed quite a bit in the landscape of helping people with these kinds of things. Just a.
Anna-Vija (00:02:15) - Smidgen. Yeah.
Julie (00:02:17) - Yeah. So tell me about what it was like when you got started.
Anna-Vija (00:02:21) - So when I got started, it was an accident and I was applying for jobs, you know, full time jobs. My background was in hospitality and private country club management, and starting a company was really me looking at the market and seeing a whole, seeing an opportunity, networking with people and then coming up to me and saying, hey, can you help me make a brochure or, you know, I need to, I need to post on social media. I have no idea what to do for my business. I know you've got some experience. Will you help me? And so again, ten years ago, we didn't have things like Fiverr and Upwork, right? And there weren't as many, you know, anyone with a laptop could be a freelance marketer. And so, you know, so small businesses were having trouble scaling with marketing or with systems because they just they didn't have a lot of resources that weren't really expensive, that wasn't, you know, that wasn't a full time in-house marketing director or, you know, hiring a bigger box agency. And so I just sort of planted a flag in the sand and said, well, and truly, while I'm looking for another job, I will go do this as a freelancer, right? So I kept applying and sent out an email to everyone that I knew and said, hey, I, I can help with marketing now and if you know anyone who needs that help, please give them my information.
Anna-Vija (00:03:43) - , and within six months I had 17 retainer clients. And I was like, oh, this, this is the this isn't the side hustle. This is the job. Right? So it was like, all right, well, I guess I, I should really lean into this. And so it's grown since then. But I think when I started out it was me helping small business owners, trying to figure it out for myself, trying to figure it out for them. And it was, I will say,, smaller is just the, the word. Right. It was a lot more conversations about single line items of marketing., a lot of it focused on social media. And I would have to try to direct people towards foundational best practices around websites or even email marketing,, a little bit more education around why those things were important. And now, ten years later, as people come to me, they're looking for a much more comprehensive approach, because I think that a lot of those marketing silos have been proven at this point, ten years later.
Julie (00:04:42) - , well, and it's interesting because I think one of the challenges for small businesses is you can't hire all those expensive people. And marketing is one of those things where people have expertise, right? So although it might not be as siloed as it was, there are still different buckets of expertise that you want to bring. Absolutely. And it's hard to hire an agency when you're a small business, because often you're too small for what it is they're really doing.
Anna-Vija (00:05:09) - Right, right. And that's where we when I first started, I always say we now because I'm so used to having a team. But when I first started, it was literally me in a similar spare bedroom. Right., but it was, it was me saying, hey, I know that you can't afford that. And that's okay, because I'm not a full agency, but I've got experience with running all these areas of marketing enough that I can help you where you're at. And then as we've grown, we've simultaneously added the full agency component, right.
Anna-Vija (00:05:37) - So I have all these experts in different areas. And so we can help comprehensively. But we've strategically created packages, group coaching, downloadable courses and and just opportunities for people to work with us, even if they can't hire us for the full suite of services. Because I'm like, well, I was a small business owner once and that's the reason I created the company was for those people. And so we want to continue to help no matter what level people are at.
Julie (00:06:06) - Yeah., and so what has that been like? I mean, you had 17 clients and then decided maybe this is the full time job. Yeah, maybe this is what I'm meant to be doing. And how did you decide to go from there to really growing?
Anna-Vija (00:06:23) - So I would say that that took another, another 12 to 24 months for me to go, oh, this is going to be a thing. I started with just calling a woman that I had worked with in my last job. Job, and saying, hey, I know that you're in graduate school.
Anna-Vija (00:06:38) - Would you like a little virtual side hustle? And she said, yeah, that'd be great. I'd love to earn some extra cash. And she had done my marketing at the country club, so I knew she knew what she was doing. We work together well, so I was just like, I'll just hire some part time help. And then I was like, oh, I'll hire a bunch of interns because I love teaching. It is just my passion. And I was like, this is a good opportunity for me too. So I kept I wasn't like denying the growth, but I was trying to find ways to make it where I was still the solopreneur with a little bit of help, you know what I'm saying? And then at some point I went, I remembered there was a day I was sitting in the in the office, well, my spare bedroom office, and I was talking to somebody about hiring them as a part time person. And I was like, oh, this is going to be the moment.
Anna-Vija (00:07:25) - This is going to be the person that when I bring this person on and I give them the workload that we're talking about, this is now a fully fledged business with growth prospect. And like, I can't do all this work by myself. Like if this person left, I as an individual could not do everything that I have sold. So, you know, there was a moment of just like fear, like true, like a pause and a fear of like, oh my god, but what if everyone leaves me like, but what if ever? And now I know everyone will leave you eventually. So it's a little bit different. But you know, it's like, okay, like now I can get you. I have a little bit more used to it, but at the time it took me the first year or two to really be like this is the thing I'm going to do and build, not just something that I'm going to side hustle until the next job comes around.
Julie (00:08:15) - Yeah. And I think there's something about that feeling of risk of the person leaving you.
Julie (00:08:20) - Like, I'm going to entrust them to deliver part of the work, and it may become part of the work that you no longer have any expertise in, or that their expertise is much deeper than yours. And the nervous feeling of, you know what? If they leave, what am I going to do then? How will I deliver? The work is a very different feeling than knowing. Yeah, I might need some interns or some contractors or a bit of this and that, but I know I can do this. Yeah, it's a different feeling, but it's necessary in order to start growing and scaling up.
Anna-Vija (00:08:52) - Absolutely. Well. And also. Yesterday I was doing a walkthrough at a venue. We have an event coming up where we're doing,, marketing packages for speakers. So if you're a speaker and you need a marketing kit, speaker reel, photo library, testimonial videos, all those things where we produce an event and then we do that. So I'm doing the walkthrough and it's in a couple of weeks and my event planner shows up and she immediately takes over not to in a bad way.
Anna-Vija (00:09:17) - She immediately takes over the conversation, the planning, the everything. And it's not that I can't do that. That's where I started my career, right? Like I had 8 or 9 years of event planning experience before I started. But I hire her for a reason and it was funny. I was standing in the corner and watching her work, and I was standing with the venue coordinator and they're just like, okay, well, do you need anything? And I was like, I know, like, she does everything. She's amazing. And I had a moment. I turned to the event, the venue coordinator, and I said, it's really great to be in a place in my career where I can hire people that are smarter than me, that are more experienced than me, that are just going to knock it out of the park. And I can just stand here and let them shine, right? Because when I first started, there was that fear of I have to know more and do more than everyone else to prove my worth for some sort of weird like sense of job security or like, again, the fear that they would leave and I wouldn't be able to pick up what they left.
Anna-Vija (00:10:13) - And now I'm like, I can't wait to find amazing people that just like, knock it out of the park because they make everything better, right? And then I can go focus on the next thing to build or the next thing to grow. So yeah, it's a it's a very big difference than day one.
Julie (00:10:30) - Very big difference and a huge difference in like I think that the letting go. You know, when you start a business because you saw a need in the world. And that's I mean, that's I think why a lot of us start businesses and letting go of like, things that you might love to do in order to have other people do them so you can find the next thing and keep the company growing and, you know, keep the the train on the tracks and that sort of thing is different. Right? And some people find it hard to let go of things that they feel close to.
Anna-Vija (00:11:03) - Yeah, I would say that's one of the biggest challenges that when I'm when I'm working with our clients on their marketing and their scalability, when I'm doing public speaking, when I'm doing coaching.
Anna-Vija (00:11:15) - I'm the only one. I'm the only one who can do that. I'm the only one who that client wants to work with. I'm the only one who can do it fast enough. I'm the only one who knows where that stuff is. In the digital filing system. I'm the only one who should be looking at the books, or paying the bills or doing the blah, blah, blah. I don't trust anyone to touch that. And people wear it sometimes. Like this badge of honor. I'm the only one. And it's like, ooh, and I hear that. And it's like the biggest red flag. And I'm like, tell me about how you're sleeping at night. Because my guess is that, you know, it's it's kind of, you know, a metaphor, but it's like, but are you really enjoying that? Do you own your own business and you're enjoying the flexibility and the freedom that that gives you in your life? Or are you just like you've created a job for yourself that is more demanding and high pressure than working for someone else and clocking out at the end of the day because, like, you know, maybe you're making more money or maybe you, you know, you feel comfortable with it, but that, like, I'm the only one is so self-limiting.
Julie (00:12:15) - It is. And ultimately it's it's limiting for your vision of the business and all of the things that are possible.
Anna-Vija (00:12:22) - Yeah, absolutely. Well, and then you have to try to break people out of the mind space of that. And that's where it gets into scalability. Right. Marketing is part of that. You have to have more more opportunity for revenue and for new clients or customers. But being able to scale your company internally by hiring help and and making them successful, so many people are like, well, every time I try to hire someone, it goes wrong. And when you dig a little deeper, it's like, well, I'm swimming in the sea of chaos. And I found the first person who is remotely qualified drug them down into the ocean with me. And then I was really surprised when they didn't lift me up and fly me out of the sea of cats. Like, that's not how that works. Like, you have to train people.
Julie (00:13:05) - It's music playing, like, oh.
Anna-Vija (00:13:08) - When does this happen? Like, right, when have you really like, put the, you know, the shoe on the other foot? When have you been someone who's gone into another, you know, somebody else's company or organization with no training, tools, resources, expectations, communication and just magically done the job or fix all the problems. Like if you're the owner and you're the only one who can do it, why do you think that hiring someone else, they're just going to magically divine what you need when you're holding it so close to your chest? And so it is a challenge sometimes when we're working with people to say, you have to shift this mindset, right? Like it's one thing to kind of say, hey, you hired us to do X, Y, and Z, we're going to do it, but you have to participate in this process or it's not going to work.
Julie (00:13:52) - And it is that piece of, like I haven't talked about with clients about how leadership is a practice. It's not a destination or something you decide to do. It's like a constant evolution and betterment of yourself as a leader because the business is growing and changing also at a constant pace.
Anna-Vija (00:14:12) - Every day, every day, like I tell my team, because I do, I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I run or while I'm walking my dogs, and I sort of in my head, I have this little vision, this little, like mental image of me, like traversing a jungle. And I've got like one of those little hats on, like, you know, the cute hats, the little, like, little jungle explorer hat, and, you know, my backpack and my map in front of me and all this stuff. And I've got my whole team of people behind me, right? All of my all of my team members behind me, let alone my clients, like, they're behind them. Right? But I'm the one who's leading, and I have this map. And if I don't continuously focus on my own improvement, at some point the people behind me are going to pass me right are going to.
Anna-Vija (00:15:03) - And that doesn't mean I have to be more knowledgeable about everything that they do, right? Like every team of expedition expeditioners. Is that a word? Expeditioners, adventurers. I'm going to switch to adventures. Yeah, every team of adventure, you know, you have to have people on the team that are skilled in different things, but like, I need to constantly be learning and growing so that I can always be leading because otherwise I'm going to get to a point where they're not getting anything from working with me anymore, and then I'm going to lose really great people because I was like, oh, I hired someone and checked it off the list. And then I thought I was done being a leader. That doesn't help anybody. Yeah. No.
Julie (00:15:42) - No. And I think how you are as a leader in those early days, like when you hired your first person, part time person,, it is a more collaborative kind of environment where people are solving problems as a small team and figuring out where to go next.
Julie (00:15:58) - But there's some point where you do have to take the map and start leading everybody forward. And that's a big change and a big shift, I think as businesses grow.
Anna-Vija (00:16:07) - Yeah, and it's when I think about my role as CEO, because let's be honest, I called myself the CEO day one, what I was the CEO of. I'm not sure it was like of me in my spare bedroom. Right. But now, ten years later, I do have a team of people. I have a leadership group. I mean, I promoted the the three most experienced members of my team about a year and a half ago to be a little leadership group so that they can run day to day operations., and to your point about collaboration, that works the best for my team, rather than hiring an external person and naming them the CEO, I knew that wouldn't work because they wouldn't capture the culture and like, know you guys are already running it. Let me give you the authority to do that. So it worked really well.
Anna-Vija (00:16:48) - But when I shifted into a into a true CEO role, my business coach gave me some really great overall overview as to what that role looked like. Because I'm like Hannah, I'm used to checking things off a list every day, just like everyone else, right? And those tasks might include leadership or beside everyone, but like, but I'm what is this new thing where I'm not in the project management system? What does that look like? And she said clear vision. She was like, as a CEO it is vision casting. And you have to make sure that there's clarity. So as you're leading those adventurers, she talked about visibility for the company and and business development, right. Selling understanding and managing financials and leadership development. And when she gave me those sort of five key focuses, now everything that I do is, oh, okay, this fits into this bucket, right? But clear vision is one that it doesn't matter if you're day one in a business or year ten in a business. If you can't clearly articulate the vision you have, ain't nobody going to follow you.
Anna-Vija (00:17:54) - Right? Like, where are we going? That seems dangerous and confusing. I'm going to go over here, right? Like so. You have to have that. No matter. No matter if you're the year one CEO or the, you know, the ten year CEO.
Julie (00:18:07) - Well. And it makes me think about how like when you made that step and became the CEO. In some ways, it's not different than the entrepreneur who hires the first employee and has to start the process of letting go. And not only in that letting go are you allowing someone to do their job, but you're also building in the right checkpoints and the right oversight to make sure that you have a good sense that things are happening the way you need them to.
Anna-Vija (00:18:37) - Yes, all of the systems, all of the systems. I joke that systems are my love language, but when I try to explain to small business owners what I mean by like scalability and systems, because when you say that to someone like, yeah, our company can help your company scale, that means so many different things.
Anna-Vija (00:18:54) - There's so many people. And historically my company has been a marketing agency. Right. And so they think about it in terms of the opportunities or revenue right of like new business. But the scalability really comes in the in that the dense part of the PNL like, where are you spending your money? How much turnover do you have? Right? Like where are you putting efficiencies into place to reduce the amount of, you know, waste or time that you're. So that's where I look at both. It's like it's top line revenue. Sure. But it's also all this stuff in the middle. And so the example is yeah, I, I sold a whole bunch of marketing. And in the first six months I had 17 clients. It's not feasible for one person to manage all of the marketing for 17 companies. So when I hired someone and said, hey, I need you to help me, for example, with social media, I couldn't just say, go do the thing. Because who knows what she would have given me back.
Anna-Vija (00:19:52) - I had to create systems. Here are the 10 or 12 steps every month that you have to take to execute this client in social media, because that's what I already sold. That's the deliverable they're expecting. This is the time frame that we have set in, you know, set in place. Here's the content calendar we use. Here's a quick little video to explain to you what you know, who the client is talking to. Here's a marketing strategy doc. This is the messaging. And so giving them those tools all of a sudden instead of hiring a contractor and getting back something that was radically different than what I needed or wanted, I've given them those tools, training and resources. I didn't tell them every single thing to do. I'm not trying to make them a W-2 employee, but I gave them the resources to understand what the expectation was, and I think a lot of people skip that. They'll hire someone and go, hey, I need you to do social media. And then when they get it back and it's nothing like what they wanted, or that doesn't follow their timeframes or the client's strategy, they're confused in a well.
Anna-Vija (00:20:54) - Do you? You're terrible at this. No, they're not terrible at it. It's just you gotta have more in place to help people scale.
Julie (00:21:03) - Yeah, yeah. And it's thinking about, well, you know, delegation. Nobody teaches you about delegation. Nobody ever sits you down and says, here's how to do it well. And all the things you're talking about are about doing it effectively. And when we don't do it effectively, that's when we're like, oh, I'm going to have to really, really oversee this. It's where like our secret micro manager comes out, right? And we're starting to be like, oh, I need to know every five minutes how this project is going. And that's like a real recipe for disaster around keeping any kind of quality employee.
Anna-Vija (00:21:37) - Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that's the challenge too, is that if you're depending on what your work environment is, we've been remote since day one. I feel really strongly about the way that that level of flexibility,, contributes to people's lives, right? In the way that they can have and myself, the way we have work life balance.
Anna-Vija (00:21:57) - Last year we we started doing a four day workweek. And so, you know, yeah. So adjusting has really changed. If you've ever heard that, that, quote, however much time you have is how much time it will take. Have you heard that? So like if I told you that you I love you to, you know, do give a public presentation, a speech four weeks from now, you're going to go, great. And you're going to work on that about 3 or 4 days before that speech, right? If I said, hey, that same opportunity is available to you tomorrow, you're probably going to stay up tonight and get that presentation ready, right? However much time you have is how much time it takes. And so what we found is that by giving people these resources, by saying, hey, we're going to do a four day workweek, we're going to have you work from home. I don't care where or when you work, as long as you're communicating clearly and you're meeting your deadlines.
Anna-Vija (00:22:47) - That means people are working at 10:30 at night. But I'm not available at 10:30 at night to answer their questions. So by having these tools available, it facilitates their success, right. You don't have to come. Well, now I can't work on it because I have to wait until Anna-Vija is available to ask her the question. I don't need to micromanage because I already data dumped everything out of my head. Put it into training videos and checklists and templates and example best practices guidance. And "here, go learn. And then if you have a question come to me". Right. And so like it really facilitates people's flexibility in their ownership of a project. They feel much more comfortable when they've learned to do something than if they just have to ask you what to do every step of the way.
Julie (00:23:33) - . And it's so important those processes because really scaling is about getting better and better at doing the same thing over and over again. Yeah. And and so and that was actually one of the interesting things when I wrote my book.
Julie (00:23:48) - And the women that I interviewed process and systems and third people were the inevitable theme and everyone's story of how they're able to do such big things. Yeah.
Anna-Vija (00:23:59) - And again, I think that when when people are looking at scaling a business, they think about selling more, right? When they, oh, I just need to sell more and the more and don't give me or I mean, yeah, like money fixes a lot of problems. But also like if it's built on this really like shaky foundation at some point you're going to break. Right. And like all of that money that you have, I mean, I've seen marketing agencies grow a lot faster than my company has. And the owners be miserable, right, because they they haven't built these systems, they haven't hired great teams. They're trying to do too much on their own. And or the company falters, the company fails, you know, it doesn't or it goes out of business. They choose to let it go. And that's that's hard, you know, because people don't want to think about that.
Anna-Vija (00:24:44) - A lot of times we look at those vanity numbers and we think like the bigger gross revenue, the better the company. And it's like, is it or like, is profitability good? Like I kind of feel like that's the better number to focus on. And a lot of that is a lot of profitability is around your efficiencies and your systems and the people that you're using to get things done.
Julie (00:25:08) - . Definitely, definitely. Now when you transitioned into the true CEO role, how did that change the work you do on on the vision you have for the company and on the sort of like where you're going next and how do you fill that up? So.
Anna-Vija (00:25:28) - , I have always been I don't know if you could tell. I've always been pretty extroverted. So,, I like to have a good, you know, night on the couch and that kind of thing. But, I think that it changed the focus of my day to day. And I was able to sit down with my team and say, if you all are taking over these responsibilities X, Y, and Z, what are the things we've always dreamt of doing? So what are the things that have been on our wish list for years? Internal development.
Anna-Vija (00:25:59) - External visibility. Write new tester projects, products, services. What are the things that we want to do that we've not had the time to do, or the bandwidth or the skills to do in the in? Excuse me, in the past. And so we were able to work together as a team to say, here's where our priorities are. So you heard me mention that that speaker,, marketing kit earlier, that was something that last year it was a test. A friend of mine came to me and said, hey, I would love to, you know, I would love to have a marketing kit. Her name is Rosa Castano. She is a powerhouse, for like, well-being in the workplace. And she said on of I need this speaker kit, but I'm not really like it's going to take more, more manpower to get that done. And I know that you have some of these connections. So our friend Al Benson and I, we got together and we made this little beta tester event.
Anna-Vija (00:26:49) - I had the bandwidth to do that and to test that as, as an event for visibility, as a networking opportunity for biz dev. Right. And as a potential new package or service. Right? And it was like, yeah, I just spent multiple weeks really focused on that key initiative. It was really successful. So we decided that we would host three of those events in 2024. So our next one is, you know, coming up in a few weeks. Right. So now it's like, oh, okay. It worked on all three counts. Right. So visibility for the company business development and a new service. You know something something that we could sell as a new product or service. So I know that's sort of like a singular example, but that's kind of what's happened is that we've been able to look at it and say, where do we want to position our company? Who do we want to serve with, what products and services? And let's pick a few key things to test.
Anna-Vija (00:27:44) - And those are like my special projects that as I'm out in the community, I'm going, yeah, this year it's the rise speaker packages and it's my system reboot group coaching program. So outside of my normal marketing, these are the two things that I'm working on. We're going to see how they go. Right. But it gives me something to sort of play with. And then there's more fun and creativity. Behind the scenes is my team. And I, like launch the entire marketing kit for those individual, you know, initiatives and things like that.
Julie (00:28:14) - Yes, but also interesting that it's given you so not just the special product projects, but the white space to kind of dream and imagine. Like, so what have we put in the parking lot? What can we pull from there? What might be new and different that we haven't even dreamed up yet? It's giving you that opportunity to devote yourself to imagining what is next.
Anna-Vija (00:28:35) - Yes. And that was something that. So Ahmose. But we have these things called Kickstarter packages.
Anna-Vija (00:28:40) - You heard me mention we do full services, but we also have developed these opportunities for small businesses that need a little bit of help but aren't ready to hire a full time agency. Right. And our most popular one was kind of an accident born from the white space. And it was, you know, this was right after the pandemic, right? So we like we had gotten this new leadership team, but we were kind of trying to figure out, you know, hey, people aren't signing these bigger retainers as often. What is it that they actually need? And we have the space to really assess our audience and what their needs were. And then with that space, we were like, hey, what they need is the guidance, right? They need us to look at everything they're doing, give them a report on how to optimize it, and then say, if your company was my company, here's exactly how we would market. And so we turned that into this thing called the marketing launchpad.
Anna-Vija (00:29:34) - Right. Because it's kind of fun. Like we're just going to launch your marketing. Here's everything that you need to do that. And now, a couple years later, it's our most popular package. Right. And so it's like this is something that like again pre pandemic pre me being a full CEO pre all those things we didn't really see that right as an emerging trend. And then once it was like no let's let's stop and look at it and get kind of creative. Oh wow. Here's an opportunity. Let's test. And it very quickly became something that resonated with the audience.
Julie (00:30:06) - , and that's where yeah, that space is giving you the opportunity to look for emerging trends. Yep. And to look at the business too, like what are the different lenses you can put on the financials? Is there anywhere where, oh, suddenly people aren't signing as big retainers, like when you take the time to dig in and see that versus all of a sudden in six months being like, something's going.
Anna-Vija (00:30:28) - On, right? Oh, wait, where's the money? Yeah.
Anna-Vija (00:30:31) - Yeah. Well, and that's the thing too. Is that what we found is that when we do the marketing launchpad and I'm not trying to to diminish the value, it's very valuable. But what we used to do is sign people. We would get married right away. So instead of dating, we would just, you know, metaphorically, we would just jump right to a retainer because we would be able to look at them in the beginning and say, here's our best approximation of the services that we would start with in a phase one marketing strategy. But the first four weeks of any retainer was the launch pad. We still had to do the deep dive assessment. We still had to create an optimization checklist for ourselves. We still had to make the formal strategy and get the client's buy in approval. All we did is we just chopped off the first four weeks of a retainer, and we sell it separately now. And if people decide they want to walk with it, that's great. And if people don't and they say, gosh, look at all this work, I don't want to do it.
Anna-Vija (00:31:24) - What's the retainer? Well, great that we could sell you. And then we credit them back for the for the launch pad because they already paid for all that. Right. So like, we give them their money back on the retainer or excuse me, on the launch pad. That being said, 50-60% of the people that get a launch pad end up hiring us to do the work. Right. So it's like right.
Julie (00:31:45) - And I think it's an interesting idea because you establish your credibility, you give them value. They see if they, like the recommendations and the advice they get from you, and you build that trust that enables them to say yes. And it might be yes to something where they were sitting on a fence saying, this is kind of expensive for me right now.
Anna-Vija (00:32:07) - And also when I say dating, it does go both ways because we've had situations where when someone comes to me and says, hey, I need marketing help, I'm looking for X, Y, and Z, I can kind of look and go, yeah, I mean, I could sell that to you as a retainer right now, but it doesn't quite feel right to me.
Anna-Vija (00:32:23) - I'd like to explore it further. And we've had clients where we've gone back and gone, do not hire us. And they're like, oh, really? And we're like, yeah, like we looked at it. You're actually doing a really good job with these things and the things that you need to reach your goals. We're not going to be able to help you with. Let me introduce you to a PR firm. Let me introduce you to an event planner. Let me introduce you to my girl Shani. She's you know, she has an event company. She's going to. Right? So, like, that's what you need. And we're not going to do that for you. That's what we found out. And so we try to be very,, again, both directional or multidirectional with that assessment. Because if we're not going to be able to help them with a retainer, why would we sell it? Right. So some people are surprised. They're like, oh, you don't want to work with it.
Anna-Vija (00:33:07) - It's like, no, it's not that we don't want to work with you. It's just we're not going to be able to give you any more value than you're already doing. Like, we don't want to sell you something that isn't going to do anything for you. Yeah.
Julie (00:33:19) - Well, an ultimately that breeds loyalty also because they'll be a referral source for you. Or maybe there is a need in the future that you can work together on, and the chances of them coming back and asking you to help before someone else are going to be pretty good.
Anna-Vija (00:33:34) - Yeah, but the scalability there has been really interesting for my company because, you know what we were doing, you mentioned about revenue projections, right? Is like we were we were holding out for those retainer clients. And as people were becoming more hesitant to sign retainers post Covid and, you know, threat of a recession and those kind of things, it was impacting our long term contracted revenue. And we can see it out 6 to 12 months. And we were going, goodness.
Anna-Vija (00:34:00) - Right. And so bringing in these this package allowed my company to continue to grow in scale because it allowed us to have fresh relationships, even though the amounts were much smaller than our retainers. Right. We were working with more of them. Right. And then again, 50 to 60% are converting to retainers. So it was like, oh, okay, this is a way that we can scale the business. So it was weird. It was like taking a step backwards in order to take two steps forward. It was like, wait, this doesn't make it. But I was happy it worked. But it was like, this didn't really make a lot of sense at the time. I mean, one of our team members, we play this thing, we play a game called Devil's Advocate. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. We when we're sitting in brainstorming rooms, if we've all come to a mutual decision, somebody has to volunteer to be the devil's advocate and go. And it's always I laugh, it's always my client services director, David.
Anna-Vija (00:34:54) - But he will be like, hey, devil's advocate, what if this radically different thing, right? What if it's not what we assume? What if this bad thing happens? What if the result is completely different, blah blah blah. Like we have to evaluate, you know, the positive and the negative to make sure that our team has been, you know, really thought something out., and that was one of the things I was like, we're looking at these, these Kickstarter packages because we do one for social and SEO and email and the different areas, you know, website assessments., and it was it was kind of like the devil's advocate was like, hey, are we shooting ourselves in the foot here by making it like to affordable, like too cheap? Is it too cheap or do we are we going to be spinning our wheels with a whole bunch of different clients and not really making as much profit? And therefore, are we going to run ourselves into the ground? And it was like, that's a really good question.
Anna-Vija (00:35:45) - Let's go test it. And so in the testing we were aware of that. Right. But we ended up having a scalability tool rather than a detriment.
Julie (00:35:53) - Are so interesting and something that you gave yourself an easy exit door. So if it didn't work out, if all of your what ifs came true, you just exit out and move on to the next. Yeah, we just.
Anna-Vija (00:36:05) - Don't sell that anymore. In that case. Yeah. I'm sorry, we don't do that anymore. Yeah.
Julie (00:36:09) - Yeah, yeah. No, that's a really great way of doing that test. So what's next for you?
Anna-Vija (00:36:16) - So like I said, this year we are working on, you know, continuing our core foundation around marketing services for small businesses. I've got the rise events that I'm working on this year, which I'm very excited about and, you know, helping public speakers. and then really, like I said, my other my other initiative this year and kind of our newest test is group coaching.
Anna-Vija (00:36:36) - So I have a lot of people I'm sure you get this all the time to Julie, who are like, oh my gosh, I would love to buy you coffee and pick your brain.
Speaker 3 (00:36:44) - Yep.
Julie (00:36:45) - But you can't do and you can't do all of that.
Anna-Vija (00:36:48) - You cannot. And so I'm like, gosh, I want to help and I want to teach and I want to be. But like, I can't have, you know, unlimited $5 coffees, right?, and so I started a group coaching program. I'm actually going to start on,, LinkedIn live next month to kind of, you know, get people involved and that kind of thing. But we've already started the group coaching program. And essentially it's the concept of of, you know, if you ever wanted to buy me coffee and pick my brain, it's like that, but with a little bit more of a curriculum. So it's around scalability systems, marketing help, and the concept is a, you know, a couple of zoom calls a month where we jump on and say, what are you challenged with? Here are things that, you know, experience shares, things that I've done, you know, tools and resources that you can implement.
Anna-Vija (00:37:34) - , and then there's an online community that goes with it. So that's sort of my, my new initiative,, for this, this year. And so I'm hoping that that's something that, gives me a better answer than no, thank you. I don't want to have coffee.
Julie (00:37:48) - Well, I think that sounds exciting and fun, and I can't wait to see where you go next with all of the changes that you're bringing around. Yeah.
Anna-Vija (00:37:59) - I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on the show too.
Julie (00:38:03) - Yeah. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. So you won't miss any episodes. Figure Eight isn't just a podcast, it's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book, Big Gorgeous Goals on Amazon anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www.julieellis.ca to see how we might work together.
Julie (00:38:43) - Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again. That's julieellis.ca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure Eight.