Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.061)
If you're a business owner struggling to scale because you're the bottleneck, working endless hours and unable to step away without everything falling apart, then our guest, Jesse Gilmore, is about to give you a simple win you can implement today.
Jesse P. Gilmore is the founder of Niche in Control and creator of the Leverage for Growth method. He's helped over 500 agency owners scale without burning out by redesigning their offers, building operational freedom, and stepping into true leadership. Welcome to the show, Jesse. So excited to dive into this with you.
Jesse P. Gilmore (00:35.606)
Yeah, me too, man. Thank you so much, Adam. Excited for our conversation.
Adam O'Leary (00:39.471)
Absolutely. So I've heard you discuss how being the single point of failure can trap business owners in a cycle of overwork. Can you explain why identifying and removing this bottleneck is the key to unlocking growth and freedom?
Jesse P. Gilmore (00:53.838)
Yeah, absolutely. So first off, it's important to understand what a single point of failure is. So a single point of failure is where in the business, there is a single person, that could be the founder, could be an employee, could be contractor, could even be a vendor, where if without that person, the business can no longer operate at the same level of quality. So when we think about a single point of failure, typically the founder is the first one. And if you think about the...
the transition that each founder makes, if you're trying to go from being self-employed where you kind of own a job to a true business owner, you ultimately need to remove the dependency upon you in order for the business to grow. And in my first three businesses, so, Niche and Control is my fourth business, in my first three of them, I was always the bottleneck, I was always the single point of failure, and I didn't really understand how to remove that. And so, the result was that as each one of those businesses were becoming more successful,
I started working 60, 80 hour weeks for years and burnt out and dissolved businesses because I kind of fell in love with the idea of freedom with entrepreneurship, but I had created something that was more like a monster. And the single point of failure, how to actually kind of identify that is just if you kind of think about if you got flooded with clients, what would be the first thing to break? And typically there is a certain part of the operation that kind of just
get stuck, might be client onboarding, could be the strategy, could be a certain type of process. And understanding if you got flood with business, where is the constraint? That becomes the first thing you start to create systems and remove that duplication. create less, what's the word for it? Less rework or less of that kind of dependency.
Adam O'Leary (02:40.142)
Absolutely, and you just said the word monster. I thought that was interesting. Tell me how a person can look and realize if they're managing a monster in a business.
Jesse P. Gilmore (02:50.254)
Yeah, so if you have control over the business, if you have time to work on the business and be able to create the direction of the business, then you're not really owning a monster. Monster is a term that you could use for a business that basically owns you. If you don't work, work doesn't get done. If it's kind of like based around external circumstances as opposed to your internal vision, these are different things that a monster of a business would happen.
And anybody that's experienced it, it's kind of funny. A lot of times I talk about burnout or monsters in businesses or whatever. And a lot of times people will, if they've never experienced it, they'll be like, yeah, I'll deal with that later. And people that have experienced it are like, my gosh, this is the most like, you gotta figure that out. So yeah, that's a monster.
Adam O'Leary (03:40.187)
Totally, I agree 100%. I was actually just talking with somebody earlier today about when I was running my own agency and I had three clients and I would, my brain, I'd be waking up at two o'clock in the morning and be like, my God, I gotta go do this, I gotta go do this. And it was crazy. I mean, when you say the word monster, I think you're hitting it like.
Bang on the point because that's what happens to agency owners all the time is that they hit three four or five clients and then all of a sudden they find themselves not just working one job but working five jobs It's horrible. So no, totally I totally agree with that and thinking about this one thing that you just kept saying over and over was the word time So how can we as entrepreneurs as agency owners go ahead and look and say okay? How can we manage our time better?
Jesse P. Gilmore (04:14.136)
Mm-hmm.
Jesse P. Gilmore (04:28.59)
Absolutely. So as with pretty much everything in life, the key to any type of change is awareness. And the best thing you can do with time is just log your time every half an hour for seven days. Include everything. You're scrolling on social media. You're binge watching Netflix. You get distracted by Squirrel, know, like whatever it is, and you're trying to get into deep work and then a client calls, you know.
Capturing everything allows you just to be able to look at it objectively because the use of time is typically something that we don't really think about unless we're actually kind of studying it. And I won't go into the psychology behind awareness and so forth, but once you capture the use of time, you can start to apply a model that has worked really, really well for me and a lot of my clients where you look at each one of those little
blocks of time and you look at is there something that I'm doing right now that I could eliminate? Okay, just stop doing it, right? Scrolling on social media or binge watching Netflix, simple things that you can just eliminate and start freeing up time. And if you can't eliminate it, can you automate it? Okay, I said in one of the podcasts I was on, you know.
Data transfer should never happen by a human from here on out. That was one of my statements because if you think about automation, it just allows things to happen that are happening on a high frequency and are very predictable. You can have a system to be able to do that. So if you can eliminate it, automate it, if you can't do those two things, then can you delegate it? Can you find somebody to actually take the work from you? Think about low risk admin types of tasks to start off with and then.
As time goes on, if you have a bigger team, you can kind of start taking things that team members are actually more empowered to be able to do. And last, whatever you come up with, what's left on your list, kind of hard to say, then you focus on time blocking. Now, some people that do time blocking always think it's just like having a certain amount of time for a certain activity. That's one aspect. But if you actually do time blocks that are kind of stacked based around
Jesse P. Gilmore (06:46.082)
the type of thinking that's needed for it. So for an example, if you do websites and all technical things are in a certain block of time, you have less task switching, which creates better decisions and less decision fatigue. So when you start moving things around and condensing the types of work, you get more done in less time. And the time goal that you have is to carve out eight to 10 hours per week to work on the business.
This reminds me real quick of an example. So sometimes when I talk about this, everybody's like, whatever. But in actuality, Mike was a client. He was working 80 hour weeks, 12 to 14 hour days, seven days a week. He has two kids. And he talked about in his case study how before working together, he just continued to work until two in the morning. He'd go to sleep, he'd wake up, he'd say hi to his kids, and then he'd go back into the office. And he just got into this cycle.
Adam O'Leary (07:12.109)
Hmm.
Jesse P. Gilmore (07:41.208)
And we did that time log, that same activity, working together for six weeks, just over and over and over and over again. And he went from 80 hours to 40 hours, then he had the weekends free for his family, and then he quadrupled the business. It's crazy how much time management is actually a big piece of the puzzle.
Adam O'Leary (08:00.004)
Absolutely, that's the some crazy numbers and when we look at this time management here How are we going to use it to so I know that you're an expert at this you're probably one of the best in the world at this how do we use that time now that we found to systematize the operations to reduce dependency on ourselves
Jesse P. Gilmore (08:03.266)
Hahaha
Jesse P. Gilmore (08:17.698)
Beautiful. Yeah, so everybody always asks what the heck do you do with that working on the business time? So if you had eight to ten hours per week to work on the business the first thing you want to do is you want to log and kind of brain dump everything that's in your head and your team said into systems and procedures the easiest way to do that is just to identify What roles and services are in the business right now? You can kind of just list all out and then from each one of those roles and services
list out different processes, and processes is like a beginning and an end with a certain type of result or deliverable that you're trying to create. And you start to brainstorm those processes, and then within the process, think about what is kind of like a trigger event or something that starts the process. So think about like client onboarding. What starts a client onboarding might be like they're signing an agreement or they're paying the invoice, right? And then from a trigger event, then you start figuring out,
the end of client onboarding might be a kickoff call or something that starts the process, right? And then in between these two different points, there's most likely a series of different steps or tasks that need to be done between those two points. If you list all those out and you just document from all the rules, all the services, and then the processes, you all of a sudden start to see what is either done by one person
needs to be optimized in some form. Just that brain dump is very similar to the time log where you all of sudden have kind of like this raw information that you can start to organize. I could go way deeper into like lean thinking and what to do with actual process, but the first step is really just that big brain dump. One thing that you could do, because we're on the simple wins, if you do that brain dump and you start to identify that there are certain things that only you do or somebody else does,
My suggestion is, is loom is like my favorite thing. I think I'm like a premium, amazing user. have like 3,000 loom videos or something because I do this. And what I do is I, and I suggested to all my clients before they get into like actual system building, is just take one of those processes that you know like the back of your hand, but you need to train it to somebody else. Record yourself doing a loom video.
Jesse P. Gilmore (10:36.182)
and just talk everything out. I'm gonna click over here at this certain thing and this is what it says. And then I'm gonna find this information. If you just talk it all out, it might take you about 20 % longer to do that one task, but the transcript itself is basically its own training. And the Loom video is its own training that you could use to have somebody else start learning these things. Now that is a starting point, that's what's called just-in-time standardization, but, well, it won't go into too many jargon-based things, but.
That is a good starting point for you.
Adam O'Leary (11:07.835)
That's a really, really good use right there. Actually, I wasn't even thinking about the transcripts because once you talk, you can take the transcript and then turn that into an SOP. Great actual advice. And it's funny when Loom was first coming out, our company was one of the top 10 affiliates for Loom when they first launched. like if there was a countdown timer, not a countdown, it was like who gets the first release. And we were literally in the top 10 of the people who recommended Loom the most because it was amazing.
Jesse P. Gilmore (11:15.416)
Yes.
Jesse P. Gilmore (11:34.766)
I knew we had a deep, deep connection there.
Adam O'Leary (11:39.684)
Yeah It changes your life once you start using it for sure. And so one thing I know that you're Fantastic at as well and I know quite a few of the agencies that I've worked i've worked with in the past They do hourly pricing And there's also stuff like value pricing, right? Which I know that you would probably recommend more than the hourly So what would be like a minimum viable solution, right? How can we go ahead and increase profits without increasing?
workload.
Jesse P. Gilmore (12:12.462)
So this is a loaded question solved from our scalable agency accelerator, but I will do my best to make this a relatively short. So if you think about the different models, so in the agency world, there are two kind of like legacy models that are completely dying. One of them is based around hourly model, and I'll talk about what that is, and then the other one is a cost plus model. So an hourly model is pretty simple. It's very similar to a freelancer type of model where you charge by the hour.
And the way to make more money as an agency that's charging by the hour is actually just to take longer to do the thing that you get in charge to do, right? And what's crazy about AI coming in is that you can do the same amount of work in a lot less time. And so if you were to align towards value but then not change your pricing model, you're actually less incentivized or decentivized to actually do better work in less time, okay?
So hourly model, that's one one. The cost plus model is a really stupid model. It's basically like if you said that you wanted to build this certain system and then I hire a bunch of contractors that cost me 10K and I wanna put 30 % onto that in order for me to make 3K from whatever that package is, I'm incentivized because of the percentage of how I get paid to put as many things into the bundle as possible.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the person that's getting this system or getting this project is actually gonna get more value from whatever I'm putting into there. And so the cost plus model is actually really stupid. It's just like, has this like, it's all based around what it costs you and ultimately the cost plus model and the hourly model are dying because of currency exchanges between different nations. I we won't get so much into global currencies and whatever, but if you think about it, a lot of those two models are just kind of like dying.
Now, on the other side, we have a value-based model. And value-based model is just beautiful. It reminded me of what I learned in corporate America of how these big billion dollar CEOs, how they make strategic partnerships is through this thing called strategic blueprinting. The idea is that they talk about the vision of their companies and they align the visions together. So that way, they both have a win-win kind of situation. The same exact thing with value-based pricing. If I know...
Jesse P. Gilmore (14:38.09)
that if for the right type of person, the value is astronomical. So for an example, I had a client go from 15,000 per month to 100,000 per month in nine months. If you think about the value of being able to do that, in a year, I was able to generate and help him generate 800,000 in annual recurring revenue. Massive value. And when I thought about the value, then I realized,
One-on-one sessions actually are very valuable for the right types of person. So when you think about value, value is actually all based around the perception of the person. So if you start to understand the value and the return on investment, which can be either time saved, money saved, or money earned, there's like a couple other ones, but those are the main ones. If you understand what your true ROI is based around having the right type of person,
and you divide it by either 10 or five, you have a five X return on investment or a 10 X return on investment, that gives you a price range. And then pricing according to value has a lot more benefit because you're more focused around the outcome and getting good results for the clients as opposed to all the other kind of models. And if you already know what your hourly is and kind of like what the actual cost is, then value actually just increases your profits because that's the constant when value is actually the variable.
Does that make sense?
Adam O'Leary (16:04.497)
And you said so there was time saved there was money earned and what was the third one that you said? Money saved okay, love it. Yes. Those are those are really good And I like your your take on dividing it either by five or by ten because that is bang on a really good idea to do because I mean then when a client comes on what's gonna happen is they're instantly gonna get a five or ten X return And that's that's what matters genius way to go This is why I wanted to have you on
Jesse P. Gilmore (16:08.961)
and money saved.
Jesse P. Gilmore (16:25.997)
Yes.
Yes. After you coach 500 agencies and you figure out what works and what doesn't, it becomes a lot easier for you to follow these certain frameworks. But typically the offer itself, just repositioning it and attracting the right types of clients is huge. One other thing I want to touch on with this, and I know you're probably going to ask me about some of the other parts of leverage for growth, but the offer itself.
What I've noticed is that there's kind of a split between two different types of agencies right now. Agencies at the time of this recording are getting disrupted by AI and then companies are internally using AI to try to figure out can I actually remove the need for agencies. And this is pretty natural. There are two different types of agencies of the future. One of them is execution oriented and I would assume that based on global currencies this is in different types of countries that are more based on the execution.
The strategy-based agencies where you go up market and you actually become more of a partner are going to be along for the ride for like a long, long time, and you can charge a lot more based around it. if agencies that are listening to this that are really, really good at your craft, but maybe your offer needs to reposition, that is what you wanna do is you wanna start going up market and not playing this kind of like low-cost type of game. So I just wanted to give a little simple in there too.
Adam O'Leary (17:54.033)
Absolutely, 100%. And let's go ahead and let's dive into that leverage for growth because this what you've done here is incredible. Can you break down for our audience what that is and how it works?
Jesse P. Gilmore (18:05.804)
Yeah, what's cool is we've already gone through three of the five steps. So step number one is based around freeing up the time and carving out eight to 10 hours per week to work on the business. The second one is based around building scalable systems that allow the people within the business to switch without the customer being impacted. So that's a whole systems component. And naturally when you start to, in step number two, build the systems, you'll naturally understand what is valuable and not valuable, what is more profitable, what's not profitable.
And that sets you up for the work in step number three, which is that minimum viable solution. So least amount of effort on your end, greatest results for the client, price according to value. And once you have that offer in step number three, then step number four is where you build client attraction systems. Client attraction systems, what I've realized works really, really well, especially if you're very customer-centric, is you start off with a referral program where you get clients that have had good results.
to give you case studies and even referrals. And from there, the referral program, every kind of input from a case study can be used in outbound and inbound to create kind of integration between those. So for an example, Susan was one of my favorite case studies. She was a creative agency that was reinventing the wheel with every client. She was delivering massive value, but the clients didn't actually understand the value.
And we went through this process to a place where towards the end she had a core offer. She cut a bunch of services. She focused on what was most valuable to the client. And then we took it to the market. And when she went from almost burning out, so very similar to my previous businesses, she gave me six months to turn her agency around. She doubled in six months and got acquired in 18. And she actually wrote the forward in my book. So for anybody that's listening, if you want to read her story, it's in the book.
When I went through this and I had it kind of like the case study interview at the way end, she walked through each one of these steps and one of the biggest things that she kept on saying in the beginning of before working together, she kept on using the word spinning your wheels. Before working together, was spinning my wheels, spinning my wheels. And she said it so many times and when I kept on rewatching it, I was like, I just have this crazy idea. And so then my outbound campaign was, are you spinning your wheels in your creative agency? And question mark and then.
Jesse P. Gilmore (20:29.228)
sent out the message and I was like, my hypothesis is that I'll find more Susans and I did. And I was like, my gosh, I figured it out. And then inbound was like her case study and then being used a lot and the combination between all three creates an exponential demand, not only for me, but also for clients. that is filling up the pipeline, which is step number four. And then step number five is where you empower the people. So this is where you hire the right people, you train them effectively and you manage a growing team.
and you actually have the team run whole parts of the company so you can focus on growth, or what I like to say is a unique ability. We wanna position you according to your strengths so that way as the business grows, you're actually more fulfilled, which is the exact opposite of the monster that we were talking about a little bit ago.
Adam O'Leary (21:14.096)
Absolutely and Jesse where can people go to learn more about you?
Jesse P. Gilmore (21:17.806)
Yeah, awesome. You can go to nicheincontrol.com to learn more about us. If you want a copy of my book, The Agency Owner's Guide to Freedom, you can go to nicheincontrol.com slash book. And then the Scalable Agency Accelerator is my most valuable thing that I could ever give you. One of my clients closed a 50,000 a month client the same week as the launch.
But the scalable agency accelerator, if you want to learn more about our seven step systems, take a scalable agency offer to the market within 14 days. You can go to go.nitchingcontrol.com slash accelerator.
Adam O'Leary (21:54.448)
Amazing. Jesse, thank you so much for jumping on with me today.
Jesse P. Gilmore (21:57.497)
Yeah, thanks Adam, appreciate it.
Adam O'Leary (21:59.713)
Awesome, well thank you all for listening and seriously go check out Jesse. He is the best at what he does and you will love what he's got in store for you. So guys, I will see you on the next episode of Simple Wins. Have a wonderful rest of your day. See y'all later.
