2 - Building The Machine

So, in this training, I'm going to walk you through the steps that you need to create the machine that is going to power your business and help you grow and help you scale. And I'm going to walk you through all of the different tools and technology that you need. So, at the end of the day, what you need is a machine that is optimized not only to

perform today, but it's optimized to perform in 10 months. It's optimized for both performance and durability. So, in this training, I'm going to provide you with a scalable machine and structure that you can use to power and grow your business. So here's the problem. You just can't scale without lean, effective systems and structure. And if you were to get 10 clients tomorrow, you would most likely crash

and burn. Most freelancers and small agency owners are not aware of the incredible tools and technology available to them that will dramatically improve the operational structure of their business. And the crazy part is many of these tools are completely free as I'll be sharing with you in today's training. The solution to this is to be before you become. Now, I'm not sure who exactly said that. Maybe

some Buddhist monk, maybe some Zen guy, maybe Martin Luther King. I'm not sure, but what this means is before you get 10 clients tomorrow, you need to be ready to get 10 clients tomorrow. You need to create this machine, you need to build the machine that is needed to handle the scale and the massive growth of your business before it actually happens. This is so, so critical

because the last thing you want to do is work your ass off to go and get all these clients and then have all your hard work pay off only to crash and burn. So here are the only tools that you need to build the machine. First, for communications, you're going to need Slack. Secondly, for project management, you're going to use Trello. For your operating system documentation and

processes, you're going to use Google Drive. And then lastly, for automating all of these, which we're going to cover in a separate training, you're going to use something like Zapier or If This Than That. Alright, so let's dive into Slack, which is going to be your central communications tool. So that is correct. You will no longer be emailing your clients. Once your contract is signed, you're going

to be communicating exclusively through Slack with your clients and this will become part of your onboarding process for future clients as well. And the reason for this is because email sucks. It sucks. It really sucks. I hate it. I have not used email for my projects in about five, six months and the amount of gray hairs have dramatically reduced, I promise you. And the reason for that

is you miss attachments. It's hard to navigate and the search functionality just sucks. So I know that many of you already have existing clients, otherwise you wouldn't be in this program. So I've provided you with this email template to alert your existing clients of your move to Slack. So basically what this says is you've been working behind the scenes to improve your quality of service and improve

your product operations. One of the changes that you're going to be implementing is moving all client communications to Slack. The reason for this is email is ineffective and the pilot testing, which I've already done for you, don't worry, has already led to improved communications. And so you're going to be sending an invitation to your new Slack channel to your clients. And then at the bottom, I have

a link to a quick guide to help any clients that are not familiar with Slack about how to use it. It's a very, very simple tool. So there shouldn't be too much resistance. And again, this change is coming from a place of, look, I'm the business owner and I have diagnosed that I have a problem with communications. And the fix to this diagnosis is Slack. So again,

the reason for this change is not one of, I'm this big mean business owner. I want to ruin your world. It is, I'm a business owner and I want to run a better business and I want to provide a better end user experience for you, my client. So we are going to use Slack to deliver that. All right. So here's how you're going to set it up.

So you're going to set up two different Slack teams. So these are going to be on two different URLs and you're going to have one for all your internal communications with your team members. And then you're going to have another for all your client communications. So within your internal communications Slack channel, you should have a channel where new jobs are shared with and assigned to team members.

Secondly, for client communications, every project or client should have its own private channel within your Slack team. When a new client or project kicks off, just create a new private channel. Super super easy. If you have a client that you get repeat work with, it's up to you to decide whether you want to just simply include that same project in the same channel or create a new

channel. Ideally, each channel should be for its own individual project. So if you're going to be managing, let's say, two to three different projects from one client, it's probably your best bet to separate that out. But again, I'll leave that to your discretion. It really just depends on your current situation. So this is what the build looks like for your internal Slack team. So you're just going

to have one central channel where jobs get shared and assigned. It's really essential that you have this entire assignment process documented. For example, a job comes in, you share it in this channel, and you need to have a process in place so that all of your team understands how to use this. So that's the simple setup. Optional, you could have a culture building channel for sharing team

wins. You could have a knowledge channel for sharing valuable insights. You could have a general channel for banter and jokes, whatever. That's just some suggestions. But again, it's super, super critical that to complement this build and the setup that you have a process for how these projects are to be assigned and delivered on. Secondly, your client facing Slack setup. So on the left here, you can see

those are various different clients and projects. For each new client, create a new private channel, super simple. Clients can't access any channels besides general and the ones that they have been invited to. So if you're worried about clients seeing other clients information, don't worry about it. As long as you set it up properly, which you just simply create a new private channel, it's super, super simple, you

will be good to go. That being said, please do make sure that you're keeping the general channel clean and you're not accidentally having some of your clients share any information there or maybe you're accidentally sharing information. Just make sure that that general channel stays clean. That's something that you could have a project manager or a VA check on every few days or something like that. Another thing

that you want to keep in mind is on the left, you can see client support. What that is, is that's basically just a channel that I use on a kind of rolling basis. For example, if an old client or someone like that pings me and needs support, I just simply add them to this client support channel. So that's something that you guys maybe want to use. And

again, that's something that you're going to want to have a process in place for. All right, so that is Slack. Now we're going to move on to Trello and Trello is the greatest. So Trello is going to be used for all of your internal project management. So you must, must, must have a process for how your team is to use the Trello board and update status on

jobs. While the setup of the Trello board is extremely simple and pretty straightforward, you still need some form of documentation to complement it because it's not going to work otherwise. You need everybody, everybody needs to understand the process that is contributing to your end product. Without that, you're not going to have a finely tuned operating machine, all right? The Trello board should have the following lists or

a slight variation, again, customize this based on your needs, but this is just a template to follow. So first of all, we have a pending list for team members needed. So this is basically when new jobs come in. Secondly, we have a to do list, which is once team members are assigned and they're getting ready to take action on a job, next we have doing, straightforward, once

a task or project is in motion, it should go under the doing list. There's a list for once the job is completed, you know, you want to have a sort of quality control process in place just to make sure that everything's ready to go before you hand it over to the client. So once that's completed, then you have a waiting client feedback. So this is where the

task goes once it has been delivered to the client and you're awaiting their feedback super straightforward. Then once the task gets approved, then you move it to the done list. And let's say that the client requests revisions, then you would just filter that back to the to do list super straightforward. And here's just a quick look at my internal Trello board. All right. So there you go.

So that is Trello. Next we have Google Drive and you need to have a central location where you store your business operating systems and Google Drive is the perfect place for that. It's stupidly simple and effective and it's super, super easy to collaborate with team members as well. So there's a few systems that you absolutely need to build a powerful world changing machine through your business. And

we're not going to cover in depth these processes too much, but as we move forward with this systems and operations training, we'll be breaking down how to structure each of these and I'll be providing you with some templates as well. However, you definitely want to start creating a checklist for each of these because these are all critical operating systems that you're going to need. And again, you're

going to want to build these out in Google Drive. So all of the operating systems for your core offerings. So from start to finish, you want to have an operating system documented client onboarding. So what should clients expect? How do project operations run? Next, internal job assignment. So that is what we shared before. This internal job assignment, that's going to involve both Trello and Slack. Next we

have client requests. So when a client sends in a request, whether this is from an existing project or a new project, you're going to want to have a process in place for how these get handled, both externally and internally. Next, whenever you hire new contractors or bring on new team members, you want to make sure that there's some sort of onboarding process. You want to make sure

that there's kind of a central document that you can provide to them so that they know where to pick up and get started. Next, payment processing. You want to have this documented as well. This is super simple. It doesn't need to be super difficult. Also in a later training, we'll be sharing with you a bit about this. Also swipe copy. So basically every touch point between both

you and the client, as well as you and your internal team members, you need to have structured, templated swipe copy. So every time you deliver a deliverable to a client, what's the language that you're going to be using? It's going to be something like, hey, super excited to present you with fill in the blank, right? All these little tiny things, you need to have swipe copy for

because it's just like, why do you need to recreate and rewrite these things over and over again? You know, these little tiny things that are seemingly meaningless, truly, truly scale up and compound to create a massive, massive impact that really creates a lot of momentum in your business. And when you onboard a new client and you already have every single piece of text and information and step-by-step

processes ready to go, I mean, that is just such an empowering and liberating feeling because you know that everything is already handled. So it starts with the little things and it really scales up to really drive serious results in your business. And then lastly, you're going to want to have a few different projects and operations dashboards for your project. You can use depulse, you can use Google

Sheets, you can use Excel, whatever works. But again, it's just important that you have a quick way to visualize your project progress. All right, so here's how you're going to want to structure your Google Drive folders. So first you have your business as the main parent folder. Then you have admin, underneath that you have an operations folder. And then within that, you have clients and projects. And

then from there, you branch that out into, you know, client project number one, client project number two, et cetera, et cetera, right? Within your client or project folders, you're going to want to have individual folders for both internal and external facing materials. And let me break down exactly what each of those includes. So within the admin folder, pretty straightforward. You want to have admin resources, strategy documents,

revenue trackers, et cetera, anything associated with managing your business should go here. Next you have the operations folder. So this is where all of the documentation for your operations and processes will go. Next, clients and projects. So whenever you get a new client or start a new project, create a new folder and add it here. As you start getting more projects from the same client, again, as

I mentioned with the Slack channel, just simply create a new folder within the parent folder for that new project. Very simple. Again, guys, what we're doing here is we're creating a scalable model, right? We're creating a very simple and scalable structure that you can use for all of your folders and information retrieval. Next, we have your internal documents. So these are client project specific and they should

be a place to store all your internal documents that are not seen by the client. So these would be things like source files, project notes, related assets, that kind of stuff. Next, we have external. So all the documents that you'll share with the client should go here. So these would be things like project contracts, project specs, and project deliverables. All right, so here is just a very,

very simple workflow for your internal job assignment. So step one, client signs, project specs are created and approved by client. So once you have those project specs, you can then create that project brief that is delivered to your team in Slack. Next, a team member gets assigned in Slack to that project or task, right? Next, Trello card is created and your progress gets tracked. So you go

from to-do, to-doing, to-don, etc, etc. You follow the flow of those statuses that you'll create on your Trello board. Next, the team member delivers the job and depending on your structure, your PM or your ops director or you, yourself, the business owner will be alerted. The work will then be reviewed and delivered to the client for approval. So this is just a very, very straightforward, simple workflow.

But the reason that I included this was I just wanted to get started. I just wanted to show you what it's going to start to look like once you start integrating these various tools and using them together in conjunction to create a really nicely finely tuned machine. So again, this is a very simple workflow, but when you start diving deep and you start really breaking it out

in depth, this process is going to look something like this. You don't need to create these sorts of visual workflows, but as you grow and as you start bringing in more contractors or team members, it's super, super helpful to have these sorts of diagrams available. So here it kind of just breaks everything down. I'm not going to dive into this too deep because it's not necessary at

this stage. I'm going to provide some additional training on this in another training. So there you have it. That is the machine that you're going to be building for your business. And guys, look, again, if you build it, they will come, right? That's what you need to tell yourself, right? Because again, if you're going to be getting 10 clients tomorrow, you need to be ready. You need

to have that machine built and you need to trust that they will come so that when they do, you're ready for explosive growth. So thank you guys for tuning in and listening to this. I hope that you're ready to get started building this world changing machine that is going to help you take your business to the next level. I'll catch you guys soon.