0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to automate your agency. Every week we bring you expert insights, practical tips and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations.
0:00:17 - (Alane): All right, Micah, I've been thinking about some of my favorite things that we put into place at our previous company we built up .
0:00:23 - (Micah): Okay. For the listeners. I have no idea what we're talking about in this podcast, so…
0:00:30 - (Alane): No, you're going to love it, I think. My favorite thing that we put into place is we were really struggling with our team as we were growing. Instead of it just being you and I coming up with ideas for improving the company, we wanted to empower the team to do that.
0:00:49 - (Micah): Yes.
0:00:49 - (Alane): And my favorite idea that we put into place was a system for our team. If you have an idea to save money in the company or make money in the company, then submit your idea. It got voted on by the team, voted if it was a good idea or not to try, and we would give a bonus based on that. And people started coming up with incredible ideas.
0:01:18 - (Micah): Yes, yes.
0:01:20 - (Micah): I kind of forgot all about this.
0:01:22 - (Alane): I don't remember what really triggered that memory, but I was talking with my friend, Brenda, when I was out in New York and it came to me when I was talking to her, I was like, "Brenda, you know what my favorite thing?" And I told her, she asked me if it worked and I told her it worked amazingly well.
0:01:40 - (Micah): Yes, yes.
0:01:41 - (Micah): Do you have some examples off the top of your mind?
0:01:43 - (Alane): Yeah. One of them was that we had been ad hoc, getting negative reviews removed for our clients. And one of our managers, mid level managers said, I think we could remove one of our services that we're doing where we were finding duplicates of listings on Facebook and merging them into one. She's like, I think we could stop doing that as our service because it doesn't really seem like the dealerships care.
0:02:12 - (Alane): And instead we go all in on trying to get negative reviews removed for them. And we were like, we think that's a good idea. Let's put it to the test. The team loved it. And you know who loved it more was our clients.
0:02:27 - (Micah): Yes.
0:02:30 - (Alane): If they could prove that that negative review went against the terms and services for the review site, they got it removed. So we went from getting like four or five a year to, I think one year, we got like 300 removed.
0:02:41 - (Micah): Yeah, there was. I remember for a few clients, there was a huge batch because we stopped spending time on stuff they didn't care about. And then focused on that. And what I think is interesting about all of this, I'm so glad you're bringing this up, honestly, because we have discussions with clients about this every once in a while, where leadership wants to make the decisions, wants to create the improvements, feels like it's their job, but when you're a leader and you're not doing the work, you don't have the same insight.
0:03:13 - (Alane): Yeah.
0:03:14 - (Micah): And so putting in the system elevated that insight from the people getting the work done to leadership.
0:03:22 - (Alane): And, you know, I think what we had to change, too, was our culture a little bit in the beginning, too, which is why we needed something like this in place, because early on, it was us. We had to make all the decisions.
0:03:35 - (Micah): It does create a habit.
0:03:37 - (Alane): It does. And, you know, we also were young leaders. You know, we were. I was in my late twenties when we were scaling our team, and so we had to learn how to not be the hero, not always be the idea keepers. And so this was our way of changing that dynamic. And, I mean, some things were really small. I remember one of them was like, what if we did a company directory with where people live? Cause we started having team members all over the country.
0:04:09 - (Micah): Yeah, that's right.
0:04:10 - (Alane): And so people didn't know where. What other time zones people were in, what city and state people were in. And so they wanted to feel closer to the other staff members. And so some things were just simple like that, and the team had to vote on it. And if they got one in the votes, then we'd put that in place. And that was one that the team was just really excited about, something simple. And you and I would have never cared about something like that.
0:04:38 - (Micah): No. We would have never thought about doing that or spent time on that. But when it really came to it, does that help us make money or save money? That's both.
0:04:49 - (Alane): Yeah. Cause our team members felt more connected. I mean, when we look at our team members now, I mean, we sold that company in 2018. They are still friends. They go to each other's weddings. They travel all over the world together, like, these little things that maybe, as a leader, aren't big deals to us, are big deals to them.
0:05:08 - (Micah): Yeah.
0:05:08 - (Micah): I mean, we. I think that's a really good lesson or example of when we got. We tried to get so focused on what are the things that we could do for growth. How do we increase revenue? How do we minimize expenses and risk. Right. And we don't treat those ideas as a culture perspective. Right. The thought of team building and the thought of a company directory doesn't have or it didn't equate to making money or saving money. That's why we would have never thought of it.
0:05:44 - (Micah): But because it was, if I remember right, wasn't that one like unanimously.
0:05:48 - (Alane): Yeah. They were so excited about this simple little thing.
0:05:51 - (D): Yeah.
0:05:51 - (Micah): And I even, I think I remember naively going, this is so dumb, like.
0:05:56 - (Alane): Why are we even putting this in the idea channel?
0:05:58 - (Micah): Why are we wasting time on this? But it made a huge difference, for sure.
0:06:02 - (Alane): And, you know, some things were a lot bigger. I mean, that one change for our clients that I, that we just talked about with the reviews, that was a huge, huge deal. That it got to be such a big deal that they put it in their board meeting at the end of the year as one of the highlights for their company. And so other things were more systemized. You know, what if we built templates for some of these things, these frequently asked questions that we get from our team, not from our team, but from our clients, and we just put it in a blog article and then we could just send them that link.
0:06:33 - (Alane): That's a great idea. The team loved it. That alleviated so much time for our account managers. And I think we had some caveats in there, too. You know, if it doesn't affect your team, you don't need to vote for it. You know, things like that. Like, if you don't have an answer, that's okay. Not to vote.
0:06:50 - (Micah): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think for the listeners now, if you're building a company, this is one of the most simple things you can put in place. You don't need any complicated system. You can convey the idea really easily.
0:07:04 - (Alane): Yeah.
0:07:05 - (Micah): And as a leader, it's really good practice to be like, I don't have to come up with all the ideas because I certainly felt like that. I know with my first business, and even when we started working together, Alane, I was like, every decision has to come down to me and I'm going to take responsibility for every decision. But that led to bad habits.
0:07:25 - (Alane): Right.
0:07:26 - (Micah): And I had to let some of that go. I still take responsibility, of course, but we've got to get input from the team. We've got to get input from the people doing the work because they're finding better ways to do it. They have ideas in the back of their head and if you don't give them a channel, they're not going to tell you because they're scared of being wrong and you're the boss and they're not right.
0:07:47 - (Alane): And they've got some good ideas. A lot of times, like, I can't remember right now, this has been several years ago. I can't think of an idea that we were like, that is a terrible idea.
0:07:58 - (Micah): Well, I think the beauty of the system, too, is that it wasn't an idea that went to you or I, and then we were the yay or nay. It went to a committee and it went to the team for a vote. So we didn't have to care if it was a good idea or a bad idea, because the team would say yeah or nay. Exactly.
0:08:18 - (Alane): Yeah. And just for context on how we managed this, we did use slack for it. We had a save money, make money Slack channel that the team could be a part of, and that team member would just slacken the idea in there. And then we just used emojis to vote. Like it was a really a simple system. And, you know, if you have 200 employees, maybe that's not the best system. You might need a different one. So you're not getting eight slacks a day.
0:08:49 - (Alane): But for a smaller team, it worked perfectly.
0:08:53 - (Micah): Yeah.
0:08:53 - (Micah): And I think about this because our last business was really focused on multi location, multi brand style businesses. And even with this business, we've got a number of clients that are in that same space. But if you think of the value, let's take it like a franchise setup. If you have a franchise owner who has the capability to share ideas and get some sort of bonus or even just appreciation or an announcement that credit, something.
0:09:29 - (Micah): And they come up with some idea that could be applied to all the other locations, that could be applied to home office, that could be applied to corporate. I mean, the value that could be generated from a single idea, from somebody doing the work, is just mind blowing to me.
0:09:50 - (Alane): You know, it just reminded me, you're talking about that my older brother, that's the nurse, he worked for a company, and they had thousands of employees across the country, and they put a similar system in once a year. They asked the employees to submit ideas to improve the company, and they had made it a competition. And then the winner won. Like, I think ten or $20,000 or something like that, in the end. But they're dying. Like, companies are dying for these ideas, no matter the size.
0:10:24 - (Alane): And they know that the ideas live in the people doing it day to day.
0:10:28 - (Micah): Yep.
0:10:29 - (Alane): So whether you're a large company or a small company, if you're no longer in the day to day part of that job, your team's got ideas for improvement, and you need to get them out of their heads.
0:10:39 - (Micah): Yeah.
0:10:40 - (Micah): And even if you're a small company and don't have teams divided or large enough to do the voting, join a peer advisory group, get involved in entrepreneur centers, other places that have people that can help you vet or vote on some of these ideas, just in the meantime, because I think the worst thing that you could do with this system is have your team submit it to you and then you be the arbiter.
0:11:06 - (Alane): Yeah. I mean, sometimes you just have to go with it. Even if you don't think it's a great idea, if it's not going to be detrimental to your company, let them try it. Let them learn.
0:11:16 - (Micah): Yeah.
0:11:17 - (Micah): One of the things that we do a lot, I think, with each other, when we each have ideas, too, is we've got to take a step back and remember it's not about being right or wrong, it's that we're the going to test it. And so if we can again think about it as a system, like, hey, here's an idea. I might not like the idea, but Alane loves the idea. Let's just test it. We can take all the emotion out of it. We can take the. "I feel this will work out" of it, because that doesn't.
0:11:44 - (Micah): Neither of us really know a lot of times. Right. So if we put it in context of, let's try this, let's test it out, let's both take our ego aside of. And I think that can be very useful in systems like this, too. The earlier example where we were looking at it going, why would we even do a team directory and spend time on it? We set our egos aside and said, the team wants this, let's go for it. Who cares?
0:12:11 - (Micah): And it was a great success.
0:12:12 - (Alane): Yeah. Micah, that, to what you're saying is a good point on any of this, where it's an idea, you test it out. Like the employees that came up with the idea to stop doing merging the pages, to start doing more emphasis on negative review removal. That didn't mean it had to be set in stone forever. It's an idea.
0:12:36 - (Alane): Yes.
0:12:37 - (Alane): The team believes this is a good idea, so we're gonna implement it. If it didn't work, doesn't mean we gotta keep it.
0:12:43 - (Micah): No, but what it might do is prompt a secondary idea to even improve on the first one, which can then get voted in.
0:12:52 - (Alane): Absolutely. I mean, some of the processes the team came up to save us money, you know, one of them, too, was having a primary and a secondary lead on things. You know, we got to be diverse in our offering, especially when thinking about between reputation management, social media content and ads, you know, we needed to then have specialists. But what happens when somebody went on vacation? We still needed a backup.
0:13:17 - (Alane): So one of the ideas came out of it, like, what if we put in a primary, secondary type of lead on some of these main offerings that we do, and over time that evolved. Then we actually realized we needed two primaries. Cause we were doing so many ads. So those ideas maybe day one look different than day 30.
0:13:38 - (Micah): Yes.
0:13:39 - (Micah): And I think if it would have been us trying to make all the decisions or bring up the ideas for process improvement, we would have never figured this out because we didn't have the context, we didn't have the insight, and we probably would have directed the team to do something really dumb that they would have resented because it would have made their life worse and harder and more difficult. And so this just flips all that on its head.
0:14:02 - (Alane): It does. And the team feels great because they feel like they're part of the decision making.
0:14:07 - (Micah): Even when you think about change management, you're getting buy in, you're getting ownership. Right? That makes change a whole lot easier because they're coming to us saying, here are the benefits, instead of us trying to convince the team of benefits for a change.
0:14:25 - (Alane): So if you're running into the same kind of roadblocks that Micah and I were early on with trying to pull ideas out of the team, maybe this is an idea. If it's going to save the company money, if it's going to make the company money, we're going to have a bonus system in place and voting, and maybe it'll work out for you all, too.
0:14:43 - (Alane): Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate your agency. We hope you're inspired to take your.
0:14:47 - (Alane): Business to the next level.
0:14:49 - (Alane): Free content and tools for automating your business at our website, workdayninja.com, and join.
0:14:55 - (Micah): Us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business.
0:14:59 - (Alane): Bye for now.
