BONUS EP: How can you boost your agency's productivity?

10/01/24 • 21 min

The Handbook: The Agency Operations Podcast

Do you ever get to the end of the working day and wonder, ‘What did I actually get done today?'

You’re certainly not alone.

We’re interrupted about every 8 minutes. And it can take up to 20 minutes to get back to what we’re doing. Imagine the impact of that on an 8 hour day.
In a recent Agency Hackers webinar, Harv spoke about productivity – including the flow state, trends that have had a negative influence on our ability to focus, and strategies that have given him and his colleagues a big productivity boost.
We're resharing that content for you here in case you missed the webinar.
You'll learn Harv's advice including:

Scheduling your day in advance, so you're not staring at your to-do list in despair.
Using a combination of 'office hours' to reply to messages and DND to minimize distractions.
Techniques to make your meetings more efficient, your team more focused, and encourage clear communication. (Including meetings that no one actually shows up to)!

View the presentation with visuals on Youtube.
Learn more about Agency Hackers.
Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/
Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.
This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Do you ever get to the end of the working day and wonder, ‘What did I actually get done today?'

You’re certainly not alone.

Scheduling your day in advance, so you're not staring at your to-do list in despair.
Using a combination of 'office hours' to reply to messages and DND to minimize distractions.
Techniques to make your meetings more efficient, your team more focused, and encourage clear communication. (Including meetings that no one actually shows up to)!

Previous Episode

Trenton Moss: 3 high-impact strategies that redefined my agency

Curious about how an agency experimented with new approaches and found their recipe for success?

In this episode, we talk with Trenton Moss, a former agency owner who ran his business for 15 years before it was sold. Trenton shares the key decisions that transformed his agency, along with some missteps along the way.

Trenton covers three major changes he implemented and explains exactly how he did it:

Setting up team pods with a highly effective reward system
Developing ongoing client services training and putting the learnings into practice
Creating an advisory board to guide the agency

Trenton shares plenty of inspiring stories and practical tactics you can apply in your own agency.

Now a leadership coach, Trenton has been coaching and training teams for nearly 20 years. You can check out his website, Sterka, his book Human Powered, you can also subscribe to Human Powered: The Podcast via his website.

Follow Trenton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentonmoss/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Next Episode

Richard Brett: What is 'rev rec' & which metrics matter?

Which metrics should you track, to run your agency as efficiently as possible?
In this episode we speak with Richard Brett. Rich is a seasoned FinOps professional with 15+ years of experience, including a decade in the agency world. Rich has played a key role in scaling agencies, setting up financial processes, and supporting sustainable growth.
Rich will take us into a deeper dive of agency finances, starting with revenue recognition – recording revenue when it's earned, not when payment is received – and explain why this is so important.
Next, we’ll discuss key metrics and the kind of decisions you’ll be able to make using each:

Utilization: see how effectively your team’s time is allocated to billable work, helping identify resource optimization opportunities.
Recovery: shows the actual revenue generated from billable hours worked, highlighting areas of over-servicing.
Billable paid: shows the proportion of billable work that is successfully paid for, helping assess the financial health of client engagements.
Future month work value: projects the expected revenue from booked hours in upcoming work, allowing for proactive resource and budget management.

Finally, Rich will tell us 5 ways we can influence margins through agency rate cards.
Rich now runs his own consultancy, Rich Brett FinOps, providing bespoke financial services to agencies.
Follow Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-brett-36903590/
Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/
Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.
This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

The Handbook: The Agency Operations Podcast - BONUS EP: How can you boost your agency's productivity?

Transcript

Harv Nagra00:00:32.055

Hey all, welcome to a special bonus episode of The Handbook. A couple of weeks ago, I presented a webinar with agency hackers on workplace productivity. I touched on the idea of the flow state, trends that have had a negative impact on our ability to focus, and strategies that have had a big productivity boosting impact on me and my colleagues, past and present. For those of you that weren't able to attend, I thought it might be nice to share th