163: Scale from the Stage with an Agency Model (ft. Tasha Booth)
Are you building a team or an agency with your business? There’s a major difference! With building an agency, you’re able to step out of the client work, be a CEO, and open doors for other opportunities!
In this episode, Tasha Booth of The Launch Guild joins us to share how she’s scaled her business with an agency model, allowing her to speak on 50 podcasts per year (and still growing her business to hit their first million dollar year). Listen in as she shares some of the fundamentals of scaling. to an agency, highlights how you can become the CEO, and grow as a leader!
If you loved this episode and it motivated you to work on more polished presentations, I’d love for you to leave a review on iTunes and tell me about your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, post it to your Instagram Stories, and tag me @jessicarasdall.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Meet Tasha Booth
Tasha Booth is an agency owner, coach, and podcaster. She is the Founder & CEO of The Launch Guild - a Course Launch Support & Digital Marketing Implementation Agency supporting established coaches and course creators with Course & Podcast Launches, Operations & Systems Management, and Content Management & Repurposing. Her team is over 20 members strong and works together to support their clients in being able to focus back onto their zones of genius.
Additionally, she mentors Virtual Assistants, Online Business Managers, and Project Managers who are passionate and ready to grow their businesses while living life on their own terms, and she is the host of the How She Did That Podcast -- a podcast for Virtual Support Pros to learn business and tech tips. Tasha has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur, and she has appeared as a guest speaker for various summits and podcasts including Amy Porterfield's "Online Marketing Made Easy," and Jereshia Hawk's "Jereshia Said."
If you're not already a member of the academy, we'd love to invite you to apply to join The Speaking Strategy Academy. You'll get instant access to our A-Z speaking training system with video lessons, transcripts, scripts, templates, and more.... access to our live group coaching calls, personalized 1:1 feedback on your work from me, and an opportunity to present your work live in front of our community for hot seat coaching and feedback. What are you waiting for, friend? Apply today!
What's Makes an Agency
Having a team doesn't necessarily make your business an agency. In terms of what defines an agency is a company that has other people in the business that are primary points of contacts for your clients, as well as the managers and implementers within your business. This means that the owner acts as the CEO and doesn't work as much in the day-to-day operations of the business.
When you have an agency model, you have a scalable business. When you, as the business owner, are still involved in your client work, you're a limited resource that isn't scalable.
Knowing When to Move to an Agency Model
The best place to start if you're considering scaling to an agency model, is to focus on getting the operational pieces together, narrow down your services, and highlighting your target market.
Additionally, you'll need to look at how you want to work—do you want to be a manager? Leadership isn't for everyone, therefore, you need to enjoy it if you're going to grow into an agency model. If you're not sure if you'd be a great leader, you can always hire someone to coach you into this position.
Maybe an Agency Model Isn’t for You
While agencies are really scalable businesses, they're not for everyone. The best businesses for an agency model are those with repeatable processes. Therefore, if your business is solely based on strategy, it's not necessarily the best option for scaling due to the lack of representation.
Agencies are created to have replicated processes, services, and templates. Agency models can range through any and all industries, but you have to be committed to this repeatable process in your business.
Being the CEO
This can look different for everyone, but for Tasha, she's set herself up to be the face of the company and does speaking engagements to market her business. Other agencies choose to not put a face on the brand, specifically with the agencies that have hundreds of sub-contractors within them.
Leadership is a Learned Skillset
Most people are not born leaders—therefore, you have to build your skillset to include it! You can hire a coach or work on the skillset to be the CEO, rather than the day-to-day integrator.
Mistakes in Building an Agency
There are a few mistakes business owners make in building their agency:
Hiring too quickly without vetting or building processes.
Not charging enough—you can't charge what you did as a solopreneur.
Scaling to Allow for Speaking
By scaling to an agency and handing work off to her team, Tasha was able to scale her business to allow for more speaking opportunities. Last year alone, Tasha did over 50 podcast interviews to help build out her personal brand, all while approaching her first million dollar year.
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Review the Transcript for this Episode
Transcript for Episode 163:
Jessica Rasdall
There is more than one way to scale your service based business. But today we're talking about one of them, we're going to unpack what it looks like to scale from the stage with an agency model business.
Jessica Rasdall
Welcome back to another episode of The speak to scale Podcast, where we're helping small business owners just like you grow and scale their company, by speaking on stages, podcasts, webinars, and more. I'm your host, Jessica Rasdall. And I am so grateful that you're here. I know, there are so many different episodes and podcasts and shows that you could be listening to. And I'm just grateful that you're tuning in today. So as a service provider, myself a service based business, I know that there are a lot of different ways that we can build our companies grow our teams, skill or impact. And I've been trying to tailor you know, a series of episodes around different business models, so that you can get to a place where speaking is more accessible to you, that you can comfortably step away from your desk for a few days, and pour into your audience and grow your company without worrying about things falling apart behind the scenes. Now, one of these business models we haven't talked about until today is scaling with an agency.
Jessica Rasdall
Now this one, I love so much, because many of our VIP clients and our academy students, they come to the table with an agency model in place or building an agency. And I have seen firsthand how people who have an agency style business are in a incredible position to scale their business was speaking, because they are set up to be the face of the company, right? They are the one leading the charge, bringing in new clients, but they're not necessarily the one having to actually do the work behind the scenes. This gives them the freedom and the flexibility to say yes to speaking opportunities to connect with their audience, and to really make this work for their business. So in today's episode, I have brought in Tasha booth, who is an agency owner, Coach podcaster.
Jessica Rasdall
She's the founder and CEO of the launch Guild. And I'm sure if you've heard anything about agencies or if you've looked into or considered growing one yourself, you have heard of Tasha booth, I know that some of our students have personally worked alongside of her. And I've seen how her training and her instruction, and her processes have helped them build a sustainable agency. So it was a no brainer when I was looking for someone to come on the show, and share with us their insight and their knowledge and their expertise into what types of businesses are great for an agency who can be a great leader when it comes to an agency model. And what can we expect when we start thinking about adding speaking to our agency based business, we are diving into all of that and more in today's episode. So whether you have an agency right now, you're considering maybe growing one in the future, or you just like to nerd out about different small business strategies, like me, today's episode is for you. So let's get into all things agency based business, and how to scale them with speaking.
Jessica Rasdall
Listening to the podcast is a great first step. But I want you to go take action. So if you are ready to apply everything you've learned here on the show, listen up, we took all of our best resources, like our plug and play crafting your story workbook, or how to select your speaking topics, workbook, resources on crafting your talk, finding and pitching events. We put them all together inside of the speak to scale vault, and we put them in order, so you know exactly what to do and when to do it. to scale your business with speaking, ready to unlock the entire vault, head on over to speak to scale vault comm or click the link in our show notes. But be sure to use the code podcast for a special discount for me.
Jessica Rasdall
Okay, so for anybody who hasn't met you yet, give us the quick little rundown of who you are and what you do, so that we can just have a little context around what we're diving into.
Tasha Booth
Absolutely. So I am Tasha booth. I'm the CEO and founder of the launch Guild. We do full service launch support. At this point. I think I have a team of almost 30 not quite there yet, but almost 30 and let's see what else do. I do? I do all the things. I also have a podcast called how she did that. It's specifically for virtual assistants, online business managers, project managers, I like to call them virtual support pros on how to start going scale their own businesses. And then I do business coaching, for launch managers and for agency owners. So lots of things. And I love I love it so
Jessica Rasdall
much. So I know we've been talking a lot on the podcast of different ways to grow and scale our business is, and when we haven't talked about yet is the idea of scaling with an agency. So I'd love just in case somebody is like, What What in the world? Does that mean? Can you give us a little breakdown, like dumb it down to one on one of what does it actually mean, to have an agency? What does that look like?
Tasha Booth
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important that we start here, because when I'm coaching people, a lot of times they will come in, and they will already have teams, but they are not teams, as I define them in terms of an agency model. So when I'm talking about agency model businesses, I'm thinking in terms of you have other people in the business that are your clients, primary points of contact, and that are both the managers as well as the implementers for those clients, and those people are not you. So for example, in my business, we do full service launch support, we have multiple launch managers, and also implementers, like graphic designers, Facebook ads, strategists, Facebook managers, all of those things that support our clients in the launches, and I don't do any of the implementation for our clients at this point in in their launches or for their launches. I'm fully in the CEO seat. Sometimes people are defining agencies and what they're really actually meaning in my book, our teams in that they're still the primary point of contact, and but they also have some team members who are supporting them often on the back end, you know, with the implementation,
Jessica Rasdall
oh, that's such a great distinction, because that word does kind of get thrown around a lot of like, Well, I have a VA, or we have a copywriter who's helping me deliver this thing to the client, but the idea of actually stepping out of that delivery and yeah, driving that team.
Tasha Booth
Yeah, totally. And the thing about it is when when you have the actual agency model, that is a scalable model, because you can always hire more people, right. But if you are still an implementation, you still have the resource that is you, that is a limited resource, and you're still limited by the amount of time that you can be there, you're still limited by if you're on vacation, what happens, right? Or if you want to scale in another way, how do you do that while still showing up, you know, as as an implementer, or as a as a contact person for your client?
Jessica Rasdall
Oh, I love getting you know, anything, especially I've watched a lot of our students and clients, they get to a point where they're doing really well in their business, they're typically a service provider. And they really want to be able to have time and space to get on podcast to speak at events to get on stages. And they're like, I can't find the time, right, I'm stuck in the client work. And I don't see a way out like that feeling like they're stuck in this cycle of constantly doing. How does somebody know that one? An agency model might be good for them? And two, how would they know when the timing? Are there any signs or signals where we're like, ding, I might want to consider this.
Tasha Booth
Yeah. So I know, for me, we spent a good probably year, just getting all the operational pieces ready to go. So that I could scale up the other sides of my business and really step into the CEO seat, as I like to call it in terms of it. So it's definitely a process. It's not anything that you're going to have basically be able to flip a switch, you know, and make it happen overnight. But really starting to figure out number one, who do you actually like want to narrow down your ideal client, your services, all that stuff, too, because that's a big part of kind of stepping into agency ownership, kind of narrowing things down, and being really definite on like, what you do and how you do it. And then number two, basically, like being really honest with yourself about do you enjoy working around people, right? Is leadership a skill set that you actually want to cultivate, because being an agency owner is people management, like all the time every day, and sometimes it's messy, and you have a lot of hard conversations? And that's not for everyone in terms of like, not everyone wants that. And that's totally okay. But like, I knew that I wanted to be an agency owner to build the agency that I have, because I love people and I grow as a leader every single day even now. So it's not necessarily that like if you don't feel like you are a natural born leader or whatever, you can't be an agency owner. It's definitely something that I've worked on and I've been gotten coaching and mentorship around. But I knew that I liked people. I liked the collaboration. I liked being in that mentorship role. And that's what I get to do you know, as an agency owner.
Jessica Rasdall
Oh, I love that. So let's say somebody is, is at that place where they're considering different models. Is there anything? Are there any businesses that are like are not a good fit that make a better fit where somebody could maybe start to self qualify? Yeah, no, this is not for me, or I am a people person. I definitely want to do that. But I'm still not sure.
Tasha Booth
Yeah, I think that the business models that work best are the ones that have repeatable processes. So if you have something where it's only strategy, right, and there's no every single client is 100%, different from the client that came in before, there's no repetition in the type of process, that's going to really be hard to agency fires, I like to say, right, because agency-fying It is about creating processes, creating templates, creating repeated repetition in the business so that anybody can come in, look at the SLP, look at the video, look at the template and be mentored to understand how that process plays out. If the only thing you're providing is strategy, and that strategy changes all the time, that's not going to be you know, supportive and agency model. What people don't understand is that agency models can be a ton of different things. In my program, we have a lot of virtual support pros who are agency model, so obms, virtual assistants, but we also have copywriters, we have graphic designers, you know, we have an accountant in our program. And so there are tons of, you know, online businesses, especially, but any kind of businesses in the online space, who can be agency model businesses, but you have to be committed to creating a repeatable process for your business.
Jessica Rasdall
So once you have an agency model in place, once you've really like, owned it, you've stepped into that CEO role in your setup, how important is it to really be that face of the company? Do you just kind of get to dip out and like that doesn't matter anymore? Or what what are these, your role start to look like in this seat?
Tasha Booth
I have made it important for me to be the face of the company. And this is like doing podcasts and you know doing other speaking engagements, everything. This is what I do and how I I show up as a CEO. I know of some agencies, most agencies, I think that the CEO really is the the you know, the face of that I do know of some agencies, and they are the larger agencies that have like hundreds of subcontractors and everything in them, that it's not really about, like who owns that agency. It's more about the agency as a whole. But I think that that's, that's harder I feel like to cultivate. And I feel like that I would feel like there's a huge disconnect between like me and my business if I got to that point. And so I've just made it, that it's important for me to be the face, even though and to be able to communicate the full value of the launch guild as a team as company and everything. But I think that most people like if they, you know, they, they hear the launch Guild, and they think of me Still they do. That's how
Jessica Rasdall
But no, I think that's a great point. Because a lot of our clients and students who are agency owners, you know, as they step into that role of, of just making sure there's a steady stream of new leads coming in, they find that speaking works really well for that, because I don't know, I think there's magic in being able to connect with your audience on a deep level to create enough know, like, and trust that not only they want to hire you, but they trust enough to come in and work with people who are not you. Right. But that like you're willing to put put it out on the line and say like I speak on behalf of this entire agency that we're going to bring something valuable like that this is this is possible for you and using your voice. There's no other way to create that know, like and trust so fast,
Tasha Booth
right? Absolutely. And it's for, for me, it's turned less about, like, here's why you should like me and more about like, here's what you need to understand about our process. And here's how our process works. Right. And that with retries happening, yeah, when that's not happening, that just opens it all up. Because that means that you don't need to be the center of it anymore. Like your process is now the center, but your company is now the center of it. And that's where the magic happens and where you're able to scale and get out of the day to day. Oh.
Jessica Rasdall
But it just that just makes my nerdy brain so excited because, like if you're able to talk about your process like that, like you're able to communicate well from the stage, you're able to deliver a transformation to your audience quickly. You understand them, you know them. You know how to do this work and all that So for somebody who's saying, What do you say to somebody who's on the fence, like someone who's coming into your program, and they're concerned that, you know, like, Well, I'm not going to be a good leader, or this one, how about people hire me for me, right? They want to work with me, like, what do you say to somebody who's concerned about making that transition where they can see their business as a good fit? They want that freedom and that flexibility, but they're still kind of hung up on themselves.
Tasha Booth
Yeah, I had somebody the other day. And we always do like debrief at the end of the week, what what, well, all that stuff. And she was like, Yeah, I just suck at onboarding. And I was like, how can we make that statement more supportive? What what needs to change? You know what I mean, like? And what I mean by that is, I don't think that most people, I would say, 99.9%, people are not born leaders. Leadership is a learned skill set. And if you treat it as a skill set and say, What are the tools that I need, in order to create a larger and a better toolbox to be a leader, that is a supportive solution, right, and that is taking the steps towards the outcome that you're looking for. And I think it's the same thing with the VA come to me for for me thing, I get this all the time, and everyone's biggest objection. And what I tell them is, you're not that special. I don't mean that in a negative way at all. But what I mean by that is, if you stop doing the things that you do well, for your clients, no matter how wonderful a person or personality you are, your clients would go away, right. And so what that tells me is that you have created a process that makes your clients happy and get some results and makes them want to stay. And that process is something that we can slowly pull out of your brain, create an SLP for and then create systems and processes and templates around. And so really thinking in terms of they're not they are coming to you for, you know, your sparkly personality and everything. But that's not the only reason. And that's not even the primary reason they're coming to you for the outcomes that you create. And those outcomes are, are repeatable and sustainable in a larger way, with team.
Jessica Rasdall
Oh, my goodness, what are some of the, like most common mistakes you see when people are getting started with an agency?
Tasha Booth
So right? Yeah, yeah, don't Let's not make those Yeah, hiring too quickly. And then not knowing how to delegate how to do that. There's a whole hiring process to make sure you get the right people, make sure that like you're not having a revolving door. So that's number one. And number two, not charging enough thinking that you can keep the same prices that you had when you were a solopreneur. And that will somehow work with an agency. I think that that's one of the things that people don't think about with agencies and even, I often have to kind of educate subcontractors, right? Because if if a subcontractor comes in, you're paying them $20 an hour, and they see that you're charging the client $60 an hour, of course, at first, they're gonna be like, Oh, well, that doesn't feel fair, right. But when we think about marketing, when we think about overhead, when we think about the internal operational costs, because, you know, within our business, we have a director of operations, she needs to get paid, we have a, you know, an operations assistant, she needs to get paid. And though all of those costs are fed into what the actual client facing rate is. So I know that I made this mistake, when I first hired my first team member, I was charging, like $25 an hour, and I was paying her $20 an hour. So I was making $5 an hour to pay myself and all my overhead costs and my taxes and all of the things right. So realizing that when you shift to an agency model, you are now not you're no longer ever going to be the cheapest option for someone, and that's okay. You your value is going to come in other ways and you learning how to articulate that value. And also be okay with walking away from people who are just seeing the value as dollars. That's, that's going to be a huge, huge shift for people.
Jessica Rasdall
Oh, that's so good. I can imagine that a lot of people have a hesitation around the cost of an agency. Is that something that you run into when people are starting with you?
Tasha Booth
Right, and I think that showing them the fact that like the goal for agencies, that agency model is all about margins, and about the fact that like you as a solopreneur can probably handle what, let's say 10 people tops, right? as an agency owner, you the sky's the limit, so you can handle if you have the team to support it properly. 100 people and if you're getting 10% of that 100 or 20% of that 100 people, chances are you're still making at the end of the day, way more than you would on those 10 people after you take out you know, taxes and probably All of the other overhead expenses. So really thinking in terms of the margin, and that opens it up, in addition to the fact that like you are now you now have the space and time and capacity to go be a multi passionate entrepreneur, and to be on stages and to, you know, speak and be paid to speak, or create a course, or a group program, or whatever else you want to do or take a nap. If that's something you want to do.
Jessica Rasdall
What does this look like for you as I mean, this has obviously been an evolution in your business didn't happen overnight. But as you got more and more freedom, what did that allow you to do? What did what did you do beside the nap? Like what?
Tasha Booth
I definitely I'm 100% I take the naps. But I also Yeah, I last year, I think I did over 50 podcasts, like interviews, this year, it's probably going to be around the same. It's allowed me to really build out the Tasha booth side, as I like to call it of my business. So that's our coaching and course programs and just show up in a bigger way. Also, we're about to have our first million dollar year. I would not, thank you, I would not be able to do that alone. You know, that's a definite. And so revenue, like it's opened up the possibility for additional revenue and all the happy things.
Jessica Rasdall
Oh, I'm so excited for you. But he right like so often I think people look at people celebrating those wins online, like the million dollar years. And they're thinking, gosh, like, I can't do that. But so focused on doing everything by ourselves or ourselves plus a VA.
Tasha Booth
Yeah, yeah. It's got to be more and, and scaling your team. Whether you build an agency model or not knowing when to scale your team for the level of business that you're at, is going to be core no matter what, like you can't there's going to be a point where you need more than yourself in a VA.
Jessica Rasdall
Is there anything that you like, for somebody listening? And they're like, okay, but what's that? Like? What are some of those maybe warning signs, you see your red flags, when it's saying, hey, you're tapping out here, or your work is failing? Where's the point where somebody says, I can't do this by myself anymore.
Tasha Booth
So I, a couple weeks ago, I spoke at a conference for pharmacists, it was very strange. Why was I there? It made sense, because I was talking about how virtual assistants can support their growth, right? But but the woman who, who held the conference, and who asked me to be there, she was saying, and she was speaking to the pharmacist, but I love the saying she was saying, work at the top of your certification, right? And so basically, like, what are you best at what is the highest and best use of your time? I think that one of the huge red flags is when you find yourself not working at the that the level of your certification, or the highest and best use of your time, or what your role is supposed to be right? And so if you are, let's say your primary role is strategist in your business, but you're always doing admin support stuff, and you're always in the inbox, and you're always in your community answering every single question that your community has, and you know, you're always dividing your attention. You're always building out new, like graphics and stuff for social media. Is that the highest and best use of your time? Or is what you're supposed to be focused on strategy and showing up, you know, in terms of visibility as the CEO of your business. So that's probably the biggest red flag in terms of like, am I? am I working at what I should be working at? Or am I working at the other things that need to be done that somebody else could do?
Jessica Rasdall
That's such a great response? I don't like that. But yeah. Are you doing a little called out? about this? It's so why are you doing that's not even assigned to you? Why are you doing it?
Tasha Booth
It really is hard. And like I see this was eight with agency owners all the time. Because, you know, we've already had success in the thing that we are now passing on to other people. And so a lot of times it's like well, I can do this myself and I have literally had to stop myself in the middle of things and say yes, I can do this myself. I am fully capable. This happens to me with tech a lot of times because I was a really successful tech VA, I know how to do the things you know, and so it feels like it's like walking through molasses to slow down and explain each piece of a process to somebody else. But if I don't then I am training myself and my team that I can do this and that I'm going to handle this and I can't if I want to grow to the next level.
Jessica Rasdall
I love that part though of like training your team to Yeah, yeah on about us. No. So good. So good. Oh my Getting this, okay, so for our listeners who are saying, I want to do this, like I want to grow an agency, I want to get out of the way I want to serve our clients to the best of their ability and really be able to step into that CEO role. Where do they get started? How do they learn more? Where can they stop you? Yes.
Tasha Booth
So, my program for agency owners is called agency thrive mine, and it's just, it's probably the best thing I've ever built. So I love it so you can have
Jessica Rasdall
the most amazing things about it. Thank you.
Tasha Booth
Thank you. Yeah. And we're, we're super excited about it. We're scaling it this year. And as we scale, one of my fears was making sure that it stayed supportive. And so we have amazing accountability coaches that are in there in addition to me at this point, and just making sure that we have eyes on everybody's businesses as they're growing. But that is Tasha booth comm forward slash thrive mind. It's like hive mind, but with a thrive instead. And yeah, Tasha booth calm is where they people can find me, I also hang out on Instagram, way too much. I'm at the Tasha booth, Natasha was on Instagram.
Jessica Rasdall
Also, and we'll link all of this in the show notes so you guys can easily find it go binge, all the things. I can't say thank you enough for joining me today because I know we have business owners listening, specifically who I've chatted with who've been toying with this idea for longer than they're willing to admit. And I hope this is the permission slip for them to just take their business to the next level. Yay. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of The speak to scale podcast. It would mean the world to us if you could just take a second and head on over to iTunes and leave us a review. Your support of this show allows us to continue creating this content for you each and every week. And we appreciate your reviews and you sharing about the show more than you know. As always, I will be over here cheering you on friend. I'll see you next week for another episode of The speak to scale podcast.
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