How Can Agency Owners Stop Working to Death?

<p><a href="https://www.stephanspencer.com/" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">Stephan Spencer</a> made himself too essential in his agency, resulting in working to exhaustion. After a much-needed break, he was able to gain clarity on the best way to scale his agency. In the 1990s he founded the SEO agency Netconcepts and in 2010 it was acquired by Covario. Stephan invented an automated pay-for-performance SEO technology called GravityStream. He is co-author of "The Art of SEO", co-author of "Social eCommerce", and author of "Google Power Search." Today, he joins us to talk about how he scaled his agency to the point he could take a sabbatical. Learn how he intentionally worked himself out of a job by building a leadership team that could take over the thought leadership role.</p> <h2>3 Golden Nuggets</h2> <ol> <li><span style="color: #000000;"><span style= "font-weight: bold;">Figure out what can be automated.</span> We’ve talked about the importance of getting rid of the more tedious tasks to focus on what you really want to do. One way you could do that is by figuring out what <a href= "https://jasonswenk.com/retain-agency-clients/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">can be automated</a> or scaled with some artificial intelligence technology. For example, GPT-3 is a game-changer that you can incorporate into your product to have a real competitive edge.</span></li> <li><span style="color: #000000;"><span style= "font-weight: bold;">Don’t work yourself to exhaustion.</span> It’s important to work yourself out of a job. By being indispensable, you become the biggest roadblock to the growth of the agency. Stephan wanted to be the visionary, not the integrator or the implementer, so he brought on a COO, VPs, CFO, CEO, and <a href= "https://jasonswenk.com/marketing-agency-team/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">built his team</a> to make sure he no longer was the company’s only thought leader.</span></li> <li><span style="color: #000000;"><span style= "font-weight: bold;">Establish authority in a powerful way.</span> You c