I’ve talked to a lot of ad managers and asked them what the obstacles are for them to be able to grow and scale their business. A lot of the time, they will say systems. Now systems have become a bit of a sexy word in this sort of marketplace. Everybody loves systems!

I love the idea of having these systems, but people think that just because they have systems in play that they’re ready to scale. Well, you don’t need to have systems in place to get to five-figure months. You will need them at some point especially when you want to get team members on board to help you.

For me, I teach Facebook ad managers that to have a boutique agency where they can be very profitable and still be able to have weekends off and go on vacations, they need to get a marketing assistant on board who can help them run ads. So at that point, you do need to have systems in place so that your marketing assistant or whoever you’ve got on board can follow these systems and make sure that things are run nice and smoothly for your clients.

It’s systems that have enabled businesses like McDonald’s, for example, to have such huge success. Every restaurant and every franchise has the same systems, right? They all have the kitchens built the same way. They have the same sort of deliveries. They have all the things in place so that if you go to a McDonald’s here in Queensland or McDonald’s over in Los Angeles, things are still going to be the same. The cheeseburger will still have those little bits of onion on it and a piece of pickle that most people pick off and throw on the wall.

It’s all going to be there because they have systems. So when it’s just you, and you are just getting started or maybe you’ve got a couple of people on board, that’s when we are dialing in some systems and processes. But it’s not a reason why it’s stopping you from five-figure months.

Chances are, what’s stopping you is fear. That fear can present itself as either procrastination where you just keep putting things off, or perfectionism where it’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to get this done and also this done. Right?” Then you keep working on things to make it perfect before it gets out there. Before you can get a new client on board, you just have to work on this first. You need to get this funnel going. You need to get this lead magnet, and you need to have whatever project management tool set up and organized.

One of our coaches in the Elite Ad Manager Certification is Renee Hribar, our sales coach. She is phenomenal with sales! She’s been in the sales space for over 20 years, and her sales strategies and tactics have brought in probably about a hundred thousand dollars for my business alone.

I love Renee because she is a get-out-there, get-it-done, talk-to-people and make-sales kind of person. Whereas in the past, I have been very much caught up in that procrastination and perfectionism. There was a time recently where we were launching something. I was doing a bit of a test on my Elite Ad Manager Certification program and providing a self-study option. I spoke to Renee about how we could present it all, what we would do, and how we would offer it to people. She’s got this strategy she calls a duck launch system so that you don’t have to have a whole sales page together. You just have a Google doc, and it’s all very personable.

When we run Facebook ads for people, it can be very impersonal. So when we go out there, people are opting in, and it’s just all automated, and that’s what we find safe and comfortable. However, Renee teaches us to talk to people, which is a great and central way to make sales for your ad management business.

As we spoke about all of this, we formed a plan together. Now, what that meant for me was being that procrastinator or perfectionist and wanting to get into it, and also knowing how to build funnels and email automations. I set up the whole sales page, the email automations and loaded up the campaigns. I wrote up all these emails, got the tagging right in ThriveCart, got Zapier connected to send the product from ThriveCart over to Kajabi; all of the bits and pieces I went off and did. So about six hours later, I finally had all the pieces together.

Well, if it were Renee, she probably would have sold ten of these offers in six hours because she would have just went out there and started talking with people. Plus, she would already have been talking to people initially. So that people who are already in a position that when you offer something, they go, “Yes, please. I’ve been waiting for whatever it is that you’re going to put out next.”

So that’s the difference between five-figure months and non five-figure months, right? It’s whether you go out and just take action. Things do not have to be perfect! Do not procrastinate on them. Look at how I can just go out and talk to people to bring them in as clients.

So while I got caught up with the funnel and the system to bring in someone to generate this sale and go through all of it, Renee would have just gone out and spoken to them, saying, “Sure. Here’s a link; go  over and purchase,” and the purchase would have come in.

So, getting to five-figure months could be just having five clients, and you’re charging $2,000 a month. If you’re just starting, then I wouldn’t exactly recommend $2,000 a month. One because you would probably be very nervous with charging that. Also, if you haven’t got proven results, you might be charging $500 or $1,000 initially, but we’ve got strategies to increase your prices over time.

So, if you’ve got five clients on board who are paying you $1,000 a month, that’s $5,000. That’s huge for a lot of people, and with five ad clients a month, that could be part-time hours. So if you’re just working with five people, you don’t have to worry about having all these systems in place. While you may say, I need systems to scale and grow my business and get new clients on board. Yes, systems are important. But you do need to have your own processes to follow; just don’t get caught up in it.

If perfectionism or procrastination is what’s holding you back, and it’s stopping you from just talking to people, getting them on board, and doing things manually initially, then it will get to a point where you’ve probably done it a few times. That’s when you can start to systematize it. Then when you’re ready for someone else to come on board, that’s when you really refine the system. And the secret on that is that it doesn’t have to be you creating all the systems.

When you get a marketing assistant on board, for example, that’s where you could have a basic document with the flow to show what we do. They do it a few times, and then you have them create the system and process. A simple, easy way to do that is to record a Loom video and they can just be explaining and walking you through it.

That’s what you can do as well, and then you just hand it over to them. If you record using Loom, Zoom, or whatever screen-share app, you would also get it transcribed. So that way, there’s the video and also a printout of it. So whoever it is that you hand it over to, you can have them watch it, organize the transcription, go through it, edit it, and refine it so that it is accurate and nicely written out. It doesn’t have to be you that is creating all the systems.

I hope you’ve found this week’s Online Confidential helpful in figuring out what’s stopping you from hitting those five-figure months running ads for clients.