Process matters for agencies (featuring Juliana Marulanda)

In this episode of Chats with Chip, Juliana Marulanda of ScaleTime explains why creating and documenting repeatable processes for your agency can make a big difference in outcomes for your business and your clients.

Juliana helps agency owners understand how to get started and what pitfalls to avoid as they begin to implement a process-driven approach.

Key takeaways

• Chip Griffin: “I would argue that small agencies in particular need process even more than large agencies. Because they don’t have a lot of labor hours that they can throw at a problem.”
• Juliana Marulanda: “Most employees spend about two hours a week just trying to look for things. And so if you centralize your documentation, if you can templatize a lot of it, you’re saving your team so much time, effort, and energy and then they can spend time innovating.”
• Chip Griffin: “If you’ve had a similar pain point twice in the recent past, document those things first to solve those problems.”
• Juliana Marulanda: “One of the reasons why I went into business to help people with process is because it is an opportunity to really recession proof your business.”

Resources

• Connect with Juliana on LinkedIn
• ScaleTime
• ScaleTime’s Scale Map

About Juliana Marulanda

Juliana Marulanda is a business operations expert, speaker, and the founder of ScaleTime. With over 13 years of experience across Wall Street, the non-profit sector, technology startups, and family-owned businesses, she now helps service-based businesses. For the past 3 years, ScaleTime has implemented custom processes and systems for on-boarding clients and team members, deal flow, and streamlining day-to-day operations, resulting in consistent rapid revenue growth and reclaimed time for their clients. She studied at the London School of Economics and received a BS in Economics from Trinity College, where she graduated with honors and was the recipient of the prestigious Pi Gamma Mu award.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me today an expert in all things becoming more efficient and more scalable for your agency, and that is Juliana Marulanda, the founder of ScaleTime.

Welcome to the show, Juliana.

Juliana Marulanda: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here with you.

Chip Griffin: It is great to have you here because I know that the people are always trying to figure out how they can, you know, scale better, be more efficient, improve their processes. And so we’ll have a lot to talk about here, but before we do, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself and ScaleTime?

Juliana Marulanda: Absolutely. So I’ve been now working with ScaleTime over five years, and we’ve helped over 600 agencies. Now I just clocked it. Turn into lean, mean, profitable machines, you know, everywhere and everyone between the six, seven and eight figures and just basically breaking those plateaus and getting to that next level.

Chip Griffin: And what made you say, this is, this is an area I want to get into. I want to help agencies be efficient, scalable, profitable, and all of that.

Juliana Marulanda: I would say so as a, as an elder millennial where I definitely shifted jobs as a good statistic, like every 1. 5, 1. 3 years, I, the, the one through line I would say was operations, right?

So I had, you know, started off on Wall Street doing financial operating models. Then I was doing tons of, you know, operations, jobs in between. I even worked doing warehousing and logistics for an organic toy company at one point. And… You know, I was, I was going all over as like a traveling operations manager building up events that, you know, we’re producing at least on an operational level, 1 million a week.

And so when I finally decided to go off on my own, I was like, I felt like a Jill of all trades, as it were, a master of none, but operations was the thing. And then I was like, okay, I’m going to test this because when I was in the testing phase, there wasn’t a lot of operations consultants there, there were management consultants and there were HR, there was people who were helping with sales process, helping with client management, but not really, you know, the nitty gritty holistic operations. What is process management. I then I was like, okay, I’m going to test this because usually this is something that happens with corporate. Can I bring this to smaller businesses?

I tested it and lo and behold, small businesses do need operations and they do need organization. And then when I got really specific, I decided that I wanted to work with digital agency owners because at the time, you know, back in 2015 a long time ago, it was, they were really on the vanguard of hybrid teams, right?

And being geographically independent. And so what did it look like to work with teams that were full time, part time, strategic partners, contractors, white label, co labeled, right? And how did we make a digital infrastructure that would be able to deliver on time every time with teams that were fragmented and geographically independent.

So that was the piece that of like my obsession that I was like, oh my god, how do we do this? Can we do this well? And we did and then the pandemic hit and everyone was like, oh my god How do I go ahead and create a digital infrastructure? And and I had been doing this for quite some time.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and and you mentioned, you know, the sort of the the the revelation or realization that Small businesses need process.

And I would argue that small agencies in particular need process even more than large agencies, right? Because they don’t have just a lot of labor hours. They can throw it a problem. They really have to be mindful of how they’re using that resource and efficient in how they’re doing it in order to be able to build a scalable, profitable business.

So You know, when you find agencies coming to you and asking for help, what is typically driving that? Is it because they’ve got a profit problem? Is it because they’re growing fast and they’re just, they’re kind of confused and don’t know how to run it the right way? You know, what, what do you think is the trigger that you’re seeing most often that causes people to finally wake up and say, yeah, this is something I need to invest some, some time and effort into?

Juliana Marulanda: I think both of those that you mentioned are true. So profitability, all of a sudden it’s like, Ooh, I can’t invest. And, and it, and it may not necessarily be a signal that you’re not looking at your finances, right? But all of a sudden you’re like, Ooh my finances need to be upleveled, right? Like there, there needs to be an upgrade so that I can invest.

I can hire more, I can hire better. And so, so profitability is, is absolutely a thing. Or, you know, it’s like where something happens and you lose a client and there’s no reserves and it’s because you’ve been running on such little margin. So there’s, that’s one. The other is also what intellectual property leaves the house.

And what I mean by this is there is a key employee that is either number two or even, you know, someone that is a head of a department or division or team, and they’re leaving, which happens all the time. And as, as sort of the evolution and the maturity of the agency, right, at the beginning, the owner starts doing everything.

Right? Because it’s like you started and, and, you know, and I usually see owners run into three categories. They’re either a Rainmaker, really good at selling. You know, they are sort of this individual that is an innovator. Like they love to tinker. They’re doing R& D. They know, you know, they know the algorithm is going to change before the algorithm changes, right?

Like there’s, there’s individuals who are really great at, you know, making great product and great. And then there’s, you know, there’s these true hardcore entrepreneur that’s always starting, right? So they’re, they’re building a new business. Maybe they started the agency, maybe they’re creating an agency for the rest of the businesses that they’re doing.

So there’s these sort of three archetypes that I see in owners and they will create a team around their strengths, right? And then you see that team evolve. And, and eventually, you know, whatever’s in their head goes to the other individuals, goes to the other individuals. And if someone’s going to leave where it’s like, Oh my God, they have a lot of intellectual property of the business, right?

They have tribal knowledge. It’s a huge deal where they’re like, Oh, we can’t run our business based on individuals. Like there, there’s a light bulb moment where it’s like, well, I’m, I’m screwed right now. And, and I don’t want to be screwed later. And, and this is why. Or you really want to fire somebody, but nobody else knows how to do their job.

Right. Because either that individual has become toxic or, you know, or whatever the case might be. But nobody actually knows it. So now you’re be