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A real-time look at the 7-pronged business plan put together in March 2020 as the pandemic hit.
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[00:00] And this is your host say advantage Mille and today I am here with the first episode of the third season of the SAE business podcast so welcome to the show in this episode I would like to start with addressing something which is I guess much more important than you know some of the plants that I have had before you know the entire corona virus pandemic so you know I'm not obviously a doctor or something like that and I
[00:45] Guess you already know the health precautions Plus this is this is not a podcast about health right and this is why I want to speak about how we are working on preparing our team and our company to be ready for any sort of potential negative economic effects of the corona virus pandemic so I hope that you stay and learn a few things from what what we are trying to do and what we are planning to do and you know it's
[01:29] It's not about getting panicked or something it's just about you know learning from the history so obviously there was the 2007 economic crash 2007-2008 and and you know in the start a lot of the experts thought that okay this is not a massive issue like when you know all that housing bubble or whatever it was when we when it started right so again I'm not an economist and I'm not going to share a lot of you know I'm not going to share even any sort of
[02:06] Numbers or statistics but you know I did do some study here and there and I also interacted with some of our clients from you know UAE and the US and I can also see some of the changes changes that they are either implementing or they are considering to implement if if things get worse so you know I I thought okay it is necessary to be proactive rather than reactive and have more clarity on where our focus is going to be and what we can do and how
[02:45] We are going to do it and sort of what should be the priority of tasks and and what not right because when you do have a plan in place then you know even if things get worse then you know you you are more prepared and then you know the you will make I guess fewer mistakes and you because you will not be too too panicked or something right Oh first things first we we have always been a remote first company so we do have an office you know a physical
[03:20] Office but but we have always been a remote first company and we have team members who are not in the city that that I am based in who are working remotely from different cities and countries they have always been working remotely and because you know I also have a home office already which I currently am at so you know the transition if you want to call that was not too hard for us you know it was not too much of a problem for us so our plan
[03:57] For the coronary session is that our first priority obviously is client work so what we do for our clients is link outreach we also do content creation like power pages which is like in depth guides which are which are created as these evergreen content pieces and the aim here is to earn backlinks for those ages then we also do some infographics both the content and design and what we are now sort of expanding into is publicity outreach so that will continue as usual we do have some clients who
[04:40] Have either reduced budget or who are considering to reduce budget so in case in case you don't know we our you know primary and and sort of main business is an agency DMR or digital marketing ry so when I stalk about client work I'm talking primarily about the agency right so we plan to continue that and it is possible that we will have to make some changes there and it is possible that there might be some surprises and shocks because obviously there are a lot of
[05:18] Companies which have to rethink their spending and and their strategy and whatnot at least for this year it seems so let's see how this goes but we are we're positive that we are able to we will be able to continue with this obviously having said that we do have to make some cost-cutting measures even if you don't go ahead with some cost-cutting I mean in terms of tools we do have to make some cost-cutting because we have been spending a lot in terms of different content marketing and
[05:51] SEO tools like you know ATF's and and power tools and male shake and you know a lot of others so right now given that some clients have changed their strategy or they want to change it means that we have to allocate some of our team members to some of the other things that we are going to do which I'll be mentioning in the next sort of in the next part of this this episode so we will have you know there are like when you look in detail there are a lot of
[06:27] Opportunities for us to do away with any sort of unused tools in terms of team we have eight team members eight core team including myself and we are extremely keen to you know not let anyone go obviously and we are still not sure if we have to reduce the hours of any of these team members but I don't think that will be necessary anyways and so far you know we are we are doing okay in terms of all the team members putting in the effort and whatnot there have been a
[07:07] Few issues here and there but you know we do understand that everyone is kind of you know worried or something or you know they have families at home their kids are home and you know but like my sort of motivation and and my what gives me the passion as the founder of this this marketing agency is is to remember always that you know it's not just about me or myself but the team that we have and the fact that this agency this business is responsible for the
[07:43] Livelihood of these team members and in some cases even their families so we have one team member who who has multiple siblings that she takes care of financially she has believed her ailing mother that she take care of there is another team member who you know who is at least a little bit worried that you know her husband might you know it is possible it is still a very unlikely fear but that fear is still in her mind as she told me that her husband might
[08:19] Not have a job let's say after month or whatever right and I hope it doesn't come to that but she is obviously a very valuable team member and she she she's someone that we depend a lot on for for all the variety of tasks that that we you know throw at her or burn her burden her with but she has never seen that as a burden and she has been very positive and everything so you know I just told her that you know if if if if things
[08:51] Come to the worst or you know you you don't have to worry about your job here we value your contribution and we would never want to let you go obviously right so I mean that so my point is that in terms of cost cutting our focus is more on like different tools that we use and different services that we pay for and whatnot right rather than letting someone from our team be be let go since since work seems to be a bit getting a bit slower from the client side we do
[09:30] Have some time to invest in our processes so as I have mentioned in some of my previous videos and I will as I will also be sharing in one of the upcoming videos of the series we have been using the EOS or entrepreneurial operating system methodology which was popularized by G Novick Minh excuse me in his book traction so Gina Whitman had basically talked about how to ensure as a company's founder or as a company's senior member to make sure that you are working on the business you know rather
[10:13] Than in the business all the time so it's it's kind of like making sure that you have more sort of automation in place you have more you know delegation in place where you are assigning and delegating tasks and one of the important one of the six important components with regards to making all of that sure is the processes component right where you make sure that okay you have clear processes for different key departments of your business so in terms of the services that we provide we have
[10:46] Harrow outreach where we answer journalists theories then we have what we call sao r or you know semi-automated outreach process so there is a lot of tasks that we have to do there and there is we already have a hero outreach manual in place and we already have the semi-automated outreach manual in place the heroin is actually really good we have trained multiple team members who have been able to use that and get mentions and backlinks for our clients from you know publications like Forbes and you know canva and Guardian and and
[11:28] And you know a lot of all these high authority publications but it still needs some modification and some changes and some review because we have heard some feedback from some of our new team members that okay maybe you know you can change this or maybe there is something that's getting repeated too much and maybe we should take that out and that you know maybe maybe you should make it a bit more brief or something right so we have to work on that the outreach process we this man will needs
[11:58] A lot of work there is a lot that has changed and that there's a lot that we have to improve there is a lot of ways that we have to sort of create multiple versions for it one one focused on infographic outreach and other focused on guest posts and so on then we also have to sort of you know put put things in place like you know making sure that data from one Google sheet is getting synced with another Google sheet automatically rather than you know one PA or one person having to
[12:29] Manually copy paste all the data you know and and we also know that there is some room for integrating zapier with Google sheets and Mail shakes so that you know our our system and process is much more faster we also want to look more into publicity outreach and it's something that I myself and one of our more senior team members will be doing ourselves initially at least the two of us because you know we are a boutique agency like I said we have just like eight team members including myself so
[13:05] You know and also when when we the senior members have implemented something our on our own then it makes it much more easier for us to come up with the process for that and then train our more junior team members who may not have done anything like that previously so remember when I mentioned the EOS methodology so one other component of it is the data component and we have been following that we have like weekly meetings where we analyze okay how many pitches did we send how many positive
[13:39] Responses did we to see you how many backlinks have the earn and so on but and you know so so so every team member know like where do they stand in terms of their conversion rate right in comparison to other team members and also in comparison to their own previous score so we think that that's that helps us as a team to have some numbers and and focus on those numbers so remember like you know something like profit and loss that comes much much much later
[14:11] Right like like after a month or after a quarter but these numbers are for like our day-to-day work like okay how many pitches did you send today and and you know how many responses were positive and and how many mentions are battling stick did you earn but we have to make some improvements to that PTL score we believe and we have been meaning to do that for for quite some time for instance we want to reward if if a person is let's say earning more higher
[14:44] Authority battling so let's save a team member like yesterday's yesterday I saw that one of our team members have earned a backlink from a very decent website which has a DR or domain rating of 90 out of 100 right so and and you know she's a very new team member and that was just amazing so you know not all links are equal some links are more valuable than others right then then then there is you know other than the DR or the entire domains rating there is
[15:17] Your you are score as well as in the URL and obviously if if if you get a link from a higher you are website then you know that's more valuable than a you are zero a web page right so you know we there is a lot that we have to improve there as well then there is like we want to also reward how much time these team team members are taking to get these you know backlinks so if if you are spending five hours on a pitched and you know you
[15:56] Know that's a a bit of a problem especially if you are a not a new team member right even the very new team members of our team I think the worse that that I saw someone doing was like three hours taking three hours to answer a Harrow pitch so but then again like if someone is that say taking just you know five minutes to answer a harakiri then that's also not good so we have to like sort of find a balance and we have to kind of sort of quantify that to figure
[16:29] Out okay how how can we you know encourage and and quantify and reward the right behavior when it comes to doing outreach you know then there is also the open rate and and the click-through rate and whatnot like you know how much how many times is your email getting open even if you have not earned a backlink yet and if you have added a backlink to you know a client's web page or something is that link getting clicked right is that link getting clicked right so you know there
[17:02] Is a lot of such data then obviously we have our hop stuff data so remember I mentioned that you know we we use half remember that I said earlier that we are a remote first company so we have been our agency has been in operation since 2013 and we have been using half staff every single day every team member of ours including myself to track our time right and you can see that right now si a podcast is the project that I have selected right and I'm working on that right so so we
[17:39] Use that to track our time I think that makes us more focused more organized more productive and even more honest you know like if I have my hub stuff time on I will not be you know like getting sucked into social media or or you know just like wasting time on on some sort of like my cell phone or something right in fact my cell phone is turned on like most of the time anyways but you know you see my point right then we also have
[18:08] To integrate hub staff to Trello and QuickBooks we have sort of tried to do that previously but but you know sometimes it is a technical issue and then of course we have to build our habits of using these tools in terms of QuickBooks there is some sort of like set up things that we have to do for instance I guess one of the things that I if I can recall correctly is that we have to ensure that if we have a B and C as our projects in Hopstop then we have
[18:40] To sort of man will he create the same projects and QuickBooks and then we have to sing that and same is the case with I think members as well so have not been able to do that I had assigned that to our bookkeeper but but he was also not very he could not really understand how to do that I guess and and then he got busy and we have to find actually a new bookkeeper as well because we do want to organize all our data within QuickBooks
[19:05] Which was pretty bleep previously in in wave apps and to be honest it was also not all of it was in wave app some of it was also in different Google sheets and whatnot and you know if we still get time from from you know doing these stars like I said client work but obviously if there is not a lot of client work then we have more more free time right so we will be focusing on some cost-cutting at least then we have to focus on our processes improving our
[19:36] Processes refining our processes and whatnot for our data so we can measure performance and and reward the right behavior and whatnot in in a more improved way and then there comes training so we have purchased good few premium courses related to SEO and content marketing previously and even digital PR but we have not done a good job of following those courses and really studying them and really implementing them so we want to focus on that as well hopefully and then we also want to implement the learnings that we
[20:13] Learn from from there in our own blog some of our own sort of quantum digital assets right and and even potentially our clients websites as well where where it makes sense obviously then this may be a good time considering how all of this coronavirus thing goes this may be a good time to look into purchasing niche websites because there are a lot of people who will be selling these websites and and even expired domains and they've been doing that at a much lower price so you
[20:44] Know this may be a good time to put some of our savings into good use I mean we don't have massive savings and something like that but we do know that we can you know invest in some of these niche websites and an expired domains then you guys may have noticed if you have been listing so far that I I mentioned our team in our business but I didn't kind of like really you know uttered the name of our our company and what not too much
[21:16] Or too explicitly so the problem has been that I used to have a partnership with with a British marketer and we basically decided to part ways and we are still on good terms he's really honest and and good person but we decided to part ways and since then we have been so busy with our client work that we never got the time to have a you know a proper web presence we have been kind of using my websites either for as well dot-com even though our agency's name
[21:54] Was and is digital marketing ROI so we need to sort of push that this name the DMR much further so this is a sort of companies our parent companies si a Enterprises and si a the the vision is that these and these words si a stands for a stand for apart from my name say that management they the bigger picture is that they stand for the world's spotlight influence and authority so in what we are doing as an agency is focusing on earned media and and
[22:30] Specifically SEO and outreach and backlinking and we think that these words spotlight influence and authority kind of sum up our our our vision and our passion now under the parent company si enterprises which which we used to you know which is which is a taxpaying intently entity and when we are paying our taxes that's the name that we use but under that agency we have to so under that company parent company si a enterprises we have two different sort of you know subsidiaries one is DMR the
[23:08] Agency and and we want to have that website for its set up as quickly as possible we do have a older website but we want to change things a lot for for some of the reasons that I did mention with regards to the partnership being dissolved and then there are some other reasons as well but other than that we also have our blog at say their fan Osmel comms so this is in vision mode not services clients but you know people who who will who will see the value in
[23:47] The content that we are sharing and then in due time when we have some digital tools to to offer whether it's it's it's it's a you know an e-book Eiko's SAS tool you know then then you know they would be interested in that because of all the value we have previously provided you know for free right so but those plans are kind of on a lower priority but in terms of improvements you know when I mentioned the training and whatnot and the implementation of what we learn at our
[24:20] Blog so you know we do want to implement that at the DMR website and obviously the SAE blog or the say that fahrenheits mail.com website as we call it and he also think because we have had hired a few new people in the first past few months and we if we expanded our team so we do feel the need to have a more clear and a more updated HR HR policy and I may have to work with an external HR consultant on that to have a more clear
[25:01] You know policy because I think that it's important for our team members you know we spend a lot of time together each day via slack and wire zoom and and whatnot so important it's important for us that they know the you know all the sort of policy points and how we envision rewarding them and training them and guiding them and supporting them and we also want to make sure that they know the rules as well on you know what is expected of them as well because
[25:35] You know without their support you know fighting with something like you know a recession or even if there is no coronary session even if you know it's all things as as you know business as normal even then we will need their support so that we can be you know we can provide a good service to our clients as we have done in the past so we do have some concerns on that and we do want to work a lot on that as well so you know this is our plan like I said we
[26:12] Will we will continue to work the client work obviously there it permits we will try to cost cut costs by by focusing on on tools first we would really hate to let anyone go because we have invested a lot in them and and they have helped us a lot as well and you know we want to keep going we want to go through what may probably become a tough situation so we want to be very careful and very proactive about it and very careful about everything
[26:46] That we do we want to work on our processes like I said we want to focus on our data so that we have more clear that you want to invest in training we may buy some new niche websites we want to improve an overhaul and relaunch our agency website DMR and we want to make some improvements to a blog both in terms of content and design and you know even on site SEO and whatnot and of course like I said the last point being that we have to improve our HR policy as
[27:21] Well maybe I will actually move this much above above this this a few of the other things it might come right after processes and data or even before processes right so you know this this is what our plan is and I would love to know what would you guys think about our plan and if you have any feedback and you know let me know if you have any questions or if there is anything that that you have planned for your business in terms of how to be prepared for a
[27:56] Potential Colonna recession what are you going and going to do in terms of you know client retention and motivating your team and making the most of this time that we seem to be spending at our homes obviously the hope is that we won't have to spend a lot of time at home and that we will be back to our offices and whatnot but you know it's still too important to have this plan even even when you are back to office you might be experiencing the ripple effects of the
[28:28] Coronavirus right so it's important to be prepared and I I really think that you know like to be honest like for me creating this this sort of rough plan it really made me much more motivated you know and much more focused I am now less focused on following news and and more focused on you know these items that I have to do because firstly I have to like I said I have to make sure that we are taking care of our team and of course if we are taking care of our team
[29:06] And we are keeping them happy and and and fulfilled and whatnot then you know of course we can do good work for our clients as well so this is it and yeah let me know what you think thank you so much bye