Episode 16- Solo Episode Inge Hunter Reality of The Agency
Now the only thing that I can think about at the moment is the launch coming up for the agency, I freak out about this every single damn year, it is the fourth time I will have launched the agency. So you would have thought I got used to this by now. For any context, The Agency is my 12 month long digital marketing, mentorship, programme, consultancy, whatever you want to call it, sometimes I feel like we get so caught up, in the words of what the thing is that we just don't say it. So it's 12 months long. I work with people, we go through each element of their digital marketing process. And I educate them as they go. So I'm kind of there either in a one on one capacity, because there's two tiers, or in like a group capacity, and we just kind of get it done. But I freak out about this every time.
So I've been running this before, I'm going into my fifth year of running it, my fifth cohort. I do it every year. I do every year around this year. And from this time of the year, and from December, I always get so nervous. The thing is that it's the only thing that keeps my whole business afloat. And it's not gonna be like this in the coming years, I promise you. So it's my biggest knife, my biggest financial generator, it's what helps me, it's what supported me to be able to employ three members of staff in a hunter limited business. And it's coming up again, on the 27th of February. Now I could do a whole episode about how amazing it is, and the results that people get. And I could try and encourage you as a listener to sign up to the agency. But instead, I thought that I would just be real about it, about the way that I feel about it , the way that it runs my life, about the way that I get nervous every time that I'm going to launch it and things. Now, I get nervous every time I'm going to launch it, obviously because it's a big financial earner. And now that I have staff I kind of need to sustain this kind of company's level of income. But the reality is that if it didn't go well, it didn't launch or make as much money, I'd have to deal with those consequences. But the real reason why I get so nervous about it, I think, is because I pour so much into the agency. It really is absolutely everything I know and every way in which I know how to support people to actually get it done.
So I think the real reason they wide the agency, I get nervous about the agency every year because the agency is absolutely everything I know, poured into one programme now, I've tried doing smaller programmes before and I try to do a little bit one on one like, I do do one on one consultancy, but I'll be honest, it just doesn't sit right with me because there's no structure. And I don't think it's one on one. I don't think I personally think that you can't really affect long term change in someone's business unless you work with them beyond four months. And I know that there's definitely a space for four month programmes with someone because they’re for months like kind of one on one packages. I'm not saying there isn't. But the way that I work I like to do it really, really sustainably and really impact, which means that every single month we focus on one discipline of digital marketing. And we project it into your business. And every single year I get it's kind of bittersweet for me. I get really kind of anxious about knowing who the next people are that I'm going to work with. But I've worked hard to price the agency at a really kind of accessible rate and a rate that kind of attracts the right people for what I'm trying to do. So I like to work with people who are ready to scale who are, who have kind of been doing it as a hobby, or doing it as a side thing, or have just started but just wanting to grow really, really rapidly. And the price point sits out right with those kinds of people. But I also get anxious, because the thing is, I've worked with these people for like 12 months, and I get really close to all of the members who are in the agency, and then suddenly, it's like, new round of people. And I start to like it, I don't know if it's like a bit of a grieving process where I kind of admit, like, Oh, I missed the comfort of the people who I was working with. So it's a really strange time of year for me, because I get really caught up in the financials of it, I get caught up in, you know, how much of my heart and soul and blood and to quote material, Matilda, blood, sweat and tears into the agency. And I also get weird about just working with new people. Should I say that? I don't know. But
I think we all do, because the thing is I pour so much time and energy into it. And my job is to help people get a return on their investment. My job is not necessarily to just sit there and like to plough information at people and hope it sticks like I really, really hand on heart consider my job to be the outcome of my clients. Like as long as they're doing work. Like if I have a client, who for some reason others cannot do any of the work, then of course that outcome is not affected on me. It's an effective circumstance. But when I'm working closely with someone, their business growth and their kind of achievements and their goals and their level of understanding their growth and knowledge and confidence is down to me and how much I put into that individual.
So I always get a little bit anxious about who I'm going to work with, because I don't know what the challenges are that are going to be there. I'm like, do I know enough? Do I? Do I have enough in my kind of repertoire? Am I going to affect change on this person's business positive change in this person's business. And I have all the evidence like you can life coach me to the knees like, I have all the evidence that the agency works, I have all the evidence that people are interested in buying the agency, I have client upon client upon client wins, like over and over again. I have people that come out of the agency, and they are completely changed business owners, they are so in tune and in touch and like confident in this themselves and their businesses that they're literally unrecognisable from the first call that I have with them to the last call I have with them they are like seriously different people and owning different businesses, really strong businesses. I've got the evidence. And I've got the financial evidence that people sit there and, one of my clients turned around, she was like, in December, she secured 30 grand of contracts for 2023. And she's sorted. She's good. She wants to obviously, because the people that I attract are ambitious and interested in doing more for themselves. She wants to grow and she wants to add more things on top of it, but that is her guaranteed base level of income for 2023 is 30 grand before she even started January the first. That kind of impact is insane. But I hold on.
I feel like I hold so much responsibility for them on my shoulders that then I get nervous that I'm not going to be able to do it. Does that sound weird? I don't know if this is coming across weird. And I don't know if this is the right conversation to be having. This is just the reality of what I'm feeling at the moment and what I'm thinking at the moment. Every day I wake up in the morning thinking about whether people will join the agency. And every day I go to sleep thinking what could I do to make more people join the agency.
The agency opens its doors on the 27th of January. I always do a pre-sale to the waitlist. So I will open that up in two and a half weeks, three weeks. Last year, I opened up too early actually I got so anxious last year that I said to everyone the waitlist begin about sort of four or five weeks out I think it was from the agency starting to kind of get people to commit and you know I got people to commit and I was like for the past two years is what I've been fully booked within 24 hours of opening it up. But I tried really hard not to do that this year, you know really hard not to jump the gun too quickly. So I have got four and a half weeks before the actual doors open.
The reason why it opens and closes in one week is because I personally need to operate on a kind of like, one week of really clear messaging and really like a clear onboarding process. And then we close on the seventh, I think of March, unless it gets filled out, like last year, we had to close within 24 hours because it got filled up, really worked. In March, there's kind of like, it's like an onboarding month. So there's not actually many actual sessions that happened in March, but we kick up, we always kick off like, first of April. So March is always like there's a few things to get people arranged with and, a little bit baseline things to work through. But so I am five weeks out, and I just like, real down to basics. Every day, I'm challenging myself to find a way to talk about the agency in my socials. And I know that, I've got a whole strategic plan, I've got a whole strategic content plan, social media content plan, a whole strategic email marketing plan, I have a whole strategic kind of blogging plan.
And I also have a referral system within the agency. So that if anybody, any current members of the agency know anyone, it's like as in any kind of referral scheme, they can send people my way, and I offer them a bit of a kickback on it. But I've got all these things in place. But still, I'm like, consistently, like, at a base level, I need to figure out how I can just make sure that I'm talking about this every damn day. So I'm going in my stories, and I'm just kind of like, let me tell you about my sales page that I'm going to redo or let me tell you about what's happening today. Or let me tell you about what people said about it last time. And I reckon I could challenge you like, if you were going to, if you're launching something, or you're talking about something that you need to give yourself a good amount of time, to be able to actually just tell people, what it is that you are doing time and time and time and time again, because you have to remember that marketing isn't like, always a big kind of surprise. It's available unless you have loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of followers. It is about that, like daily nudges, like, hello, I've got the agency open, and paying attention to the people that are paying attention to those like daily nudges. So I'm getting around in circles. I've got all the evidence of all the strategic marketing there. I've got the whole team that are prepped and ready and know the targets that we have to hit. And I've already got people sign up to the waitlist. And I've already got people who would like to redo the agency again. Now people like to redo the agency. Let me caveat that by saying not because they didn't get anything, but because they got amazing things.
This year, the only way to work with me one on one is through the agency, because as I mentioned, I don't like working one on one and in a short capacity because there's not much effect change, I can affect. And I like having the agency, even if like a lot of some people actually put me come and work with me in the agency on the one on one tear says to tears I can an access to or there's accelerate to the accelerator, exactly the same, it just has one on one support, one on one calls. They know that that's the only way to work with me one on one. So I will use the structure of the agency to guide them through my one on one consultancy, and like implementing each discipline into their business. And the reason why it's called the agency, by the way, is because you have to think about it like a digital marketing agency. So imagine that you're walking in the front door, all these different marketing departments, and you want your business to have every department skills in your business. So we work on every single skill one per month. And yeah, I'm nervous about it. I can't say anything else about the font. And also weirdly, you know, it's that whole mindset thing of like, if you're nervous about it, it won't happen. I think also you get nervous about things because you just really want them to happen. I had this quote that said nervousness is the same as excitement. You just don't know the outcome. And I think that's it. I think that's where I'm at. And I don't think it matters how much your company grows, I think you can still get nervous about campaigning or onboarding clients or filling your pipeline or releasing a new product or something. No matter, even if you're Beyonce, and you drop a new beat. Like you're still gonna get nervous about whether people are going to react well to it. Because I guess it's just Is that isn't it? It's that excitement. Same fear, same biological reaction as excitement that you just don't know what the outcome is. I could guess I could formulate a plan I can formulate. But yeah, that's where I'm at. And I think it might be helpful for people to know that you can plan, like I am a strategic Digital Marketer. I know that my marketing plans work, because they work for all of my clients, and they work for me time and time again. And it's already all the teams on board, like we have all the assets in place to be able to market this thing. But still, I'm nervous. Also, I think that nervousness is because I have such a strong emotional connection to it. And I don't know if you should, but I think small business owners like you can't not have an emotional connection to your offerings. I mean, I know it's not now after four years, I know that whatever happens is not a reflection of the content that's within the agency, because I know the content in the agency is really good. And I know that it works. It's just a reflection of the marketing.
If you're going to go away from anything from this, you should understand that when you are selling something like I am five weeks out, like I've said, and I give myself one week, to properly onboard people and like, make it available for people to purchase. That week is not your marketing week, that week is your selling week, all of your marketing is in the five to six to eight weeks before you tell you to make that thing on offer. So for example, if you have a concert, it's eight weeks before the concert tickets go on sale. That is your marketing. And if you don't make any sales in that week it is because those six to eight weeks beforehand, didn't work like you didn't mark it. And that's I think the key thing that everyone in the agency takes away from the agency and that we work through how to do that inside it, obviously.
But if I don't make the sales on the 27th of February, then it will be because I haven't done enough marketing in these weeks in the lead up. I have the evidence to say, Well, God, I'm going round in circles and I have the evidence to tell myself that it's going to work. I have all the things to show me that it's going to work. I have the people on the waitlist interested in continuing.
This is a reality snapshot of what's going on in my brain at the moment versus what's going out on Instagram. I hope it's been insightfully helpful. I hope you've taken away some pieces from it.
And until next time, if you have any further questions head over to my Instagram, Ingehunter and take a visit to The Agency website to find out more on the programme and what it could do for your business!
Inge x