Hands-Off Growth

By Mandi EllefsonBusiness Management

Hands-Off Growth episodes

March 24, 2022Push Starting a Car and the Connection to Hitting $100k/mo in Profits
Mandi Ellefson discusses how to get out of the entrapment cycle in this solo episode of Hands-Off CEO.

You’ll hear Mandi talk about:
The entrapment cycle seizes many CEOs. “There's this dynamic where you need to hire more experts to help you deliver the growth, but then you need more cash flow to be able to hire them. So you need more sales to generate more cash, but then you need more capacity to make sales without fear of quality slipping.” [2:41]
“This cycle is just so challenging, and the impact of this is that it turns your business into a time-for-money model.” Mandi shares the effects of the entrapment cycle on a CEO and their business. [4:48]
“You need to have the cash to scale; that’s going to get you from push starting your car.” Mandi describes the four things you need to get out of the entrapment cycle and successfully scale. [6:05]
Bringing in a manager to take over the minutiae lets you focus on working on the business instead of in it. “That team led by your manager is going to streamline increased profits and help you meet those staff demands as you're continuing to increase quality.” [7:11]

Resources
Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
9 min
March 17, 2022Consulting Agencies Adding $1M+ Plus in 12 months, What Do They Have in Common?
Mandi Ellefson discusses the characteristics of rapid growth companies in this solo episode of Hands-Off CEO.

You’ll hear Mandi talk about:
Two things rapid growth businesses have in common. “[Rapid growth businesses] usually have an offer that’s really valuable in the market, and are willing to position themselves in such a way that it’s a lot easier to sell.” [1:19]
“Our top-level clients who are able to add $1-2 million+ in their first year with us have this certainty that allows them to show up 100% committed, and because they're committed, it drives decisive action.” Many CEOs approach their business as a seed that needs to grow before they water it. Mandi shares why this fails. [3:52]
“What you need is a delusional level of certainty,” Mandi explains how to create that certainty. [5:57]
By creating a bigger vision for your own company, you can then help clients create a bigger vision for themselves. “When you [do this], they’re willing to pay you more. When you create much bigger outcomes, your team is more excited to be a part of what you’re building.” [8:44]

Resources
Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
12 min
March 10, 2022Ultimate Comeback Story - Leading Expansive Growth in Uncertain Times with Jamie Birch
Mandi Ellefson’s guest is Jamie Birch, CEO and Chief Incremental Officer at JEBCommerce, an organization that helps retainers maximize their affiliate sales. He has extensive experience in all facets of online marketing. This has enabled Jamie to thrive and become a market leader in these unprecedented times. Jamie and his team help clients grow their revenue and gain an additional $10M in sales in 3 years. He is the host of The Profitable Performance Marketing Podcast, where he talks to industry experts and shares insights to assist listeners.

You’ll hear Mandi and Jamie talk about:
“Stepping back and allowing my team to solve the problems was one of the biggest steps in my leadership evolution.” Jamie sometimes takes weeks off of the business, which allows his executive team to step up and strengthen their skills as they take over whole parts of the business. [4:26]
Mandi and Jamie discuss staying true to vision. [10:35]
“You have this problem; there’s going to be seven more tomorrow and there are two more waiting for you right now. Work this problem, then work the next, and remove the emotions of ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’” Jamie shares the three client reactions to the pandemic that he observed. [20:50]
“Young people are getting their first and second jobs using Spotify as a search engine.” Jamie explains how. [35:02]
Mandi shares why Jamie is the perfect embodiment of a Hands-Off CEO. “You get your business sustainable, and you look at how to scale, how to keep that consistent cash flow, how to create these amazing careers where people want to be, how to build this culture so that you have people that are fighting for your vision.” [44:37]

Resources
Jamie Birch on LinkedIn | Twitter
JEBCommerce.com | JamieBirch.com

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
49 min
March 03, 2022Growth, Value, and Mindsets with Aaron Krall
Mandi Ellefson’s guest is Aaron Krall, founder of SaaS Visionaries and the SaaS Accelerator, a proven system that adds $500,000 of revenue to SaaS companies in just 12 months. He is also one of Hands-Off CEO’s Scale to Freedom clients.

You’ll hear Mandi and Tim talk about:
“It’s a really specific program we’ve designed,” Aaron says. “We come in, and we rehaul everything.” He briefly lists the four major levels of SaaS growth that his company ensures, which are market positioning, automating the sales process, increasing customer value, and filling the funnel. [2:12]
“I originally positioned myself as an onboarding expert… when I went in to do these onboarding projects with clients, what I found was that we would do the onboarding and it would look amazing, but it wouldn't have an impact on their growth.” Aaron discovered it was due to internal problems he hadn’t solved. He shares how he changed his approach, and the results that followed. [5:30]
“When I changed my beliefs around [me doing] everything and [hiring] people who deliver a better result than I could deliver, [I realized] that means I could charge more.” Aaron talks about delegating tasks. “The director of a movie only has one role, and that’s to direct.” [14:59]
“And now, because of the mindset shifts and the experiences that I've had in the program and other things, I realized that I'm probably not charging enough.” Aaron’s self-confidence suffered from working with the wrong clients, which influenced his views towards the value of his service. “Now, I feel like it's not only worth it, but it's a bargain for these guys.” He talks about increasing the price of his “world-class services.” [18:56]
“There are certain processes I went through that broke a lot of the false beliefs I had.” Writing and visualizing his future helped Aaron expand his mind and change his life. He explains how. [25:13]

Resources
Aaron Krall on LinkedIn
AaronKrall.io

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
32 min
February 24, 2022How to Profitably Hire and Train a Great Assistant to Scale Your Consulting Agency with Tim Francis
Mandi Ellefson’s guest is Tim Francis, founder of ProfitFactory.com and Great Assistant, two organizations dedicated to making the entrepreneurial journey easier. After noticing that entrepreneurs desperately needed support in running a business, Tim started Great Assistant to help them hire an assistant, retain them for years, and make them really profitable.

You’ll hear Mandi and Tim talk about:
Tim shares three strategies for more effective delegation. “Do not use email when it comes to delegating to anybody in your internal team, including your assistant; email’s a wasteland of distraction. Use Loom, a free tool you can use in your browser, to screen record and narrate what you want done. And finally, hire an assistant that fits you properly. ” [1:16]
Tim and Mandi explore how teams can work effectively in different time zones. [9:29]
“There’s such a thing as being too early, the timing being wrong, and a lack of a path to profitability. Once those three things are in place, you should be going forward with getting an assistant.” Tim explains why you can’t afford to not have an assistant, and when the right time is to hire one. [21:52]
“It creates this open space for me to create, and that’s when these amazing ideas come; you can’t do that if you’re so busy in the minutia.” Hiring an assistant not only saves you time, but it also saves you energy. Tim describes how. [32:17]
“We’re helping coach you and prepare your work, while finding assistance candidates and bringing you three finalists.” Tim talks about the services Great Assistance provides for its clients. [47:23]

Resources
Tim Francis on LinkedIn | Twitter

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
54 min
February 17, 2022Maximizing Value and Promoting Growth with Wally Waldron
Mandi Ellefson’s guest is Jason “Wally” Waldron, CEO of Exitology, the agency that can create 33% annual growth and guarantee to add at least $1M of new growth using existing resources for logistics, supply chain and industrial companies. Wally’s unique profit acceleration strategies have helped companies grow faster and maximize the value of their business, as well as buy back their freedom when they feel trapped in their businesses.

You’ll hear Mandi and Wally Waldron talk about:
“If you’re looking to move onto the next phase of your business life, create a legacy in the world, or even sell over the next five years, you [can] come to us; we’ll get your business ready, and you get a hell of a payday.” Wally talks about Exitology’s target market and how they serve their clients. [4:58]
“The really cool thing is that [we helped nurture] a business owner who lives what he teaches.” Wally talks about one of his proudest case studies, an inherited business from father to son, and how they helped him. [9:42]
“The mark of a winning, momentum-filled business leader is that they’re always looking to expand their boundaries and find the next level up, so they can do a better job for their tribe.” Mandi and Wally discuss Wally’s variety of clients. [13:54]
Wally explores the ‘someday I will’ mentality and why it never works. “If you choose the best version of your potential future and introduce it into your being right now, [you will be] planting a seed of growth.” [21:25]
Mandi asks Wally to describe how his internal work has impacted his personal and organizational growth. “It feels like I’m playing in my zone of genius more than I ever have.” [29:20]

Resources
Jason “Wally” Waldron on LinkedIn | Twitter
MasterKeyProfits.com

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
37 min
February 10, 2022Keeping Your Client Pipeline Full with Tom Shapiro
Mandi Ellefson’s guest is Tom Shapiro, the founder and CEO of Stratabeat, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses grow via branding, design, and strategic thinking. He is a marketer who understands what businesses need and crafts strategies to fill those needs. .

You’ll hear Mandi and Tom talk about:
"What we're seeing is that a lot of businesses are struggling with lead generation and struggling to increase the number of leads that they're generating," Tom explains. Businesses cannot hold on to the approaches and best practices of the past in the new sophisticated market. They have to adapt. Tom explains how. [4:30]
Refine your focus as you teach. "The more that you focus...the easier it becomes to help your clients be successful," Tom says. He and Mandi explore this, as well as a few more requirements for success. [9:40]
Work with companies that are profitable. "You don't want to work with companies with low profit - especially agencies - because they're doing the exact opposite of what you're doing in your company," Tom remarks. Replacing clients because they aren't profitable is costly, and it's better to remove that risk altogether by not working with them at all. [13:22]
Driving traffic is not all marketing is about. "It's an actual human being who's coming to your site, and they are making judgments on your business from every interaction, from every touchpoint, from every experience," Tom states. [21:11]
Rethinking your lead generation involves many different facets of your business but your audience has to be top priority. Make sure you are completely customer and audience-obsessed. [26:17]
Treat your clients like your friends. "If you're gonna be working really closely with these people and they're really good people, you know it just makes sense to care that much about them," Tom adds. Connecting with the human aspect equals success for your business. [34:45]
To generate more leads, ask yourself what would blow your clients' minds. [40:30]
Stratabeat has the perfect tools to capture more clients. "We use behavioral analysis software, so we can marry that up with exactly what they were doing on the page, how far down they were scrolling, what they were clicking on… and then we know exactly what they're interested in," Tom says. [46:00]

Resources
Tom Shapiro on LinkedIn | Twitter
Stratabeat

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
44 min
February 03, 2022Stepping Out of the Day to Day with James Schramko
James Schramko, bestselling author and host of the SuperfastBusiness podcast, invited Mandi Ellefson on his show recently. This is a cross-post of their enlightening conversation about scaling a service business.

You’ll hear Mandi and James talk about:
How soon to start building a team and becoming a Hands Off CEO. “Please don’t build a solopreneur business if you can avoid it!” James cautions listeners. Melissa comments, “It gets to a point where you're able to really take advantage of all the years that you have been building up your company, and it's this point where this quantum leap that happens in your growth, when you're able to let go…” [2:23]
Much of the popular advice on scaling a business does not apply for service companies. They are usually based on creating systems and hiring people. “Here's the problem,” Melissa tells James, “if you just go in and build systems, first of all it's gonna take an enormous amount of your time… And then you hope that people you hire are then going to follow those systems and take on ownership for them, which is not really the way it works.” [7:30]
Melissa’s tool rules:
“If we're going to have a tool we should absolutely have to have it.”
“It should be the best tool for what we need… And that's certainly the team's decision to research and discover that tool.”
“We have to know how to use the tools.”
The tools are constantly revised and updated. [8:40]
Scaling a service business means making a bigger promise and getting more expansive outcomes for clients, Melissa says. This means you can charge higher prices and have the margin and profit to create the systems to scale your company. [11:28]
The Power of One framework: one prospect, one painful problem, one promise. Get this framework right and you will attract high quality clients. [13:25]
“What are those factors you need to have in place to be able to deliver your very best results and then eliminate every other prospect that doesn't have those,” Melissa advises business leaders looking to scale. She and James discuss vision-based selling to clients. [19:23]
James says, “The greatest goldmine is probably an existing database, and I even created a whole campaign around winning back old clients because your systems will change over time, there's a good chance that your promise will change over time, and your serviceability will change over time, and the clients you work with will change over time..” [26:55]
“One thing I do with anyone who's got an agency is I discourage them from doing proposals; and we renamed that one to an action plan or strategy guide,” James tells Melissa. “It’s small semantics with big outcomes.” Melissa’s growth plan is a similar concept. It’s about focusing on the promise and what the customer really wants. [32:48]
Melissa talks about the 5 exits a business owner must make in order to scale. These include exiting client management, marketing and sales, client strategy and high ticket sales. The final exit is when you can hire a CEO. [41:43]

Resources
James Schramko on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
SuperfastBusiness

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
1 hr 2 min
January 27, 2022Stop Making it so Damn Hard to Scale your Consulting Agency
Mandi Ellefson discusses how to make growing your consulting agency simpler in this solo episode of Hands-Off CEO.

You’ll hear Mandi talk about:
“It’s not that something is wrong with your business; it’s that you’re working way too hard.” Mandi shares why CEOs sometimes struggle with growth. [0:23]
Mandi shares an example of a client who struggled to find a reason to scale. “It can’t just be about money, it has to be something bigger than that.” [1:08]
Sometimes working with half the number of clients but at an increased (or doubled) price is the best way to go. “[You] can make more money working half the time.” [4:36]
“You have to stop scaling activities, because activities don’t necessarily generate results.” Mandi advises listeners on how to scale without diminishing the results. [7:11]

Resources
Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
10 min
January 20, 2022Reverse Engineering Success with Ron Friedman
Mandi Ellefson’s guest is Ron Friedman, the founder of ignite80, an organization dedicated to teaching leaders practical, evidence-based techniques for working smarter and elevating their team's performance through keynotes, workshops, and consulting. He is also CEO at Friedman Strategy Group, where he fuses psychological insight with cutting-edge research to deliver actionable marketing recommendations.

You’ll hear Mandi and Ron Friedman talk about:
“Throughout our lives, we’ve only been taught two major stories of how people achieve greatness,” Ron claims. “Greatness comes from talent, or greatness comes from hard work.” He talks about the less famous third path to greatness: reverse engineering. [3:16]
Successful entrepreneurs aren’t harder workers, more creative, or more intelligent; what they excel at is pattern recognition. They observe the market, see what’s working, and identify where it’s going to go next. Mandi and Ron explore this. [5:10]
Many of the stories we love are simply the same story with different characters. Similarly, people who have achieved greatness share commonalities that we can adapt to our own lives and use to our benefit if we take the time to observe them and find the patterns. Ron shares how. [13:07]
“The key is to take a few samples to reverse engineer and templatize, and combine the different elements that you find powerful; now you’re not just copying someone else’s formula, you’re making your own creative approach,” Ron explains. [20:42]
“Sell first, build later.” Ron shares the story of Zappos, founded by Nick Swinmurn, who took the ‘sell first, build later’ approach when he created the company. He started off just posting pictures of shoes from his local shoe store online, buying them when someone placed an order and reselling them to the customer. Zappos scaled significantly before being bought by Amazon for $1.2 billion. [26:40]

Resources
Ron Friedman on LinkedIn | Twitter
FriedmanStrategy.com

Mandi Ellefson on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Hands-Off CEO - Executive Briefing
32 min