Hello, hello, hello, friend!

And welcome back to First Class Operations!

This is your Captain Kuba speaking.

How am I? Thanks for asking.

Pretty good, pretty good.

Especially when I look at my calendar.

So, so many cool Agency Journey conversations scheduled for the coming weeks.

Stoked to have them, and stoked for you to hear them.

Also, can’t help but notice October 31st drawing ever closer… 🦇

Anyway, here’s your latest helping of content to improve your agency operations.

The soundtrack for this edition of First Class Operations is Ghost Reveries by Opeth. It’s my favorite album for the fall. Fair warning: it’s progressive metal with equal parts huge riffs and rough vocals mixed with haunting melodies and wistful clean vocals. It’s not for everyone. But if you find yourself enjoying it, absolutely reply to this email and let me know. Any Opeth fan is a cool person in my book.

Captain's Address

🔗 One connection at a time.

What would happen if you just focused on having as many relevant conversations as you can?

You may think this is marketer speak. Talk to your prospects, talk to your customers—we’ve heard that advice before.

And no doubt, this is important in your marketing and sales.

But in operations?

It may be even more important.

Every organization is a complex world of emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that each team member holds about the work.

How can you get everyone rowing in the same direction if half of them may secretly be unsure if it’s the right direction? Or doubting the boat will even survive the trip?

And the way you fix that is through honest conversation. One heart+mind+soul at a time.

Try scheduling some 1:1 conversations with team members you haven’t sat down with in months.

Get their real take on things. Ask them to be honest, blunt even.

If you’ve done a good job creating a sense of psychological safety, they might open up to you.

You’ll bring them in closer, get them truly on board with what you’re trying to achieve.

And that could make all of the difference.

Operations isn’t just about how your ClickUp and your spreadsheets are set up.*

Running a tight ship is all about what’s in the hearts of the crew.

So give them the time and attention they need to truly buy into your vision.

(Kudos to Mariya Delano for inspiring this section. Her Agency Journey episode is coming soon!)

*Of course, if it turns out you do want to organize your ClickUp better, we have a free training series for that: Everything You Need to Streamline Your Agency's Operations in ClickUp. Or you could always book a call with us to get expert guidance towards end-to-end gold-standard operations.

In-Flight Announcement

Upcoming events: All-In Agency Summit + agency exit training

More ZenPilot-organized events are on the way, but in the meantime, here’s something else that might be of interest.

[Event invite] All-In Agency Summit with 15 expert agency presenters (including yours truly!)

Chris DuBois (agency coach and founder of Dynamic Agency OS) is putting together a free event for agency leaders that you should definitely put on your calendar next week.

It’s called the All-In Agency Summit, and includes two tracks of talks that will give you a complete education in what other agencies are doing to win these days.

Among the presenters are agency greats such as Max Traylor, Marcel Petitpas, Corey Quinn, Logan Lyles, Ryan Watson, Dr. William Attaway…

…and yours truly will be there too!

My presentation will be about:

People-First Project Management: The Habits You Need to Prevent Chaotic Operations

If you want to get more done with the resources you already have—and make your team happier and your workload more visible—my talk is designed to help you achieve that.

Hope I’ll see you there!

👉 Sign up here.

✨

[Special offer reminder] Control (and Maximize) Your Agency Exit: M&A training with Karl Sakas

A reminder about the upcoming agency exit training with Sakas&Company; don’t forget to use the code ZENPILOT at checkout for $400 off.

As an agency owner, are you carefully managing your family’s #1 financial asset?

You work with a financial planner to optimize your retirement portfolio, and you hired a CPA to help cut your tax bill. 

But for most independent agency owners, their agency is likely their family’s #1 or #2 financial asset. After all, what else is producing 6-7 figures in annual income—plus a potential 7- or 8-figure payday?

Fortunately, you can learn the ins and outs of managing your exit, from M&A insiders and agency owners who exited—and then take steps today to control (and maximize) your agency exit.

How? Join agency advisor Karl Sakas and exited agency owner Mike Belasco for their new 3-part workshop in October 2024: How to Control (and Maximize) Your Agency Exit.

Save $400 by using the discount code ZENPILOT at checkout. Sessions are two hours a week on Wednesdays in October, plus recordings if you’re away.

👉 Learn more here.

In-Flight Magazine

🛫 New from ZenPilot

Here’s our latest content for you to enjoy.

Podcasts:

• [Agency Journey] How to Get More Money Per Client Without Doing More Work with Raul Hernandez Ochoa
• [Agency Journey] How to Win and Manage Enterprise Clients with Alex Birkett

Videos from our YouTube channel:

• The Best Way to Structure Tasks in ClickUp
• How To Send Emails From ClickUp
• [Webinar replay] The COO Survival Guide: How to Nail the Hardest Parts of Leading Ops with Shawn Moudry

On The Radar

🧠 Content from the ZenPilot network

Here’s some inspiration from our Pilots on social media.

⚾ From our CEO Gray:

• Most agencies should be paying way more attention to their project management. Here’s 4 reasons why.
• On the kind of data you should be able to pull out of your project management software to inform your leadership's decisions.
• 10 factors that are holding back agencies from spreading their wings.

🧑‍🏫 Jeff is back on LinkedIn, and he's back with a banger: 

• The biggest mistake teams make when it comes to structuring tasks in ClickUp. If you're using multiple assignees or relying on task status to track project progress, this is a must-see for you.

🎸 From yours truly:

• I made a really important change on my LinkedIn profile and nobody noticed so I posted about it and it turned into my most-commented post in weeks. 🦇
• Agency Journey hit a nice round milestone of downloads recently! (Though Gray took to the comments to correct the record and remind me this number is only since we switched to Transistor.)
• Struggling with networking conversations? Here's a stupid simple framework I learned from Kurt Schmidt to make them easy.
• Simple tools to run a 150+ remote agency. This clip from Agency Journey with Zach Boyette was a real hit with people.
• Finally, if you want to write more on LinkedIn yourself, I shared a heap of prompts I use to get myself unstuck and break through writer's block.

And how have you been? What would you like to see more/less of in this newsletter? Let me know in an email reply. Or add me on LinkedIn and let’s chat.