THE SUCCESS STORIES

 

How a Full Consult helped Ally Anderson scale her business & make her services more profitable.

 
 

THE CLIENT

ally anderson

Marketing consultant. Data leverager.


OWNER & LEAD STRATAGIST
AT AKARI DIGITAL

With 10+ years of experience in marketing, Ally and her team at Akari Digital are determined to help business owners and marketers leverage marketing data, so they understand how to strengthen their marketing strategies, maximize their impact, and stay on budget.

The Pain Points

Pain Points
A long client waitlist

“My business had been fully booked out for a year and a half, if not longer, and I knew I needed to grow and scale. I needed to hire people and wanted a small, nimble team supporting me within the next two years.”

Akari’s client waitlist was long and getting longer, and Ally knew that to properly service these clients and generate more income, she needed additional staff support. Experts she could rely on to help her manage multiple projects all at once.

Tight on time, unclear on strategy

“I wanted to grow and hire, but I also wanted to be set up for success. I’d been in negative situations before, where people had been hired before the business was ready for them. So I wanted this to be a positive hiring experience that didn’t waste time or money.”

With many client projects on her plate already, Ally wanted to ensure that when she hired new staff, she was well prepared to do so. In addition, she wanted to clarify the roles she needed to fill, how onboarding and training would flow, and what the fiscal impact would be.

No clear vision for the future

“I initially came to Sara to support me with HR, but after talking with her, it also became clear that I wasn’t looking far enough in advance for my business — I didn’t have a 5 or 10-year plan.”

Ally found herself gravitating to client work because she felt unsure of what she needed to do to grow her business. She needed clear long-term goals aligned with her values and bigger mission within the company. This clarity allows her to work on the business easily rather than being frustrated and stuck working in it.

Structuring services & defining boundaries

“Life wasn’t feeling joyous. I was taking on projects that I didn’t necessarily want to be doing anymore and was always checking emails because I knew if I wasn’t connected at all times to my business, it would fail”

Ally was feeling lost and alone. She was doing work and making money but was overworking herself and experiencing costly scope creep because she felt unable to set clear boundaries.

WHY SARA

 

The Selection Process

“I knew I didn’t want a one-size-fits-all solution and Sara doesn’t offer those. I also knew HR was a priority and I needed someone that could bring expertise to the hiring process & make it successful for everyone involved — so Sara’s vast experience with hiring and training was a big sell.”

 

THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION THE SOLUTION

THE SOLUTION

A completely custom consult focused on results & backed up by the numbers

Ally’s custom consult included work on:
Long Term Goals • Mission Statement & Values • Ideal Clients • Service Offerings • Day-to-Day Operations • Financial Projections • Staffing Projections • Defining Roles • Hiring & Onboarding Documents

The Process

  • Our first session involved an internal analysis to see how Ally and Akari were currently functioning. This helped us understand where additional staff support was needed, get clear on workflows, and curate a personalized action plan that delivered impactful results.

    • Ally had positioned herself to be the biggest bottleneck in her business. Every task required her direct input, and that needed to change if she wanted to empower new staff, grow her business, and take on more work.

    • She also lacked a clear vision of who her ideal client was and what the long-term goals should be for her business — important things to know to keep your team organized and energized.

  • Every business is different, so it was important that we develop a program that was tailored to Ally and Akari’s unique needs and supported her current and future teams’ strengths.

    • It was important that we solidify service scope to ensure project profitability and curate each service to a specific client type so they become easier to sell, manage, and deliver.

    • We also needed to define job roles, pay rates, onboarding and training procedures, and workflows for new hires, so the hiring process is more streamlined and effective.

    • Finally, Ally needed a big picture plan and guidelines for making future decisions so the time she spends working on her business is constructive and never feels aimless.

  • We met bi-weekly to work through her program.

    • We defined Akari’s ideal client, how to validate who this person is, and what their experience working with Akari should feel like so we could better evaluate the effectiveness of Ally’s service offerings.

    • We changed the structure and flow of services significantly and created a ‘business overview’ board that clearly outlines Akari’s mission statement, values, ideal client, and workflows and deliverables for every service.

    • We developed a detailed 6-month operational plan that worked with Ally’s schedule and outlined key dates and milestones, making to easy to follow.

    • We used Akari’s existing operational data to get a handle on trends in the business and what conversions up until then had been like, so we could create realistic financial projections for 2023.

    • We defined new job roles for Akari and created job descriptions, training materials, and onboarding procedures that are helpful to new staff while being easy to initialize and replicate.

    • And we ran the numbers to assess how many new hires Akari needed in each role to execute on the sales projected for 2023.

  • We wrapped by setting Ally up with a personal database that organized the work we’d done together into one central place and set her up with clear next steps to action her hiring and onboarding goals.

    • This database included a set of guidelines that would help Ally align future choices with existing values and goals so she feels confident making decisions in her business.

    • Everything Ally needs to create her new services, test ideal clients, manage marketing operations, define her organizational chart, and start her hiring and onboarding process is available in just a click so all she needs to focus on is doing the work, not organizing it.

 
 

THE RESULTS

“I feel more productive and have made more moves with my business in the last two months than I have in the past year. I’m experiencing way less scope creep, have clearer deliverables and boundaries, and it’s taking me less time to do work than ever”

Ally’s biggest takeaways

 

Akari’s services are more profitable, can be completed faster, and are better matched to the needs of Ally’s ideal clients — making them easier to sell.

She has a model for her business that is informed by data, alignment with long-term goals, and adds flexibility into her timelines so she can spend more time working on her business rather than in it.

She has an HR model that is clear, scalable and which includes job descriptions and onboarding plans so she can pull the trigger on hiring with very little prep work.

She has a clear vision of what her business will look like in 10 years and has found it easier to make decisions for her business because she now understands how to align her choices with her values and goals.

“Sara has completely changed the trajectory of my business and I couldn’t be more excited”

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