Hello, hello, hello, friend!

And welcome back to First Class Operations!

This is your Captain Kuba speaking.

This week has been full of excitement.

I celebrated my birthday on Tuesday with a special announcement…

…that announcement being that I’m taking over the Agency Journey podcast as its new host!

Big, big shoes to fill taking the reins from Gray MacKenzie.

Super stoked to get into it.

But there’ll be time to talk about Agency Journey changes yet.

You’re here for a fresh infusion of agency operator insights, and I’m here to deliver!

The soundtrack for this edition of First Class Operations is Always by Erasure. AKA, the type of music Kuba’s doom metal band listens to at 2am after playing a successful gig last Sunday. (We’ve even got some good recordings from this one; reply/DM me if you want them!)

Captain's Address

⏳ Time budgets.

As a gamer, I know one rule is true above all else:

Nothing gets you to focus quite like a time attack round.

That running timer gets your brain running full speed.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with a related technique that I call “time budgeting”.

The genesis of it is this:

It doesn’t matter what quality of work you can produce.

What actually matters is the quality of work you can produce in a reasonable amount of time.

For your next project or task, try setting a timer—for one hour, let’s say.

That’s your time budget.

Can you get it done within the budget?

Or you can look at your whole work day through that lens.

Set a 5-hour, 6-hour timer at the beginning of your work day.

(Probably not 8; I haven’t met anyone who can go non-stop for 8 hours.)

Can you get your most important work done within that budget?

What would you have to change to achieve the same results with less budget spent?

This mental reframe has revealed a ton of insights for me:

⏳ There are activities that consume hours from my budget without bringing proportional results. Those should be minimized.

⏳ Some activities are quite “cheap” from a time budget experience, yet lead to strong results. Need to find more like that.

⏳ Being honest about when my work timer is running vs. not running brings clarity. It helps me focus on work when I’m working, and properly rest when I’m taking a break.

Sending this to an audience of agency operators, perhaps I’m not saying anything revolutionary.

After all, we’re all trying to deliver client services to the highest standard while burning the least amount of hours on our team.

But for personal productivity, this feels quite fresh for me.

Maybe it’ll help one of you out there.

Want to make sure your team is spending its time well? Want to see clearly where that time is being spent? It’s easy to do with a unified work management system built on top of ClickUp. ZenPilot has the best team in the world to build a system like that for you. Our process starts with a free call with our team to assess your current work system and find ways to create more clarity and eliminate wasteful activities.

In-Flight Announcement

🗓️🧑‍✈️ How to Build a CRM in ClickUp webinar + we’re hiring a new Client Coach!

Our next webinar is already open for sign-ups! Plus, we’re hiring.

[Webinar invite] How to Build a CRM in ClickUp (With ClickUp's #1 Solutions Partner)

ClickUp is not only one of the most full-featured PM platforms on the planet—it’s also still rapidly growing.

Adding new functionality layers nearly every week, including some really cool and useful AI features.

So it becomes a challenge in itself to stay up to date on everything that ClickUp can do to help you track work, ensure accountability, and vastly accelerate information flow within your company.

Which is why we're organizing this deep-dive webinar into ClickUp 3.0 to show you the cutting edge of what ClickUp can do today! 

We'll be diving into new and exciting ClickUp features like:

🦄 ClickUp Brain, AI Knowledge Manager, and AI Project Manager,

🦄 Custom Commands,

🦄 The Custom Field Manager,

🦄 And other features you might be curious about, based on Q&A with our audience.

Your guide will be Jeff Cypher, Productivity Professor and one of the best ClickUp teachers on the web.

Get all your questions answered about the latest and greatest that ClickUp has to offer.

👉 Sign up here.

✨

[ZenPilot Careers] We’re recruiting for a new Client Coach!

Every once in a while (especially after our events), I get DMs from ClickUp enthusiasts.

They’re asking if there’s an opening to join the ZenPilot team.

So far, I’ve had to turn them away…

But today, that changes!

I’m happy to share we’re hiring for ZenPilot’s new Client Coach.

The role is all about leading our clients to ClickUp success:

🤝 helping them set up the workspace, 

🤝 executing training, 

🤝 instilling good habits, 

🤝 answering questions,

🙌 and cheering teams on as they go through their ClickUp transformation.

You should be obsessed with helping clients find value as fast as possible, be known for over-communicating, and naturally set clear expectations and live up to those expectations.

You'll be the type of hyper-organized person who is motivated to keep everyone on schedule, on the same page, and moving forward.

And, most of all, you should truly enjoy helping people transform their scattered processes into an air-tight system that enables them to continue growing their businesses.

If that sounds like you, we’d love to meet you.

👉 Apply here!

In-Flight Magazine

🛫 New from ZenPilot

Whether you want to learn about consulting for equity, integrating Slack and ClickUp, or get inspiring excerpts from Agency Journey, our latest batch of content has got you covered.

Podcasts:

• [Agency Journey] Fixing Underperforming Businesses, Crafting Equity Deals, and Reclaiming Time with Casey Cavell. Casey is a serial entrepreneur who’s built a $40,000,000 portfolio from a $9,000 investment by founding, buying, or investing in dozens of small businesses over the last two decades. He goes deep on a lot of the nitty-gritty of how entrepreneurs can grow wealth, optimize their business, and make it less reliant on their direct involvement.

Videos from our Productivity Professor Jeff:

• The Best Ways to Use the Clickup + Slack Integration. “Should we put this info on ClickUp or Slack?” If I had a dollar every time I heard this question… Let’s just say I’d be pretty close to buying that new bass. But now Jeff is here to teach you how to make the two platforms play nicely together.

Blogs:

• If you want to get the best bits of Agency Journey episodes, I’m regularly publishing short blog posts with the most impactful excerpts and quotes from them:
• How to Grow an Agency by Becoming Optional, Leadership Training, and Building Personal Warmth (feat. Karl Sakas)
• How to Sustainably Grow a Creative Agency with Humble Experts and Utilization Spreadsheets (feat. Arianne Foulks)
• How to Grow an Agency With a Smart YouTube Strategy, an Owner Mindset, and an Intentional Leadership Style (feat. Ali Schwanke)
• How to Use Boundaries and Priorities to Grow an Agency That Fits Your Life (feat. Carlos Hidalgo)

ZenPilot products:

• Our Profitability Reporting dashboard suite just got a spiffy new product page. I’ll be honest: this is probably some of the most impressive stuff we’ve built on top of ClickUp. If you can’t accurately measure your teams’ available capacity or the profitability of your service lines and client engagements, this is the perfect solution.

On The Radar

🧠 Content from the ZenPilot network

Life has many twists and turns. Last time, we didn’t have any links from our Pilots. This time around… It’s all Pilots!

⚾ Gray posted a couple big ones:

• Introducing our new COO/Integrator, Shawn Moudry!
• Details on our newly opened Client Coach job position.

🧑‍🏫 Jeff went on a posting spree:

• Started a discussion on ClickUp vs monday.com—jump in to discuss the pros and cons of each.
• Shared how to set up a ClickUp Custom Command, step by step.
• "I'll be honest, I don't use the Goals feature..." Here's a better way to track goals, KPIs, or OKRs in ClickUp.
• Sick of typing out meeting notes? Here's a way ClickUp Brain can speed it up a lot.
• Jeff makes a case for why account managers should be keeping their client notes in ClickUp. (Feeding ClickUp Brain is one reason but not the only one.)

🎸 And yours truly shared some stuff too:

• My post announcing my new role as host of Agency Journey!
• Carlos Hidalgo shares his secret weapon for getting great work done while avoiding 14-hour days—an excerpt from his Agency Journey episode.
• To scale an agency and build a strong company, you need to grow out of the marketer mindset and start thinking like a business owner. Ali Schwanke shared about this on our pod, and I shared the best bits of it in this post.

And that's it for this edition of First Class Operations!

One question for you before you go though…

What do you look for in a podcast? Happy to hear your thoughts as I take over the reins on Agency Journey!