Hello, hello, hello, friend!

And welcome back to First Class Operations!

This is your Captain Kuba speaking.

Today I’m feeling envious.

All the cool kids at ZenPilot (Gray, Andrew, Maggie, Jeff) are going to INBOUND (here’s how you can meet with them if you’ll be attending).

Meanwhile I’m sitting here in increasingly more autumn-y Poland…

…and my humble contribution to the conference is that I get to send out First Class Operations right when it begins.

If you’re at INBOUND and reading this, send pics!

Meanwhile, here’s a fresh package of insights to help your agency win by way of superior operations.

The soundtrack for this edition of First Class Operations is 1 hour of dark ambient choir and strings music inspired by Warhammer 40k by Brazilian composer Allan Ariza. I used to listen to normal songs at one point in my life. But now these strange YouTube mixes have completely taken over.

Captain's Address

🤝 5 questions to use when networking

So, how can I help you get the most ouf of INBOUND (or any other networking efforts) from way over here in Central Europe?

How about by sharing some great networking questions?

Sourced from my own experience + some best practices from around the web.

Here they go:

1. "Where are you from?"

Seems basic, but this one is sneaky.

You’ll hear one of two types of answers:

1. I work at [name of a company]
2. I’m from [name of a city]

Based on the answer, you’ll know whether the person is more interested in talking about work or about personal stuff.

Super useful to feel this out in a subtle way.

2. "What’s your story?"

This one is deliciously vague; it’s fun to find out where the other person goes with it.

Do they tell you about how they landed their job?

Do they talk about their passions and hobbies, and how they fit into where they are today?

Or perhaps they’ll tell you about moving states, moving countries?

Or undergoing a personal transformation?

This can open all sorts of conversations.

Another tip is to have a good answer for this question yourself.

Maybe think of the different roles you transitioned through (e.g. “from English tutor to public speaker to content marketer”).

Or you could contrast two different points in your life. For example: “10 years ago, I was studying English and writing NaNoWriMo novels. Now, I build content marketing strategies, help agencies fix chaotic project management, and play bass in a metal band.”

3. "What was one of the highlights of your career?"

Talking about peak moments accomplishes a few things at once.

It gives you an idea of what the other person is best at; you learn about their superpowers that you should keep on file in case someone else from your network needs those powers for their business.

This question also gets people excited. I don’t know about you, but I quite like talking about my accomplishments; it makes me feel good about myself.

And if it’s true that people will remember how you make them feel…

…then you want to make them feel good about themselves.

It gives you a chance to form a stronger connection.

Bonus: You could also ask about life highlights outside of their career—either later in the conversation or to connect on a more personal level more quickly.

4. Active listening

“Hey, that’s not a question!”

It may not be, but it’s key to keeping the conversation going and making the other person feel like you’re a great person to talk with (which is what people feel when you listen to them more than you talk).

Here are two quick and easy tips to do more active listening:

1) Repeat their last few words when they stop speaking.

A: “So what do you do?”

B: “I write newsletters, craft content strategies, and co-host a podcast.”

A: “You co-host a podcast?”

B: “Yeah, have you heard of Agency Breakthrough?”

This gives the other person permission to continue to tell you more about themselves in a natural way.

2) Use “it sounds like” / “it feels like” to reflect their feelings back on them.

Continuing from the previous example…

B: “It’s a storytelling podcast about agency operators who found a way to break through plateaus and achieve (their definition of) success. I already had a chance to interview Marcus Sheridan and James Carbary for this podcast; I’ve admired them for years.”

A: It sounds like you’re really excited about this podcast.

B: No kidding! It all started when…

You’d be surprised how deep you can get into someone’s world by just using these two techniques.

5. "Who (or what) are you looking for?" / "Who should I be looking to connect you with?"

At the end of the day, networking is about making connections.

So what I like to do is to always find out what the other person is looking for.

Sure, sometimes you’ll hear about what types of clients they’re looking for.

But maybe they’re also looking for a VA. Or a good accountant. Or a real estate consultant.

If you know who they’re looking for, you’ll be able to help them get ahead.

Which makes it much more likely they’ll help you when the time comes!

(And by the way, if your answer to the “Who are you looking for?” question is “I’m looking for someone who can help our agency standardize our processes and build visibility into our workload”, check out what ZenPilot can do for ya.” Because fixing chaotic agency project management is what we do.)

In-Flight Announcement

📊 The State of Client-Agency Collaboration Survey with our friends at Databox

ithHave you ever wondered: 

🤝 What steps are included in other agencies’ client onboarding processes?

🤝 When do other agencies first set numeric goals with clients, and how many do they set?

🤝 How frequently do other agencies revisit a client's strategy?

🤝 How much do other agencies’ clients pay them per year on average?

🤝 Which model is the most popular at other agencies: fixed-fee retainers, fixed-fee projects, or hourly-based work?

What if I told you there’s a way to find out about that—and much more—from 300+ agencies worldwide?

That’s the kind of intel you’ll get from completing the State of Client-Agency Collaboration Survey, a project with our friends over at Databox.

Fill out the State of Client-Agency Collaboration Survey to get instant access to the anonymous survey results thus far. 

Here’s a sneak peek into the data in the survey:

When asked “How often do you reset goals because they've proved too difficult to reach?”, agencies answered:

👍 Rarely – 35%

🤔 Sometimes – 56%

🙃 Frequently – 6%

😬 All the time [yikes!] – 2%

Get more insights like this by filling out the survey.

And share it with other agencies in your network!

In-Flight Magazine

🛫 New from the ZenPilot blog

[Podcast] Agency Breakthrough Ep. 4 with Nikole Rose: What it takes to scale and sell an agency (+ tips on culture and ROWEs)

"I see way too many agencies stay comfortable. They stay in their lane: ‘Let's just focus on the next client, the next piece of work’... And there's just so, so much more opportunity out there if you're willing to just take more risks and expand." – Nikole Rose 

Episode 4 of Agency Breakthrough is out!

If you feel like you need a kick in the butt to think bigger about your agency, this one is perfect for you.

Also if you’re thinking about either making an acquisition or an exit.

In this episode we talked with Nikole Rose, Managing Partner at Gravity Global (the most awarded B2B agency in the world, 500+ strong), about her journey going from starting an agency to selling it just over a year ago.

Nikole shares the key breakthrough moments that allowed her agency Mojo Media Labs to scale and successfully exit, including:

🍏 Making the courageous decision to go all in on inbound marketing in 2012 despite it being unproven at the time

🍏 Being the first agency partner for Terminus and betting big on ABM very early

🍏 Taking risks with culture like open book management and ROWE (Results Only Work Environment)

🍏 Making acquisitions of other agencies to accelerate growth

🍏 Working with ZenPilot to become more process-driven using ClickUp 🙌

🍏 And more!

Nikole shares experience-based tips on change management; M&A conversations; evaluating tools and platforms; and the mindset required to make courageous decisions that break you out of your comfort zone.

📺 Watch the full video episode here!

📻 Listen to the audio episode here or on your favorite podcast platform.

[Podcast] Agency Journey: How to Build a Resilient and Empowered Company Culture with Mark Abbott

Struggling to get your team aligned on goals and metrics? Wish your company culture was more productive and humane? 

Mark Abbott, founder and CEO of Ninety, shares the how-to and the importance of implementing tools to empower employees and build a resilient organization.

In this episode, Mark discusses the specifics of designing effective scorecards, setting targets vs goals, getting team member buy-in, and more.

Watch and listen to this episode here.

[Client Story] Venn Digital Marketing Sees Profitability Soar After Making a Pivotal Business Decision

Venn Digital Marketing is a 2-year old marketing agency providing email marketing, PPC, and SEO services to a variety of small businesses in the legal, coaching, consulting, and SaaS spaces.

As a HubSpot partner, Venn Digital helps small businesses design, develop, and streamline a full customer lifecycle program to drive revenue growth.

Despite their success and continued growth, the agency was dealing with a chaotic project management system.

“We had a project management system that we struggled to formalize and get buy-in for adoption. 

“As a result, repeated tasks had to be constantly recreated and projects fell behind, leading to a dip in project execution and client satisfaction.” – Matt Guevara, Founder @ Venn Digital Marketing

Read the full story of how Matt and his team went from a system that “just wasn’t working” in Basecamp to not only fixing their project management, but also identifying the niche they were in wasn’t working, and moving to a new one that was much more profitable.

Read the Venn Digital story here.

[Video] Supercharge Your Workflow with ClickUp Docs: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Our Friendly Neighborhood Client Coach Maggie is back with an in-depth video tutorial on how to get the most out of ClickUp Docs.

Maggie takes you through:

📄 What ClickUp Docs are, when and why you should use them

📄 Creating, formatting, and structuring docs for clarity

📄 Using features like checklists, banners, and templates to standardize and scale your processes

📄 Generating text with AI and easily converting docs into tasks

📄 Linking Docs to other work in ClickUp to improve context

📄 Exporting finished docs and securely sharing them as polished deliverables

Watch the full tutorial here to step up your Docs game!

[Video] Internal Marketing Team at LegalZoom Transforms Creative Operations with ZenPilot

We love agencies, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have great insights to share to help internal marketing teams as well.

In this video Melanie Brooke, Principal, Creative Operations at LegalZoom, shares her experience on working with the ZenPilot team.

In her own words:

“I am so grateful that I found ZenPilot—because what I desperately needed to find was a group of people who understood ClickUp in and out and understood the best practices of project organization and creative team management across not only projects but also out of office and data about the team.

“Really a way to utilize all that information, organize it in a tool, and pull data from it in a way that is effective and helpful.

“I'm so, so, so grateful that ZenPilot exists.

“Working with them was a dream.”

Watch the full video here.

On The Radar

🧠 Content from the ZenPilot network

Here’s some inspiration from our Pilots and other places on the web.

🌐 From outside of ZenPilot:

• Rand Fishkin: Why the Worst Search Marketers Start Content Strategy with “SEO Keywords” — 5-Minute Whiteboard. Agencies get called out in this one… Perhaps for good reason.
• From Joseph Lewin: “Here is a ridiculously easy way to create video content [for LinkedIn] fast without needing deep subject matter expertise.”
• Are you following Christopher Tester yet? My favorite voiceover artist on LinkedIn for sure. Here’s his post about range and putting your most interesting foot forward (with a killer impression of Warboss Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka).
• "We invested $100k into our content this year, but what has it returned?" Emir Atli shares the exact playbook (incl. an email template!) for how to show the ROI of content; it’s from an in-house perspective but transferable to the agency context too.
• Jordan Chappell shares an easy-to-use, 4-step template for hooks for Facebook ads.
• From our buddy Logan Lyles: “2 ways to write the show notes for your podcast episodes: 1. Let AI do it, or…”

✈️ From within ZenPilot:

• Maggie got promoted to Team Lead! Give her a ❤️ if you haven’t already.
• Want more and better ideas for what to post on LinkedIn? Create a “lesson plan” for what you want to teach, breaking topics down into individual lessons, and create content based on that. This is an idea that Ian from our marketing team recently shared with me on a call, and it was so cool I wanted to share it with y’all.

🧑‍🏫 From Jeff:

• “Combining the power of AI with beautiful process, templates, and documentation will make you 10x more productive, guaranteed.” Jeff’s take on AI in a recent podcast clip.
• “You need to make sure your project managers will have an accurate view of workload and they can easily remap due dates and reassign work when necessary.” Jeff shares how to do it in ClickUp.

🎸 From yours truly:

• “Podcasting got super popular in B2B marketing. So why does podcast pioneer James Carbary say podcasts aren’t enough on their own?”

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

One question for you before you go though…

How am I doing? It would mean the world to me if you could let me know what you would like to see more/less of in this newsletter.