How to Create a Digital Brain for Your Agency and Scale Smarter with Shawn Johnston | Ep #807 Podcast Por arte de portada

How to Create a Digital Brain for Your Agency and Scale Smarter with Shawn Johnston | Ep #807

How to Create a Digital Brain for Your Agency and Scale Smarter with Shawn Johnston | Ep #807

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 Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training How does a print designer become the founder of a thriving strategic web agency? Spoiler: It wasn’t all smooth sailing. But this agency founder figured out how to stop being the bottleneck, leverage systems and AI, and make his agency way more profitable along the way. It all began by creating a digital brain for his agency. In this episode, Shawn Johnston, owner of Forge and Smith, a Vancouver-based agency shares how he’s been building bespoke WordPress sites for 13+ years. He’ll share his story—and some seriously smart tips for agency owners looking to scale and create more freedom in their agency. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why documenting your processes is key to scaling How to use AI to build a “digital brain” for your agency How to step out of day-to-day work and empower your team Tips for focusing your team on high-value, strategic work Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. From Print Design to Web Agency Owner Like a lot of us, Shawn didn’t set out to build an agency. He started as a print designer back in 1996, cranking out newspaper ads when CSS came on the scene, sparking heated debate at the office over whether it would change the internet or not. Shawn got curious, taught himself to code, and started building sites on the side. What started as a hobby turned into freelancing… and when the 2008 housing collapse hit, he went all in. He hustled hard on Craigslist, building $1,500 WordPress sites and quickly realizing he was making more than his day job. This gave way to his first lesson in business: Hustle works early on, but you can’t scale without systems. When He Knew It Was a “Real” Agency Starting out, Shawn was able to handle all the WordPress development, design, and strategy by himself. By setting up some repeatable pieces, he was able to grow his client list, with some of them coming back for site support. As projects stacked up, however, he hit a wall: He couldn’t sell, deliver, and support all at once. He decided his first hire would handle client support, so he could free up time for higher-value work. From there, he slowly backed himself out of development… then strategy… then design - replacing himself piece by piece. Of course, this didn’t automatically erase all the agency’s problems. Initially, it only created a new set challenges. Adding new pieces to the team made their lack of documented processes very clear. For a while, the handoff confusion created meant everything continued to run through Shawn... The real issue was that there was too much knowledge trapped in his head. Why Documented Processes Are the Key to Scaling The obvious solution was to start documenting everything from UX components to strategy guides to build quality standards. From that point on, everyone knew who was responsible for what and at what point. The goal wasn’t to limit creativity but to empower the team to make smart decisions without running to Shawn for answers. For Shawn, a focal point of this shift had to be underlying the agency’s why. Everyone on the team had to be very clear on: Why do we work with clients the way we do? Why are we doing things this way and not that way? Making sure everyone understood the overall goals would inform the decision-making, cultural aspects, and would help the team work cohesively. Documented systems = freedom for you and clarity for your team. Win-win. The Next Step: Creating a ‘Digital Brain’ for Your Team Fast forward to today, and Shawn is using AI to level up even more. He records and transcribes sales calls, discovery calls, and proposal work—then synthesizes it into a knowledge base his team can actually use. No more “Shawn said this one thing on a call” confusion mid-project. The team can look back at the records and apply direction to move forward without him. We’ve talked about the next step with AI for agency owners: train an AI assistant on your agency’s entire knowledge base. That means training it with everything you have in your knowledge bank, including: Past client insights Brand guidelines Design patterns Sales conversations Internal processes Apply these practices ASAP so that your team can tap that knowledge instantly — without pinging you for answers. Think of it as your agency’s “digital brain” and the key to your freedom. Why Low-Code + Prebuilt Systems Are Boosting Profits One of Shawn’s smartest moves has been leaning hard into reusable systems and low-code tools. He’s baked strategy into UX ...
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