$200M In Revenue With "Mini Machines"

Read time: 3 minutes

Good Morning! This is the Agent Weekly. In 5 minutes, you’re going to learn:

• Mini-machines? ⚙️: How this entrepreneur built a $200M revenue business with tiny teams.

• Weekly Team Memo Template ✅: Here’s exact report used to remove herself from the business.

• Keep your standards, but lower your cost 💰: How to hire a management consultant for $2,500/month.

FEATURE

The 5-Step "Mini Machines" Playbook

Christine Carillo became the head of her household at 14. Unsurprisingly, that mindset led her to accomplish a lot as an entrepreneur:

• Built 3 businesses to $200M in revenue.

• Prioritizes living (e.g., Family, surfing, travel, etc.) & works wherever she damn chooses.

Christine sets herself apart by achieving massive amounts of productivity in minimal time.

Her secret?

Relentless systemization and leverage save her about 60% of her time.

Here’s the step-by-step to get started:

1. Create a map

2. Build Mini Machines

3. Layer in talent

4. Add leverage with technology

5. Continually iterate, automate, and simplify.

Step 1: Create A Map

The first step is mapping out the exact steps you take to achieve an outcome. You’ll often see opportunities to improve efficiency by just mapping out the process.

The best places to start are:

1. Who you sell to - How do you get in front of customers today? Are there systems you can build to create efficiency in this process?

2. How do you fulfill it - What steps are required to fulfill the service? Is there a repeatable process?

For Example:

When Christine was building Butler Health, a therapist-matching service, she needed to get ahold of therapists.

• Level 1: She started by reaching out to therapists from popular sites like Psychology Today, putting them into a spreadsheet, and having her team pull contact information.

• Level 2: Over time, they built a screen scraper to automatically pull the name, practice, and contact information for therapists from popular listing sites.

This process automated the company's lead generation and allowed them to scale much faster. For context, the company was profitable within 1.5 months of launching.

Step 2: Build Mini Machines

A map will eventually become a mini-machine. In short, a system takes an input and drives to a consistent output in a highly efficient way.

Here’s an example of a communications mini machine.

Each week, Christine sends a team memo outlining exactly what her companies need to do to move the company forward, with or without her.

By reading her memo, the team knows:

• What to work on

• Whats a priority & why

• How to make decisions without any input

The secret is that these memos only took Christine 15-minutes to make.

Step 3: Layer In Talent

You can only do so much before you burn out and your business begins to plateau.

One way to give yourself leverage is to outsource your processes to intelligent and capable people.

Christine has mastered sourcing low-cost, high-quality talent by looking offshore.

If you need help with this, feel free to lean on us at Agent. Reply to this email about a specific role and we can answer any of your global talent questions. 

Train your remote talent to run the playbooks and mini machines you developed in the first few steps.

Step 4: Leverage A Tech Stack

Tools are critical to building a tiny team with massive output. The heuristic here is that the easier someone’s job is to do, the faster they can do it.

Simplify the touch points for everyone to reduce stress on the stack and make it as seamless as possible.

Here are some of the tools Christine’s companies use:

• Notion - an all-in-one workspace for note taking, knowledge and data management, and project and task management.

• Air Table - a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Christine uses this to power their CRM.

• Zapier - automate workflows.

• Missive - Email collaboration across her companies.

• Loom - a quick and easy way to film, record videos, and share notes.

Step 5: Iterate, Automate, & Simplify

This is the secret sauce and is more art than science.

When a business grows, it will inevitably take on fat. Something sneaks into your tech stack because of shiny object syndrome. People get added to the team to deal with problems at scale. The list goes on and on.

Most companies keep the bloat and plateau - struggling to feed what is slowly becoming a bureaucracy.

To have a small team, you must take a breath and create automation machines around the fat and trim.

Over time, your mini-machines will compound to create a highly efficient execution machine.

When Butler health started to grow, 10 people were vetting the demand side of the marketplace.

Christine automated this as soon as possible with machine learning and cut the vetting team by ten people.

The result?

A hyper-efficient & small team.

Now, Christine works on projects she loves, takes vacations, gets paid, and has a life.

TALENT SUCCESS STORY

How A Business Strategy Firm Found Their New Project Manager

Our Austin-based client, a leading business strategy firm specializing in government contracts and grants, needed a seasoned project manager to drive success. We introduced them to Bernard, a seasoned expert with over 10 years of experience in project management, management consulting, and process optimization, most recently at a prominent Brazil-based consulting firm.

In his new role, Bernard is spearheading complex grant and contract pursuits, leveraging his expertise to deliver results. His responsibilities include:

• Leading Multiple Projects: Overseeing business strategy, government grants, and contracts.

• Stakeholder Management: Coordinating with diverse stakeholders and virtual teams.

• Research & Insights: Conducting rapid research to provide actionable insights.

• Presentation Development: Crafting compelling presentations using PowerPoint and Google Slides.

• Project Management: Managing timelines, resources, and budgets for timely completion.

• Risk Mitigation: Proactively addressing potential issues to ensure project success.

With Bernard on board, our client is poised to excel in the competitive landscape of government contracts and grants.