#48 Maxwell Hertan – Working Once A Week While Managing 200+ Clients

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In this episode of the Sugatan Effect, Deividas is joined by Maxwell Hertan – entrepreneur and founder of Megaphone marketing, a digital agency he started 7 years ago and now consists of 60+ members.

With introductions out of the way, Deividas jumps straight into the action and wants to know:

How DOES Max work only 1 day per week on Megaphone Marketing while managing 50+ people and 200+ clients?

There’s a lot to it, says Max. When he first started Megaphone agency, he wanted it to be big but didn’t know how it would fit into his lifestyle.

In the beginning, it was difficult.

He began by trying to spend as few days at the office as possible. So, it began with working only for 5 days, and then, he kept reducing the number of days so that he’d have to spend only 1 day working.

Easier said than done.

Of course, a lot of this comes down to hiring the right people so that you’re comfortable with letting go of control so they can run your business.

If anything, Max says, there’s an even bigger risk if you don’t hire and the risk if you don’t let go of control. To some degree, his main goal was finding really good people, empowering them to make decisions and be comfortable with making mistakes they could learn from.

With Max, the agency could have grown much quicker. But he didn’t step in to make those calls because he wanted to be more productive in the long-term.

So, here’s what he did instead…

When he was working 3 days a week, they were growing 100% faster year over year. When he stepped down to working 1-2 days a week, the growth fell down to 60%.

It’s still good growth, says Max but he was too busy thinking about the 5-10 year projection growth instead. In the long-run, it’s more beneficial to find the right people now and free up your team to work on external projects to move business faster anyway.

Max says this keeps him more engaged and productive.

If you have to hire and outsource in the next 5 years, why not do it now?

Max lets his team solve day-to-day problems while he takes his team to solve the bigger-picture problems in his business. That’s where he gets his energy from as an entrepreneur and what he’s constantly thinking about.

There’s a lot of factors to consider when it comes to scaling your business and making important decisions. And having a diverse set of interests can be really beneficial as a lot of the skills transfer.

Next topic: What is Max focusing on right now?

He just launched an eCommerce company 4-5 weeks ago that he’s been scaling up aggressively, while he’s learning random hobbies on the side that he used to practice on his YouTube channel.

One of the things that excite Max with Megaphone is that it’s more than just a company. It’s a community and a way of life. He loves the idea that his employees can go anywhere around the world and meet like-minded and growth-oriented people.

To grow internationally, he’s thinking about opening a new office in LA and having his whole team move there eventually.

For new employees, Max has a checklist for most things. From Facebook ads checklists to guidelines and best conversion-driven principles.

As they’re scaling and getting more employees, Max is trying to close the gap with growing people up to speed.

The next topic they discuss is self-development and philosophy. Most recently, Max’s favorite 2 books are: The Six Pillars of Self Esteem and The Fountainhead, which he uses as a roadmap on how to incorporate a lot of perfect-practices into life.

Next, the two discuss life coaches and daily structures.

Deividas says he got burned out trying to checklist his daily life into to-dos.

It’s more about the philosophy of who you are as a person than the specific strategy that you do with that, says Max.

He goes on to explain that his ‘Why’ is to act with integrity, produce a high-level of output, and become a person you’d admire.

For Deividas, it’s constantly changing. But his mission right now is to live life to the fullest, learn all the things he wants to learn, travel to all the places he wants to travel, aim for the stars and enjoy the ride.

Last question: What would be Max’s main area of expertise that he could give a Ted Talk on?

His answer: Skill acquisition.

Here’s what we cover during episode #48:

Meet Maxwell Hertan – entrepreneur and founder of Megaphone marketing, a digital agency he started 7 years ago and has been scaling since then
How Max works only 1 day per week at Megaphone agency while managing 50+ people and 200+ clients
Why Max kept reducing the number of working days in his week without harming his agency
How Max manages to have a long-term vision and thinks ahead 5-10 years into the future. Here’s how this keeps him more engaged and productive
How to hack management to hire high-quality people at a large scale operation while training them within a month
How Deividas and Max approach time management while using productivity blocks to get a lot of work done in 3-4 hours a day
Managing the managers: Makings sure they’re supported and empowered to do what they need to do
Being more analytical than statistical in your hiring process
Thinking big and scaling from $1M/year to $5M/year to above
What ADHD and the entrepreneur’s journey have in common
Scaling an eCommerce company with one hand and solving a Rubik’s cube with the other. Here’s how Max manages his time
Max’s superpower: Networking, being proactive with your outreach, and how Max approaches networking events
How Deividas approaches networking on Facebook to get on a call with just about anyone by following this simple process
How to always be giving value while networking
How Max scaled his agency through checklists and recording video philosophies while being mostly hands-off
The 80/20 rule and your business offering – here’s how to double down on what you’re good at and focus on the fundamentals. The 80 is your fundamentals and the 20 is experimenting
Self-development and how your philosophy on life is connected to your actions
Max’s 2 favorite books, how they help him incorporate a lot of perfect-practices into his daily life, and how they reflect his philosophy on life
Deividas and Max discuss life coaches and where/how to find one
Why integrity is aligned to happiness for Max
Why you start with your ‘Why’, values, goals, and structure around your goals – in that order
Concept of discomfort Olympics and how you can strategize around them as you become more successful
Routines, life structures, and checklist-ing your daily life
Discussing your ‘Why’ as an entrepreneur and how to find it. Here is Max’s ‘Why’ and Deividas’ mission to live life to the fullest
How to be conquering your ‘devil’ every day through transcendental meditation
Why Max would give a Ted Talk on skill acquisition if he were to, learning Spanish in a month, and parting thoughts on his YouTube channel and learning challenges