IAM605- CEO Develops and Implements Business Strategies

Armani is the Founder and CEO of F.A.C.E. The Agency Training & Consulting brings over 12 years of business and consulting experience within the public sector, private sector, and with entrepreneurs. She specializes in developing and implementing business strategies that cross technical and functional boundaries.

She spent the majority of her career as a senior training consultant advising companies on their organizational development strategies and strategic training initiatives to increase revenue. She has managed multi-million dollar portfolios and retooled programs for industry executives across the country.

• CEO Hack: Canva, LinkedIn, Every Door Direct Mail
• CEO Nugget: Build a strong foundation for your business
• CEO Defined: Chief Learning Officer

Website: https://www.face-theagency.com/

LinkedIn: Armani Diggs, M.A.
Facebook: F.A.C.E. The Agency
LinkedIn: F.A.C.E. The Agency
Instagram: facetheagency.co

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I Am CEO podcast

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very, very special guest on the show today. I have Armani Diggs of F.A.C.E the Agency Training and Consulting.

Armani, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Armani Diggs 0:40

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

No problem. First of all, what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Armani so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Armani is the founder and CEO of F.A.C.E the agency training and Consulting brings over 12 years of business and consultant experience within the public sector, private sector, and with entrepreneurs. She specializes in developing and implementing business strategies that cross technical and cross-functional boundaries.

She spent the majority of her career as a senior trainer consultant, advising companies on their organizational development strategies and strategic training initiatives to increase revenue. She has managed multimillion-dollar portfolios and retooled programs for industry executives across the country our money.

Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Armani Diggs 1:21

Absolutely. Welcome aboard.

Gresham Harkless 1:23

Awesome. I was doing so I wanted to kick everything off here a little bit more on what led you to get started. What's your CEO story? What brought you to where you are now?

Armani Diggs 1:31

Wow. Hopefully, you have enough time to hear. I've actually been in business for roughly a little over four years. On full-time. However, I started off as a corporate manager and the training and organization development field. I went to school for psychology and human resource development. That's how I got started. And so I pretty much studied the industry. And one of the things that I learned from one of my favorite professors while I was in graduate school was you know, I knew I wanted to be a consultant, but I didn't want I didn't know what in what arena.

So he told me to study training. Once I studied and mastered training, I just started to work with a lot of industry executives, and learn how they do business, it's very difficult from a woman's perspective, because we like to think about passion and purpose. And they told me, You know what, if you really want to make it in this industry, you got to think about what what you're going to bring to the person that you're actually going to service to.

That's how I got started in the industry. And I mastered it, I enjoyed it. I started off as a trainee consultant working my way up, and then governments who were corporate managers, and then I decided, You know what, it's time to make a move. And that's how I was able to branch out and do everything.

Gresham Harkless 2:34

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. It was, was there a reason that your professor said to focus on training?

Armani Diggs 2:41

Yeah, it's interesting, because if you ever look at, you know, how businesses are run the foundations of any business's training, you know, you have to be able to train your employees to do what does a great job, you also have to be able to train your employees and staff to be able to do their job and do their business. And so when you think about it, I never thought about how the connection between the two merged.

Now that we're in 2020, and the knowledge industry is booming, right now, if you notice every piece or element of a business, they do some form of training or courses or programs or online businesses. And so with that being said, that was probably the best and most solid advice that I can ever receive from someone to really be able to grow a company.

Gresham Harkless 3:17

Yeah, absolutely. It definitely sounds like it's a great place to kind of put your flag on and build your business and do all the awesome things you're doing too. And you're, you're absolutely right. When you look at the business, and you look at, you know, all the processes and systems that are in place, you have to get trained in order to figure out how to do that the culture and all of those things.

So I definitely appreciate you obviously, for doing it for business, but even breaking that down for us. So we kind of can understand, too. So I wanted to hear more about your company, and your organization, can you take us through exactly what you do for clients and what exactly that process looks like?

Armani Diggs 3:44

Sure, sure. So the industries that we serve, we serve the government and public sector as well as education and small business owners. We started off serving small business owners just to kind of get our feet wet before we went for the big, big dogs. And you know, as you you really matriculate with it throughout your career working in the government, there's only certain boundaries that you have before you actually step out on faith and say, You know what, it's time to go for the big contracts.

So what we started doing was helping small business owners create those programs where their business is to create passive income. So for example, if you offer a service as a consultant or a coach, how do I automate that to make sure that I can make money in my sleep? And I always tell my clients that you know, the tools, so very successful businesses, so one get from outside of the friends and families, and then for two, is to make sure that your business can operate without you. So, are you actually training your staff, or company on staff is able to run your business while you're sleeping?

With that in mind, we work with a lot of our small business owners to create those programs online so that it packages all their services together. And when it's time to go in and do that concierge coaching, they can do it at their own leisure and time. Once we went through that route, tested the formula tested all of our systems, we started to branch out into the contracting world. And so, again, that's our baby because most of our experts and consultants can't come from that world.

So we started to look at training and professional development contracts that we'll be able to secure to be able to long last our business. And those are one of the things that we do primarily, we do a lot of professional development. We also design a custom training. So anywhere between leadership training, executive coaching, as well as training for education businesses, that's one of the biggest things that we do as well. Our third component is the organization development and then the strategic management Consortium.

So we do a lot of streamlining for businesses that have no clue where to go next, to start to scale their services. And so we look at anything from organizational assessments, if they comply, by the way, compliance, for those of you who are not aware of that, if you create training or any type of online platform, and you have someone that may suffer from a disability, whether it's his hearing enabled, or they can't see they have visibility issues, those are software's that you can put in place so that nothing stops rolling.

So closed captioning for all of your training and courses, and then also to make sure that your graphics are aesthetically pleasing for people who have issues seeing. So we do all of that. And all that encompasses a pretty good foundation for the company, what we find is that people want to train but a lot of them don't know how. And so we look at all of the elements of what it takes to run a successful training program. And then lastly, we also do speaking engagements for individuals who want to come into this industry from a consulting perspective.

As you know, coaching is booming right now. And so with that being said, you know, a lot of people are walking away from the consulting because they feel like, okay, we put two people together in a group coaching, what else could we do to possibly streamline our process, but we focus on both. And so with that, in play, we've used a lot of those elements to make sure that we still are providing those tools for people to be able to provide professional consulting, as well as training for all of their clients and services. So we have a pretty large suite of services that we provide, but it also encompasses training and business development.

Gresham Harkless 6:53

Yeah, I love how you know exactly as you said as that common thread comes through everything that you're doing. And I also love the fact that you know, if it's somebody that may be stuck in doing everything within their business, and it's like a kind of made me a more startup mode or earlier entrepreneur, maybe they're, you know, costly on the hamster wheel, they're, they're not sure how to productize if that's the right word, their services and products.

But I think even if you are able to do that, and when you're able to do that you want to grow your team, your company, you want to create the kind of product that size of your processes as well, too, you guys can, you know, help out with that as well. So it knows no matter how small, or how large the company is, because a lot of times those smaller companies want to grow to those bigger companies or so on and so forth. But you have to be able to have in CNET vision.

Armani Diggs 7:38

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 7:40

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and it can be for you personally or for your business, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Armani Diggs 7:50

So it's funny that you asked that because people always ask me that question, how do you do it? And I always tell people that you know, to always want to have downtime. And so I put myself on the schedule, even that, you know, being in that nine to five realm, but put myself in the schedule. Whereas I know when I need to put down the phone when I need to take in calls when I need to outsource content, and when I need to outsource resources. I think a lot of times when we become CEOs, and we become owners of companies, we think we have to do everything.

A lot of the time we feel like if we do everything that makes us an expert, it makes us work harder versus smarter. So my secret sauce is to always be able to hire the right person to do the job. And so one of the things that I've learned working in corporate America is that, you know, people often confuse training and development, they're sisters, but they're not twins. And so with that in mind, it's always important to make sure if there's nothing that you don't know, don't try to figure out everything on your own, outsource the people to be able to be able to provide that service at an expertise level and that's what has made my company so unique. I get to my mom and my wife, and you still want to have that time to really have with your family. And so the difference between being solo solo entrepreneur to being a business owner is able to provide people the one resource and also jobs to be able to still fulfill that company's vision. And so that's one of the things that definitely has led us it set us apart is because you'll see that our team, we're beasts, we are specialty in the things that we do. We don't try to overcompensate for things we don't we don't have.

And I think one of the biggest things that's helped us move the company forward is that we love to partner with other agencies that provide services that we don't have. But in order for our clients to be successful, they will need that next-level service, for example, marketing. We don't provide marketing but in order for any of our programs to work, you need it. With that in play, we have a partnership with another firm that does strictly marketing, they are Excellent.

And what we do is we do referral partnerships for sale for every client that we receive and vice versa. We provide them with a percentage of the dues. And so that's what sets us apart. We're never always focused on income. We're focused on the outcome. You know what's going to make us successful. And so the success of any business is good testimonials. And that's what I would definitely tell anyone that's getting ready to make that leap, or there's already in that leap, but not figuring out per se, what's going to make them different and what's gonna stand them apart, the focus on outcome versus income is what's going to make you amazing.

Gresham Harkless 10:18

Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, you might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So that could be like an app, or a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient?

Armani Diggs 10:30

Um, Canva, Lord have mercy. Canva really paved the way, you know, it's one of the things that is one of those, those systems that we use and also slip text. A lot of times, I'll give you a prime example. This week, for some strange reason I'm blocked from Instagram, I have no clue what I did to Instagram. I'm like, Okay, what's going on? But guess what, the work never stopped, because we had all of our systems in place so that we could still nurture and engage with our clients. So I can see what's going on Instagram, but I can't engage with anyone right now. And I have no clue.

So I'm on the block for another week. And I'm like, Okay, what did I do? Was I too real? But you know, you know, our platform, we use a lot of SMS messaging. And then we use a lot of email marketing that has been the foundation of our company, because a lot of what we do, we are, we tend to attract a more mature and executive-based crowd. So with that in mind, we know which platform works best for us. And you know, we're not here to try to master them all. But what the heck came from me is LinkedIn, LinkedIn, believe it or not, LinkedIn. And everyday direct mail is what really catapulted our business.

Because, you know, people figure, okay, social media is here, do we still need to use snail mail? Yes, you do. Because you never know who's going to open up that postcard and say, wow, this person was in my head, I really need this service. So ever, for anyone who's not familiar with or who does not use everyday direct mail. It's a system that we use from a business perspective where we can identify, we can take a zip code, and identify businesses within that particular zip code and feed postcards to that business, those businesses.

And it's not very pricey, we spend roughly maybe around $1,000 a month doing that. And with that, we get a pretty good return on our investment. As I said, Our prices are our packages are priced very competitively, so we're not nickel and diming our services because it takes a lot of work for us to do it. So with that investment of the everyday direct mail, and then also with the slip tax, that has been a huge hack, because even though we've been blocked from Instagram for a week, we don't know why we still got in business.

Gresham Harkless 12:32

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self or maybe even a younger client?

Armani Diggs 12:43

You know, are my biggest tagline for everything that I'm doing, you know, outside of face agency on other companies for service base is my baby, I love it. Because it's the transformation that you provide to people, I always tell people to make sure you build a solid foundation for your brick house. And the reason why I say that is because a business can't stand with a broken Foundation. And so what I always tell people is to make sure you study your industry, make sure when you're actually trying to market to your client who you think it is, you're not marketing to yourself.

Gresham Harkless 13:14

I know you've touched on this as well, too but I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you, we're hoping to have kind of different, quote and quote, CEOs on the show. But what does that mean to you?

Armani Diggs 13:23

For us, because we're a learning platform, I like to associate myself as being the CLO, the chief learning officer. Because, you know, but like I said, prior to me coming into this business, I was a chief in employee development, I was a corporate manager. So I understood what it what it takes. But as the CEO of the company, I'm the CEO of the brand, I'm the CEO of the F.A.C.E. And so with that being said, I I placed myself in high regard, I place my staff and my consultants who are in high regard because I should be the person that's going to be able to be the person that pushes the company forward, but be able to employ people that's able to also push the vision for it.

It means so much to me to have a stake in the company and to still be a driving force. You know what it would not be to know me without a face-to-face agency for individuals who not who are not aware of what they stand F A C E stands for foster Academy for Korean permanent. And so Foster is actually my maiden name. And so that's how it came apart. So it means a lot to me, it's my baby. But also I know that the movement is greater than just me. And so as a CEO, my intent is to always make sure that the movement and the space that I have in this world, the impact that we make on face-to-agency training, and consulting is greater than the company is a movement in itself.

Gresham Harkless 14:38

Nice. I love that. And I love that mentality and that focus. And I think that if you have that kind of learning, mentality and learning focus, you're always evolving, you're always getting better. There's always something new that you can do to kind of take that next level. And I think when you have that mentality, you start to evolve, the company starts to evolve and everything around you starts to have really phenomenal results.

So definitely appreciate that and I appreciate your time, even more, Armani, what I wanted to do was pass the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know, and then of course how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Armani Diggs 15:08

Sure, Sure, Sure. Definitely like like I said, face agency training consulting, we are based in a metropolitan area however we service businesses worldwide. If you're ever looking for an opportunity to create custom design training, we do training development, organization development, and interest management. So if you're just starting out, we are the place to come to to definitely push your company forward, where you can find me I'm actually on Instagram, and hello Armani.

LinkedIn is probably the best way to reach me as well. I treat my messaging like my text messages. So if you DM me, most likely you're going to begin a very organic conversation, whether it's going to be network or relationship building, so you can find me at Armani Diggs. I have an MA in massive of arts behind my name so you can be able to find me. Also, my websites are www.hello armani.com is my personal website. And my company website is wwwface-theagency.com.

Gresham Harkless 16:01

Awesome. Thank you so much again on Monday, we will definitely have the links and information in the show notes. And that's the DC metropolitan area that you're talking about as well as your local.

Armani Diggs 16:09

Yes, sir.

Gresham Harkless 16:09

Okay, perfect. And then definitely serving everybody worldwide. So no matter where you listen to this, you can definitely get hold of Armani. We will have the information in the show notes. So thank you so much again for all you're doing all the awesome work that you provided today and all the awesome insight and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 16:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless.

Thank you for listening.

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