Build a Better Agency Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome to another insightful episode of Build a Better Agency! This week, host Drew McLellan is joined by returning guest Nicole Mahoney, an accomplished agency owner and thought leader renowned for her innovative work in collaboration within the travel and tourism space. Drawing on her 15 years of industry expertise, Nicole shares how strategic partnerships have propelled her agency to new heights—even during challenging times like the pandemic.

Together, Drew McLellan and Nicole Mahoney dig deep into the multifaceted nature of agency collaboration, both with competitors and complementary businesses. Nicole reveals insights from her research, podcast, and her newly released book, breaking down the different types of collaborators—the promoters, doubters, and protectors—and why understanding these archetypes is key to building mutually beneficial relationships. They also explore how agencies can be more intentional with partnerships to drive growth, resilience, and innovation.

Expect actionable frameworks, real case studies of cross-agency teamwork, and candid stories about what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to navigating collaborations—from RFP responses to co-hosting major events. Nicole introduces her proven "3C framework" for successful partnerships and shares how agencies can assess and operationalize collaboration as part of their strategic planning, especially heading into 2026.  

If you're rethinking how to strengthen your agency's network, improve client offerings, or simply want to learn from real-world examples of effective coopetition, this episode is packed with takeaways. Don't miss this opportunity to hear fresh perspectives on how working together not only benefits your agency, but helps build a stronger, more connected industry.  

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• • Building agency growth and resiliency through strategic collaboration  
  • Understanding the three types of collaborators: promoters, doubters, and protectors
  • Operationalizing collaboration as an intentional business strategy
  • Keys to effective partnerships: communication, commonality, and commitment
  • Creating mutually beneficial relationships even with competitors (coopetition)
  • Leveraging collaborations to diversify offerings and better serve clients
  • Using partnerships to overcome resource gaps and win larger opportunities

Welcome to another thought-provoking episode of Build a Better Agency! Host Drew McLellan sits down with Robin Bonn, agency veteran and founder of Codefinery, for a candid conversation that tackles one of the agency world's biggest challenges: true differentiation. Drawing on over two decades of industry experience and insights from his new book, Market of One, Robin unpacks why even the most creative agencies struggle to set themselves apart and how owners can reimagine their businesses for lasting competitive advantage.

Drew and Robin delve deep into the heart of agency positioning, debunking the myths and tired tropes that so many firms rely on to claim they're "different." From generic claims about people and creativity to the pitfalls of "category norms," Robin shares why most agencies' attempts at standing out fall flat—and what it really means to create a business model that's as unique as a fingerprint. Listeners will hear practical advice for moving beyond superficial branding tactics and start building what Robin calls a "market of one"—where your agency's true value is clear, tangible, and uncopyable.

The episode also explores the often-overlooked role of pricing as a key differentiator, the pervasive fear and herd mentality that keep agencies stuck, and the transformative impact of AI on agency business models. Robin challenges listeners to rethink everything from service offerings to client fit—encouraging leaders to embrace strategy, redefine success beyond just growth, and make bold choices that align with both financial health and personal fulfillment.  

Tune in if you're ready to move past the sea of sameness and face the future with optimism and intention. By the end of the episode, you'll walk away with actionable questions, a fresh strategic lens, and the inspiration to reshape not just what your agency does, but how—and why—you do it.  

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• • Why true agency differentiation is so difficult—and why most agencies still struggle with it  
  • Common pitfalls that lead agencies into the "sea of sameness"
  • Distinguishing between superficial distinctiveness and authentic, business-model-driven differentiation
  • The critical role of clear positioning and deep strategy in agency growth
  • How fear, herd mentality, and legacy habits hold agencies back from standing out
  • The power of pricing as an underutilized differentiator
  • Embracing change, enjoying the business, and defining what success means for your agency

Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency! This week, host Drew McLellan shines a light on an area vital to every agency's growth: how to show up for clients and prospects in ways that build genuine trust, loyalty, and long-term relationships. To explore this undervalued but crucial topic, Drew is joined by Jamie Shibley, founder of The Expressory and expert in strategic engagement and relationship-driven agency growth.

Jamie shares her fascinating journey from two decades in corporate IT and ecommerce management to launching her own agency, where she helps businesses nurture relationships through intentional and personalized engagement. Through insightful stories and real-life examples, Jamie and Drew examine why clients crave more than just a transactional relationship—they want to feel seen, valued, and heard. Together, they unpack the psychology behind meaningful connections, discussing simple but powerful ways agencies can differentiate themselves by caring more deeply and showing it consistently.

Listeners will learn how to communicate care and appreciation, not just during the wooing phase, but throughout the client journey. Jamie reveals the six strategic storylines that should guide your client engagement, offers practical tips for intentional gifting (hint: it's more about thoughtfulness than price or heavy branding), and shares eye-opening data on the tangible impact of consistent relationship nurturing. Drew and Jamie also address common barriers, like lack of time or uncertainty about what to say, and provide actionable strategies to overcome them.  

If you're looking to solidify your client retention, inspire advocacy, and create memorable experiences that set your agency apart, this episode is a must-listen. Discover how small, intentional acts can have outsized effects on your business—and why now, more than ever, demonstrating care can be your most powerful growth lever.  

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• • The evolution of business relationships in a post-COVID, highly digital landscape  
  • Why intentional, personal connection is a key agency differentiator
  • The science and psychology behind making clients feel seen and valued
  • Practical strategies for nurturing client relationships—before and after the sale
  • The impact of thoughtful, tailored gifts and gestures (beyond traditional swag)
  • Easy ways to operationalize meaningful engagement—without overwhelming your team
  • How consistent care and acknowledgment lead to trust, referrals, and stronger client retention

It's easy to get caught up in the chaos of day-to-day agency life. We all have a million things on our to-do lists, and they just keep growing. But part of being a successful agency owner is being present and open to what's right in front of you.

Doug Fleener knows all about what it means to run a business intentionally. With history as a business owner and a rock bottom moment that led him into recovery, he's had to learn some truths about life the hard way. But from that, he has developed some core principles to help business and agency owners live more intentionally.

His six core principles can help anyone start their day on the right foot to make incremental but powerful life changes. All it takes is one day to wake up and decide to make positive changes, and if you take anything away from this episode, it's that intentional actions create intentional results.

This episode is packed with action items that are not only simple concepts but also easy to implement. I have no doubt that Doug will leave you feeling inspired and ready to start 2024 with a fresh set of eyes and a renewed inspiration to take intentional action toward making your year great.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• Learning to live in the day and making each day a little better
• Taking responsibility of yourself to make positive change
• Intentional actions create intentional results
• Practicing relentless simplicity in life and business
• Thinking of 3 things you can improve each day
• Micro habits that feed greater improvements
• Helping others to help yourself
• Mastering the ability to be present
• Having more intentionality throughout your day
• Implementing the 6 core principles and applying them to your business

Remote and hybrid work environments are here to stay. While some agencies have successfully returned to the office full-time, and some may have never even left, many agencies are still struggling to crack the code on hybrid work without upsetting their employees.

It's a difficult balance, but it has become ever-important as these demands begin cementing into our work culture. And if you're working with creatives, the conversation around a hybrid workplace has probably been even louder.

So this week, we're joined by Felice Ekelman and Julie Kantor, authors of Thrive With a Hybrid Workplace: Step-by-step Guidance From the Experts, to teach us how to approach these conversations and transitions from a legal and psychological point-of-view.

We all know that as agency owners, there's nothing more expensive or as valuable as our employees, and we just want them to be happy working with us. So tune in to learn how to have these conversations and set expectations around hybrid work environments so we can all have a better agency together.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• The making of the Thrive With a Hybrid Workplace book
• The shifts and trends of hybrid and remote work post-covid
• Creating a balance in a hybrid work environment
• The challenges for agency leaders in creating a collaborative hybrid work environment and maintaining communication
• What type of training agency leaders need to build a thriving hybrid work culture
• How to develop productivity benchmarks without the ability to observe in person
• Getting agency leaders out of the fear mindset and setting appropriate boundaries with agency employees

Agencies are under more pressure than ever to be innovative. While it used to be easier to solve your clients' problems and wow them with a great solution, these days, it's much harder to do that with the bar constantly moving. This is why it's essential to develop an innovation strategy.

Wouldn't it be nice to bring a lofty, innovative idea to a client and have them be over the moon and excited to be a part of the process? With the right innovation strategy, that dream can be a reality.

An innovation strategy can help your team jumpstart the creative and problem-solving process while leaving room for co-creation and collaboration with your clients. This streamlines the creative process and takes the pressure off you and your team to have all the answers while you search for the solutions to their problems.

Tune in to learn how your agency can become problem-solving and innovation experts by asking the right questions, enacting decisive decision-making, and building out a creative workflow.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• The hardest part of innovation
• Collaboration is key for driving innovation
• Boiling down the "how" of problem-solving and innovation
• Creating an upstream methodology — the question-asking stage
• Getting a client to buy into an innovative idea
• The importance of collaboration and outside input for an innovation strategy
• The landmines to be aware of in the upstream production stages
• Workshopping ideas to produce quicker outcomes

It's no secret that 2023 has been a rough year for most agency owners. Between the elongated sales cycles, shrinking prospect budgets, and the need to re-evaluate some of our own expenses that have been piling up, many of you are feeling burnt out.

But it's not all bad news. There's still time to take a fresh look at how you want to run your agency in 2024 and pull yourself out of the trenches if 2023 has gotten the better of you. This episode will focus on what we can be doing differently in 2024 in our biz dev strategy, which will make next year a little less stressful for us.

We're taking a look at the data that Lee McKnight Jr. and his agency have compiled from many agency owners about their experiences throughout 2023. And while many of you were plagued with lower-budget prospects, dried-up client referrals, and slowed client growth, this leaves a glimmer of hope that the pendulum will swing the other way for us next year.

So don't miss this episode to learn how to dial in your biz dev strategy and prepare for what we hope is an exciting new year full of new prospects, bigger returns, and, of course, happier agency owners.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• The strain on obtaining new business in 2023 and its effects on agencies
• How agency owners have been coping with elongated sales cycles
• The importance of staying vigilant in business development even when work is abundant
• Shrinking prospect budgets and diminishing returns on new business
• Keeping up with client outreach, especially in an elongated sales cycle
• The biz dev strategies that still work to obtain new business
• What to expect from a new business manager
• The four prongs of biz dev that will still get you out of a rut
• What outbound efforts are still working on clients
• The biz dev strategies that are working and what to avoid in the new year

2023 is quickly coming to a close, so it's time for agency owners to start thinking about the year ahead to come up with their 2024 game plan. With holiday hibernation quickly approaching for most agency owners, this is the perfect time to reflect on 2023 and start thinking about what we want to improve for 2024.

Many of us are coming out of a less-than-ideal year that threw us a lot of curveballs. So, if this year wasn't your year, what game plan can you develop to make 2024 even better?

This episode is packed with a ton of action items that will set you on the path to getting your agency on the right track as soon as you're back from the holidays. Whether you're looking to tighten up your budget, grow your existing clients, reevaluate your team, or even find more time to do something memorable this year, this episode has everything you need to do to make your game plan and stick to it.

For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• Making a game plan aligned with the legacy you want to leave
• Creating a budget and aligning your expenses to it
• Connecting better with your team to help them grow
• Have a career path for every position
• Improving your leadership team, including the agency owner
• Identifying A, B, C, and D players
• Having a growth plan for existing clients
• Finding your niche and owning it
• How will you show your clients and team you appreciate them?
• What is one thing that would make 2024 unbelievable for you?

Finding right-fit clients, especially in a slow economy, is always a frustrating task. For the past year or so, agency owners have been expressing more and more frustrations over finding and keeping good clients at the right price point.

In this episode, Jason Swenk shares some tips and tricks about what he sees agencies doing right when it comes to client acquisition that keeps them profitable even in the toughest economies. He shares the 3 main channels where agencies can find right-fit clients — hint: it's got nothing to do with referrals — that position your agency as a must-have problem solver for prospects.

If you're ready to find the perfect clients, get paid what you're worth (or more), and make them feel like they can't live without your services, this is your episode. You'll learn some tangible tips for impressing clients and staying ahead of the curve to keep them interested.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• What the agencies who are getting new clients are doing right
• Getting clear on the types of clients you want to go after
• Why you shouldn't rely on referrals as your main client go-getter
• Figuring out how to solve your clients' problems innovatively
• The 3 main channels you should be resourcing to find right-fit clients
• Why podcasting is one of the greatest inbound sales channels
• Creating an attractive offer ladder without using retainers
• What does the agency of the future look like?
• 2 of the biggest challenges agencies need to anticipate for the future

We've all lowballed ourselves when going into negotiations. Whether it was for a raise, a proposal to a new client, a request to be a keynote speaker or a promotion, we've probably left opportunity on the table without even realizing it.

The good news is that it's extremely common, so you're not alone. But the bad news is that you could probably be getting so much more than you realize, but you're not asking in the right way.

This week, Dia Bondi teaches us how to ask like an auctioneer in negotiations. At auctions, you're not looking for an immediate yes. You're searching until you ultimately find that no, and that's where the fun really begins.

You never know what you can get until you ask, but if you never receive that initial "no" and start the negotiation process, you'll never know where the ceiling of potential is for your ask. So, in this episode, Dia encourages us to step out of our comfort zones and challenge ourselves to maximize our potential to further ourselves and our careers by learning to ask like an auctioneer.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• What it means to ask like an auctioneer
• Finding your ZOFO
• Why you should always look for a no to maximize the potential of your proposals
• The 4 different types of asks you can make
• What to do when you're met with a no
• The Boomerang Effect that can turn a no into a yes later on
• The 6-step framework that will build your confidence in negotiations
• Letting go of asking for what you think you deserve
• What to do when the "no" is a hard no