Agency leaders have some of the most important roles in the agency. They’re key team members supporting the agency owner in the agency’s day-to-day operations and taking on roles that allow the agency owner to focus on business development and other key tasks.

The truth is, it can be a lonely position.

As agency owners, we need to consistently work on being more supportive to these key leaders — whether they’re our COO, creative directors, department heads, account leads, or even the company president.

These positions are mission-critical and will support the long-term growth and success of the agency all the way to its succession. So naturally, it’s our job to create opportunities for growth, career development, and constructive feedback that support our agency leaders to be better at their jobs.

This episode is a great one to sit down with your agency leaders and go through the different points we discuss so you can learn what opportunities you and your agency leaders can create together for their continued growth and development.

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.

• Which agency leader positions typically qualify for leadership peer groups
• Why Del found value in sending his agency leaders to peer groups at least twice per year
• How agency peer groups help agency leaders feel less lonely in their positions
• Why money isn’t always the solution to keeping agency leaders happy
• The value of mentoring and coaching leaders, and how to structure time for it
• How to give your agency leaders more autonomy in their roles
• The importance of workshops, peer groups, and other leadership training opportunities
• Helping your agency leaders grow in their roles within the agency
• How agency leaders want feedback presented to them

Agency owners and leaders are no strangers to proposal writing. But despite our vast experience, there are things we still get wrong, and there is always something we can improve — especially as the industry shifts and changes so quickly.

I got to sit down with Robin Boehler and Emily Shapiro from Mercer Island Group to talk about the often-overlooked pitfalls in our agency proposals. This conversation is a game-changer for anyone looking to level up their agency’s pitch game.

You might even see yourself in some of the examples of what not to do in an agency proposal, cover letter, or bio, but don’t be too hard on yourself. This episode is all about unlearning the bad habits so we can replace them with ones that will get you to that next conversation with a prospect.

Quality over quantity is the name of the game when it comes to winning new business with agency proposals. So, if you’re ready to transform your proposal process and start landing those dream clients, this episode is a must-listen.

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.

• Unintentional errors agencies make that cost them new business opportunities in their proposals
• Framing your proposal as client-centric instead of agency-centric
• Crafting a story with an agency proposal
• How to show a client you’re a good listener
• The most common reasons why clients move on to a new agency
• Using case studies to talk about other clients without going overboard
• Making sure it’s not too hard for prospects to work with you
• What we get wrong about our agency bios
• Misunderstood agency proposal best practices
• The most glaring mistakes we make with our case studies

Agency owners have it tough these days, but we have more control over how hard it is for us than we think. This week, we’re going to talk in-depth about how we can change the course and direction of our business by changing our habits and mindsets.

To help us, we’re talking to Jason Yarusi about creating positive momentum around breaking bad habits, choosing to offload tasks that aren’t propelling us forward, and cutting out unnecessary chaos in our lives.

You might think there’s nothing you can personally change, or maybe you have too many variables that are completely out of your control. You could have a lot of fires popping up during the day that you have to address.

But the good news is we have a lot more say in what happens in our day-to-day than we think. And by taking a few moments to ground yourself in the reality of your situation, you’ll realize that a lot of those big fires aren’t fires at all — or someone else’s fires to put out.

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 near-death experience that changed Jason’s course in life
• Being self-aware in how you’re showing up each day
• Starting the day off with a solid routine that sets you up for success
• Regrounding yourself when things start going off course
• How to recognize you’re not focused on the right parts of your business
• Finding your way out of the day-to-day grind to reach your long-term goals
• Creating positive momentum around changing habits that aren’t serving you
• Where people get stuck in these habit shifts the most
• Writing down 3 things you can do write now to build positive momentum

Fear is a familiar feeling in agency ownership. It’s easy to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing or might be missing something important, especially if you’re doing it all yourself.

In this episode, I’m delivering advice on how to conquer the biggest agency owner fears in a Collabs & Cocktails event hosted by Predictive ROI. Whether it’s imposter syndrome, money worries, figuring out how to manage employees, or learning how to collaborate with other agency owners, I have some advice that will help ease your mind and get you back to focusing on the important things.

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.

• The four biggest fears of agency ownership
• How to eliminate money fears by running things by the numbers
• Taking care of your employees so that they stick around
• Why you shouldn’t operate on only referrals and word of mouth for biz dev
• The importance of becoming an authority in your industry
• Generating right-fit leads
• Navigating imposter syndrome
• The right way to collaborate with other agency owners

One of the best ways to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and get more right-fit clients is by publishing a book. Often, the people who don’t want to publish a book fall into one of two categories: those who don’t think they know enough (or think everyone knows what they do) or those who think they have the “secret sauce” and don’t want to give it away willingly.

Our guest, Henry DeVries, is here to tell us why everyone has it in them to get published, why it’s the best way to find new clients who are a great fit to work with your agency, and the seven best ways to market the book once it’s written.

This episode is packed with tips that will teach you exactly how to set yourself apart from other agencies and get clients contacting you for work, not the other way around.

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.

• Why a book is the #1 marketing tool for an agency
• How to identify the topic of your book
• Why giving away your secrets will leave potential clients wanting more
• Why you know more than you think you do about your industry — so write about it!
• The “Magnificent Seven” of marketing your new book
• The spectrum of “getting published” and building your body of work
• Having a book as a legacy piece for your agency and your accomplishments

Today on the podcast, we’re challenging how you approach B2B prospecting. If you’ve ever been afraid to openly advertise your pricing, roll out a free offer for new customers, or try something completely different from the agency norm, I hope this conversation inspires you to take the risk.

In this episode, David Valentine and I discuss how his businesses have grown incredibly by using unorthodox methods to drive sales and keep clients for longer through “Outrageous Offers” and case studies. His agencies have closed 75–85% of their sales by giving clients nothing to lose in working with him. He knows that what companies need most are results — and fast.

Tune in to hear what he’s learned over ten years of agency experience, the different methods he uses to drive sales, and how he guarantees his clients’ happiness.

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 is an “outrageous offer”?
• How to stop creating roadblocks for your agency to obtain new business
• The effectiveness of case studies in showing clients how you can guarantee results
• How to sell results over selling a product
• Why attaching free offers to a guaranteed outcome works
• Why transparency will generate new business for you
• Making yourself irresistible and undeniable to prospects

We always say, “What you measure matters,” on the podcast, and today is no exception. To keep you and your team fed, you need to measure metrics in your agency. Without this vital system in place, you likely have no idea how much money is coming in or being spent, which directly affects your team.

That’s why we have Marcel Petitpas here to teach us all about running your agency by the numbers. He’s the expert in AGIs, delivery margins, and profit and loss statements, and he knows how to keep agencies on the right track.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the most important metrics agencies should already be measuring, how to improve time utilization, calculate billable rates, and the importance of excellent project management. It might seem like an intimidating topic, but we promise that it’s not as painful as it looks, and it will make your life so much easier once you make the changes we discuss in this episode.

Marcel Petitpas is the CEO & Co-Founder of Parakeeto, a company dedicated to helping agencies measure and improve their profitability by streamlining their operations and reporting systems, a problem he discovered while running his own agency back in his early 20’s.

He’s also the fractional COO at Gold Front, an award-winning creative agency in San Francisco working with brands like Uber, Slack, Keap, and more. As well as the head strategic coach at SaaS Academy by Dan Martell, the #1 coaching program for B2B SaaS businesses in the world.

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 importance of measuring metrics and agency finances
• The difference between delivery margins and delivery costs
• Three ways to improve delivery margins
• How to approach employee utilization differently to boost profitability
• Why time tracking shouldn’t go out the window
• What to consider when setting billable rates
• The imperative role project managers play in measuring metrics
• Where agencies might face challenges in 2023

We’ve all been hearing it: a storm is coming. Or maybe it’s not. Depending on who you ask, we don’t know what our economic future holds. But one thing is for sure, if you stay prepared with recession planning, regardless of what the economy is doing, you can hold strong against those unexpected changes much more easily.

In this solocast episode, I will share with you the best ways you can start recession planning even if your agency is financially okay right now. It’s never the wrong time to start looking at how you can operate better, earn more profit, and keep great clients and employees, no matter the economic outlook.

Instead of waiting out the economic storm and wishing you had been better prepared, start making changes today and know that you have the power to pull yourself through anything while still making a profit. You just need to be smart about 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.

• Things you should already be doing for recession planning
• Why you should be raising your hourly rates
• How to prepare yourself against a longer sales cycle
• The importance of renewing contracts and locking in good clients now
• The good and the bad of employee staffing during a recession
• Why having too much money in your agency is a bad thing
• The importance of maintaining a good attitude with your team
• Why you can still be profitable even if there’s a recession

What do you think of when you hear about Disney? Fireworks, castles, and happy families all probably came to mind for a moment. But you probably didn’t think of dishware — and we’re not talking about those cups from the 90s with Lion King characters on them that were in every family’s kitchen cabinets.

Today’s guest, Alvaro Melendez, knows brands deeply in a way that most of us could never even imagine. If you think you know the core of what makes a brand who they are, think again. Alvaro has been developing and using machine learning to measure brand awareness or “Brand Love” for years to help companies, both big and small, understand what makes people connect with them.

In this episode, we discuss how Alvaro uses technology to help brands reach a bigger audience. He speaks about how to advertise effectively, how DEI is imperative for brands, and how creativity and technology go hand-in-hand in brand innovation.

And, if you’re still wondering why Disney is defined by dishware, you’ll just have to tune in to the podcast to get your answer.

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.

• How Alvaro and his team are using machine learning to make brands trackable
• Why organic social is the best way to advertise and promote your brand
• How machine learning has taught major brands things they never knew about themselves
• What the PPAI branding framework is, and how to use it to identify major brand metrics
• How smaller agencies can learn from the experimentation of big brands
• The importance of making DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) a huge part of your brand identity
• Why creativity and storytelling must still be people-centered and collaborative in an automated world

What makes an employee want to stick around at your agency? Every year since 2014, we’ve been doing the research and compiling it into our Agency Edge Research to help agency owners get to the bottom of how to maintain employee satisfaction.

We expected certain things like financial compensation and work-from-home flexibility to be most important this year. Still, we were surprised to find many other desires shining through that have nothing to do with money. This year, Susan Baier returns to help me break down our findings.

In our analysis, we’ll highlight three categories that most agency employees fall into and how their needs, wants, and levels of loyalty differ across the board. Each group has their own unique way of viewing their role in the agency, how they want to be cared for, and what’s missing that would make them want to stay. We’ll talk in-depth about each group and how we can best address their concerns to boost employee satisfaction.

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 is the Agency Edge Research Series, and what agency-specific issues does it address?
• What questions do we ask agency employees when compiling the research?
• The three categories that most agency employees fall into when looking at employee satisfaction
• The most important things that employees feel are lacking in the agency culture
• Where millennials stood out more than other age groups in certain categories
• What are the driving reasons behind an employee choosing to leave an agency?
• How to build loyalty in your agency and take care of employees
• How to identify employees who might be at risk of leaving your agency or agency life altogether

Are you making yourself irrelevant in your agency? We’ve been talking a lot lately about how important it is to have systems and processes in place so you can work less and get back to doing the parts of agency ownership that you love. But if you or anyone in your agency becomes irreplaceable, you will be stuck in your 60-80 hour work weeks.

This week, our guest Jesse Gilmore gives us a thorough breakdown of how to identify single points of failure in an agency—Hint: it’s often the agency owner—and how we can create a better flow that helps everyone work together more successfully. When we give our employees the tools they need to work effectively and delegate with other team members, our whole workflow improves no matter who’s out of the office that week.

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.

• How to identify single points of failure in your agency
• If you’re the single point of failure, how do you make yourself more irrelevant?
• Why removing single points of failure is vital for scaling your business
• How to create systems and processes that aren’t cookie-cutter solutions
• How to carve out time in your already busy schedule to put systems in place
• What is the difference between a bottleneck and a single point of failure?
• Timing out changes to your agency’s systems and processes
• How removing single points of failure can improve agency culture

If you’re in a creative role at your agency, you’re probably familiar with receiving creative briefs that just don’t measure up. Instead of getting inspired to do great work, you’re left wondering where to start or what the point of the project is.

If you’ve ever created or pitched a brief, on the other hand, you’ve probably worked from a template or simply checked off the boxes of the bare minimum — it happens to the best of us!

This week, I’m interviewing Tim Brunelle, a creative director with decades of experience in marketing and advertising. Over the years, he has seen hundreds of creative briefs that span the whole spectrum between gold and garbage.

When our brief falls flat, it won’t inspire our creative minds to do great work. In this episode, Tim challenges us to think bigger and better rather than checking off the boxes and reading from a sheet of paper in our briefing meetings. When we think creatively about our creative briefs, we get a wealth of inspiration in return.

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.

• Why creative briefs often fall flat for creative teams
• Why brief-makers should care about the project just as much as the creative team they’re hiring
• The two core functions of creative briefs
• What the pipeline of the creative briefing process should look like
• How to mentor and inspire creativity across teams to collaborate on the briefing process
• Why location is important when discussing your vision
• Determining when a creative brief is necessary to inspire a team to do ground-breaking work

When you’re running an agency, you know you will not have it forever. While your goal could be to sell it eventually, you must consider retirement, career pivots, or plain old ownership fatigue as part of your succession planning strategy.

Most of us aren’t thinking about what’s happening 3, 5, or even 10 years down the road in day-to-day agency operations. But, it’s very important to understand how your decisions today could impact the future value of your business. Today’s solocast covers everything you need to know about what you should focus on to increase your valuation and why it matters to start thinking about your succession planning strategy right now.

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.

• Why your agency isn’t as valuable as you might think
• The importance of thinking toward the future when making current agency decisions
• The recipe to increase your agency’s valuation when it’s time to sell
• Why profitability and where it’s coming from matters
• Why you should be making yourself irrelevant as your agency grows
• How agency culture plays a role in your succession planning strategy
• Why you should avoid “gorilla clients” that make up too much of your AGI
• Where else you should invest your money outside of the agency

When you’re stacked against other agencies with the same awards, credentials, and impressive case studies as you, it’s tough to stand out above the rest. But with the right pitch deck, you’re sure to catch the attention of your ideal clients.

This week, Tom Martin is teaching us a few things about crafting the perfect pitch deck that moves beyond just impressing clients, but making them remember you over the rest. You already have their attention just by getting the meeting, but your pitch deck is what will ultimately make you the undeniable choice in the end.

Tom shares his thoughts on strategic repetition, the science behind the pitch deck, and what agencies most often get wrong when building their decks. This episode is packed with tons of golden nuggets and actionable insights about what will make you the most memorable agency in the room.

Stop making easily fixable mistakes that could cost you right-fit clients, and join us to learn everything Tom can teach us about building a better pitch deck.

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 purpose of a pitch deck
• The science behind an effective pitch deck
• What makes us lose our audience while we are presenting
• Agencies have earned the right to be in the room and should act like it
• Taking your client on a journey with you during the pitch
• Why you might want an appendix in your pitch deck
• How to design slides for memorability and information flow
• Getting scientific about strategic repetition
• The most critical part of the pitch deck
• Don’t just show up and throw up

Now that we’ve discussed what systems and processes are, the tools we can use to implement them, and how to integrate them into team culture, let’s talk about what happens when we start to use these processes as we scale our agencies.

This week, Juliana Marulanda of ScaleTime shares her 20+ years of knowledge with creating systems and processes in agencies and how it frees up more time to do what we love. We discuss how to get your agency unstuck from bottlenecks in productivity, reduce day-to-day chaos, and, most importantly, how to stop leaving money on the table from disorganized management.

Featured by Forbes and Entrepreneur, Juliana helps uplevel businesses into lean, mean, profitable machines. On average, she and her team create ways to free up at least 30 hours per week for her clients so they can have successful agencies that run without them. Agency owners can find themselves saying, “I do what I want, how I want, whenever I want — now, that is freedom.”

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.

• How to free up more space in your business for creativity
• How to create systems and processes that work whether you’re in the office, hybrid, or 100% remote
• The clearing of the storm after you establish systems and processes in your agency
• Where money is being left on the table without proper procedures in place
• The trajectory of emotions agency owners experience as they change their day-to-day
• How Juliana helps agencies wrap their heads around management, HR, and hiring challenges
• The importance of creating culture in your agency and why that affects day-to-day operations
• How to get unstuck if you’re stuck in a loop of unchecked chaos

When running an agency, efficiency is key. While we would probably prefer to focus on any other task, establishing effective systems and processes is imperative to our agency operations. The systems we create and teach our team members will ultimately define our day-to-day, client satisfaction, and employee retention.

This week, Marquis Murray of Ditto will share his knowledge on implementing agency operations adjustments into our team culture. Whether it’s project management software, a well-organized Excel sheet, or simply improving team communication across the board, Marquis knows exactly how to work with agencies to identify where they have the most room for improvement.

When everyone gets on the same page and knows exactly where they belong and what is expected of them, the whole team can focus less on who’s doing what and more on what’s important to their specific role. It doesn’t need to be complicated or high-tech, but it does need to be sustainable, scalable, and repeatable so your team members can do what they do best, effectively.

Marquis Murray is the CEO and Founder of Ditto, a systems and processes consultancy for organizations who need help creating clarity around the work done inside their companies. Partnering with companies like Asana, HubSpot, PandaDoc, LogicGate, and Kanbanize allows him to offer some of the best in class solutions for clients.

His goal is to eliminate team burnout for good so that teams can focus more on the work they do without the stress of not knowing where or how the work is happening.

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.

• Why it’s so important to implement and codify SOPs in your agency, especially if your team is growing
• Identifying where your agency has room for improvement and how to start making changes
• How to set boundaries around SOPs to get your employees to adopt the same agency operations strategies
• Why having agency owners and leaders on board with systems adjustments matters
• The bumps in the road agencies often face when switching up agency operations
• How to make the changes stick beyond the 45-60 day adjustment window
• The most broken areas of systems and processes and what you can do to improve on them
• Everything you need to know about project management tools—which ones are right for your agency, how to get started using them, and how to vet these tools within your team

The talent we hire is often one of our greatest assets as agencies. Building our talent pool and promoting connectedness is integral to agency culture, and we spend a lot of time finding the perfect fit for our team.

On one hand, you want a team that can come together, easily collaborate on tasks, and understands one another closely. On the other hand, casting a wider net can find you more people who are good at helping get specific jobs done independently. How do we marry these two ideas together?

Noel Andrews of Jobrack has some answers for us. This week, we’re talking with him about what he does best—helping agencies hire remote talent who want to be part of a team and can do great work at a lower cost. It’s truly a win-win, and we can all have this. In this episode, he will teach us how to build a remote team, how to create a positive agency culture, and what to look for when hiring remote workers.

Noel Andrews bought Jobrack in 2018 after 10 years of building and leading large teams in the corporate tech world. Since then, he has helped businesses all over the world hire more than 1,000 remote team members from Eastern Europe.

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.

• How do you make workers physically distant from one another feel like they’re part of the team?
• What do you need to do as an agency owner to hire remote workers successfully?
• Why you should reconsider doing a standard interview to vet remote talent and instead assess their skills directly
• How to take the stress out of hiring by leveraging the talent you already have in your agency
• Changing our thoughts around remote workers as only “task-doers”
• Why it’s essential for agency culture to make remote hires feel like they belong to the team
• How to manage and build a remote team across multiple time zones
• How to build agency culture and promote connectedness around remote teams
• How to set expectations and compensate your remote teams well for their skills

For many of us, agency ownership means that most of our time and energy goes into our work. Even when trying to sleep, we’re replaying a frustrating conversation we had earlier that day, doomscrolling, or even dreaming about everything on our to-do lists. When we can’t turn off our minds at the end of a long day, we set ourselves up for occupational burnout.

As some of you know, I learned the hard way that staying overly connected to our work can have severe consequences. I brought Dr. Gerry Farris on the podcast today to talk about how we can take care of ourselves to feel better daily, stay mentally strong and healthy, and why taking breaks is so important. With many years as a physician and working with patients who have experienced occupational burnout, Dr. Farris is the perfect person to educate us on how to be smarter about living our overly-connected lives.

Dr. Gerry Farris has been an Emergency physician for 30 years and a Functional Medicine physician for 10 years. His current practice focuses on healthy living and age management and he is a former triathlete who competed for 31 years. His goal is to help patients and persons be healthy, mitigate disease and aging, and live well for a long time. He is a double Board Certified physician with a wealth of experience and knowledge. He is practicing the “Medicine of Tomorrow, Today!”

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.

• How to know if you’re experiencing occupational burnout or heading in that direction
• How information overload leads to hypervigilance and why it happens
• The effects that elevated cortisol levels have on our brains and bodies
• How to build resilience against neuroinflammation and bodily dysregulation
• What does burnout recovery look like?
• Why sleep is one of the most essential things for recovery and burnout prevention
• What 37 minutes a day can do to improve your overall health
• How to make healthy lifestyle changes that you can stick to

Some of the most significant innovations have been born out of the most challenging hardships, and agency innovations are no different. For the past two years, agency owners have been through the wringer. Some of you have even wondered if it’s time to shut your doors and move on to something different. You’re all. Just. Exhausted.

I often use the analogy that your agency is a ship, and you are the captain. It’s your responsibility to make sure that the ship doesn’t sink. For the past 24 months, this meant finding shelter and waiting out the storm. But we must rethink that analogy for the new times we’re finding ourselves in. With pandemic days easing up, I’m now telling you it’s time to head back into open waters.

While things haven’t completely settled down yet, this is our time to shine. We’ve spent the past two years adapting, changing the game plan, and moving through a figurative storm of hardship. But that has primed us for greatness and equipped us to move forward into a new renaissance of ideas and agency innovation. It’s time to relinquish control, take new risks, and see that these hard times have made you and your agency stronger and ready for brand new ventures.

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.

• I made a mistake in overemphasizing the importance of finding a safe harbor to get us through the pandemic. We need to rethink this.
• Where your focus should be turning now to drive your agency innovations
• Why control and leading with a type-A personality was suitable for the pandemic but might not be as supportive now
• Why creativity and agency innovation is so important right at this moment
• How taking risks will push your agency forward into the new era
• What past tragedies and renaissances can teach us about where we’re heading in the future
• That your only choice as an agency owner right now is to leave safe harbor no matter whether you’re ready to close up shop or move forward as an agency
• The questions you should be asking yourself as an agency owner to be a renaissance leader

As agency owners, we’re often dedicated to the niche we’ve carved out for ourselves and can get very comfortable serving our clients within those parameters. It’s easy to become highly committed, and stubbornly so, to that one niche. When it stops working for us the way we want it to, deciding to pivot can be difficult.

Today, the CEO of PredictiveROI, Stephen Woessner, came on the podcast to share his experience with this exact situation. His agency had been working in a niche for many years as a podcast shop that helped clients produce content. After some time, it started to become clear to the team that there was a better way they could be approaching business. Thus, a new agency niche was born, which began their great pivot to becoming the authority in teaching clients how to be the authority of their industries.

Stephen shares with us what led to the decision to pivot, the decisions he and his team made during the shifting process, and how they re-established their cornerstone content to align with their new niche.

If you take nothing else away from this very transparent and open discussion today, you should at least know that you have permission to think differently about how you want to position your agency to potential clients and that it’s okay for your agency niche to not be permanent. Sometimes, to build better, you need to pivot.

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.

• Why choosing your agency niche doesn’t have to be a permanent decision
• How Stephen Woessner of PredictiveROI knew it was time to pivot to a new niche
• Why sometimes throwing out the playbook and rebuilding in a different direction is a better move for your agency, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first
• What pushed Stephen and his team to rethink their agency niche and the value they were providing to their clients
• How to know which types of clients you’re already serving the best (this could be your new niche)
• What is cornerstone content, and why is it so important to establish?
• The importance of building a community of people wanting to learn from you and others to make more effortless sales
• You have permission to think differently about your agency and how you want to position it in your industry

We all know the phrase, “what we don’t know, can’t hurt us.” But, it also can’t make us any more money. That’s why this week, we’re kicking things off with another solocast episode where I’ll be discussing the two agency growth secrets that are guaranteed to put more money in your pocket and bring clients to you effortlessly.

To demonstrate this, I’m using Flying Camel as an example of how a few small tweaks can up-level you from an A– to an A-grade agency. They’ve already established themselves as an agency that has honed its expertise within a niche, they’re sought-after to speak at events all over the world, and are overall doing everything right. But, they knew they could be doing more, and they contacted me to help them figure out how to tackle it.

While we didn’t need to change much, we still gave them two areas to work on that will almost instantly make their agency even more attractive to potential clients. And on today’s episode, I’m going to break down those topics so that you can start up-leveling your agency, too.

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 agency growth secrets that can uplevel your agency, even if you’re already doing everything right
• Two ways that you could easily improve your agency’s profitability and bottom line every year
• The value of understanding the money metrics in your agency, even if you’re not a numbers person
• Why carving out a niche and honing your expertise will establish you as a leader in your industry
• The reasons you should not be dismissing your own expertise, but rather, magnifying it
• How to be sought-after specifically for your expertise with very little change to your day-to-day operations
• Why being a thought leader matters when running an A-tier agency
• How to carve out time to create content that sets you apart from other agencies

This holiday week, the idea of freedom is at the forefront of many people’s minds. It’s a topic that touches so many facets of our lives every day. In today’s episode, I want to turn my focus to agency owners, and what freedoms we should be taking full advantage of that will ultimately benefit your agency culture.

Many of us chose to start our own agencies because it granted us privileges that being an employee did not. And while we may think we’re taking full advantage of them, the reality is that we could be offering ourselves so much more.

Today, I’ll cover seven freedoms that agency owners can (and absolutely should) be taking advantage of. From who you work with and hire, how you spend your work time, to your own role in your agency, and more. You chose to work for yourself, and now is the time to reflect on if you’re making it work for you.

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.

• Why we should take full advantage of our freedoms as agency owners
• What specific privileges we have, and how to leverage them to work for you and your agency
• Why agency owners shouldn’t hire employees based solely on their talent
• Why it’s important to share your vision when choosing who you hire
• How putting up with bad attitudes from employees limits the freedoms we have as agency owners
• Why we should have more freedom than our employees when it comes to our schedules
• Why your time should work for your life, and not the other way around
• What you should be doing when it comes to leveraging your financial freedoms as an agency owner
• The freedoms agency owners have when it comes to walking away or staying in the business
• Why agency owners take on the risk of running a business but aren’t comfortable taking the rewards

We all wish we had more time in our schedules, right? We long for a day without interruptions so we can just focus and do our best work. Or, even worse, we’ve finished all of our work, and now we don’t know what to do with ourselves. These are two different problems, but, according to today’s guest, both have the same solution that starts in our agency operations.

This is where Joe Martin has a thing or two to teach us. He changed how his entire agency operates and meets its goals by switching to a 6-week cycle work schedule. This means four weeks on, two weeks off, and a lot of room for adjustment and flexibility for maximum efficiency.

Today, he teaches us how this benefits every level of agency culture, how to begin implementing it into your agency, and why it’s so effective. We’ll also learn why it might not be the best idea to bring this structure into your dating life.

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.

• How to maximize efficiency and productivity in your agency
• Why it’s not about the hours we’re buying from employees, but rather their skills and ability to accomplish tasks
• How to break the 40-hour work week mindset and have more productive employees
• Why it’s important to learn what value you are offering to clients before implementing a strategy
• What is a 6-week cycle, and why does it work so well for agency operations?
• How to begin implementing this structure into agency culture
• Why this structure is even better than the popular 4-day work week model

This week on Building a Better Agency, we’re jumping right back into our breakdown of 2022 Marketing Trends. Last time, we talked about noticeable trends in agency spending, shifting client expectations, and not missing out on opportunities for business development. This time, we’re taking things a bit closer to home by talking about trends we’re seeing in our own marketing tactics, in our employees, and in ourselves as agency owners.

If you didn’t catch Part 1 of this conversation during our last solocast episode (#345) — no worries! There’s still plenty of time to go back and catch up. Then join us here for Part 2 of our discussion on the industry trends, insights, and predictions that agency owners should know about before entering the second half of the year.

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 marketing trends we’re seeing with agency owners, employees, and tactics
• Why agency owners across the board are so dang exhausted (nope, it’s not just you!)
• Why Drew believes that agency owners aren’t just tired, but tired of being afraid
• Where are agencies at with the whole “work from home” situation? What’s working and what isn’t?
• Why employees have never been more expensive than they are right now — and when that pendulum will swing back.
• Which marketing and sales tactics are working best for agencies right now

CMOs have a lot on their plates, and similar to agency owners, their role can be lonely in the C-Suite. Because of this, CMOs rely heavily on agency partnerships to keep them in the know.

To help us understand the crucial role of agency-CMO relationships, Liza Adams is giving us an inside look at what it’s really like to be a CMO—what they value in strategic partnerships, what they need from agencies the most, and why agencies are an integral part of doing their job well.

This episode is packed with candid, practical advice from Liza for agencies to nail it in their client-agency relationships. When you boil it all down, if your CMO is happy, your agency will be happy. And that alone will carry you far in your business journey.

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 agencies don’t understand about the CMO role
• Getting out of the competition mindset against other agencies
• What a CMO wants from an agency-CMO relationship
• The difference between an agency that gets recommended by a CMO and ones who don’t
• How AI is changing the world from a CMO’s perspective
• Should agencies be trying to experiment with AI for clients?
• How AI will change the CMO role in the future
• How agencies can help CMOs do their jobs better

The market right now for attracting and retaining the best employees is insane. It feels like only three people on the planet are looking for work, and they all want $3 million, plus a signing bonus. Owners are in panic mode when they think about attracting and retaining the best employees. They’re struggling to find good candidates. Or, by the time they get a candidate through their 12-step process, they miss out because they accepted a different position.

So how in this environment should we be hiring? What should the process look like?

I invited Heenle Turner to join me for this episode of Build a Better Agency because she holds the golden ticket to your agency having a great rest of 2022.

She believes that not only should we all have a 5-star employee, but that we should have ALL 4- and 5-star employees in our agencies. She believes that this is absolutely possible and critical to our success.

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 does a 5-star employee look like, and why Heenle believes you can have an agency full of them
• How you can level up your employees, especially in this market when it’s hard to find anyone to take a job
• How you can find, hire, and keep 5-star employees
• What are the five distinct qualities of a 5-star employee
• What are the 11 universal qualities 5-star employees share
• What questions should you ask during an interview to ferret out if someone is a 5-star candidate before you hire them

As agencies, we tend to overlook certain platforms and channels when it comes to their perceived relevance to our audiences or bottom-line ad potential. That bias is one that Lindsay Shearer overcame to help her clients win new business and earn 2-3 times their initial ad spend on what most of us would consider an unlikely platform — Pinterest.

During our conversation on this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency, Lindsay talks about what led her to experiment with Pinterest in the first place and why she quickly adopted the platform into her agency’s diversified ad strategies. If you’re wondering what advertising on Pinterest looks like, how it works, and why you might want to consider incorporating it into your ad strategies, then you’re in the right place. Join Lindsay and I as we talk about using Pinterest — part social channel and part interest-based search engine — to win high-quality, top-of-funnel business for ourselves and our clients.

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 led Lindsay to experiment with Pinterest in the first place
• Why an entire department of Lindsay’s agency is now devoted to Pinterest ad strategies specifically
• How Pinterest functions as both a search engine and a social media site — and why that’s a game-changer
• The major role Pinterest plays in consumer behavior and the intentional purchasing decisions of its users
• What types of brands play well in the Pinterest space — and why
• How to set expectations for yourself, and your clients, about this channel that plays a bit differently than most
• Where Pinterest could fit into your current cross-channel ad strategies and how to get started

What happens to our agencies when something happens to us? No one likes to think about the day that they’re no longer around, and it’s no secret as to why. The conversation can feel more than a little uncomfortable. But as agency owners, it’s one that’s far too important for us to avoid or ignore. If we want to ensure that our businesses —and more importantly —our people will be taken care of should the unexpected happen, then we need to make sure that we have a plan in place that allows our agencies to keep living on even after we’re gone.

On this episode of Build a Better Agency, I sit down with attorney Andrea Shoup to start the conversation and hopefully, to help you all do the same. Andrea holds a depth of expertise in both estate planning and business law — making her the perfect person to help us wrap our heads around this tricky but critical subject.

During our conversation, Andrea offers up her invaluable insights into navigating different succession plan options, learning how, when, and with whom those plans need to be created and communicated, and what happens when we don’t have a contingency plan in place.

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.

• How legacy planning can protect your business —and your people— should something happen to you
• The key differences between a will and an estate plan
• Everything that goes into a contingency plan — and how to get yours started
• Who needs to be involved in your contingency planning, and how those plans should be communicated
• How long it will take you to gather the information you’ll need for your plans
• What happens when we DON’T have a contingency plan in place
• When is the “right time” to start planning your agency’s succession?

Women own less than 1% of the ad agencies in North America. This gender gap is disappointing and staggering, but in this episode of Build a Better Agency, our guest expert Christy Hiler reminds us that bridging that gap is far from impossible.

During our conversation, Christy helps us unravel this alarming statistic by exploring the barriers that may be keeping the women we lead and work with from pursuing ownership roles or viewing ownership, not just leadership, as an end goal in the first place. In addition to discussing the things that may be holding women back, Christy and I also discuss the progress from encouraging, elevating, and celebrating women-owned agencies, and what we can do as agency owners to help empower more women within our networks to pursue ownership roles.

This topic is near and dear to me as both an agency owner and someone who has the privilege of working alongside the women-led agencies represented in AMI. My hope is that you will not only enjoy this conversation with Christy, but that you will link arms with her and leaders like her so that we can all work together to tackle problems like this in our 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 the “Own It” initiative is, and what inspired Christy to launch it
• Why women own less than 1% of all ad agencies in North America
• The barriers that may be preventing women in the industry from becoming agency owners
• Why inviting and empowering women in these spaces is a benefit for everyone
• How women-led agencies are doing things differently — and why that’s so great
• What current agency owners can do to mentor, encourage, and empower the women they work with to seek ownership opportunities
• How you can help Christy identify, support, and celebrate women-led agencies in the industry

Summertime is just around the corner, which means now is the perfect time of year for agency owners like us to take stock of where we’re at now and where we want to be sitting by the end of the year. How can we get a clear picture of how 2022 is stacking up against 2021? By taking a close look at the trends that have, and will continue, to affect our industry as a whole.

On this week’s solocast episode of Build a Better Agency, we’re taking a look at the marketing trends that have shaped the first part of the year so we can mitigate the bad, take advantage of the good, and come into the second half of 2022 stronger than ever. As the title suggests, this discussion is being split into two parts — so be sure to keep an eye out for Part 2 during our next solocast!

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.

• Which marketing trends are in Drew’s crosshairs — and why
• How 2022 stacks up against 2021 so far
• Why so many agencies are feeling the pinch more this year than last
• The metrics agency owners aren’t paying enough attention to
• How those metrics can help you add 5% profit to your bottom line this year
• Business development opportunities that you don’t want to miss out on — and how to make sure you don’t
• How client expectations have changed in the past few years

As agency owners, the work environments we create are a direct reflection of our leadership styles. In a trust-led environment, our people should feel safe to speak up, take risks, and take ownership of the work they produce. Trust is the cornerstone for strong communication, creativity, and the innovation that fuels our business. So, what happens when trust isn’t part of the equation?

Our guest for this episode of Build a Better Agency, Sue Dyer, is an expert on all things leadership. She wrote the book on trusted leadership (literally) and has seen firsthand how teams and even entire agencies tend to fall apart when the people at the helm aren’t leading with trust.

During our conversation, Sue and I unpack what it means to be a trusted leader, how agency owners can determine their leadership style, and what it takes to build successful organizations based on trust.

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 be a trusted agency leader
• Why trust is the cornerstone of success for any business
• How to create a high-trust environment at your agency
• Ways to help new team members adapt to a trusted environment
• Why “fear-led” environments have wiped out so many businesses
• How to determine whether or not you are a trusted leader
• What to do in order to start becoming a trusted leader

Whether we realize it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) has already impacted countless aspects of our everyday lives. And as the technology we rely on continues to adapt and change, those changes will inevitably shape the future of our businesses, our industry, and our society. As agency owners, it’s our job to stay ahead of those changes — even if the thought of an AI-driven agency is, understandably, a little intimidating.

Our guest on this episode of Build a Better Agency, Paul Roetzer, is not only an expert on all things AI, but he’s also someone who is dedicated to helping agency owners and other industry professionals. Paul teaches those agency owners and industry professionals how to pilot and scale AI technology so they can use it to drive efficiency, growth, and creativity for their business.

During our enlightening conversation, Paul demystifies the fascinating realities of artificial intelligence by walking us through what it really is, how AI agency tools can help make us better at our jobs, and why shaping the future of marketing starts with understanding how to use AI platforms, programs, and services responsibly.

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.

• How artificial intelligence will — and already is — shaping the future of agency tools
• Why AI is NOT here to take your job
• Where you’re already seeing AI in your everyday life, and where you WILL see it in marketing in the marketing world
• What AI technology can do to help you make your agency smarter right now
• Why Paul says that you don’t need to go shopping for AI tools — and what to do instead
• How AI agency tools can be used to drive efficiency and growth for your business
• What Paul believes a “Next Gen” agency looks like — and how to become one

As agency partners, we have access to an insane amount of backend data and insights into our clients’ business. Now what? How can we use all of that data to build momentum in our clients’ revenue pipelines and translate those insights for them so that they can make the case when they’re at the table with the decision-makers on their team?

On this episode of Build a Better Agency, we’re joined by CRM and sales expert Eric Stockton, VP of Demand Generation at SharpSpring. Eric gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the industry-wide shift in focus from outbound marketing to inbound lead generation. We talk about what this means for agencies and how we can help our clients adjust to a “quality over quantity” mindset — without freaking them out.

Eric is a past keynote speaker at a series of marketing-related trade shows, including MarketingSherpa events, eCommerce Retail Executive Summit, Email Summit, B2B Demand Generation Summit, ContentBiz, MarketingExperiements virtual events, and Affiliate Summit.

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.

• Why the industry is shifting its focus from outbound to inbound leads — and what that means for agencies
• How to help our clients make that shift without freaking out
• Why focusing on quality over quantity does NOT mean you’ll be getting fewer leads
• What Eric means when he tells his clients to focus on their “North Star” metrics
• Whether or not the “quality game” is truly sustainable
• Ways we as agency partners can help clients divorce themselves from metrics they don’t — or shouldn’t — care about

How does your agency show up in the world? As agency owners, we have a responsibility to know what’s going on — with our business, our employees, and our clients. There’s a lot going on in the world, and understanding how these things affect the worldviews of others in our space is the first step in deepening our agency relationships, elevating our business, and making sure we go beyond the “one-word” values our industry seems to be riddled with.

In this episode of Build a Better Agency, Karley Cunningham of Big Bold Brand joins me to talk about ways agencies can actually implement their mission, vision, and values into their processes in order to leverage them as strategic branding tools. She also offers expert insights into identifying the worldviews of the audiences who matter most to you, knowing when to take a stance on the important issues, and what to do when your worldviews no longer align with those of your clients.

Brand Strategist and Business Growth Accelerator Karley Cunningham takes businesses from overcrowded, competitive spaces out into blue ocean territory where they can confidently stand out and thrive as brand leaders in their sector.

Having built three successful businesses, Karley knows what it takes to start, develop and lead a company that delivers results. Her entrepreneurial success story is featured in the awarded book: The Widest Net by Pamela Slim. In addition, she’s a sought-after mentor and speaker for national and international business organizations and the host of The Made Possible Podcast.

Believing deeply in the practice of givers gain, she is well-known and networked and rarely goes a day without making a referral or connection. As a former pro athlete, Karley is performance-driven. An avid mountain athlete, she is a two-time finisher of the BC Bike Race, a seven-day, 325 km mountain bike stage race, and is always looking out for her next trail running adventure. When not focusing on the business or expanding her network, she can be found somewhere in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with her wife and dog in their 4×4.

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.

• How to proactively influence the way your agency shows up in the world
• Why it’s important to understand our client’s worldviews, how they align with our own, and what that means for our business
• Ways to implement your mission, vision, and values as strategic branding tools
• How to accelerate your business, improve employee retention, and deepen client relationships by taking your mission, vision, and values “off of the page”
• When it’s important to take a stance on important issues, and how to start those conversions with clients
• What your consumers want to know about where you stand
• How to identify and align the worldviews of the audiences who matter most to you

One of the unfortunate truths of our business is that as agency owners, we are almost never in the driver’s seat when it comes to sales engagements. At the end of the day, we have no way to inspire, incent, cajole, bribe, or trick someone into buying agency services until they have a genuine need for them. But, with so much of our focus centered around not making an ask at the wrong time, it’s no surprise that so many of us are left with the same question — when CAN we sell?

In this episode of Build a Better Agency, we’re going to answer that question in a few different ways. First, we’re going to talk about what the “right time” to sell looks like not only for our prospects but also for existing clients and former clients. We’re also going to explore ways we as agency owners can accelerate the sales process (because yes, that’s a thing we can do), provide value to our prospects long before we’re in their consideration set, and use our positions of authority to grow our reputation and crush our business development goals — all without selling.

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.

• How agency owners can know whether or not it’s the right time to sell
• What the right time to sell looks like for your prospects, existing clients, and even for clients who’ve parted ways with your agency
• Why agency owners are not always in the driver’s seat when it comes to engaging business development opportunities — and why that’s ok
• How to ensure that you’re providing value to your prospects long before they’re on your radar
• What agency owners can do to accelerate the sales process
• The reason Drew says you shouldn’t try to sell until after you’ve been helpful
• How agencies are crushing their business development goals — without selling

The glamor of working for an agency has worn off somewhat since the 80s and 90s. Markets are more saturated, salaries have stagnated, and recruiting top talent has become more difficult — especially since Covid.

As agency owners, that means we have to adjust our process to find and hire top talent to meet our clients’ needs. To help us understand all the changes we’re facing today, I sat down to talk with Michael Palma, an agency recruiting and business development expert.

With decades of experience in the industry, he’s seen all the shifts and changes that have occurred in the hiring process for both agency owners and employees. In this episode, he shares what agency owners often get wrong about finding top talent and why finding top talent is so hard nowadays. He also helps us understand how agencies can find right-fit clients and right-fit employees to match our clients’ needs.

Michael is essentially an expert agency matchmaker who has his finger on the pulse of the most pressing issues agency owners face, and helps us navigate them all with a “humble swagger.”

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 “walk with a humble swagger”
• What agency owners often get wrong about recruiting top talent
• The downhill trend in finding right-fit agency employees
• How to find be confident without arrogance
• What’s making it difficult for recruiters and agency owners to find top talent
• Challenges in salaries in equity for agency employees
• Knowing what you want in a candidate before you write a job description
• How Covid has changed new business for agencies
• Strategies that win over a client
• Where agencies should be investing in their own biz dev and growth

Running an agency in a post-COVID world means growing more and more comfortable operating in a virtual environment. This collective shift in our industry has been happening for a while, but after navigating a global pandemic, agency owners have had to pivot more rapidly than in the past. As a result, agency owners are left wondering how they can genuinely connect with their prospects and invest in those relationships when the human aspect of interaction has shifted to a digital one.

In this episode of Build a Better Agency, I talk with encore guest, Tom Martin. Tom is the Founder and CEO of Converse Digital, and he knows a thing or two about the collective shift into the digital world – a shift that isn’t going to reverse anytime soon. Tom and I discuss how sales strategies, pitches, and the dynamics of client interactions have been influenced by this digital shift.

You’ll probably be just as relieved as I was to hear Tom share why that shift, while uncomfortable for many of us, is actually a GOOD thing for agencies. We also delve into the importance of strategically creating your prospect lists and how you and your pitch teams can use social media, the internet, and other digital environments our clients rely on to your agency’s advantage. Tom gives expert advice on successfully attracting, building, and effectively selling agency relationships in a virtual world.

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 sales, prospecting, and effective agency relationships look like in a post-COVID world
• How Tom went from being “unemployable” to owning his own agency
• Why Tom emphasizes the importance of strategically attracting your prospects
• What it means for your pitch teams to “do their homework” — and why it’s usually the key to winning a sale
• How sales strategies and client relationships have adapted to an increasingly digital environment
• Why Tom believes that your prospects list is ultimately worthless if it’s impersonal
• How investing the time in getting to know your prospects will place you leaps and bounds over your competitors
• What it means to be a “conversation catalyst,” and how you and your pitch teams can use what Tom calls “social reconnaissance” to offer more value to your prospects
• Why the industry-wide shift to virtual sales and virtual relationships is actually a GOOD thing for agencies

Time sheets. Taxes. Annual reviews. There are some things we don’t love as agency owners and leaders. Cybersecurity and compliance are absolutely on that list. But much like taxes, it’s a necessary evil today. The risks are too great, and the reality is – our clients are going to demand it. We’re far better off to get out ahead of it before we’re asked.

Even my guest, Nathan Maxwell, refers to cybersecurity and compliance as “necessary evils.” But, as the CEO of CCITeam, Nathan also knows better than anyone that in a world filled with data breaches, security risks, and unpredictable online attacks, avoidance simply isn’t an option.
Nathan isn’t one to sugarcoat the daunting realities of implementing solid defenses, navigating cyber insurance options, or tending to the growing list of compliance concerns we’re all getting from our clients. But during our conversation, he reminds us that those processes, while painstaking at times, are never insurmountable. In fact, when we take the time to do these things the right way, our efforts won’t just make our companies safer — they’ll make them better.

Founded in 1995, CCITeam (formerly Communication Concepts, Inc.) is a full-service cyber security, compliance, and IT firm, headquartered in the US heartland. President and CEO, Nathan Maxwell saw an important unmet need for a quality IT and cyber security provider that treated their clients more like family, rather than just a ‘number’. With over twenty years of experience in enterprise-level corporations, Nathan founded CCITeam with four core principles; care, ownership, sharing knowledge, and loyalty. Each of these principles is what makes CCI one of the most trusted managed IT and security providers in the region.

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 effective cybersecurity looks like for agency operations — and why you should care
• The risks every business should be aware of (yes, small agencies too)
• How cybersecurity and compliance are the same, and also very different
• Why your policies need to match your practices and how to make sure they do
• How your employees can either strengthen your cyber defense…or be its greatest weakness
• What to do to protect your business from big risks — including the ones lurking in your inbox
• When to start shopping for cyber insurance and how to know how much you need
• The ROI for agencies who “do all of this right”

As agency owners, we tend to view sales as a necessary evil. Even when we love what we do, believe in how we do it, and have proof that we do it well, having to put on our “sales hats” can still feel, well, gross. But…maybe we’re going about getting those sales in the wrong way.

Nobody likes sales…except for David Priemer. David loves sales. In fact, he loves sales so much that he opted to leave his non-sales background to deconstruct the traditional sales approach and develop his own methodology based on consumer science, research, and psychology.

David has built a wildly successful career around his methodology: Cerebral Selling. And lucky for us, he uses it to help other business owners revamp and rethink their sales process to make it more efficient, effective, and most importantly, more human. I’m so excited to share our conversation with you so that you can start loving sales too — even if you hate selling.

As the Founder and Chief Sales Scientist of Cerebral Selling, David’s unique science and empathy-based approaches to driving revenue and talent growth have been published in the Harvard Business Review as well as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. magazines. Often referred to as the “Sales Professor,” David is also the author of the Bestselling book, Sell The Way You Buy, and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University and the London Business School.

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.

• How to sell your business even if you absolutely hate sales
• What it means to “sell the way you buy”
• The biggest mistakes agency owners make when trying to sell their business
• How giving people the opportunity to say “no” can win you more “yesses”
• Why your CTAs might be scaring your customers away — and how to fix them
• The one thing that customers buy 100% of the time (yes, 100%)
• Why your sales pitches should be focused on problems, not solutions
• How taking the pressure to sell off of yourself will take the pressure off of your customers too — and why that’s a good thing for both of you

Like so many other business environments, our industry is one that is undeniably extroverted on the surface. Agency work is collaborative, relational, creative, and dynamic — all attributes that seem to be catered almost exclusively to extroverted individuals. So where does that leave our introverted counterparts?

Monica Parkin, my guest for this episode, is not only an award-winning public speaker, an acclaimed author, and an engaging business leader; she’s also a total introvert (a title she wears with pride). Like so many, she used to think that gaining momentum in this industry as an introvert was an uphill battle — that is until she decided to flip those false assumptions right on their head. And now, she’s here to help us do the same.

Monica knows firsthand that introverts offer a host of hidden talents and superpowers that are invaluable for all agency teams, talents that are often overlooked or overpowered by the “louder” voices in the room. During our awesome conversation, she reveals what those superpowers are, how introverted individuals can harness their unique skills to find success without pretending to be someone they aren’t, and how agency leaders can create environments that allow the introverted voices within their own teams to rise above all the noise and truly shine.

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.

• Why introverts are natural relationship-building masters
• How career paths look different for introverts and extroverts, but lead to the same level of success
• Tips, tricks, and tactics for introverts looking to magnify their ideas, form meaningful business relationships, and make their voices heard
• Why marketing “like an extrovert” simply doesn’t work for introverts — and why that’s ok
• How agency leaders can create environments that empower introverted talent to thrive
• Why introverts and extroverts are both invaluable agency resources
• How to create magic by mixing introverted and extroverted talent into your agency teams

Today, we’re delving into a topic that’s been on my mind, and on the minds of agency owners in general, for quite some time: employees.

No matter where you are or how big your agency is, staffing is a challenge for everyone right now. Every time the subject comes up during my conversations with agency owners, there are two frustrations in particular that bubble to the surface time and time again:

1. It is hard to find and attract qualified agency talent
2. It is hard to retain the qualified and talented people who already work for us

To tackle those frustrations, let’s explore several things agencies can do right now to counter the rival opportunities your current team members are being poached and approached with on any given day (and yes, it is happening.) We’re also going to get to the heart of what it takes for agencies to create an environment that is attractive to new employees, and a culture that makes your current team want to stick around — and not just for a year or so.

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.

• How agencies can attract new, qualified talent
• What it takes to keep your agency employees around for more than a year or two
• What agency employees are looking for in a great employer, and how to be one
• How to create an agency environment that is attractive to both new and current employees
• How to utilize other tools for retention instead of relying solely on wage increases
• Why you should be sharing your agency’s vision with your employees as often as possible
• The massive value career paths offer agency employees — and owners too
• The importance of cultivating your culture not for, but with your employees

The last few years have thrown a lot at us — both professionally and personally. While we’ve done our best to navigate all of that unpredictability, many have struggled to not only react to these changes but adapt. As agencies continue to reframe and take stock of where we’re at in this “new normal,” I can’t think of a better time to dive into some impressive research just released in RSW/US’s 2022 New Year Outlook report.

RSW/US talked to marketers, CMOs, business owners, agencies, and the people who are seeking out their services to get a diverse and balanced read on how these groups see the world right now — and what they anticipate for what lies ahead. In this episode of Build a Better Agency our guest, Lee McKnight, shares some of the most surprising and invaluable insights uncovered during those conversations. Then together, we break them down into key takeaways and actionable next steps that agencies can take to adapt and thrive in this climate of constant change.

Lee is no stranger to the podcast, nor is he a stranger to building and maintaining solid agency relationships — even in times like these, when the landscapes of client communication, lead generation, and sales elevation seem to be shifting indefinitely.

As Vice President of Sales at RSW/US, Lee drives sales efforts to bring ad agencies and marketing services firms on board with RSW, creates content around successful new business tactics, and takes part in RSW/US marketing objectives, including social media channels, blog content, webinars, video and speaking engagements.

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.

• Key takeaways from the RSW/US 2022 New Year Outlook survey, and what they mean for agencies
• Surprising insights from marketers on spending, specialization, and shifting sales landscapes
• Why so many marketers are pulling back on their non-marketing activities — and what that means for agencies
• What agencies can do to elevate their sales process when face-to-face networking isn’t on the table
• The not-so-hidden benefits of being a specialization agency
• How agency relationships work differently in the virtual space — and how to adapt
• Why it is crucial for agencies to alternate their content and sales platforms
• How to build strong client relationships long before the initial pitch

For an industry that is heavily dependent on effective sales practices, many agency owners are intimidated by the “s” word. It conjures horrible imagery of vacuum salesmen trying to trick people into making purchases they don’t actually want or need. Hiring sales teams might seem like the right step but the results are often disappointing and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why. This can turn one of the most important aspects of building a successful agency into the most strenuous aspect.

Kevin Snow is dedicated to helping businesses and business owners think through their approach to selling, while also helping them get more comfortable with the process. He believes strongly that shifting from a sales pitch to a simple conversation is key to making the outcome more pleasant and effective on both sides of the table.

In this episode of Build a Better Agency, Kevin and I demystify what it means to have a successful sales model. We look at ways to approach sales comfortably, regardless of your personality type. We unravel what it means to have sales automation that doesn’t feel phony or contrived, and we ultimately hope to help business owners reimagine this “necessary evil” as an enjoyable conversation with an outcome.

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 best small business sales model
• Sale tactics for introverts
• Making the most of sales automation
• The important shift in how to approach sales

Business development is a complicated and challenging aspect of agency life for many owners. The same rules that applied when the agency was new no longer apply once it starts to settle into its identity. But what is that identity, and how can it best be leveraged for business growth? And what if you want to shift that identity to better define how you want to be seen and known?

After five episodes talking about the various pieces of the Biz Dev puzzle, this final episode in the mini-series pulls it all together into an action plan. It’s not enough to want to do better; you have to do the work, identify the goals and put an accountability process into place.

Here, we’re going to explore specific, tangible steps for making Biz Dev at your agency a success.

For example — you might be considering hiring someone to manage your business development. We’ll look at the reality of that route.

We’ll also do a short recap of the topics covered in this series, and then we’ll dive into a game plan that starts with dividing the sales funnel into four sections, each with its specific approach.

And by the end of the discussion, you’ll be ready to take your biz dev plan to the next level.

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.

• Thoughts on hiring new business development managers
• Recapping Episodes 1-5 of this biz dev series
• Steps of a Biz Dev System
• Identify sweet spot prospects
• The need for accountability
• A sales funnel exercise

Agency life has evolved dramatically since the era portrayed in shows like Mad Men. We used to be the keepers of the “secret sauce” for making the magic happen, and now we’re the keepers of the secret knowledge for using that magic to its greatest potential. Agencies used to be expected to be generalists, but now clients and prospects are looking for specialists with a depth of strategic expertise. And part of that specialty is having a clear point of view. But you can’t just whisper it; you have to shout it from the mountaintops.

Agency life has evolved dramatically since the era portrayed in shows like Mad Men. We used to be the keepers of the “secret sauce” for making the magic happen, and now we’re the keepers of the secret knowledge for using that magic to its greatest potential. Agencies used to be expected to be generalists, but now clients and prospects are looking for specialists with a depth of strategic expertise. And part of that specialty is having a clear point of view. But you can’t just whisper it; you have to shout it from the mountaintops.

This episode continues a short series dedicated to improving your agency’s biz dev efforts. We’ve discussed the importance of finding a niche several times on this podcast. But here — our focus will be to go a step further. We’ll look at the importance of claiming and declaring your agency’s point of view — and how to do it.

There are questions you can ask of your agency to finetune your POV. There are ways your agency can be findable without needing to continuously create and churn out original content for each different platform. And you might think you need to speak to a large audience but focusing smaller is actually easier and faster to monetize. Putting the ideas spelled out in this conversation into action will help set your agency on a course toward success.

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 timeline of how agency life has changed
• The importance of declaring your point of view
• Questions to help you define your agency’s point of view
• The cornerstone & cobblestone content concept
• Why it’s easier to monetize a narrower audience

Agency business development has to consider many things when setting goals. There is new business to be found, existing business to expand, and lost business to make up for. It can be difficult to juggle all of this information as the agency owner, but it can be challenging for an agency’s AEs who aren’t clear on how to best leverage their position.

Today’s episode continues the series dedicated to improving your biz dev efforts. The first three episodes were focused on you as the business owner, but here in Part 4, we shift the focus to your AEs and helping them grow their book of business and your agency’s bottom line.

There are many ways AEs can be better equipped, and it starts with giving them a stronger toolbox. Their outside perspective is a huge asset that is often overlooked, but they first need to understand “agency math” and exactly what you need from them. Their book of business is key to your agency’s success, and only by clarifying, training, and mentoring can they make the most of it. When they are given the tools and the space to make informed decisions, you set them–and your agency–up for success.

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 agency owners get wrong with their new business goal numbers
• How to plan for attrition
• Understanding “agency math”
• Tips for helping AEs grow their book of business
• How to utilize your AEs outside perspective
• The agency owner’s role in helping AEs grow business

In the last solocast, we reviewed the agency trends that most affected agency AGI in 2023. This week, we’re pulling back the curtain on the major trends rocking agency owners and their teams in 2024 — and giving you tips to stay ahead of them.

We’ll give you a reality check on misguided expectations around agency valuations and sales. And we’ll explore why daily timesheets and utilization metrics are so crucial for retaining your rock star team members.

Another big trend we unpack is moving back towards more in-office collaboration and nurturing agency employee fatigue through meaningful face time, employee retreats, and using in-office time more intentionally.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve and proactively build your agency’s future, don’t miss this deeper look at the key trends shaping the industry this year and beyond. And to catch up on all the other trends we unpacked, be sure to check out Part 1 from last month’s solocast.

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.

• Why a COO role is becoming increasingly popular, even with smaller agencies
• Making the right decisions around selling your agency — or buying another one
• Why taking a smaller salary as an agency owner isn’t always better
• Hybrid work trends for agency owners and employees
• How contractors and freelancers can fill in worker gaps
• The continuing importance of keeping accurate daily timesheets
• What helps reduce agency employee fatigue and what’s causing it
• What agency owners are going to spend time and money on in 2024

Agencies often pose important questions to our clients in order to help steer them into good decision-making. We talk to them about the need to be findable, to understand the customer’s buying journey, to be helpful to clients instead of selling to them, and being aware of how far prospects are into the buying decision by the time the client is actually aware the prospect exists. We are great at teaching this to our clients, but many agencies aren’t so great at taking their own advice.

Today’s episode is continuing our deep dive into agency biz dev with Part 3 of our series. Building up the previous discussions surrounding niching and the different stages of business development during its lifetime, Drew looks at the 6 kisses of death that undermine biz dev for many agencies and how to avoid them.

The conversation explores how successful biz dev often flies in the face of our comfort level. We have to make bold decisions and proclamations in order to own our authority and stand out in a crowded marketplace. If you can learn to be not only aware of but vigilant in avoiding these common mistakes, you set your agency up for tremendous success.

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.

• 4 questions we teach our clients that we need to ask ourselves
• How consistency in the right biz dev areas rewards your agency.
• How to stop looking and sounding like everyone else.
• Why generic content hurts you.
• What it takes to do more than whisper your niche.
• Miscalculating the number of new clients needed to grow your agency.
• How passivity creates problems for your agency.

During the lifetime of an agency, how that agency/agency owner approaches business development evolves. In the beginning, an agency’s first clients are people the agency owner knows personally. From there, as the agency matures and grows, it morphs into working with people who have been referred to the agency by happy clients. Many agencies never evolve past this level of business development. It can be challenging to see options for the continuum of business development beyond the normal routine.

Today’s episode is continuing our deep dive into agency biz dev. Building up the previous discussion about the importance of finding a niche, Drew looks at the 5 stages that create the continuum of business development and explains why 85% of agencies never reach the most effective and sophisticated of levels.

You get to decide where on the continuum your agency lands. But to make an informed decision, you have to know your options.

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 five stages on the continuum of business development
• Why offering deals never serves in the long run
• The need to be interesting instead of interested
• Statistics related to how prospects find their agency
• The ideal structure for an agency

As we start to dip our toes into 2022, many agencies have been pretty quiet on the biz dev front for the last 4-6 weeks. By the time we emerge from the holiday hibernation, we’re approaching February and our pipeline is feeling a little weak. I decided to help you jump-start your agency biz dev efforts with a series of podcast conversations just between you and me.

I’ve decided to mix things up a bit. 2022 is my year to shake things up a little and why not start in January? Rather than my usual guest interviews, I’m going to spend this month with you, focusing on helping you take a serious look at how you approach biz dev. Here in episode 1, we focus on something fundamental to many agencies’ success: defining a niche.
I’m going to start by looking at why the old-school approach to biz dev no longer works and why selling has evolved into helping. From there, we’ll explore why many agencies approach biz dev backwards and the list of criteria to consider when working to find your agency’s niche.

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.

• Why old school agency biz dev no longer works
• How selling has become about helping
• Why many agencies approach biz dev backwards
• The brutal truth about the need to niche down
• AMI as a niche case study
• The criteria to use when thinking about how to niche