The most popular relief loan in the US is the Paycheck Protection Program loan or PPP loan. Unfortunately, in a rush to get the funds out to agencies and other businesses, the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department forgot to define how the loan and its forgiveness will work.
There’s a lot of grey area surrounding the PPP, so in this episode of Build a Better Agency, tax advisor Craig Cody joins me to explain what we do know and what we’re still waiting to discover.
Craig is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Tax Coach™, and business owner who has been following developments since day one. Many of us have applied, many of us have received funding, but not one of us knows all the rules. Craig is here to change that, to the extent that he can.
We’ll talk about the SBA’s forgivability application released on May 15th, other forgivability factors, whether or not the expenses we pay for with PPP funds will be deductible and how to manage our finances to weather whatever rules come down.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- The PPP relief loan, what we can use it for, and what we can’t
- What we know so far about PPP eligibility for deduction
- What has changed as a result of the new forgiveness application
- Where the forgiveness application gives us the clarity that we didn’t have clarity before
- What we can make of the IRS/Congress tussle over the PPP guidelines
- Strategies we can use to mitigate our tax liability until the HEROES Act is passed
- How the alternative payroll covered period benefits agency owners
- How agencies can use PPP funds on expenses other than payroll
- How we can reimburse agency employees for working from home expenses
- How to avoid mistakes with your application
Very few agency owners are giddy about the prospect of prospecting for new clients. It feels uncomfortable and unnatural. But what if it isn’t that they hate biz dev but that they just weren’t doing it in a way that aligns with their strengths? If sales felt comfortable and easy, wouldn’t you do more of it?
In this episode of Build a Better Agency, we are joined by biz dev expert Jody Sutter of The Sutter Company, a new business consultancy that advises small agencies on organizing and operationalizing their growth strategy. Her programs make it easier for small agencies to embrace and sustain a new business strategy because they take both the agency’s strengths and available resources into consideration. Jody walks us through the steps we can take to bolster our biz dev strategy as agencies and clients emerge from the storm.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- Jody’s background and what she is doing to serve agencies
- Common biz dev mistakes that agency owners make
- How agency owners can overcome fear and rejection in business development
- The four strength profiles of agency owners and the nuances of each one
- How to identify your strength profile and build a strategy that caters to it
- Jody’s “prescriptive approach to new business”
- How to stay the course while you’re constantly changing your mind about your agency
- How agency owners can move from inaction to action
- How Jody is helping her clients redirect their sales efforts during the global pandemic
The panic around COVID lockdown is plateauing. The storm has certainly not passed, but we’ve navigated out of the panic stage and now everyone is realizing they need to get back to business. Whether you live someplace that is still sheltering in place or you are figuring out how to get back to the office — we have to sustain our business through this and come out on the other side. If we do it well, we can not only come out on the other side but we can come on stronger and better than ever.
In this episode of Build a Better Agency, we walk through the five mini plans that I’ve been talking about in our weekly newsletter. I want to help you build them out.
They are:
- Operational/financial plan (how will you get the work done on time and on budget? Then, determine the minimum acceptable profit margin for your agency and use agency math to manage your way to never dipping below it)
- Team plan (how will you keep them motivated, efficient, profitable, and striving to serve each other and your clients)
- Client plan (you need to proactively guide each client into a position of readiness so that when they can step back in — they’re ready and more prepared than their competitors)
- Prospect plan (what can you talk about that will be valuable — based on what your prospects are ready to hear at any given moment in time)
- Vision of the future plan (what parts of normal are worth rushing back to and what could/should be different?)
The danger to every agency right now is that we get stuck in place and don’t shake the panic phase. If you and your team work through these plans it will propel you past the paralysis and into a future with a solid foundation. Don’t wait – get working on these plans 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: https://www.whitelabeliq.com/ami/
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- How to build out an operational plan that enables you to continue completing work on-time and under budget
- Financial metrics that agency leaders should be paying attention to
- How to keep your team motivated, efficient, and profitable moving forward
- How to proactively guide each client into a position of readiness so they are more prepared than their competitors
- How to create a solid biz dev plan for your agency’s resurgence
- How to make difficult staffing decisions in times of crisis
- Different ways that agencies are successfully managing their teams
- How agencies are landing new clients in these difficult times
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for agency owners and their leadership teams
- Offering AE Bootcamps
- Conducting individual agency owner coaching
- Doing on-site consulting
- Offering online courses in agency new business and account service
Because he works with over 250+ agencies every year, Drew has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written several books, including Sell With Authority (2020) and been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
Subscribe to Build A Better Agency!
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
- Email: drew@agencymanagementinstitute.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/drewmclellan
- Website: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/
Resources:
There’s always been a great debate among agency owners – does cold email work as a new business strategy. Many will argue that given SPAM filters and the volume of email that everyone gets, it’s impossible to break through and actually get the attention of someone in the C-suite. My guest Jeff Winters proves that belief wrong for his clients every day. But will it work for your agency?
There’s always been a great debate among agency owners – does cold email work as a new business strategy. Many will argue that given SPAM filters and the volume of email that everyone gets, it’s impossible to break through and actually get the attention of someone in the C-suite. My guest Jeff Winters proves that belief wrong for his clients every day. But will it work for your agency?
Jeff created a company called Sapper, a service that works with agency owners and brand leaders to help them with their outbound email marketing and sales efforts. Understanding his methodology means you can do this at home—or you can hire a company like Sapper to do it for you.
In this episode, Jeff gave us the scripts, the timing cadence and how you can measure the results. Ours may be an industry that typically does not boast a lot of success from cold calling, but Jeff has many agencies on his roster that are doing things differently and experiencing great success. I picked Jeff’s brain to find out exactly what they are doing so you can do it 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.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- How Sapper was founded and what they do
- How to master outbound email marketing
- How agencies perform using Sapper’s sales methodology
- Different tactics you can use for macro, micro, and nano tiered clients
- How to approach frequency of communication
- What to do when somebody actually responds to your outbound marketing
- How to rethink your sales strategy in a time of crisis