Biz dev, mentorship, and relationship management are critical responsibilities of every agency owner. But the hours in a workday are limited, and if we fail to delegate with confidence, the work that is uniquely ours will not get done. It’s just too easy to get sucked into client work or internal issues that we shouldn’t be focused on. Every agency owner needs a #1 who walks, talks, and leads like an owner because they enable us to actually do our job.
In this episode, AMI’s own Craig Barnes chats with Drew about his observations as to what it takes to recognize, find and keep a great lieutenant from his lens as the facilitator of AMI’s Key Executive networks. Craig also walks us through how to groom an existing employee who you believe has the potential to fill that role.
Throughout his experience running his own agency for 25+ years and his role at AMI, Craig has gleaned some invaluable insights about leadership team level team members in the agency world. If you are interested in learning how to identify that critical player for your team and prepare them for success, this episode is 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: https://www.whitelabeliq.com/ami/
What You Will Learn in this Episode:
- The common traits of agency key executives
- All of the different functions that key executives can serve
- How to identify key executives on your team and groom them for success
- How you can grow as an agency owner so that your key executive can flourish
- Why this is the ideal time to find and nurture a new leader
Ways to Contact Craig Barnes:
One of the challenges of agency life is that typically everything we sell is a custom job. It’s tough to build in efficiencies or systemize our production when we never make the same deliverable twice. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Back in Episode 100, we discussed the idea of structuring your agency as a wonder bread factory vs. an artisanal bakery and there are different pros and cons for each.
Website By Tonight’s Jared Gold successfully transformed his agency from an artisanal bakery into a wonder bread factory for web development. And in this episode of Build A Better Agency, Jared joins us to share the lessons he learned throughout the process so you can apply them in your own agency.
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:
- Jared’s journey from artisanal bakery to wonder bread factory with Website By Tonight
- The benefits and drawbacks of productizing your agency’s service line
- The lessons and insights Jared learned while switching from custom to standardized deliverables
- How to determine what parts of your agency can actually be productized
- Creating firm boundaries around your productized offerings so that you can always meet expectations
- How Jared’s target audience changed when he introduced the productized service line with Website By Tonight
Ways to Contact Jared Gold:
- Website: https://websitebytonight.com/
- Free Productized Agencies Directory: turnkeyagencies.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredgold1/
Additional Resources:
- Agency Planning Tools: agencymanagementinstitute.com/herecomes2020
- Access Jared’s agency-to-agency project/partner referral Slack group:
https://websitebytonight.com/partner - Jared’s agency partner program: https://websitebytonight.com/faq-partners