Many agency owners want to see 20% growth (or more) year over year while staying profitable. This goal isn’t entirely unrealistic, but the bigger you get, the harder it is to maintain such impressive numbers if you’re not investing resources in the right things to support that growth.

For this week’s solocast, I have some homework for you to do to help you see if you’re prepared to meet your growth goals in 2024. Don’t worry; we will do it together while I walk you through how to crunch the numbers step-by-step.

If you want to follow along, grab your P&L statement and our growth goal worksheet linked below, and get ready to do some math. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a much clearer picture of where your agency is at financially and what level of growth you can support next year based on the numbers we calculate today.

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.

In This Episode:

• The basics of staying at 20% profit while doubling in size
• The mistakes we often make when setting end-of-year growth goals
• How to set a healthy growth goal based on your agency stats
• Why attrition affects your growth goal, and how much
• Emphasizing the role AEs play in growing clients
• What your agency needs if you plan to grow more than 15% year over year
• Which tough decisions agency owners need to make to hit growth goals
• The importance of niching down to boost growth

One of the most common questions we still receive is about how to decouple yourself from the day-to-day grind of agency life and finally get to focus on being an agency owner. Many of us became accidental entrepreneurs and owners, and now that we have teams to lead, it can be hard to stop doing the old work that got us started on this journey.

This week, Lien De Pau is giving us a roadmap for successfully decoupling ourselves from the daily grind so we can start focusing on biz dev, sales, admin, and other tasks that often get put on the back burner in favor of things that we could easily delegate or outsource.

The key to growing (and eventually selling) an agency is to get out of your own way and become irrelevant to the business. Join us to learn how to start advocating for your own success as an agency owner and get out of the daily grind holding your agency back from reaching its peak potential.

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 mindset work that begins the process of removing yourself from the day-to-day
• Hiring out your weaknesses to others
• Letting go of your ego getting in the way
• The 5-step roadmap to decouple yourself from the agency
• How creative agency owners can productize their services to facilitate SOPs
• The roadblocks agency owners face when stepping away from the day-to-day
• Acting like an entrepreneur vs. an employee
• Leveling up as an entrepreneur
• How agency growth is linked to your success in the decoupling process

Shifting agency culture has been a huge point of contention for many agency owners since the beginning of the pandemic. For some, it’s brought a lot of challenges in understanding how we can work as a team while being scattered around, while others have embraced the changes and have tried to adapt the best they can.

However, it can still be challenging to fully adapt to how quickly agency life has changed in just a few years. Our guest today, Gustavo Razzetti, has one simple message for us — it’s time to accept that agency life as we know it has changed forever, and we need to figure out what that means for us and our teams.

Agency culture may never be the same, but we shouldn’t be less successful because of it. Join us in listening to our discussion about creating an effective agency culture for you and your team, whether hybrid, remote, or trying to figure out something entirely new. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but we can at least help get the wheels spinning so you can figure out where to begin.

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

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Why agency culture is so important today compared to in past decades
• Creating a workplace culture that makes people want to work there AND stay
• Welcoming communication and collaboration in remote or hybrid teams
• Getting a facilitator involved in agency culture shifts
• Trialing new ideas and work strategies before fully committing
• Workplace trends that are coming, and what’s here to stay
• Why the 9-5 is dead, but the 4-day work week isn’t the solution
• Flexibility goes both ways
• Helping clients overcome common remote workplace challenges
• Involving employees in problem-solving earlier in the process
• How owners and leaders can create a strong agency culture in a new modern work environment

No matter how experienced you are, everyone gets nervous before getting up in front of a room full of people to speak. The adrenaline starts pumping, and you start doubting yourself and your ideas a little bit. It’s a universal experience we’ve all felt at least once in our lives.

Michael Weiss is here to teach us that giving presentations doesn’t have to be the stressful, nerve-wracking experience we often make it out to be. When you boil it down, it’s just an exchange of ideas you’re gifting to your audience. And with enough rehearsal and understanding of your speaking style, it can be engaging and fun, too.

If you have a sales pitch, an important client presentation, or even a big presentation on stage at a conference coming up, be sure to refer back to this episode to learn professional strategies for how to deliver an informative presentation while keeping your audience engaged and interested.

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

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Helping people recognize they’ve earned the right to be on stage
• Understanding that the audience wants you to succeed
• Why you must always rehearse before presentations, and for how long
• Getting more comfortable with rehearsing presentations
• How agency leaders can set great examples for the team with presentations
• Finding a groove when presenting with multiple speakers
• Honoring your speaking style and giving engaging presentations
• How to have brilliant and clear slide decks
• Reading the audience and keeping them engaged

With new client acquisition at an all-time low, it’s more important than ever to focus on growing your existing client base. In fact, 60 to 70 percent of your net new revenue should now come from existing clients to continue being profitable.

This means it’s time to teach your AE’s how crucial it is to know how to navigate agency math, foster agency growth, and sell new, innovative ideas to your existing clients. Many AEs don’t realize it’s their job to do these tasks, which means there’s room for improvement from agency owners to teach them these skills so your agency can continue to grow in a difficult economic time.

In this episode, we’ll cover topics like the roles AEs play in agency growth and growing existing clients, how to adjust your work scope over time to remain profitable, the importance of bringing innovative ideas to your clients, and many more actionable items for your team to learn and grow from.

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 to get 60 to 70 percent of your net new revenue to come from existing clients
• The cost of acquiring new clients over growing existing ones
• How to adjust a growing work scope with a client over time
• The importance of teaching AEs agency math and how we make money
• Where AEs need to step up to help grow the existing client base
• Allowing clients to talk about the problems they need to be solved
• How we frustrate our clients by being too timid
• Being a catalyst for bringing experts together to solve your client’s problems

There’s more M&A activity amongst agencies than ever before. As agency owners get older and running the business becomes more stressful, many owners are running out of gas and looking for a reset. This means there has never been a more perfect time if you’re looking to buy an agency. And if you’re looking to sell, it might go faster than you anticipate.

We know that M&As are stressful on both sides of the deal, no matter how much you plan ahead. So this week, we’re taking a deep dive into the whole process — how far in advance to plan your sale, valuation, succession planning, dealing with the emotions behind it, and much more.

Even if you’re not planning to sell your agency right now, eventually, this will become a reality, and it’s always better to be ahead of the curve. So don’t miss this longer episode packed with tips for passing the torch and preparing for the future of your 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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Why M&A activity is so high right now
• The strongest factors that will determine agency valuation
• How to assess your agency valuation
• Preparing 3-5 years in advance for an M&A
• Passing the torch to a new owner and being the buyer’s cheerleader
• Giving your employees the opportunity to be an internal buyer
• Preparing for an M&A for both a buyer and a seller
• Expenses to expect when preparing for a sale on both sides

Does your agency have what it takes to provide best-in-class service to your clients? According to Susan Quinn’s research, there are 9 traits that an agency should have in order to get there.

It’s not always about being the fastest or having the best prices. In fact, it’s almost never about price when you’re providing top-notch service. What it ultimately comes down to is living by your agency’s core values, innovation, and an intense focus on quality.

Susan Quinn and her team have been living by these traits so well that they began studying them to find out just what makes the best client experience and best-in-class service. So, if you’re ready to take your agency to the next level and partner with next-level companies, tune in to learn how they constantly improve their client experience and how you stack up against the competition.

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 basis for the research about the 9 traits of agencies with best-in-class service
• Breaking down each trait
• Why adopting the 9 traits will set your agency up for continued growth
• How Susan’s agency conducted their research
• The 3 ways C-Suite employees categorized their best-in-class status
• How niching down has changed Susan’s agency over decades
• The importance of partnering with other agencies with the same core values
• Why you and your agency should always be learning and innovating

Do you know the “why” behind the work you do? If not, it might be time to find out. Understanding the motivation behind why we show up and feel connected to our work is key to personal happiness and effective interpersonal communication.

As it turns out, there are nine “whys” that we could categorize ourselves into that affect agency communication and connectivity. Knowing where we fall on that spectrum, especially as agency owners, can remove blocks and help your agency reach its goals faster and more effectively than doing things the same old way we always do them.

If your agency has a lot of goals, but the team sometimes struggles to execute them, it might be time for the “why” mindset strategy that our guest, Linda Perry, is teaching us about in this episode. Because at the end of the day, your people are your greatest asset, and knowing how to communicate with them how they receive it best is a recipe 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 You Will Learn in This Episode:

• The mindset perspective that helps agencies reach their goals faster
• Getting to the bottom of limiting beliefs that prevent us from growing
• The what, the why, and the how for better agency communication
• Creating connectivity between agency owners, leadership, and team members
• The agency owner’s responsibility is to create moments of connection
• How to navigate different “whys” and assign tasks accordingly
• How the “why” mindset strategy aligns with the agency’s mission, vision, and values
• Understanding a client’s “why” for better sales strategies

When you think about how you do business, do you find that you’re purposefully taking longer to respond to inquiries because you don’t want a client to believe you’re not busy enough? Or do you hesitate to answer right away because you don’t want that to be their new expectation of your agency?

Unfortunately, this is where many agencies get it backward. Clients already expect quick responses, regardless of how fast or slow you were the first time. In fact, speed is one of the most important factors for client happiness, and it will only go higher on the priority list from here.

Jay Baer has done intense research on this very topic and is sharing his findings with us. As many of you know, he’s always ahead of the curve when it comes to agency trends. And he’s passionately confident that agencies need to get faster so they’re first in line when a prospect calls them up. Because if he’s learned anything, it’s that speed will beat out price almost every time.

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 generational differences in patience in business settings
• Speed is the most important factor for client happiness
• The psychology of speed and how it equates to caring
• Closing uncertainty gaps with clients
• Creating a “fast pass” lane for impatient clients
• The “Got it Audit” for the customer journey
• When fast is too fast
• The hierarchy of when speed is most important for client satisfaction
• Where we get speed wrong in business decisions

As your agency grows, your leadership team must grow alongside it. You’ll notice as your team gets bigger, the day-to-day operations become more complicated, and you might want to start taking a step back from certain tasks altogether.

That’s where a COO comes in to save the day. A successful, growing agency must have someone to handle day-to-day operations and implement systems and processes properly. And if you have the right person to take some tasks off your plate, that opens you up to focus on the parts of the business you’re most passionate about, like being a visionary.

This week, I’m talking with Carolyn Lodge about the signs and symptoms of when it’s time to grow your leadership team and hire a COO. We discuss how to identify the right person for the job, their roles and expectations, how to integrate them with the rest of your team to build trust, and what traits are most commonly needed in the COO position.

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 clues that show it might be time to hire a COO
• What size agency is too small to have a COO role
• The skills and traits of a good COO
• Implementing the founder’s or owner’s vision
• Building trust within your leadership team as you bring on new team members
• Ensuring your COO is a good culture fit for the job
• How a COO changes the day-to-day of a CEO
• Go-to questions to vet a potential COO

One of the most powerful new business tools to establish credibility as an agency is right at our fingertips. Finding speaking opportunities at conferences, trade shows, and even as a podcast guest is a great first step to entering the world of thought leadership.

While it may seem daunting initially, especially if you’re new to this, thought leadership is about as easy as simple networking. Your network can get you into spaces you’ve never dreamed of if you have the right tools to navigate it.

This week, Katy Boos is giving us those tools to show us how practical and valuable thought leadership and public speaking can be for agency owners and leaders. With in-person events making a huge comeback post-Covid, the need for the best and brightest speakers is on the rise, too. Tune in to learn how to get your ideas in front of the right audience and establish yourself and your agency as one of the next great thought leaders.

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 top most beneficial reasons for speaking at an event
• Speaking at a big event vs. the right event
• Looking beyond the room you’re speaking in
• Determining who’s the right person to put on the stage
• Narrowing down your topic and finding the right-fit audience
• The post-Covid trade show and conference outlook
• How to get conference organizers hyped up on your thought leadership
• Getting in front of the right podcast audience
• Creating content from your speaking event
• Common mistakes that get us a “no” from conference organizers
• Getting your foot in the door

Lately, agency owners and leaders have been hitting their heads against a biz dev brick wall. With increased sales cycles, difficulty getting clients to start projects, tightened budgets, and more, it seems like we’re in a cycle of never-ending struggle.

Even if the future looks bleak, there are always more things that can be done and new strategies to try to help push through a difficult time. That’s why now more than ever, it’s critical for agency owners and leaders to track certain metrics to ensure you’ll end 2023 in the black, even as everyone is seemingly tightening their belts.

This week, I’m sharing five metrics you should be tracking with your teams to ensure you’re making the right strategic decisions during heightened hardship. From taking a closer look at your numbers to ensuring client satisfaction, we have the tools to help you end the year in the black against all odds.

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.

In This Episode:

• Tracking your 55-25-20 AGI metrics more closely
• Deciding where to move money around to keep good employees
• Doubling down on biz dev efforts
• Getting your existing clients to spend more money on you
• Why AEs should be helping to grow the existing client base
• Why client satisfaction scores are more critical than ever
• Good employee retention sends a positive message to customers

In-person networking and relationship building are not dead. For agencies, it remains one of the most important methods of building your client base. And unfortunately, odds are you’re not doing it enough.

Showing up is a huge part of the biz dev battle that a Zoom call or Slack channel just can’t fix. And in a time when many of us have to rely on current clients to keep ourselves afloat, cutting corners on new business opportunities won’t get us very far.

For Hank Blank, some of the biggest red flags from the clients’ perspective directly result from our increasingly virtual ways of doing business. In his eyes, you will struggle to find new clients if you’re not attending events, doing in-person networking, inviting people into your agency’s space, or making philanthropic efforts in your community.

If you want to learn what always stands the test of time for agencies battling it out for new clients, don’t miss this conversation with one of the best in the business.

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 smaller agencies can stand out against large agencies with in-house teams
• The biggest mistakes agencies make when searching for new business
• How agencies make themselves look unavailable or uninterested in new clients
• Why in-person networking is still imperative for growing a client base
• How agencies can develop a meaningful brand for themselves
• Letting creativity guide you in your networking and biz dev
• The 3 things that win new business
• Making working at an agency fun again
• Getting ahead of the competition to educate clients on new technology

The workforce has changed forever, which has brought change fatigue along with it. This means how we navigate problem-solving and facilitate change amongst our teams has to change, too.

This week, I’m chatting with Jenny Magic, an expert in all things change and team morale. For almost 20 years, she’s been working with agency leaders and their teams to help implement strategies. She noticed that there were often major disconnects between agency leaders and their team’s opinions on new strategies and changes to SOPs. She set out to discover what makes teams get on board with change without getting burnt out.

We’ll discuss the best ways to facilitate change with your teams, get employees on board with your ideas and strategies, and the importance of psychological safety for employees to share openly. When you know how to facilitate change effectively, you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to get your teams on board with new ideas and strategies.

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 the world of change has changed
• How to line up change so that it actually gets implemented
• The cost of change
• The real roots of change fatigue
• Why so many employees start “treading water” when you try a new strategy
• The value of co-creating change with your team
• Utilizing confidential inquiries to get honest responses from employees
• There is no “one-size fits all” training model that actually works
• Creating psychological safety among team members

AI has been at the top of everyone’s minds this year, particularly with the birth of ChatGPT in November 2022. We’re currently in a renaissance where AI innovation and creativity are fusing to push the limits of what we ever thought was previously possible.

With these new AI tools comes a lot to look forward to, but also a lot of fear and uncertainty. Many of you are worried about job security, work expectations, and getting left behind in favor of faster, newer technology. In this episode, we’ll address these valid concerns with AI expert Paul Roetzer.

Paul has been at the forefront of AI innovation for most of his career and has some ideas to share with us about how this all started, where it’s at now, and what’s possible for the future. While the uncertainty is scary, one certainty is that we must lean into the AI movement with an open mind and be ready to adapt alongside it.

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

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• How clients are starting to wise up to AI use for projects
• Copyright concerns for agencies using AI
• The real threats agencies should be looking out for with AI innovation
• The move to client-agency co-creation
• Always be testing
• Helping clients pilot AI tools in their strategy and operations
• The evolution of agencies that utilize AI innovation
• How to vet new AI tools in a sea of uncertainty
• The future of AI integrations

The idea of agency culture has been on my mind a lot lately, especially now that we’re all settling into new post-covid workplace structures. Without as much face time in an office, many of you are starting to wonder how to continue cultivating a healthy workplace environment for your employees over video calls and Slack channels.

For this week’s solocast, I’m sharing what research shows are the four core pillars of a healthy agency culture that will ensure your employees feel seen, heard, safe, and valued. It’s not just about proximity and having office parties or team outings anymore. And as agency leaders, it’s essential that we lead by example in creating the right environment for our teams to thrive.

If you can weave these four concepts into how you run your agency and build up your teams, your agency will be set up for success, no matter if you’re in the office, fully remote, or somewhere in between.

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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Thinking about agency culture differently
• Why agency owners must lead the charge in creating a healthy agency culture
• Creating an environment of inclusivity for all team members
• Leading with love and being curious about your people
• Creating learning opportunities for yourself and the team
• Encouraging quarterly growth goals for employees
• Celebrating contributions and identifying employee strengths
• Leaving space for employees to challenge the status quo
• Making it ok for people to disagree respectfully

Agency culture has encountered a massive shift post-pandemic. With hybrid and remote work more common than ever, weaving our missions, goals, values, and purpose into our teams requires a different approach than before.

This week, we’re talking to Chad Kearns, an agency culture expert, to discuss how agency leaders are at the forefront of agency culture and should run their agency according to their core values. If you don’t align yourself with your own mission and values, your team won’t be operating at its peak, which can throw the whole agency off balance.

If it sounds high-stakes, it’s because it is. Everything starts with agency culture — from screening a potential new hire to your employee retention rate. Tune in to learn how to align your agency to your core values and discover what people value the most when choosing to work for an 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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• People are at the core of the agency world
• How cultural concerns have changed post-pandemic
• Challenges that clients face today with agency culture
• Finding right-fit employees who will embody your agency culture
• Aligning yourself and exemplifying your mission, values, and goals to your team
• Where agencies often fail to uphold their core values and missions
• Culture goes beyond social interaction
• How to attract better talent aligned with your agency values
• Why good onboarding is imperative for healthy agency culture

With the elongated sales cycles we have all seen throughout 2023, knowing your lifetime customer value is more important than ever. It’s essential not only for you as an agency but also to calculate that data for your clients.

Clients are looking for the most value for their money, and everyone is tightening their belts. Gone are the days of patient clients willing to wait around for results. Now, it’s all about data-driven, proven results that your agency can provide ASAP. If you can’t provide everything they need, they expect you to find the people who can partner with you to get it done.

In this episode, we’re discussing how you can adapt to the new era of agency ownership with data-driven metrics and proven results for your clients and their customers. We know it’s hard to adapt to a fast-changing and ever-adapting world of work, but we’re here to help you work through it and find innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve.

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:

• Defining lifetime customer value
• How an agency can help a client calculate their lifetime customer value
• The trends and metrics that non-commerce agencies can analyze for their LCV
• How LCV calculations can help you and your clients get smarter about budgeting
• Why agencies are struggling to acquire new customers and how to adapt
• The growing importance of agency syndication
• The swinging pendulum of agency hiring
• The 3 pillars of customer value optimization
• How agencies can troubleshoot for their clients and course-correct their offerings

It’s that time of year again — we’re evaluating the 2023 Agency Edge Research study, where we polled people who hire agencies about what they expect from agencies and what gets them to open their wallets for us.

Despite a challenging year of having to find creative ways to get existing clients to spend more money with us, a lot of good news came out of this study. Overall, existing clients with larger budgets are much more willing to stick with an agency and spend more money if we present them with a compelling reason to do so.

What do we do with that information? We’ve been preparing you for months leading up to this study, covering many of the topics we’ll see today. So, if you missed any of those episodes, be sure to go back so you can be on top of your game going into 2024.

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 three main client archetypes
• How the three archetypes spend their money
• How clients use agencies to fill their different needs
• The revenue and budget breakdowns of each existing client group
• What makes a current client want to spend more money with us, and when
• The biggest motivation existing clients have for increasing their spend
• What clients believe makes the best agency
• The increased importance of client love and getting to know their teams
• Why we should be pitching new ideas to our clients and asking them to experiment with us

Part of being an agency means that you solve problems for a living. Clients come to you with a problem, and it’s up to you and your team to figure out the solution and present it to them in a neat package. Simply put, creative innovation is woven into the DNA of an agency.

Under pressure and deadlines, creative innovation can quickly be squashed, rushed, or underprioritized. But Carla Johnson, an ideation and innovation expert, has studied and produced an effective formula for how agencies can reinvigorate their creative strategies.

Her methodology can be incorporated with client projects and daily agency strategy to improve systems and processes. Innovation doesn’t always have to be creative, but getting creative about innovation can change how your team solves problems and could even save you time and money when putting it to the test.

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:

• What our clients are really hiring us to do
• Figuring out how to connect the dots more efficiently
• Innovative ways to approach creative ideation on your team
• Bringing clients into the creative innovation process
• Getting creative about systems and processes during growth moments in the agency
• The 5-step Wheel of Innovation
• Weaving creative thinking into everyday life
• The intersection of business strategy and creative innovation

It’s that time of year again — we’re going over the top agency trends we’re noticing so far in 2023 and going into 2024. A lot has changed since the last time we went over the data, which means we have a ton of information that you’ll hopefully find valuable and can use as a compass for where to lead your agency through the rest of the year heading into 2024.

As we exit the pandemic era and move into the AI era, there’s a lot to consider in how agencies function regarding what our clients want, how fast our sales cycle moves, how we hire, where we should focus our biz dev, and more.

One thing is certain — many agency owners like you feel re-energized and reinvigorated coming out of 2022. Let this episode be a ray of light that gives you an extra boost of encouragement for the rest of 2023, and keep that momentum going for as long as possible.

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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• The impacts of recession fears on AGI and revenue
• ROI — the new agency buzzword
• A growing agency trend in having amazing teams
• Rebalancing overservicing and overstaffing issues
• The fading trend of over-specialization of agencies
• The PPC, SEO, and data analyst job boom
• A positive trend in agency owner happiness
• The continued importance of thought leadership and community spaces
• The agency employee trends of 2023
• Embracing AI and using it as a tool for your work

Keeping up with data protection and privacy laws is exhausting. Nearly every month, new legislation is being introduced state by state to help keep users’ data protected online. And while this is overall a good thing, it can get really messy if agency owners aren’t educated and informing their clients about what this means when they build out their websites.

Luckily, our guest today, Hans Skillrud, has collaborated with his wife to create an easy, self-updating tool that agency owners can implement on their own websites and the sites they build for their clients. He has committed himself to ensuring that data protection tools and documentation are easily accessible for anyone without needing a legal degree to make sense of it all.

In this episode, you’ll learn why you must educate yourself and your clients on the most current privacy policy and data protection laws, why not to cut corners in this department, and why you should never collect more data than you actually need.

Even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal right now, with the constantly changing environment of privacy laws, you never know when you could end up in a mess, even five years later. Don’t delay on this, and get your documentation in check 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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• What is Termageddon?
• What agencies are required to provide to their clients in terms of documentation
• The risks for smaller businesses and agencies for not practicing good data protection
• Why agencies should embrace data protection policies, even if it seems complicated
• Can chatGPT write our policies for us?
• Why copying and pasting someone else’s policies is a bad idea
• How data protection lawsuits happen
• How the Termageddon team keeps up with constantly changing data protection laws
• The confusing future of privacy law
• Three best data protection practices for agencies and website builders

Marketing today is not absolute. It’s experimental, iterative, and ever-changing. And with that comes many challenges that we have to overcome and adapt to as agency leaders. One of those challenges is offering data analytics services to our clients.

Many of us got into the industry, hoping to avoid doing math. And yet, here we are again, going over another way tech and mathematics are imperative in our industry. While it might be exhausting or frustrating, a subject matter expert is joining us to help make it a little less confusing for everyone.

This week, I’m interviewing Jim Sterne, a data analytics expert who knows so much about the industry. Jim started the Data Analytics Association and wrote 12 books on the topic.

In this episode, he’ll share the importance of offering data analytics expertise to better serve clients, how to hire either in-house or third-party data analysts, and tons of resources on where to look for advice and find other experts to help get you started.

Those who adapt survive. Don’t wait on this one, and don’t try to be a hero. The more we can help our clients reach their goals, the better off we are as an industry. Get help, look to the experts, and start offering your clients data analytics services as soon as possible.

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

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Why data analytics is more about the questions you ask rather than the answers you get
• The biggest hurdles agencies face when presenting data to clients
• Should you go third-party or stay in-house?
• What to look for when hiring a third-party data analytics expert
• How to make data useful to the client
• Data reports vs. data alerts, which is better?
• How to become a data storyteller
• Helping clients embrace experimental results over having absolute certainty
• The best resources for wannabe data analysts or those just starting out

AI-generated content is rapidly finding its way into professional spaces and changing the way we work forever. This fact is especially important for creative agencies that are quickly realizing there could be legal implications for using AI to create work proposals, creative IPs, legal documents, and more.

And like most legal questions, the answer to “Can I use AI to generate work for clients?” is, “It depends.” We’re in such a gray area with AI right now that the legal system hasn’t had a chance to catch up to technological advances. So how do agencies protect themselves, their workers, clients, and their IP when everything is so up in the air right now?

Sharon Toerek has some common sense advice for approaching AI in the workplace to avoid a potential legal nightmare. In this episode, we’ll cover human-generated vs. AI-generated content, the gray areas we need to look out for when using AI, how to protect client and agency copyrights, how to avoid infringing other copyrighted content, and so much more.

AI-generated content is an incredibly important and ever-changing topic. And if you’re an agency owner, this needs to be addressed in your agency 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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• The top 3 questions lawyers are receiving about AI
• Having conversations with clients about the use of AI-generated content
• The gray area between AI-generated and human-generated content
• The ownability of AI-generated output
• Creating documentation about implementing AI tools in a typical workflow
• Including AI prompt strategies in trade secrets documentation
• Can we protect the data we’re inputting into the collective that is AI?
• Addressing the use of AI in SOWs
• Should we use AI tools to create legal documents?

We all want to get paid what we’re worth. But it’s more than likely that we’re downplaying our agency’s value because we’re too worried about pricing ourselves out or overcharging. This week, our guest, Casey Brown, will explain why that’s wrong and how to get out of a fear-based pricing mindset for good.

Casey has been serving small to mid-sized agencies for the past 15 years to bring her corporate pricing expertise to private companies. She’ll teach us why it’s probable that we’re talking ourselves out of charging what we’re worth and giving discounts where they’re not needed.

Our time is valuable in a typically creative industry, and we deserve to be paid what we’re worth. Get ready to take action after listening to this episode so you can start having better pricing conversations with customers and stand up for your true worth as an 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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Why you should never pre-discount in pricing conversations
• The questions you should be asking when a client pushes back on price
• How to establish pricing integrity that establishes trust between you and the customer
• How to gauge if a client’s low budget is real
• Building confidence in your pricing
• How to get out of a fear-based mindset
• The best approach to raising prices on legacy clients
• Protecting your margins in this current economy
• How to know if your pricing is right