With agency ownership comes big ideas, a lot of creative energy, and infinite passion for your work. Chances are you have a million ideas floating around your head with nowhere to put them. Why not compile them into a book?
We’ve talked about why creative thought leadership matters for finding right-fit clients and aids in biz dev for your agency. This week, I’m bringing back Henry DeVries to discuss finally putting all those ideas into action and writing your book.
We have a fun episode planned today with tons of advice for creating the blueprint for your book, how to finally get started with writing (and get help doing it), and some of the common roadblocks we create for ourselves when it’s time to finally go to the printer.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- Building the blueprint of your book
- 7 questions to answer when creating the book outline
- Why writing is a team sport
- How to solo write a book in a way that’s manageable (if you choose to go it alone)
- The best approach to co-authoring a book
- Discovering your hidden assets and turning them into content
- The roadblocks we create for ourselves in the final stages of publishing
Business development will always be necessary for keeping your agency alive. Many agencies are great at marketing for clients but historically fall flat when it’s time to market themselves to prospects.
Peter Levitan knows this very well and has some tips to share to help us get creative about our agencies and prospecting for them. Whether aggressively pursuing a dream client or breaking into thought leadership, Peter knows the ins and outs of getting your agency’s name out there to just about anyone.
Tune into this episode to learn Peter’s business development expertise, hear his thoughts on thought leadership and writing, and see what’s on the horizon for agencies going into 2023.
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:
- Peter’s strong background in business development and agency consulting
- The top 3 ways to get more business and keep it
- The importance of standing out from the crowd when marketing your agency
- How to do direct marketing
- Fresh and new topics that your agency can write about
- Dabbling in thought leadership
- What’s on the horizon in 2023?
- Being aggressive and persistent with agency goals without overloading the team
Time tracking is one of the most overlooked resources in an agency’s day-to-day operations. Without it, you’re missing out on valuable data about where you need more training, more staff, or even if you’re charging enough for your services. That’s why I’m talking today about incentivizing daily time tracking with your employees.
The first thing a lot of your team will say is, “I don’t have time to do this every day.” But, with a little incentive and some tenacity, you can reach 95% to 98% compliance on daily time tracking in no time at all. Tune in to learn my step-by-step plan for starting the conversation, implementing it, and keeping the momentum once you get your team on board.
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 reason why timesheets matter for more than just hours worked
- Why timesheets should be done every single day
- How to start talking to your team about daily time tracking
- Incentivizing the team to track time consistently
- Holding the team — and yourself — accountable
- The psychology behind my time-tracking accountability method
- How to use the data that daily time tracking gives you
Weary is a great word to describe a lot of agency leaders right now. It comes up again and again that we’re just tired, overworked, and running on fumes. It’s not our fault, but there are things we can do to get back to feeling a little more balanced and less like we’re about to snap.
I brought Jeff Salzenstein on this week to teach us some good habits that we can work on little by little to improve our personal lives and help us be better agency leaders. As a former tennis pro, he knows what it’s like to be under pressure and have people counting on you to perform at your peak at all times.
We’ll talk about how he made the difficult decision to move from playing tennis to doing leadership coaching. He’ll cover everything he knows about getting your mental, emotional, and physical health to its optimal level so that you can show up as your best self for the people counting on you the most.
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 stay strong and committed in the face of challenges
- Navigating the weariness that comes with agency leadership
- Shifting a negative mindset into a positive one
- Focused breathing as an effective technique to recenter yourself
- The importance of good sleep for good leadership
- How incremental changes create significant shifts in our lives
- The importance of having well-rounded emotional health