You’ve probably heard of IQ, EQ, or even SQ (spiritual intelligence), but have you heard of NQ? For those new to the term, it’s natural intelligence, or our ability to tap into our inner wisdom to guide us in our decision-making in the most high-stakes situations.

In life and leadership alike, we tend to let our ego get in the way of our decision-making. It’s normal, but it’s not often helpful for reaching our goals or leading our teams effectively. Instead, we should be listening to our natural intelligence to guide our leadership decisions.

This is how animals survive in the wild. They don’t have the ability to overthink or hide away from a challenge like humans can. Instead, they innately know how to act in order to stay alive or lead their pack to victory.

If we approach leadership in a similar manner, we can access a side of our leadership abilities we might not have known we had. To access it, all we have to do is learn to observe nature and understand our own gut reactions to survival moments. Join us to learn more about finding our personal natural intelligence and how to apply it to agency leadership.

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 NQ?
• How to apply natural intelligence to your business leadership
• The obstacles to us tapping into NQ
• To tap into natural intelligence, you must know yourself
• Gaining self-insight and peer insight as a leader
• What horses can teach us about rotational leadership
• Coaching NQ abilities out of your leadership teams
• Trusting your gut and getting over the fear of judgment from peers
• The different benefits of prey, predator, freeze, and flock mode in business
• Why having the ability to access different modes can be beneficial in agency leadership

It’s clear we can’t keep hiring and managing talent as we used to. Back in the days of the pandemic, and then The Great Resignation right after that, we were afraid to set boundaries and ask for what we needed out of fear of losing great team members.

The way we work isn’t the same, either. Many of us are now remote or hybrid, and a fully in-office team isn’t as common as it used to be. So, we have to adapt and change how we hire, train, and problem-solve with our teams scattered all over the place.

It’s a mess sometimes, and many of you probably wish we could go back to the simpler days of training new hires through simple observation and shadowing. But we can still make this work for the new era of work.

Vicky Brown is sharing some of her HR superpowers with us this week so we can learn about hiring, managing, and retaining great talent, regardless of the work environment. The simple answer is that we must roll up our sleeves and invest time in our people from the very first interview.

Join us to dive deeper into the world of HR to discover how to be a better leader while hiring and managing talent so you can make your agency more successful 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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• Leadership’s perspective on remote, hybrid, and in-office workplace structures
• Agency owner fears regarding hiring and managing talent
• Getting agency teams engaged and feeling fulfilled with their work
• How new hire training has changed in the new era of work
• Hybrid work is the future
• In-person creative brainstorming is still important in agencies
• Finding enthusiastic hires who remain passionate and hungry at work
• How to do behavior interviewing for potential new hires
• Conducting mid-year HR checkups for taxes, payroll errors, benefits, etc.
• How to talk to employees about coming back to the office

This year, agencies are in for many industry changes — and fast. We’ve been scratching the surface a little with AI ever since ChatGPT first dropped, but even since then, everything has changed drastically. To start the year, we’re shifting our focus to learning how agencies can use AI tools to become AI consulting powerhouses.

Many agency owners and employees have been learning how to integrate AI tools into their day-to-day over the past year or so, from writing, planning, research, and more. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level (and to our clients).

This week, Casey Meehan shows us how agencies can become thought leaders and subject matter experts for their clients using AI tools. Over his time as an agency leader, he has shifted from traditional marketing and PR work to creating content repurposed for AI consulting to teach clients how to harness the power of AI and create personalized content for their audience.

Although there’s something new in the AI market each day, it’s an exciting time to take advantage and lead the movement toward becoming thought leaders and experts for our clients through AI consulting work.

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:

• Making the shift from traditional marketing and PR to AI consulting work and content creation
• The cornerstone and cobblestone approach to content creation
• The new look of agency staffing with AI tools
• Using AI to make the agency function better internally
• Bringing personalized results into the sales process with “Just in Time Content”
• The different modalities of AI chatbots and their unique skills
• Publishing and promoting content through cited subject matter experts
• Where agency leaders should be setting their sights on AI tools

There’s no other way to spin it — agency owners had it rough in 2023. And while we spent all year going over the struggles of agency ownership, one universal positive kept coming up with everyone.

Your teams are better than ever, and you want to learn how to keep your agency employees happy, so they stick around.

So this week, we’re turning to some of our Agency Edge research to dive into what agency employees said are the key factors that keep them happy and willing to stick around for the long haul.

While the assumption is that you’re already fairly compensating them and creating a fair and inclusive workplace, there are some less obvious things that really matter to agency employees. They could even be the difference between a star player staying for 10 to 15 years instead of three or four.

This episode will teach you the dos and don’ts of increasing employee retention and really going above and beyond to help your teams feel valued and cared for. It’s got a lot of valuable tips and tricks, so if you’re curious about how to keep your agency employees satisfied, don’t miss out on this episode.

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:

• Recognizing that not every agency employee will want to stick around forever, and it’s not personal
• The one thing you should not do to earn employee loyalty
• Why offering equity or partnership in the company is almost always a bad idea
• What agency employees actually want from agency owners
• Setting quarterly growth goals for employees
• Creating space to truly get to know your people beyond work
• Rewarding employees for their effort fairly, but not equally
• Getting agency employees involved in deciding their own perks for excellent work
• Simply ask your employees what will make them stay
• Get personal and thoughtful with your praise