Chantell Glenville is the author of “What Clients Really Want (And The S**t That Drives Them Crazy)” the first ever book on how to create great client/agency relationships written by an ex-client. Winner of the WACL Future Leader's Award 2013, Chantell has worked at some of the UKs top creative communications agencies such as AMV BBDO, VCCP, and Dare as well as client-side at Vodafone, a multinational teleco.
Her experience both client and agency-side has given her a unique insight into the situations and behaviours that can really break client/agency relationships or make them excellent. Chantell has worked with and for agencies with varying specialties and on a broad range of clients; from international blue chips such as Johnson & Johnson, Barclaycard, Molson Coors, and Henkel through to high profile UK and pan-European accounts.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Things agencies do over and over that drive clients crazy
- The small behaviors that break apart relationships
- What agencies don’t know about the world clients live in
- The complexity of the structure of clients’ systems
- How agencies can help clients manage the revision process
- Why you need to know more than one person inside your client’s company (and get to know them face-to-face)
- The working hour differences between agencies and clients
- Why you should never overpromise and underdeliver
- The two things that create great agency-client relationships
- Why attention to detail is so important for agencies
- How to get to the top of a client’s to-do list
- Reasons clients will fire agencies (and why they never want to do that)
- Things agency owners can do right now to help their account executives improve agency-client relationships
Ways to Contact Chantell Glenville:
- Book: "What Clients Really Want"
- Website: www.masteringaccountmanagement.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
John Warrillow is the author of books “Built to Sell” and “The Automatic Customer” and founder of The Value Builder System™ where advisors help company owners increase the value of their business. Previously, he founded Warrillow & Co., a subscription-based research business dedicated to helping Fortune 500 companies market to small business owners. A sought-after speaker and popular Inc.com columnist, John lives in Toronto.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- John’s book “Built to Sell”
- The very easy path for agencies to follow that make it extremely hard to sell
- What services look like that make an agency sellable
- Why you can’t confuse the doing with owning a business
- When is it time to say no to business?
- What to do after you sell your agency
- Things to avoid when exiting your agency
- Services agencies can offer on a subscription model
- Standardizing a process and giving that process or product a specific name
- Why you shouldn’t surround yourself with journeymen agency employees
- How to assess how sellable your agency is and what can be done to make your agency more sellable
Ways to Contact John Warrillow:
- Website: valuebuildersystem.com
- Website: www.builttosell.com
- Website: www.automaticcustomer.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Steve Farber is listed as one of Inc’s global Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts. He is a Leadership Pioneer, Strategist, Keynote Speaker, and Bestselling Author on Extreme Leadership. His expertise is in creating organizational cultures where leadership is not just an opportunity and obligation for those in authority, but for everyone at all levels.
Steve is the President of Extreme Leadership, Inc, and the founder of The Extreme Leadership Institute, organizations devoted to the cultivation and development of Extreme Leaders around the world. His accessible, deeply inspirational, and eminently practical Radical LEAP framework is widely used across the business, non-profit and education spectrum. He has been credited with redefining leadership in deeply personal yet practical terms and re-energizing thousands of people to make a significant difference in their businesses, lives, and the world around them.
His third book, “Greater Than Yourself,” was a Wall Street Journal® and USA Today® bestseller. His second book, “The Radical Edge,” was hailed as a playbook for harnessing the power of the human spirit. And his first book, “The Radical Leap,” is already considered a classic in the leadership field. It received Fast Company magazine’s Readers Choice Award and was recently named one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Defining “Extreme Leadership”
- What an extreme leader does
- Love in the business place
- Putting in more energy into your business than you take out
- Why leaders need to be audacious and willing to fail
- What agency owners can do to become more audacious
- How a business that embraces extreme leadership looks different
- Steve’s book “Greater Than Yourself”
- How to become one of the greatest leaders by lifting others up
- What agency owners can do right now to start working on the ideas from this episode
Ways to Contact Steve Farber:
- Website: www.stevefarber.com
- Twitter: @stevefarber
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevefarber
- Book: "Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership"
- Book: "The Radical Edge: Another Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership"
- Book: "The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership"
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year, give him a unique perspective on running an agency today.
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for 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 those 250+ agencies every year — he 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 two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- The daily traffic / huddle meeting for discussing daily vital priorities and how to make this meeting work regardless of agency size
- The monthly all-staff meeting for informing and inspiring your team
- The twice a year to quarterly meeting for team building and planning
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a dose of adventure, all to make it work to your advantage. The New York Times has called him "a public relations all-star who knows everything about new media and then some," while Investor's Business Daily has labeled him "crazy, but effective."
He founded Help A Reporter Out (HARO) in 2010 from his apartment before selling it to Vocus. Peter is the also founder of ShankMinds: Business Masterminds, a series of small business entrepreneurial-style masterminds in over 25 cities worldwide. Additionally, Peter is also the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Social Media, Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Innovation through exploration
- Why you need to hold your ground with clients and force them to trust your expertise
- How to get your customers to tell your story for you
- Peter’s book “Zombie Loyalists”
- Peter’s company The Geek Factory
- How agencies can make customer service attractive for their clients
- Why rewarding someone for being your 10,000th follower is an insult to the rest of your followers
- Why everything you create has to have value for someone
- How to create invested customers with the way you respond through email
- How Peter carves out time in his schedule for everything
- Peter’s preferred methods for professional development
- What Peter’s agency of the future would look like
- How Peter helped his employees with professional development
- The things that get in the way of corporations hearing their customers
- Things agencies can do right now to implement the ideas from this episode
Ways to Contact Peter Shankman:
- Book: "Zombie Loyalists"
- Twitter: @petershankman
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Paul Roetzer is founder and CEO of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and HubSpot’s first Agency Partner. He is author of “The Marketing Performance Blueprint” (Wiley, 2014) and “The Marketing Agency Blueprint” (Wiley, 2012); creator of Marketing Agency Insider and Marketing Score; a regular contributor to leading marketing industry blogs; and a frequent speaker on content marketing, inbound marketing, performance and strategy.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why Paul started PR 20/20
- Standardizing pricing to prevent scope creep
- Paul’s point system for pricing
- How to create a content strategy that works today
- Top of the funnel content vs. bottom of the funnel content
- Using the point system for professional development
- Where to find the great content writers that you will need to hire
- How PR 20/20 decides if a client is a good fit
- The Marketing Score
- Automated Insights
- Steps agencies can take right now
- How to keep employees around and enthusiastic
Ways to Contact Paul Roetzer:
- Website: www.pr2020.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Michael Gass is the founder of Fuel Lines Business Development, LLC, a firm that provides business development training and consulting services to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies.
Since 2007, Michael has pioneered the use of social media, content and inbound marketing strategies specifically for agency new business. Michael has originated a system that makes targeting, positioning, and differentiation easier and helps agencies to find, attract and engage their best prospects online. He has trained over 200 agency CEOs and their senior management teams in all 50 states here in the U.S. and agencies in over 21 foreign countries.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Generating new business through niche blogs
- Making these niche blogs truly niche (hint: “healthcare” is not a niche)
- Why these blogs need to be written by one or two visible authors
- The pace these blogs have to be written, at least initially
- Why you should start out with just one niche blog
- Why a person should be the face of only one blog
- How to keep this process running smoothly and consistently
- Why agencies have to add consulting as a service line
- The differences agency websites and niche blogs have to have
- The time commitment this kind of program requires
- The steps your agency can take right now to get this program up and running
Ways to Contact Michael Gass:
- Website: michaelgass.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/michaelgass
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgass
- Twitter: @michaelgass
- Google+: plus.google.com/108664560492921436543
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Michael Farmer grew up in the Midwest and was the first child in his family to go to college. He went to Princeton on an NROTC scholarship and worked at various jobs to pay the difference. After that, he spent 5 years as a naval officer, 3 years at sea, and 2 years teaching NROTC at Iowa State University. Then he was off to Harvard Business School and a one-year research assignment writing cases and teaching marketing in Lausanne, Switzerland. He then joined some consulting firms and worked all over the globe. Eventually, he ended up at Bain & Company where he spent three years in Boston, and then nine years in London, Munich, and Paris. Bain then started his own consulting firm, Farmer & Company, specializing on solving agency / advertiser problems. He stayed in London until 2001, and then returned to the States and continued his work. He wrote Madison Avenue Manslaughter between 2009 and 2015, and the book was published in 2015.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Some of the big problems agencies face today
- Why the future is bright for small to mid-sized independent agencies
- Why your agency needs a uniform approach for working with clients and an example of what that looks like
- The documented scope of work document: what should this look like?
- Why it’s harder than ever for agencies to make money
- Michael’s “price for the work” metric
- Creating accountability with client heads
- Why agencies probably will have an easier time fixing scope of work than they think
- What agencies can do right now to start fixing some of these mistakes
Ways to Contact Michael Farmer:
- Website: farmerandco.com
- Twitter: @farmerandco
- Email: mfarmer@farmerandco.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfarmer
- Book: "Madison Avenue Manslaughter"
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies in a variety of ways.
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for 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 a lot of agencies every year — he 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 two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Gross Billings vs. Adjusted Gross Income
- How agencies lose money when pricing
- Why scope creep leads to little or no profit
- Why your agency needs to issue change orders and how to turn this into a process
- Why you need to use the one page business plan
- How to know if you need a better new business plan (hint: you probably do)
- Why you need a tax advisor not a tax preparer
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Jason Swenk shares how to scale and sell. If you got a call with an offer, would you be ready? It happened to Jason Swenk. But, he had a plan and shares the details in this episode of Build a Better Agency.
Jason Swenk calls himself the defender of truth, justice, and effective business practices. 16-years ago, he founded a digital agency and they worked with clients like AFLAC, AT&T, Coca-Cola, and LegalZoom. He sold that agency and is now working with agencies, teaching them to use cutting-edge business strategies to defend themselves against the competition. His website, www.jasonswenk.com, has a plethora of information dedicated to educating agency owners including Agency Insights, his weekly newsletter.
What you’ll learn from Jason Swenk during in this episode:
- How Jason prepared his agency for sale
- The importance of systems inside an agency
- What to do when the systems you put in place make you nonessential for day-to-day operations
- Lead generation: why Jason believes this is the biggest pain point for agencies and what can be done about it
- How agencies can deliver exceptional value to clients willing to pay a premium price and how to get those clients in the first place
- How to recognize which clients to seek out and which to avoid
- Jason’s “Agency Playbook”
- Things agencies do to get in their own way
- Agencies and niche: why you need to start very, very small
- What can agencies do right now to take action on the ideas in this episode
Joe Pulizzi is the founder of Content Marketing Institute, the leading education and training organization for content marketing, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world, Content Marketing World. Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s fourth book “Content Inc.” was just released. His third book, “Epic Content Marketing” was named one of “Five Must-Read Business Books of 2013” by Fortune Magazine.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- What agencies and clients need to do to develop a content marketing strategy that actually succeeds
- Why you need to focus on your email list more than people you are connected with on social media
- How agencies can leverage their own content better
- Why you need to focus on content in specific platforms over trying to be everywhere
- What differentiates the agencies that do content marketing extremely well
- Old school deliverables that still work today
- Why you need content marketing mission statement
- Why the editing process is a crucial part of content marketing
- The ways smart agencies get smart enough to create valuable content
- Things agencies can do right now to get the content marketing techniques discussed in this episode rolling
- Joe’s events
Ways to Contact Joe Pulizzi:
- Twitter: @joepulizzi
- Website: content-inc.com
- Website: epiccontentmarketing.com
- Website: contentmarketinginstitute.com
- Event: www.intelligentcontentconference.com
- Event: www.contentmarketingworld.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Donya Powell has been a CPA and consultant for 23 years in the advertising/marcomm industry. She learned the industry working as a contract CFO for an agency early in her career and continues to serve as a remote CFO for agencies today. She has worked through several merger and acquisition deals with agency clients as she consults with agencies across the US on operations, agency compensation agreements, merger and acquisitions and succession planning.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Misconceptions agency owners have about the value of their agency
- Donya’s spreadsheet for assessing your financial picture during retirement
- Understanding your agency’s normalized EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization)
- Factors that severely impact your agency’s value in a negative way
- What you may need to change in your agency’s books
- Things on the financial statement that agency owners often ignore that they really need to pay attention to
- What financials agency owners should be looking at every week, month, and quarter
- Budgets: can modern, project-based agencies use them?
- Mistakes agencies make in regards to taxes and tax strategies to take advantage of
- How to know if your agency is structured as a corporation in the correct way
- Things to think about when planning the selling your agency
- Factors that play into an agency sale falling through
- Things agency owners can do right now to start improving their agency’s financial health with the idea of an eventual sale
Ways to Contact Donya Powell:
- Email: donya@consultiium.com
- Phone: (303) 932-1193
Resources:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Don Beehler has worked with news media from local to international levels and has won numerous professional awards throughout his career. He also has co-authored or ghostwritten three books for clients and has a blog called The Art of Telling Your Story.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- The dramatic changes PR has seen over the years
- How agencies can use PR as a strategic tool to drive new business
- How to determine what stories to pitch
- Ways you can become discoverable so that reporters can find you
- The kind of news that is truly newsworthy for agencies
- Why you shouldn’t think about using PR with the expectation that people will write stories about your agency
- How agencies can get the right kind of attention
- Incorporating PR into your business plan
- How to correctly use PR in relation to speaking engagements
- How to use Google Alerts to capitalize on PR opportunity
- The steps to take right away to boost your PR
Ways to Contact Don Beehler:
- Email: don@abcdcommunications.com
- Website: www.donbeehler.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies in a variety of ways.
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for 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 a lot of agencies every year — he 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 two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- The employee shortage: why it’s happening right now
- What agency employees want most (and how to use this to attract and retain them)
- Things that will cause employees to leave
- The best benefits you can offer to attract and retain employees
- How you can compete with the corporate world for employees
- Why you need to be actively looking for employees, even if you don’t need them right now
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Gareth Kay is a strategist by trade. He’s co-founder of Chapter, a creative business partner dedicated to solving the wicked problems facing pioneering businesses. Prior to setting up Chapter, Gareth was Chief Strategy Officer and Partner at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners and the Head of Planning at Modernista! In his decade in the US, Gareth has led strategy on brands including Google, Cisco, TD Ameritrade, the NBA, General Motors, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. and (RED).
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Gareth’s decision to venture off and start Chapter
- What makes Chapter truly unique
- How to build a business model and hire employees when the work you do is very diverse
- Becoming a client’s partner through absolute transparency
- How to generate new business when you’re in the project based business
- Creating ideas and solutions vs creating “stuff”
- How Chapter develops and retains its staff
- The importance of transparency with your employees
- How Gareth’s perspective has changed since making the jump into ownership
- Things agencies can do to move away from widget sales to selling ideas and problem solving
Ways to Contact Gareth Kay:
- Twitter: @garethk
- Company Twitter: @chaptersf
- Email: gareth@chaptersf.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support
Rohit Bhargava is a non-obvious trend curator and an expert in helping brands and leaders be more influential. He is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of five books on topics as wide ranging as the future of business, building a brand with personality, and why leaders never eat cauliflower. Rohit has advised hundreds of global brands as the Senior Vice President of Global Strategy & Planning at Ogilvy and with his own firm, Influential Marketing Group. He also teaches marketing at Georgetown University. A two-time TEDx speaker, Rohit has keynoted events in 31 countries and is regularly featured as a marketing expert by media such as The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and NPR.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Working as a solopreneur vs. working in an agency
- Rohit’s trend report that started as a blog post
- Habits for being a trend spotter
- Big trends for 2016
- VR: How Virtual Reality can become important to agencies
- Data overload: what will happen when all the data available to different parties eventually gets pooled together?
- Understand your clients’ true needs and becoming their true partner
- Architecting an Innovation Day to open up your clients’ wallets
- How to teach trend-creating thinking to employees coming out of college
Ways to Contact Rohit Bhargava:
- Website: www.rohitbhargava.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rohitbhargava
- Twitter: @rohitbhargava
- “Non Obvious” Book Website: nonobviousbook.com
- More Books: www.rohitbhargava.com/books-publications
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Tom Martin, author of “Invisible Sale,” has been in the agency life for many years. He has spent 20 years driving new business for agencies. In 2010, he created Converse Digital, an agency that focuses on doing business differently.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How new business has changed over the years
- Why clients no longer believe in hiring just one agency
- How to define your value to your clients when delivering ideas instead of “stuff”
- Correctly positioning your agency in the days when your client first discovers you
- Painless Prospecting: how to get great leads to find you
- Can Painless Prospecting work for generalists?
- The risks of delegating the Painless Prospecting process
- What your content has to do for your Painless Prospecting process to work
- Why giving away your secret sauce is never going to implode your business
- Tom’s propinquity theory on marketing today
- What you can do right now to get started on the business development path discussed in this episode
Ways to Contact Tom Martin:
- Website: www.conversedigital.com
- Twitter: @TomMartin
- Book: "Invisible Sale"
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Ron Baker is the founder of VeraSage Institute, a leading think tank dedicated to educating professionals internationally, and a radio talk-show host called The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy. Ron is the author of seven best-selling books, including “The Firm of the Future,” “Pricing on Purpose,” and “The Soul of Enterprise: Dialogues on Business in the Knowledge Economy,” co-authored with Ed Kless.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why Ron believes that the billable hour and the timesheet need to go
- Value pricing: the differences between different pricing plans
- Ways to add in additional value that isn’t more “stuff”
- How to start a value conversation
- The typical agency objections of value pricing and why they’re false
- How to succeed at the transition to value pricing
- Other kinds of mistakes agencies make when shifting towards value pricing
- The major benefits for focusing on value and the customer
- Action steps that agencies can take when deciding whether or not to utilize value pricing
Ways to Contact Ron Baker:
- Website: www.verasage.com
- Email: ron@verasage.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ronbaker1
- Twitter: @ronaldbaker
- Radio Talk Show: www.thesoulofenterprise.com
Ron's Books:
- "The Firm of the Future"
- "Pricing on Purpose"
- "The Soul of Enterprise: Dialogues on Business in the Knowledge Economy"
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies in a variety of ways.
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for 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 a lot of agencies every year — he 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 two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Common ways internal fraud is committed and ways to prevent it from happening
- How agencies are targeted with email scams
- The ways Drew has seen agency employees embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars from agencies
- The systems you need to put in place to prevent fraud
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
When Google wants to explain innovation and marketing to the top brands in the world, they bring Mitch Joel to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. Marketing Magazine dubbed him the "Rock Star of Digital Marketing" and called him, "one of North America's leading digital visionaries." Mitch Joel is President of Mirum – a global digital marketing agency operating in 20 countries with over 2500 employees (although he prefers the title, Media Hacker). He has been named one of the top 100 online marketers in the world and was awarded the highly prestigious Canada's Top 40 Under 40.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Mirum’s unique structure
- Generalists vs specialists: the philosophical and financial reasons agencies should specialize instead of generalizing
- How to figure out if a client is a good fit for your agency
- Mad Men vs Math Men: how to blend creative and data
- Why it’s more important than ever to stay hungry and keep learning everything you can
- Do your homework: how to balance learning time with time spent on client work
- “Algorhythm”: Mitch’s upcoming book
- Tools Mitch uses for consistent learning
Ways to Contact Mitch Joel:
- Website: mitchjoel.com
- Agency website: www.mirumagency.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Jody Sutter started her career in sales and ended up working in agencies leading the new business teams. Today she runs The Sutter Company, a business development consultancy. She spends a lot of time working with agencies to take a more proactive approach to growing their business with a special emphasis on how they communicate and tell their unique story.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why strong writing is more important than ever in our digital age
- The major mistakes that agencies make when presenting themselves in writing
- How to avoid making the big mistakes agencies make when responding to RFPs
- Why editing is so important for improving your team’s writing, how to get good at it, and what you should keep in mind if you are outsourcing the editing
- How agencies can differentiate themselves through storytelling
- The Pixar pitch
- The “5 things that you can do to make your writing better right away” checklist
- What you need to do to assess whether or not your writing needs improvement
Ways to Contact Jody Sutter:
- Website: www.thesuttercompany.com
- Email: jody@thesuttercompany.com
- Twitter: @jodysutter
Resources:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Nick Westergaard is a strategist, speaker, author, and educator. He is the chief brand strategist at Brand Driven Digital, where he helps organizations build better brands online. He teaches at the University of Iowa in the Tippie College of Business, is a regular columnist on The Cedar Rapids Gazette, and is also the host of the popular podcast, “On Brand.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How Nick took his traditional agency and transitioned it to becoming a digital powerhouse
- The differences and similarities between traditional and digital marketing and why they really aren’t all that different
- Social Brand Forum: Brand Driven Digital’s yearly live event
- The business strategy behind having a live event
- Why you should get out and attend events
- The importance of prioritizing your agency as a client
- Why experimentation is so important for your agency’s success
Ways to Contact Nick Westergaard:
- Website: www.branddrivendigital.com
- Twitter: @NickWestergaard
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Lee McKnight Jr. is the Director of Business Development for RSW/US in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are a new business development firm that works solely with agencies and marketing services firms. After graduating law school, he ran away as fast possible from that profession and worked for an internet healthcare start-up until the bubble burst and his magical stock options disappeared in the late 90s.
Fast forward through some interesting marketing and sales positions to RSW/US where Lee has spent the last 8 years working with agencies of all types to help drive their new business efforts. A big fan of history, comics and horror novels, he’s currently in a few bands in Louisville and Cincinnati and likes to pretend that chicks dig married, 44-year-old guys with kids that play in cover bands.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How to prevent your agency from making the major mistakes that agencies make all the time
- Why agencies need to specialize instead of generalize
- New business: how to develop a better, simpler process
- How to use a delicately balanced process that uses all different kinds of marketing
- Why patience is so key in closing on new business
- The importance of having one person who is the leader on a project
- Why there needs to be a balance between showcasing the figurehead and the agency
- The tools you’re going to need to put into practice the objectives discussed in this episode
Ways to Contact Lee McKnight Jr.:
- Website: www.rswus.com
- Email: lee@rswus.com
- Twitter: @LeeMcKnightJr
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies in a variety of ways.
AMI works with agency owners:
- By leading agency owner peer groups
- Offers workshops for owners and their leadership teams
- Offers AE bootcamps
- Conducts individual agency owner coaching
- Does on site consulting.
Because he works with a lot of agencies every year -- he 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 two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Stale employees: how to recognize them and why they’re holding your agency back
- Can these employees be saved? It’s a firm maybe.
- How to have the necessary conversation with stale employees -- you owe them honesty
- The kinds of goals to set to see measurable change and growth before determining their place inside your agency
- The costs to you as an agency owner for working with stale employees to up their game
- How to recognize if you really do have to let the employee go
- How to make a decision while realizing that you aren’t the only person it affects
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Art Boulay is the owner of Strategic Talent Management and offers common sense solutions for hiring better employees and making current employees stronger. Art has partnered with AMI for years and has created (through testing A players) profiles for the ideal candidates for most agency specific positions.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Assessment tools for hiring the right employee lead to more objective and effective hiring
- How Art’s tools can assess agencies, what makes them unique, and how that will help to find the right future employees
- From hire to retire: what employers and employees should do to ensure that employees don’t leave right away
- How to use assessments to counteract biases that we bring to the table during the hiring process
- Why asking specific types of questions and having at least two people conducting an interview will reveal what you actually need to know about interviewees
- Tips for making ads as attractive as possible to the people you want to hire and unappealing to people you don’t even want to interview
- Why age is not an indicator of knowledge and skill: hire leaders, not experience
Ways to Contact Art Boulay:
- Website: www.strategictalentmgmt.com
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!