Build a Better Agency Podcast

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 pr...

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...

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. Th...

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, cuttin...

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 t...

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, wo...

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 f...

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 the...

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 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 la...

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...

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 i...

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...

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...

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...

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 corpora...

This week, I'm covering an important topic I haven't covered on a solocast before — agency owner work balance. Often, agency owners get pulled into too much of the day-to-day client work or aren't correctly staffing the agency to get the support they need on the work they have. There's a formula you should be following for how you break down your workday or workweek to be a successful business lea...

Podcasts, radio, and TV are all similar mediums with a broad reach across the US. But over the years, younger audiences have moved away from radio and TV in favor of other platforms that offer ad-free subscriptions. Quickly rising to the top amongst millennials and Gen Z is podcasting. So how do we still reach people who are consistently opting out of popular advertising avenues? Tom Webster has s...

Many of us didn't initially set out to become agency owners when we first started working in the business we're in now. It sort of happened accidentally, and we put our agency together on an as-needed basis as the clients kept coming in and our services and offerings evolved. As accidental agency owners, we're left with a lot of room for error as we try to scale our agencies to fit our core values...

How you lead your business is critical to its success. People are the most important assets in our agencies, and without them, we can't deliver our best work to our customers. That's why it's critical to prioritize agency leadership so your teams can do their best work and grow alongside your organization. Dr. Amin Sanaia is an expert in leadership development with extensive experience studying wh...

So many of us hate selling or feeling like we are "being sold to" because it has the old reputation of being manipulative, exploitative, and too pushy. Thanks to the sales tactics of the old days, our sales prospects have walls up before a call or meeting even starts. When we know the psychology of sales and truly understand how people want to be sold to, that's where the magic begins. Jeremy Mine...

This week, I'm using this episode to talk about some questions I get asked a lot, and that is what we offer in AMI memberships. Many of you want to know what our different tiers of memberships include and what other services we offer. If you're curious about AMI and our membership offerings, this episode is for you. I will break down what we offer for agency owners and leaders and how you can get...

You need innovative ideas to stand out and be ahead of the curve. We often get caught up in the chaos of day-to-day agency operations and retreat into the comfort zone of doing things the same way we've always done them. Today, we're talking you out of that way of thinking and giving you an entirely different framework for approaching client projects. Stan Phelps, an author and keynote speaker wit...

Think about some of your favorite brands for just a moment. What aspects of those brands make you feel the most connected to them? Do you ever find yourself talking to your friends or family about a company you love so much because of what they stand for or how they connect with people? Enter community building as a marketing strategy — the next big thing in brand marketing, according to Mark Scha...

There's no denying that when the pandemic hit, the workforce changed forever. We experienced some of the most rapid shifts in our economy and lifestyles this century, and we still feel its effects today. Most notably, our work standards morphed along with how we view leadership and hustle culture. The old ways of working longer hours and devoting yourself to a company to climb your way to the top...