Don’t wait for your perfect day as an agency owner with Drew McLellan

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money and keep more of what you make. The Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies survive and thrive in today’s market. Bringing his 25-plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute. Thank you so much for coming back for another episode of Build a Better Agency. I am excited to hang out with you today and tell you what’s on my mind. A couple things I want to give you a heads up about before we talk about today’s topic. First one is, we’re throwing a little party, it’s called the Build a Better Agency Summit. It is in May of 2020, which seems super far away, but it’s actually only about 200 days away. And we are going to have about 200 to 250 agency owners and leaders, we are going to all come together. We are going to listen to some amazing speakers, who are going to talk about things that they have never talked about in public before. In terms of how they built their business, how they monetized their business, how in one case they sold their business.

We’ve got folks coming to talk about the nuances of the legalities of influencer marketing. We have someone coming in to talk to us about getting your business ready to sell, maybe even up to 10 years before you actually want to sell it. Like what should you be doing now or what should you be thinking about now, if you want to sell it in another decade or so? So, amazing speakers, but also you as the participants are going to be teaching. So, one of the segments of the workshop is called a round table. So, each table will be hosted by a subject matter expert, might be a subject matter expert on investing in real estate with your agency funds. It might be an expert on BizDev or how to grow your leaders, those kinds of things.

You’re going to sign up for which topics matter most to you and then you’re going to join other agency leaders around the table with this subject matter expert. And you’re all going to talk about some of the things you’re doing around this topic, that are working. And then, the subject matter expert is also going to do some teaching about what they know is effective. So, if you come to the Build a Better Agency Summit, you need to bring both your student and your teacher hat, because you’re going to be doing both. You’re also going to meet some of the most amazing agency folks that I have ever known, both inside the AMI network and folks that are just avid listeners of the podcast, or attend our workshops, but everybody in some way or shape or form, as part of the AMI family. And I think you’re going to be really impressed with the caliber of people, but also how much you learn and how inspired you are by all of them and the conversations that you get to have.

So, here’s the deal head over to agencymanagementinstitute.com. The very first button on the navigation bar is BaBA Summit, click on that, and you can read all about it. If you are an AMI member, we have the AMI Family Day on the 18th, and if you’re not an AMI member, so that’s a gold member or above, or in any of our peer groups, then the main conference is May 19th and 20th. It’s in Chicago and it is going to be a blast. And if none of that sounds appealing to you, what we’re going to do Tuesday night, to hang out together in a more casual social setting is we’re going to combine darts and drinks. So, that alone is going to be worth the price of admission. I really hope you’ll join us. We are at about 25% sold out right now, so please don’t wait.

Also, you know how conferences go? The tickets just keep getting more expensive. So, if you are inclined to join us, grab your ticket now while it’s as cheap as it’s going to get. All right? The other thing I want to remind you about is that we, every month on my solo cast, we give away a free workshop, either a live workshop or one of our on-demand workshops. And the winner of that workshop is someone who has left a rating and review for the podcast anywhere. So, it could be on Google, it could be on iTunes, it could be on Stitcher, wherever it may be. And again, remember what I need you to do is take a screenshot of that review and send it to me because all of you have funky usernames and I can’t match a username like dachshundlover1010 to the fact that you are agency owner in Wisconsin. With your email address, I can’t do that.

So, send me a screenshot and let me know that you left the review and we will put you in the drawing. All right? So, this month’s winner is Becky Chumley from Evolve Impact Group. So, Becky, I will be shooting you an email, but if you hear this before I get a chance to do that, congratulations. Be thinking about which workshop you would like to attend, or if you would like to take advantage of one of the on-demand courses that we have. All right. So, let’s talk about today’s topic. Today’s topic is near and dear to my heart, actually, and I want to talk to you about it, just you and me. So, this is one of my solo casts, no guest, although it’s going to feel like maybe we have a guest with us because I’m going to be referencing someone as I tell you a story, but it’s just you and me.

And this is a topic that I address with agency owners, one-on-one quite a bit, but we probably don’t talk about it enough as an industry and we certainly haven’t talked about it enough on the podcast. So, I want to fix that right now. Let me tell you a little story of how I decided that this was the topic we were going to talk about. So, I was at a conference and I bumped into an old friend named Mitch Joel. So, Mitch and I have known each other since, oh, gosh, I don’t know, ’04, ’05, ’06, something like that. When a handful of agency owners started blogging and I happened to be one of that handful and it was Mitch and me and Ann Handley and Jay Baer, and some other folks like that, and it was a very small universe. And so, we were all reading each other’s content and commenting on stuff to each other and sharing out each other’s posts because it was very new and there was very little activity actually, at that point, which seems odd when you say that today.

But anyway, I bumped into Mitch at the MAICON conference this summer, and I knew that Mitch had just sold his interest in the agency that he owned. And so, I posed a question to him, but let me first tell you a little bit about Mitch’s trajectory and how he got started. So, Mitch and some buddies launched a very small, a handful of people agency, in Montreal called Twist Image in 2000. So, when I met him, the agency was four or five years old and had a bigger handful of people, but still a handful of people. And they were a digital shop and Mitch was one of the very first people who really understood the power of creating a position of authority.

So, not only did he have a blog, but he wrote a book, he launched a podcast. He was always out there teaching what he knew. And as a part of that positioning, what that allowed him to do was attract bigger and bigger prospects and clients, and grow his agency. So, by about 2013, 2014, Twist Image had added an office in Toronto and was about 100 people and WPP came a knocking. So at that point, WPP was in a huge acquisition mode. In fact, the year that they bought Twist Image, I think they bought 60 or more agencies in that single year. So, they were gobbling up for them what was a lot of small agencies, to build out this global footprint, to compete with some of the other big box agency holding companies.

Mitch retained his position at WPP. And then, what happened is in 2015, WPP cordoned off a bunch of digital agencies. So, it was about 11 digital agencies that they decided they wanted to brand as sort of a sub-brand under WPP called Mirum. M-I-R-U-M. And Mitch was named the President of Mirum Canada and so, he stayed there until 2018, when his earn-out and buyout were complete, he decided that it was time for him to exit the agency. And so, Mitch left the agency in, I believe it was late 2018, but anyway, by the time I saw him the summer of 2019, he had been out for about six months or more. So, we were chatting about a variety of things and I said to him, I said, “You know what? You’ve been out of the business long enough, the day-to-day of the business anyway, long enough, what do you regret or what do you miss, or what do you think about when you look back on your time at the agency?”

And it didn’t take him long at all, to answer the question, it was clearly something that he had thought about and he said, “You know what, Drew?” He said, “If I could do it all over again, if I could go back and be in the agency, the one thing that I regret that I didn’t do more of, is I didn’t enjoy the ride. That when we were kicking it and we were taking names and we were landing clients left and right, and we were doing amazing work with a stable, amazing team, on the best of our days, all I could think about was sooner or later, the other shoe’s going to drop. And I worried all the time about when that was going to happen and what we were going to do. And when the times were not so great and things were lean, I was worried every day about how I was going to pull us out of the nosedive and get us back on top, and get us back to the winning position that we were used to.

But never in either of those scenarios or the times in between, did I actually stop and appreciate how amazing it was, what a privilege it was to own an agency. And all of the benefits and freedoms that I had, on top of making a great living, on top of being able to take care of my family, but I didn’t just stop and enjoy the fact that I was doing work that I loved, with people that I loved, for clients that we loved. And I just never allowed myself permission to just be happy. It seemed like I always had to worry about something.”

And you know what? All of you are exactly the same way. When I bump into you at a conference or a peer group meeting or a workshop, and I say to you, “How’s business?” And you say, “Ah, we’re having our best year ever, but you know what? Can’t last forever.” You never stop the sentence at, “We’re having our best year ever.” Or when I bump into you and I say, “Hey, how’s business, how are you doing?” And you say, “Ugh, we are having a rough patch. I’m not sure how much longer or how much deeper of a hole, or how many more times we can be the bridesmaid,” whatever it is that is ailing you in that moment, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. This is just grueling. This is tough work.” Absolutely it is. But even on the worst day, even when the clients are saying, no, the employees are taking jobs at other places, there are still so many great things about owning an agency that we do not give ourselves permission to appreciate.

That’s what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about how to put the joy back into the work. And I think every one of us deserves to be joyful and happy and grateful about the fact that we get to do what we do. Yes, we chose it at one point in time and we choose it every single day, but we get to choose it. Not everybody has that privilege. Not everybody has that opportunity. So, I want to talk about how do you … And I’m not saying stop looking at the numbers. I’m not saying stop worrying about new business. I’m not saying stop being frustrated when your clients are poaching your employees. I’m not suggesting any of that. Despite my deep and abiding love for Disney, I am not suggesting we sprinkle pixie dust over our agencies and not see the reality of what is there, but you know what? Whatever we measure, ends up mattering.

And one of the things we never measure and we never stop to quantify or value are all the great things that come along with being an agency owner or an agency leader. So yes, I still want you to look at the metrics. Yes, I still want you to pay attention to AGI and the ratios to make sure that you’re profitable at the end of every quarter and every year. Absolutely. But I also want you to measure and pay attention to the joy that it is to be an agency owner. So, here’s some ideas that I want you to at least consider. I’m not suggesting you do them all, but I want you to consider them. And the first one is, I want you to savor it. I want you to slow down a little bit and on your way to work every day, and I know this is a hard habit, but on your way to work every day, I want you to think about what is one thing about your agency, could be a client, could be an employee, could be that somebody refilled the snacks in the break room.

I don’t care what it is, big or small. What is one thing on your way to the office that you are grateful for? I promise you, it’s going to change the way you walk into that office, or you’re a virtual agency, it’s going to change how you show up on that Zoom call or whatever it is. But what is one thing that you’re grateful for? The other thing I want you to do is, I want you to start making a habit of spreading your gratitude. So, I am suggesting a couple of ways. Number one is, I would love to see you once a week, shoot an email out either to your entire team, celebrating something that happened that week. Because you know what? They’re in the grind too, and they take a lot of their cues from you.

So, if you’re walking around worried, if even when things are great, if you’re walking around looking for that next shoe to drop, then that’s the habit they’re going to get into as well. And you know what? That does not help culture, that does not help retention. So, why not make Thursdays, Thankful Thursdays? And why not, in the afternoon, just email everybody on your team to say, “You know what? We had a great meeting with client X, Y, Z today and/or this week, and they could not stop praising the new creative that we took to them about a month ago. They are so excited to share it with their stakeholders, with their customers, with their audience. And they thanked us three times. And so, I was so proud of being the president of this agency and being able to accept their gratitude, and I want to make sure I pass that forward.”

It doesn’t have to be that big. It could be that you want to give a shout out to somebody because they actually did all the dishes in the kitchen, and you were really grateful that you didn’t have to do them. Right? And don’t be snarky about it. Don’t make it like, “Because I didn’t have to do them this week, finally.” Just stop at the gratitude. Right? But send an email once a week and celebrate something, give them a reason also to see the joy in the business.

Another great thing to do is send individual thank you’s to your team. So again, maybe it’s once a week, maybe it’s once a month. And by the way, if you don’t put these on your calendar, you’re not going to do them, you know how crazy busy you are. So, calendar these things, but maybe on Thursday of every week you ask yourself, “Have I thanked someone at the office for something this week? Have I praised them? Have I acknowledged them? Have I thanked them for something they’ve done?” Even if it’s they’re the first ones in and they start the coffee, again, it doesn’t have to be a big deal. The big deal is that you noticed and stopped and said, “Thank you.”

So, you can simply stop and say, “Thank you.” If you are a thank you note writer, you could hand write a quick little note or you could shoot them an email. Or a lot of agency owners will keep a stash of $25 gift cards in their desk, and maybe you walk up to somebody and you say, “Hey, I just really appreciate the fact that I know you’ve been staying late a couple of nights last week, to get the big project done. So, take your family out for ice cream. Here’s a Dairy Queen gift card.” Whatever, the specifics don’t matter. The specifics have to be true to you, how you are and how you show up. But the fact that you give a gift card or not or you write a handwritten note or not, irrelevant, it’s all about saying thank you. And honestly, the biggest recipient of that, thank you, is going to be you.

When we show up as grateful people, it changes our attitude and mood as much as it does anybody else’s. And by the way, here’s some other ways to savor the joy that is the privilege you have of being an agency owner or agency leader. Don’t just keep it inside, take it out to your clients. So, there’s several things you can do. I love the idea of you having breakfast or lunch or something with a client once a month, just to say, “Thank you. We appreciate your business. You guys are so much fun to work with. My team is so proud of the work we get to do for you.” Whatever it is, whatever that truth is, say it and say it once a month and make a habit of it.

Here’s one of the things that I know about gratitude and about joy, the more you look for it and the more you find it, the more naturally you find more of it. So, if you start out just looking for one little thing, pretty soon, five things are going to hit you right on the forehead and then 10 things, and then 15 things. It’s all about what we measure, matters. And if you start measuring it and collecting and celebrating it, I promise you, what happens is it multiplies. So, okay, take a client out. Thank them.

Another great thing to do, let’s say your all your clients are not local and so you can’t see them that often, then write them a note and not just a, “Hey, I want to thank you for the business.” But be very specific about what it is about them, or their business, or their employee, or their product or service, that makes it a joy to do work with them. Is it that they’re always super responsive, so you guys don’t miss deadlines? Is it that the product or service that they offer makes people’s lives so much better, and that gives you and your team a lot of pride to be a part of that? Whatever it is, do not write a generic thank you note. This should not be a template that you send out to somebody different, every month or every week, or however often you’re going to do it.

It should be from the heart and it should be sincere and it should be specific and personal, and I think you’re going to be surprised at the responses you get. And again, you can do it by email. You can go into a Hallmark store and buy a card and hand write out the thank you note. Whatever suits your style, but the more you fill your life with gratitude, the better. But I also want you to recognize some of the privileges, because I think we start to take them for granted, some of the privileges that we get as agency owners and leaders.

So, here’s one of the things I want you to do. I want you to promise yourself that you are going to give yourself a monthly treat. That is a unique opportunity or gift that you get because you’re an agency owner or leader. So, maybe that is, I’m going to pick my kids up after school and we’re going to go do something at 3:30. And you have the freedom to do that, you don’t have to check in, you don’t have to explain it. Maybe it’s, I’m going to go to school at noon on pizza day and sit with my son or daughter and have that gross square pizza that they still serve. Maybe it’s a, you know what? I am going to take a class that I’ve always wanted to take, or buy a book that I want, or I’m going to add an extra day to a conference or a workshop, to explore a city I’ve never been in before.

I’m going to reach out to an agency owner that I haven’t talked to for a long time and rekindle that friendship. Whatever it is, I want you to recognize that there are a lot of privileges, a lot of cool things that we get to do because we’re agency owners and leaders. Now some of those can be monetarily driven. So, maybe that you give yourself a bonus every quarter, if your business is doing well. It may be that you start exploring how to invest some of the retained earnings in your business, because as you know, you shouldn’t keep them in the business. Two months of operating expense in the business, two months of operating expense outside of the business, in your name, that you can lend back to the business if you need to, and the rest of it, put it somewhere else, build your wealth somewhere else.

And again, calendar it and then I want you to record. So, for example, on the 15th of every month, put on your calendar, and it can be a private event that no one else sees but you, “Have I treated myself this month?” And if the answer is, “Yes,” put it into the calendar event so that you have a track of what you’ve done over the course of the year. And if the answer is, “No,” that gives you 15 days to do something that it would be hard to do if you were just an average employee, at an average company. That you’d either have to ask permission for, or you’d have to use a vacation day for or whatever it may be, but celebrate and use and take advantage of the privileges that you have as an owner.

One of the other things I want you to think about doing is, I want you to think about mentoring an employee or two. One of the things in the research that we did a few years ago, where we were talking to over 1,000 agency employees, what they want more than anything else from their job, what keeps them satisfied, what gets them to say no to the recruiters that are calling them, probably every frigging day, is that they have opportunities to keep growing and learning. And in tandem, their second answer was, they get to learn from you. Whether they say it or not, they admire you, they respect you, and they want to know what you know. So, why not mentor them?

Another cool way to mentor them is to be a dream leader. So, if you listened to episode 191, you remember that I spoke with my guest, Dan, and we talked about a book called Dream Manager and how a lot of companies are bringing that concept of figuring out what it is that matters to your employees. Not career-wise, but life-wise, and figuring out how to support them in that. Doesn’t mean you’re going to fund it, doesn’t mean you’re going to let them take five weeks off paid, doesn’t mean anything like that. You don’t have to be the financial engine behind their dream, but you can help them think about how to take the first step and you can support them in that, and you can celebrate that.

That is a privilege of being an owner or a leader, and that is fun. That is a joy to be able to help someone else accomplish something that they weren’t sure they could accomplish. All of these things add up. All of these things allow you to slow down. All of these things force you to recognize that you are one of a lucky few, in that you get to own your own business, or you get to lead a business where the owner gives you a lot of autonomy, and you get to do work in all of the ways that I mean that. So, work with people, the actual work we do, in a way that you think is right and you see fit and is in a way that you’re happy with the quality, but you also get all of these perks along the way.

Many of them are money perks. I’ve often said to many agency owners, “Even in your worst year, if you add up everything that you take out of the business in terms of salary and pass throughs, and all of the perks and privileges, that’s a pretty good job. That’s compensation you would not get most other places.” Even if you’ve trimmed your salary down or something else, it’s a really great exercise to go through your credit card statements and any anywhere else that you would put expenses, that if you weren’t the boss or the leader, you would have to pay for yourself. So, it might be internet at home, or your cell phone, or your car, or whatever it may be, whatever pass-throughs make sense for your business.

But start adding those up and keep a running document and add those up. Estimate how many dinners, how many trips, all of those things are part of the company expense, rather than your personal expense. I think you’re going to be stunned. It’s one of the things that we ask the agency owners to do in our peer groups and the ones that do it in detail, it’s staggering how much you guys actually get compensated, but all of our compensation is not money. So, on that list should also be the freedoms that you have. Honestly, for me personally, the freedom is the greatest compensation. Yes, I want to make a good living. Yes, I want to reward my people fairly and well, but at the end of the day, I am so grateful for the freedom I have.

That freedom comes to me in big and small ways. When my daughter was little, I left the office every day at three o’clock to pick her up after school and we’d go home and we’d do homework and we’d have a snack. Yes, I worked a second shift after she went to bed, I’m not saying it was easy, but to be able to spend those couple hours with her after school, my God, what a gift. The fact that I get to travel all over the world, oftentimes because one of you has asked me to come hang out with you and help you. So, I literally am exploring the world and certainly the US at great expansion. I am somewhere different every week. What a privilege that is for me to get to do that, to hang out with people that I care about and actually be of value to them.

So, I get to travel. I get to be with people that I like, that I can genuinely help. Privilege, privilege and freedom. Awesome. The fact that I can do what I need to do to take care of my family. Before my parents passed away, I had to take a lot of time off to tend to them, and that I was able to be with both of them when they did pass away. That I sat next to their bed, in some cases, for days, without anybody saying a word, that is a freedom and a privilege. So, on your worst days, I get that it’s a grind, and I get that there are days, and I’ve been there too, where I probably would have sold my agency for a plug nickel, it was so hard, but that’s because all I was doing was focusing on that hard thing right now and I wasn’t stepping back and realizing what I had.

Thank goodness, I’m too stubborn, just like you are, and too persistent to sell it for that plug nickel. I just kept banging away at it until it got better, but it took me a long time to realize that even on a bad day, it’s a pretty good day, compared to many other people, it is a pretty good day. There have been some horrible days where I’ve had to lay people off or do things that I really, really, really did not want to do. But with the exception of those few days where it was pretty hard to find the joy, the reality is every day is a pretty good day. I just never, to Mitch Joel’s point of view, I just never slowed down long enough to pay attention, or at least I didn’t in the beginning, I do now.

I actually have a gratitude jar where I write on colorful index notes, things that I’m grateful for, and then I fill it up throughout the year, and at the end of the year, I empty out the jar and I read all of those notes. And for me, that’s a mix of personal things and work things and personal work things because sometimes they blend together of course, like they do for you. But it’s pretty cool to go back and see all the things that I’ve been grateful for and all the privileges that came with doing the work that I do. So, whether it’s a gratitude jar or a journal, or you send emails out or handwritten notes, what I’m saying is let’s all not make the same mistake Mitch made.

Let’s all not wait until we’ve sold our agencies or closed our agencies to look back and go, “You know what? That was a lot more fun than I ever gave myself permission to enjoy. We sat in the conference room and laughed our rear ends off more times than once. We did some amazing work. I remember when we won the award or when we got this recognition, or when a client called and said this. I remember when the team all stayed up till midnight working on the big pitch, and then we won the piece of business. I remember when we all got together and we supported an employee when they were going through something personal, like the loss of a family member or cancer or whatever. And we were there for them, we took them meals,” or whatever it was you did. There’s a lot inside your agency that you should appreciate and you should slow down, and you should enjoy.

And now having my agency for almost 25 years and now working with 250 plus agencies all over the globe, here’s what I know for a fact, there is always a tomorrow. No matter how bad today looks, there is always a tomorrow. And if you keep at it, if you keep going up to bat, if you keep swinging at those pitches, you will get a hit, and sometimes you hit a home run, but everything does course correct.

So, if you are in a place right now where things are bumpy and you’re listening to this going, “Oh, I cannot take any more of this Pollyanna crap, it’s not the way it is for me. I’m not even sure I can keep my agency open for another year.” I promise you, it can get better. Now, sometimes you have dug yourself into a hole that is pretty tough to dig out of, and I’m happy to chat with you about how to make that better. And sometimes making it better is deciding that you have to start over, doing something different. I’m not saying that this is forever, for everyone, but for the vast majority of you, you have been doing this long enough that you have had the highs and you’ve had the lows, and you know that both of those cycle in and out.

So, given that we’re not going to stay at the top forever and given the fact that we’re not going to stay at the bottom forever, what if we just savor what we have every single day? Because there is something good, every single day of our work life, there’s a person, or a opportunity, or a piece of work, or a kindness that one of your employees shows another. Big or small, there is something worthy of stopping, recognizing it and appreciating it. So, stop robbing yourself of that. Stop making the same mistake that Mitch made. So again, he went from a tiny little agency to 100 person agency, to selling his agency to one of the largest holding companies on the planet, and then having the opportunity to run it.

So, if you think about all the amazing, good things that happened to him, and he didn’t slow down and enjoy it. So, we need to learn that lesson from that, that every day, if that’s your goal, if that’s your goal is to get to 100 people and to be bought out and all of that. And what he’s telling you is even then, it was never enough, “I was always worried about what was coming next.” That’s true of us too. It’s true of all of us. So, we got to fix it. We have to slow down today. Don’t wait for the perfect date. Don’t wait for the great pitch. Don’t wait for the big whale client to get landed, do it today and tomorrow, and next week.

Appreciate what you have, celebrate what you have and celebrate it with your employees and with your clients, and with yourself, treat yourself but slow down and soak it in and appreciate it. All right. Before I let you go, quick thank you to our friends at White Label IQ for sponsoring this podcast, super grateful for their support. Many, many agencies are experiencing them for the first time and then going right back because they’ve had such a good experience. I’m getting emails from many of you saying, “I wish I had known about these guys a while ago because we have been blood, sweat, and tearing, trying to find partners to do either design or web dev or PPC, and these guys are a savior to us. So, thank you.”

If you want to learn a little more about them, you can go to whitelabeliq.com/ami, and they’ve got a special offer there just for podcast listeners. I will be back next week. And next week, of course, I will have a guest with me and we will talk about their expertise, hopefully in a way that I can transfer some of that expertise to you, to inspire you to look at your agency a little differently and to try something new, or maybe stop doing something that you shouldn’t be doing anymore. But anyway, our goal as always, is to help you build an agency that gives you joy, that gives you profit, that allows you to take care of your people, that you can scale and if you want to down the road, you can sell. That’s why we’re here, it’s why we’re coming back next week, so I’ll be there, I hope you will too. See you then. That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.