Using Traction to scale and strengthen your agency with Drew McLellan

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to midsize agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable. And if you want, down the road, sellable. With 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. Super excited to bring you another episode of Build a Better Agency. We’ve been doing these since 1925. Wow. Am I old? We’ve been doing these since 2015, not 1925. Although that would be impressive. Anyway, we’ve been doing these for the last almost five years now, and I am always a little relieved and always very grateful when someone stops and says that they enjoy the podcast, that the content is useful or helpful to them. Whether I get a note on LinkedIn from somebody I don’t know, or someone I do know mentions a specific episode, it’s very gratifying. I know how busy you are. I know how busy I am, and how hard it is to pack in professional development. And all the amazing choices we have out there to get smarter every day. And so that you choose to keep coming back to this podcast and that you allow us to be a value to you is really a privilege. And I don’t want you to think in any way, shape, or form that I take that for granted or I don’t recognize just how lucky we are. So thank you very much for being here and listening to this episode and any of the other episodes.

This episode is a solo cast. So as you know if you are a regular listener, four out of the five weeks, I have a guest on the show. And it is my job to kind of crawl through their head on your behalf and ask the questions that you would ask. And in the solo casts, I’m kind of crawling through my own head. Thinking about something that I’ve had a lot of conversations with agency owners about, or agency leaders, and that I want to get on your radar screen. So that’s what we’re going to do today. So settle in. It’s just you and me talking about a topic that I think is of value and important to you.

Before that, a couple of quick announcements. Number one, it’s been a while since I have reminded you to go grab a copy of the AMI Sweet Spot Client Filter. So you’ve probably heard me say either on the show or in person that all clients are great clients, but they are all not great clients for our agency. And the more clarity we can have around what kind of clients we actually knock it out of the park for, that we delight time in and time again, that are great referral sources, that we are excited to go see them and they’re excited to see us. The more we can match that well with our clients, the better it is for our business, the better it is for our mental health. The better it is for our staff retention. Having clients that are a good fit with your agency is not just good business. It just makes life easier and more enjoyable.

So head over to the Agency Management Institute website. So agencymanagementinstitute.com/client-filter. And you can download the Sweet Spot Client Filter for free, walk yourself through the exercises to sort of identify what the criteria are for you that you should weigh a prospect against to decide if they are a good fit for your agency or not. So please take full advantage of that. That’s a great leadership team exercise as well. You don’t have to do it by yourself, but I hope you will take advantage of that. And put it into play, because it really makes such a huge difference. Not only in your win ratio, but how happy you are about the wins.

Another thing I want to tell you about is, and if you happen to be watching the video, this book Sell with Authority just came out. This is a book that I co-authored with my friend and agency owner Stephen Woessner from Predictive ROI. And the whole point of this book is it is a selling philosophy and methodology for how you can attract and win clients that are perfect for your agency. And the premise of it is that you want to have a position of authority or a depth of expertise in something. Whether it’s a niche, an industry. It might be in an audience, it might be in an audience that your client serves. It might be in a geography. So there’s lots of ways to niche yourself. But there’s something that you have a depth of expertise in that does indeed differentiate you from other agencies.

And then the book goes into other ways to deepen that differentiation and how to really position yourself as something very different. And how that positioning attracts the right kind of client to you. And that it’s easier for you to track down and woo the right kind of client. So it’s available on Amazon and other bookstores. If you read it, would greatly appreciate a review or your thoughts about it by email. Always happy to hear what everybody thinks, but we’re excited about it. It was about a year and a half in the making, so we’re happy to have it done and happy to have it out on the bookshelves, and hopefully happy to have it in your hands serving and helping your agency.

Speaking of ratings and reviews, as you know every week about, I am reminding you to go to iTunes, or Stitcher, or Google, iHeartRADIO, wherever you download the podcast and to leave us a rating or review or both. And what I’m asking you to do when you do that is to take a screenshot of it. Because oftentimes your username, like if it’s your iTunes username or something else, it doesn’t actually tell me who you are and what agency you work for. So take a screenshot. And if it’s fluffybunny102, send it to me. Send me a screenshot of your review, and remind me who you are and what agency you work at. And we will put your name in a drawing. And then on every solo cast, I announce a winner from that drawing. So every five weeks, we give away a free seat to one of our live workshops or a free license, a free seat in essence to one of our on-demand or video courses workshops. And those retail for about $2,000 if you’re not an AMI member. So pretty good sized prize to win just for leaving a rating or review.

And this month, Becky Chumley from Evolve Impact Group. Congratulations Becky, thanks for your review. You are the winner for this solo cast for this month. So I will be reaching out to you to find out which live workshop or which on-demand workshop you would like to take advantage of. And we’ll go from there. So again guys, it only takes five minutes. And if you can win a free workshop for your team member, that doesn’t suck. Right? All right, last thing I’m going to talk to you about, and then I’m going to tell you about the show. And we’re going to get right into it.

So I have talked to you before on the show, but I have been frustrated for years that there was not a conference that was truly built for small to midsize agencies. And so I finally decided that instead of being frustrated, I should do something about it. So I have stuck my neck out and I have launched the Build a Better Agency Summit, which will be May 19th and 20th in Chicago, Illinois. It is going to be amazing. And it’s going to be amazing because of two things. One, the remarkable people who are going to be there, the agency owners and leaders who are coming to learn, to teach, to share with each other what they already know or what they’ve found works. To commiserate about the challenges, to recognize they’re not as alone in the world as they thought they were, that other people have some of the same opportunities and challenges that they do. So I think that people who are going to attend are amazing. And I will say I think the agenda is off the charts.

So we’re going to talk about everything from biz dev, to money, to succession planning. We’ve got some remarkable speakers who are going to talk to you about everything around how to push aside that impostor syndrome and step into your confidence in what you’re good at. Because we all suffer from that sometimes. Without a doubt, sometimes every one of us is about to step on a stage or step in front of a prospect, or in front of our team. And we think, “Can I really do this? Are they going to see through it? Maybe I don’t know as much as they think I do.” Or I want to. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about how to use ideas and storytelling to drive someone to action. So how do you weave a story in a way that is so compelling that someone can’t not take action? So whether that’s a biz dev presentation, or it’s a staff meeting, or it’s trying to get a client to renew a contract, we’re going to talk about all of that.

We’re going to talk about succession planning and how agencies do and don’t get bought and sold today. And what makes an agency attractive to a buyer, and what detracts from that attraction. How you build more value in your agency today, whether you want to sell it or not. And all the different ways you could think about divesting yourself of your agency down the road when you’re ready to retire.

And we’re going to have subject matter experts who do this stuff with no one but agencies. So everyone at the conference, both attendees and speakers live the agency life. They live, and breathe, and talk about agencies all day long, and small to midsize agencies just like yours.

So the conference is the 19th and 20th of May. Grab a ticket. Now one of the things I’m most excited about for the conference are the round tables. So imagine you want to talk about tax strategies. And you want to sit around with a bunch of other agency owners and hear what their tax strategies are. You’re willing to share some of yours. And you want a subject matter expert at the table to give you all ideas that none of you have thought about. So twice during the conference, you’re going to be able to cherry pick between about 18 different topics where you’re going to sit with 10 to 12 or 15 agency owners and a subject matter expert, and have a really in-depth, practical, tangible conversation around topics that matter to you. So it’s everything from growing your leaders, to evaluating clients, to biz dev, to taxes, to legal issues, all kinds of things. And you’re going to be able to show up as both a teacher and a student, and add value while you take value away. And I’m super excited about it.

And if you’re an AMI member, so you’re a live peer group member, you’re a virtual peer group member. You are an associate member. So silver, gold, or platinum, you are eligible to come in on Monday the 18th. We’re going to meet right after lunch. We’re going to have an afternoon of learning. And then we’re going to all have dinner together. So kind of a AMI family dinner before the actual conference starts on Tuesday. So it’s not too late to join AMI as an associate member if you want to do that, and you can go to the website and check that out. But either way, head over to the website, learn more about the conference. We’re still on early bird pricing. So grab your tickets while they are as inexpensive as they’re going to get. And we would love to have you join us.

I want a resounding demonstration that I was right, that we as an industry want this conference. So I want to sell this thing out, because then I’m going to do it every year. So join us for this inaugural event and help me make it an annual thing. Okay? All right. Let’s get to the topic at hand.

So very often when I am either meeting new agency owners, or I’m talking to my current members or whatever it is, Traction comes up. So Traction if you’re not familiar with it is a book by a guy named Gino Wickman. It’s a business fable. And inside the book, he teaches this what he calls entrepreneurial operating system. And it is a series of very specifically designed meetings. And the goal is to help a business do the things that a business always struggles to get done. So you all [inaudible 00:13:02] me about the cobbler’s children having no shoes. So when you say to me, “Oh yeah, we’ve been meaning to do new job descriptions for a year, but haven’t got it done. We absolutely need to get our website updated. We don’t have enough time to do our own marketing. We are struggling to put together a target list of prospects. We’re having a hard time figuring out how to manage continuing education for our team.”

Whatever it is, there are all these really important things that you need and want to get done for your agency that are never on fire. Because they’re not a client deadline. You’re not going to get fired if you don’t get them done. So oftentimes because everyone’s plates are so full, these are the very important things that honestly never get done. We never get to these things. And oftentimes, they sit on the agency owner’s plate. And you commit to your team that you’re going to do them. And then you don’t get them done. And you break promise, after promise, after promise. Or someone on your leadership team commits to doing it. And then they don’t get it done, or they do it sort of haphazardly, or it never goes anywhere. It never gets to the next step. It never gets executed. Maybe there’s a plan written, but no one ever actually puts effort into bringing it to life.

These are the kinds of things that Traction solves. So Traction is a way of thinking about your business and a way of managing your business where those internal priorities actually are treated like priorities.

So there’s a companion book also called Rocket Fuel. And that’s a book that was written by Gino Wickman and a guy named Mark Winters, who I had on the show in episode 102. And part of Traction is the acknowledgement that inside most organizations, there are two kinds of leaders. There’s a visionary, which is often the agency owner. Big picture thinker, broad ideas, big, bold ideas. Maybe not so awesome at details or execution. And then there is an integrator. And oftentimes, that might be your chief operating officer, or director of agency services, or some cases it’s your CFO, or it might be your director of account services. But anyway, it’s somebody who, in some cases, it’s the person who drives traffic inside your shop. Somebody who’s driving the day-to-day excellence in your agency and making sure everything actually gets done.

And what Traction does is Traction helps agencies. It was written for businesses. So let me say that first off. It was written for businesses, not specifically agencies. But in our world, it helps agencies actually grow the business by building out the infrastructure and improving systems, processes, and people so that your agency can keep evolving, and growing, and getting better, and getting more profitable. It is not an easy thing. So let me describe for you sort of how Traction works. And then we’ll talk about some of the ins and outs and some of the problems where people sort of get stuck.

So the way Traction works is the first thing is the agency owners, you would put together a Traction team. And typically, these are going to be people who sit at a leadership level inside your organization. They’re often department heads. But one of the mistakes that is often made when agencies are building their attraction team is that these are also people that you’ve probably had to have some conversations with that maybe you have not had. And just know that in Traction, those conversations are going to come up. One of the key elements of Traction is that everyone can think about what’s best for the agency, as opposed to what’s best for them or their department. So they very much have to be of the we mentality, not the me or my department mentality.

And by the way, Traction is always implemented by someone. In most cases, and it is most successful if you have an outsider facilitate your Traction meetings. I’ll talk a little bit more about why I think that is true as opposed to doing it yourself. But you’re going to have someone in the meeting with you. So either it’s going to be one of you who is going to serve as implementer, or it’s going to be an outsider.

When it’s one of you, the challenge is number one, you are used to letting each other off the hook and not having the hard conversations that you need to have. And an outside implementer if they’re good won’t let you off the hook. But two, it’s very difficult to participate and facilitate. So in cases where agencies self-facilitate, it’s typically the agency owner, or if you have an integrator. So I’ve got an agency, and their CFO facilitates.

But I will tell you, I have never ever met an agency who self-implements Traction where it’s anywhere near as successful as if they have an outside implementer. So I guess Drew bias number one is I do not believe you should self-implement.

So let me just give you a framework of my experience with Traction. So right after Traction came out, probably a year or so after Traction came out. And they were starting to teach this methodology where you have these series of meetings over the course of the year to implement Traction. My agency implemented it. We brought an outside implementer in, he worked with us for a while. And then since then, we have self-implemented, which by the way I am a fan of. But I think you have to learn certain skills, some difficult conversations skills, and other things that are much easier to learn with an implementer before you should do it on your own. But anyway, so we have been Traction fans for many, many years.

I also in my AMI role, so that’s my agency on a role. In my AMI role, I facilitate or implement Traction for agencies. So I have worked with dozens of agencies over the year implementing Traction. And my original plan was that, the way I structured it was I would implement it for a year and then they would self-implement. And I will tell you that about half of my clients, that’s exactly what happened. And I would say of the half of my clients that decided to self-implement, half of those people have just let it fall apart. And the other half are still doing it with rigor. And the other half after a year said, “You know what? We don’t think we’re capable, or we don’t want to try and be capable of having some of these kinds of conversations without someone facilitating those conversations. So we want you to keep facilitating.” So I have done that for some agencies. I’m in year three or four with a couple of agencies.

But anyway, so I’ve seen it from both sides. I have lived it inside my own organization, and I have facilitated it dozens of times for agencies. And it’s incredibly powerful. So here’s how it works. Here’s how the structure works. So by the way, the book is a super easy read. So if I’m piquing your interest, grab the book in an afternoon or a weekend, you’ll have it read.

You start with a two day kickoff meeting. And in that kickoff meeting, you identify some critical things, values, sweet spot clients, where you’re best at, you set goals for one year, three years, five or 10 years, depending on what you want to do. You identify or you confirm the agency’s values that you’re going to live by and you’re going to hold everybody to. And we’ll talk about how important that is in a minute.

But anyway, you spend about two days, day and a half doing some big planning. And then you also are learning the Traction rhythm. So sort of how Traction works. And if you’ve heard anyone talk about they have rocks that they have to accomplish, that’s Traction terminology. So what it means is a big quarterly goal. So you’re going to have this two day planning meeting. And then every quarter after that, you’re going to have a full day offsite meeting with the Traction team. And at the quarterly meetings, you’re going to talk about two things. One, you’re going to check the boxes that all the rocks you committed to in the last quarter actually got done. And two, you’re going to resolve a bunch of issues and then set the rocks for the next quarter and assign those to everybody around the table on the Traction team.

So you’ve got the annual planning meeting. You have the quarterly meetings. And then you have weekly, what’s called a level 10 meeting. And that’s the Traction team by themselves. So whether you use an outside implementer like me or not, they’re not really a part of the weekly meetings. That’s self-administered inside the Traction team. And that’s a 90 minute meeting where you follow a very specific agenda. And what that does is that makes sure that the train stays on the tracks so that when you get together at the next quarterly meeting, everyone’s rock is done, and there are no big looming issues.

So Traction is this amazing tool that like I said, helps you get big internal goals met. So one of the things that I do with folks that I coach through Traction is at the end of the year, so we’ve had the planning meeting, and then three quarterly meetings. So we’ve gone through a whole year. We’re coming back around to the next two day planning meeting or day and a half planning. And that’s a place where we celebrate everything we accomplished for the last year. And then we revise goals and we set some big goals for the upcoming year. Three years, five years, 10 years.

One of the things that I have my people do is I have them put together a deck of every rock that got accomplished over the course of the year. And they have to present it to the entire Traction team. And I will tell you that there’s not been a time that I have done that with a client where there isn’t cheering, or clapping, or even crying. There’s a lot of pride. It’s astonishing. It is astonishing how much a team can get done in a calendar year if they honor the Traction process. There has never been a time that we have not gone through that sort of presentation exercise where even though they’ve been there the whole time, they’re not sort of amazed at what they got done. This is a very powerful tool if it is done with rigor and consistency.

So where people fall off the rails a little bit is when they sort of do Traction. So I’ve had some agency owners say, “Well, I’ve cherry picked bits and pieces of Traction that I think work for us.” Doesn’t work. Or, “I self-implement, but we’re sort of stuck in this one place. We’ve been stuck for a while. And yeah, we get about half of our rocks done.” Doesn’t work.

This is a all or none commitment. And it takes courage, and time commitment, and bravery and a willingness to have really difficult conversations. So if you’re not willing to do all of that, don’t do it. Because then you’re just wasting everybody’s time. It’s just one more internal meeting. And if there’s anything none of us need is another useless internal meeting. So if you’re not really ready to be brave enough to change and to face the difficult truths that get in the way of you changing, don’t pick up the book. Don’t bother. All right? But if you are, it can be amazing.

So I want to take a quick break, and then I want to tell you about some of the things that we do that either make this work really well or keep it from working really well. All right? We’ll be right back.

I hate to take you away from this week’s content. But I just want to put a little bug in your ear. We have some amazing workshops coming up in the first quarter of 2020, and I want to make sure they’re on your radar screen. So there are two in January. There’s the Build & Nurture Your Agency’s Sales Funnel, which is January 23rd and 24th in Orlando, Florida. We are literally going to not only show you how to build a sales funnel, but we’re going to actually walk you through the exercise of doing it so that you leave with a completed or near complete sales funnel. So that’s a Thursday/Friday.

And then on Monday/Tuesday, our good friends at Mercer Island Group are going to join us. And they’re going to talk to us about the prospect’s buying journey. So they’ve been working with brands and helping them pick agencies for years now. And one of the things they’ve been studying is what do prospects or what brands do as they are beginning their early, early stages of shopping for an agency? Long before they’re on our radar screen, what are they doing? And how do we win each of those milestones, even when we don’t know they’re out there? So it’s going to be a great workshop. It’s brand new content from Mercer Island group. If you have not been to one of their workshops, they do not disappoint. We get rave reviews every time that they take the stage. So they’re going to be with us on January 27th and 28th also in Orlando, Florida. The beautiful thing about that is right in the middle is a weekend. And why wouldn’t you spend a weekend in sunny, warm Florida on Disney property in January? So hopefully you can join us for those.

We also have a great workshop in March. So that workshop is in Chicago. We’re heading back north March 24th and 25th. And that is the Run Your Agency for Growth and Profit. This is an agency owner workshop. If you are not an owner, but you are a leader, then ideally your owner would come with you. Because we’re going to talk about owner stuff. So everything from operations, to biz dev, to people, to profit, to financial metrics, all those sorts of things we’re going to cover. We’re going to cover all the big bases in terms of the internal backside of the business. How do you run the business of your business better? And again, that is March 24th and 25th in Chicago. All right. I hope I see you at one of those or more of those. But in the meantime, let’s get back to the podcast.

Welcome back. we are talking about Traction and all the ways that this is such a remarkable tool. And it’s not just about getting this stuff done. So what Traction does, it absolutely helps you prioritize and stop making excuses for not getting your internal priorities done. Absolutely. It’s going to help you grow up your agency. It’s going to help you strengthen your agency. It’s going to help you find the weak spots and solve them or cure them. But it’s also an amazing leadership tool. It’s a leadership tool that teaches your team how to talk to each other, how to have really hard, candid conversations. How to not take everything so personally. How to live and walk out the values of the organization and the consequences of not doing that. This really is, it’s a game changer for agencies when it’s done well and right. But it is hard to do well and right, because it’s hard.

So that’s why you want to have an implementer. It is a very, very rare agency who all of a sudden with the same people around the table that are always around the table are suddenly going to talk about all of the elephants in the room that you have avoided talking about for years. That are going to take head on the challenges inside your agency that maybe are caused by a person, or a conflict between two people, or a process, or something someone takes very personally. And all of a sudden, you’re going to have the bravery to have those conversations. You really do need an outside implementer to force you and guide you to have those conversations, to make those conversations possible, and to put their hand on your back and not let you turn and run when it gets hard. Because believe me, that is tempting. I get it.

So I only implement for agencies because I believe for an implementer to be really good, they have to understand the business of the people that they’re coaching. So there are lots of great implementers out there. You can go to the EOS website and you can put in your zip code, and they will serve up implementers in your area. Lots of good ones that have gotten lots of training, have lots of experience. I’m not saying you have to have an agency-centric one. But if you’re going to hire a generalist, then you want them to spend some time inside your shop, really learning how you guys work. Because Traction was actually written for, and you’ll see it in the examples and things, for a company that makes stuff. Like a manufacturing kind of company, not a service industry company. And certainly not an agency with all of the foibles and oddities that we have inside our industry. So you want an implementer who ideally really does understand the business.

So if you’re going to hire someone local, and I’m sure there are a lot of great choices. Invite them in and ask them to spend some time at your shop. Maybe in some traffic meetings, or team meetings, or department meetings, kind of learning the lay of the land of how you work. Maybe sitting in on some internal brainstorming meetings, just so they get a sense of how you function, and what your outputs are, and how you deliver value for clients. But you want to have somebody who is really going to hold your feet to the fire and who is not going to let you short cheat the process.

So there are a couple places where agencies make mistakes. And I see them doing this whether they have an implementer or not, if the implementer will allow them. And I certainly see them doing it all the time when they self-implement. And the first one is they don’t do the level 10 meetings every week. So that level 10 meeting is 90 minutes, and it’s very scripted. And you need to follow the script. The script feels artificial and awkward for the first month or six weeks.

So the first several times you have this meeting, you’re going to want to veer off. You’re going to like we all do, chase squirrels and shiny objects. You need someone to pull you back to the agenda. It is not a regular leadership team meeting. Its function is Traction and just Traction. And you need to follow the agenda, because otherwise it becomes a catch all meeting for your leaders. And A, it drags out much longer than 90 minutes. But B, it does not protect the Traction process. It does not make sure everyone is actually moving forward on their rocks. It does not allow you to identify and solve issues while they’re little, which is part of why it’s there so that everything doesn’t bubble up to a big, hairy deal. But they’re hard to do in the beginning. And that’s just not natural. It’s not how we naturally meet, which is probably why they work. So that’s mistake number one is if you don’t have your regular level 10 meeting.

You need to have that every week, no matter if everybody’s present or not. So if I’m on the Traction team and I’m not going to be at our level 10 meeting, and you are the person. So someone on the Traction team is assigned to run the level 10 meetings. If you’re the person who runs the level 10 meeting, I need to report to you that I’m not going to be there and give you my update and anything I want the team to know so that the level 10 meeting can carry on without me.

So it’s important that everyone has accountability around making sure that whoever runs the level 10 meetings has everything that they need. But you have to have them, even if it’s only two people. And by the way, the number of people on your Traction team matters. More than six or seven gets really unwieldy. So typically, it’s going to be the agency owner. And then it often is department heads, might be a CFO, might be whoever drives traffic inside your shop. But these are leadership level people.

And by the way, remember what I said. This is a leadership course. This is leadership training, boots on the ground leadership training. So you also want to include people on your attraction team that you want to be the future leaders of your company. That maybe they’re part of your succession plan, or you know they’re going to run your department for awhile. But they are going to learn how to lead by going through this process. They’re going to learn how to have really good accountability conversations. They’re going to learn how to make sure that everyone is aligned on values and how to have those conversations when they’re not. They are going to learn how to identify issues and get past the emotion of an issue, but figure out what’s really the problem. And then how do we solve it and then put that solution into play so the issue doesn’t keep raising itself over and over? They’re going to learn how to raise issues with the agency owner that perhaps today they are uncomfortable raising or they wouldn’t raise it all.

So yes, it’s about making your agency run better. Yes, it’s about getting all of the big internal things taken care of, even though today you can’t see how to do that. And it is also about building leadership inside your organization. And if you’re the agency owner, this is going to stretch your leadership skills too. Because you are going to embark into things that you have avoided consciously or unconsciously for a while, and be sort of forced to deal with them. And it’s a humbling process sometimes. And the first year I will tell you is brutal.

So let me get back to the mistakes. So first of all, mistake number one. Not having your level 10 meetings on a consistent basis every week and honoring the agenda. Second one is that you allow each other off the hook. So I was just saying to you that this is challenging. And the first year of Traction is really hard, because it is going to bubble up and uncover things that you have been avoiding talking about for awhile. It might be org chart things. It might be a clash between two people. It might be a values conflict. But a lot of stuff comes up in these Traction meetings that the process forces you to resolve, which is great. But the effort of resolving them is hard.

So oftentimes, the first Traction meeting, you’re so busy doing the planning, and talking about values, and setting goals and things like that. That that is not as uncomfortable. But meetings two and three, and sometimes four where you’re really getting into the mud of things and figuring out what’s working, what’s not working, and most importantly, why it’s not working, these are hard meetings. And you are going to be tempted to bypass those conversations, to pass over them, to excuse them, to tiptoe around them. And if you have a good implementer, he or she is not going to let you do that. They are going to force you, with love and respect, but they’re going to force you to focus on what’s in the way of you being the best agency you can be and really talking about some tough stuff.

So go into it knowing that no one’s going to love Traction for awhile. After the first year, after you learn how to have some of these conversations, after you learned that it’s okay to raise some of these issues and talk about some of these things that you’ve avoided for a long time, and no one’s going to die. And in fact, when you do it with the right intention and the right coaching, you actually can resolve some really tough stuff. Things that you know you’ve needed to say to your business partner, or your CFO, or the agency owner for a long time. And it’s not about them personally, it’s just about the work. But it feels personal and it’s hard.

So another mistake people make is because it gets hard, they stop doing it. So you have to keep doing the level tens. And you have to plow through the hard Traction meetings, those long all day meetings where you are really diving into the real issues that get in the way of the agency being successful. You just have to gut out those first few meetings after the planning meeting and know that they do get easier, and better, and even more productive. They’re super productive even though they’re hard, but they get even more productive as you get some of the debris and old stuff out of the way. And you can focus on more current issues, and challenges, and opportunities.

Another mistake agencies make is one of the parts of Traction that is most difficult is the people analyzer. And the people analyzer is where you have identified the agency’s values. And now what you do is you start with the Traction team. And eventually you would do this throughout the entire organization, but you evaluate every person on the Traction team in terms of how they show up against these values. In other words, do they always walk out these values? Do they never honor these values? Or are they in the middle where sometimes they do, but there’s a lot of room for improvement? And you literally grade each other in the meeting. So I would be saying, “Well for core value number one, which is we always tell the truth, even when it hurts, [Babette 00:38:50], I would give you a plus minus. I don’t always think that you do that. On value number two which is no job is too small, and we all do everything from empty the trash to go to the client meeting, Babette I think you always do that. You’re always helping everybody. And you never complain about anything that anyone asks you.”

So you’re literally grading each other in front of each other. Which probably for some of you is already making your chest feel a little tight. And what that is telling you is there are some conversations you should have had with team members that you haven’t had.

So I’ve had some agency owners who have avoided doing the people analyzer for the Traction team or rolling it out. And what that’s saying is your values aren’t actually your values, and you’re not really holding your team accountable to them. And you’re not willing to have challenging conversations when somebody isn’t living the values.

I will tell you I’ve been working with one one Traction client for about four years now. And they have more than doubled in size in the time that we’ve worked together. And the biggest thing is they no longer tolerate team members who don’t live and exemplify the values. And that has changed so much inside their organization. It’s changed their retention of employees, it’s changed the retention of their clients. It’s changed the quality of their work. It’s changed the number of mistakes they make, it’s changed their profitability. But it all started with being honest with this people analyzer. Not only did they grade themselves, but then as they started to grade everyone on the team and started having conversations with people about where they were or weren’t living up to the values. Some really challenging, tough conversations. But some really amazing team dynamics have come out of this. Wrong team members have moved on, right team members have been found, and hired, and celebrated. So the people analyzer is a really important part of Traction, and you shouldn’t skip it.

So another thing that agency owners do is that they will allow, and this again, should be on your implementer. They will allow people to not complete the rocks. Rocks are a promise. So if I’m in a Traction meeting with you, and I commit to a rock. And typically, each person takes one rock for the quarter. I made a promise to you. That is my commitment that I will have that done by the time we have our next quarterly Traction meeting. And there should be no exceptions to that rule. None. There is nothing that should get in the way of you completing your rock.

Now when you take a rock, it doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself. It just means you have to make sure it gets done. So you could build a team to do it. Oftentimes, you’re collaborating with other people on the Traction team. You might be working within your department. So it’s not that you have to do the work yourself. It just means you have to make sure that that rock, that promise is honored and completed by the Traction meeting. But if an agency or I’m sure any business, but in my experience if an agency begins to get sloppy about rock completion, you might as well not even bother be doing Traction. Because now you just have another internal meeting. The whole point of Traction is to get this stuff done, and to eliminate the barriers that say, “We don’t have time to update our website,” or, “We don’t have time to do this or that.” Of course you have time. You absolutely have time. You just need to carve out the time, dedicate the time, and be committed to spending that time. And an agency that’s going through the Traction process that does not require everyone to complete their rock is wasting everyone’s time.

Now I will say a common mistake is that the first time you do it, the rocks you create are too big. So for example, let’s say you have to do a complete overhaul of your website. That’s probably not one rock. It might be we need to have a new wireframe for our website, and we want to have the content written, and we want to have the design approved in a quarter. But we’re probably not going to be have it built, and live, and populated, and all of that. So one of the things that a good implementer will help you do is to cut your rocks down to what’s reasonable to get done within 90 days. I would much rather see you do smaller rocks and get them done than take on a huge ginormous rock and not deliver it at the end of the quarter.

So when you’re doing your rocks in your attraction meeting, you need to define … so let’s say if I’m taking the website rock, I need to define what done looks like. So you will know my rock is done next quarter, because these things will be in place. We will have an approved wireframe that the leadership team has approved. We will have the content written for all of the parent and sub parent pages. I’m just making this up obviously. And we will have a design theme all ready to go so that we are ready to hand it to the coders at the end of the quarter, right? Whatever that is. But you should have that done. And that should be documented by whoever’s taking notes for Traction. All right?

So another mistake that folks make with Traction is that they hold the Traction meetings in the agency. So for most of you, if you’re in an all day meeting, sooner or later, you’re going to if nothing else have to leave the room to go to the bathroom or to get food. And when you do, someone’s to be waiting for you. And there’s going to be some client fire or something that’s going to take your mind and your eye off the ball. So I am a huge proponent of those quarterly all day meetings to be offsite or in a place where you’re not going to bump into other people. So for example, one of the agencies that I do Traction for, their agency is on the first floor of their building, but they have access to a conference room on the second floor. So we’re up there, and we have all the food, and we have a cooler of drinks, and there’s a bathroom up there. So we don’t ever have to interact with the agency staff all day so that we are not distracted by what’s happening.

But if you can’t do that, then rent a hotel meeting space, or do it at somebody’s house, or do something to get away from the day-to-day fray so you can stay focused. Because I’ve also been in Traction meetings where somebody has knocked on the door, somebody went to the bathroom. Client situation is on fire. Now two of the people in the Traction meeting leave the Traction meeting to go put out that fire. And we have to just sit there and wait, even if it’s an hour. Because I don’t want to move the Traction meeting forward if the entire team isn’t there. So if you can, isolate yourself in some way to make sure that the Traction meeting goes off according to plan. All right?

Trying to think what else I want to tell you. I told you about the implementer, first quarter’s tough. The good news is if you’re willing to do this, if you’re willing to endure a tough first year, if you’re willing to pay the money to have someone from the outside implement this for you so you’re successful, if you’re willing to not accept excuses, if you’re willing to with caution, and respect, and care, walk into difficult people conversations in those first few meetings, you will a year from now be clapping and crying because your agency has delivered so much value against those internal goals. So I’m a big, big fan of this methodology. .But I’ve seen it a lot of people do it in a way that it doesn’t really serve them. And I’m not a fan of you wasting your time.

So here’s sort of my reminders. Go read the book Traction, and then Rocket Fuel. Gino Wickman, Mark Winters. And then decide whether or not you think it’s something that you and your agency would benefit from. Would you benefit? So here’s the deal. If you feel like you keep banging your head against a growth goal and can’t get over the $2 million mark or the million dollar mark, or you are a revolving door of people problems, and you can’t seem to solve those. Or you can’t quite get your profitability where you want it to be that you’re sitting in single digits. And even though everyone’s working really, you can’t seem to break into even 10% profitability, which I think is the bare minimum any agency should settle for.

Any of those things, what it means is there’s things broken inside your agency that require your time and attention. And a process, a system, a tool like EOS and Traction will allow you to identify what’s not working and fix those things. And evolve and improve them to a point that your agency is more effective, is more efficient. That the people and the relationships are healthier and better. That everyone is pulling in the same direction, and that you are delivering better for your clients, for your team, for the agency, and for yourself as the agency owner. EOS will absolutely do all of that for you. If you are willing to do the hard work and the heavy lifting that comes with it. It is not easy. It’s not one of those read a book, talk about the platitudes, use the word rock now and then, and all of a sudden things are going to get better. It is not a surface solution. It is a drill deep, deep, deep down solution. And it’s hard stuff. But boy does, it deliver results.

So happy to answer any questions you have about Traction. Again, I highly recommend you read the book. If you’re interested, find a local implementer who can talk to you more about how it comes to life inside of an organism. But if something’s not quite right inside your agency, this might be the solution for you, because it really is an amazing diagnostic tool. It is an amazing evolution tool. It’s a remarkable leadership growth tool. It creates an investment where you can talk about anything and solve any problem before it gets too big and too hairy. I cannot endorse this enough. It is a remarkable process that has served many, many agencies well and might be worth thinking about for your shop.

So with that, I’m going to wrap it up. Hope this was helpful. As always, happy to answer your questions. You can track me down at [email protected] anytime, and I will answer your question. As you might imagine, I get a ton of email. So please be patient. I can’t always get back to you the same day, but I do try and be as responsive as possible. Also, if you are interested in learning more about our peer groups or our key exec groups, we have lots of information about those on the website. Always happy to have you come on inside the AMI circle and really benefit from that ongoing peer group, and support, and teaching, and knowledge that all of our different kinds of peer groups, we have virtual ones and live ones. And the other associate levels of membership that come with all kinds of member-only perks, happy to talk to you about any of that as well.

But in the meantime, go forth, do good work, and I will be back next week. Big shout out, and thanks to our friends at White Label. They are the presenting sponsor for this podcast. And I will tell you that they are a very popular referral. So when agencies call me and say, “We’re struggling to get PPC done well,” or, “We’re having some trouble with web dev. We need to augment the team that we already have.” Or, “We need some design help.” White Label IQ just saves the day. And agencies big and small are raving about them. And we’re super proud to have them as our partner. The folks that run White Label have been a part of AMI, their agency has been a part of AMI for many, many years. So I know them well, and I am proud to call them colleagues and friends, and happy to make a referral. But if you want to learn more about them and thank them for their sponsorship of the podcast, head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami, because they have a special offer for you. All right. I’ll be back next week with a guest. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency Podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today, so you don’t miss an episode.