The art of perfecting presentations for agency employees with Michael Weiss

Hey, before we get to the show, I just wanna remind you that we have created a private Facebook group just for you, our podcast listeners. There are almost 1500 agencies, agency owners, inside that Facebook group every day talking about what’s going on inside their shop, asking for resources, gut checking decisions, talking about everything from pricing to hiring, to biz dev. All kinds of things are happening there. We’re starting conversations. You guys are starting conversations. What I love about it is the community’s coming together and sharing resources, encouraging each other, and just sort of having a safe place to talk about what it’s like to own an agency. So all you have to do is head over to Facebook, search for a Build, a Better, Agency Podcast Group, or Build, a Better, Agency Podcast.

And you’ll find the group. You have to answer three questions. If you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. But they’re simple. It’s, do you own an agency or do you work at an agency? And if so, what’s the U R L? What are you trying to get out of the group? And will you behave, basically? So come join us. If you haven’t been there for a while, come on back. If you haven’t joined, join into the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build, a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-size agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market with 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build Better Agency. Thank you for coming back. You’re gonna love this. You’re gonna love this conversation, and I think there’s gonna be a lot of really practical takeaways that you can apply every single day in your agency. So, you know, I love episodes where there’s lots of really tangible, practical, actionable items, and I know that our guest today is gonna deliver those for you. So I’m excited about that. Before I tell you a little bit about him, and we get going, I do wanna remind you that Money Matters, which is one of our most popular workshops. So it is two days of talking about nothing but money. How do you, one of the financial metrics that you should know that are very agency specific, how do you know if you can afford another employee?

How do you know if your team members are actually spending their time where they should? How do you know if your pricing and your project estimates are on track? How do you deal with clients who don’t pay their bills? How do you know how much money you should take out of the business as an agency owner? How do you know how to create a bonus program that gets everyone thinking about the same metrics and caring about the same metrics that you do as an agency owner? How do you make more money, which is what I just talked about. And also, how do you keep it, what are the tax strategies that really savvy, smart agency owners are legally applying year after year to mitigate their tax risk and liability to the minimum that they legally have to pay so that they’re not overpaying in taxes, which many of you are are doing?

So we talk about all of that kind of stuff. It is two full days of talking about the financial side of your business and how you can in every single year. I don’t care if it’s a recession, I don’t care if it’s a depression. I don’t care if we’re in a boon or a bust every single year. You should be able to make 20% profit before taxes, and obviously before you apply some tax strategies, there’s no reason why you can’t be doing that every single year while still properly paying your team and rewarding them for work. Well done. So that happens. All of that conversation happens at Money Matters Workshop that the dates for that are October 16th and 17th.

So it’s a Monday, Tuesday in Denver. October is lovely in Denver. So come join us. Spend two days learning and soaking it in. And I promise you, you’re gonna leave with a pages and pages of to-dos, stop doing, do different, all kinds of things. It’s gonna change the way you run your business. I have agency owners who walk up to me and say, I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve owned my agency for 20 years, and I have learned so much in this workshop. I wish I had, I had heard about it 20 years ago. Don’t be that agency owner. Don’t come five years from now. Don’t come 10 years from now. Come now. Learn it now. Start to apply it now. This is great stuff.

And as always, with every workshop we teach, if at the end of the workshop you’re like, Drew, that sucked. I didn’t get a lot of value from it. I didn’t learn anything new. I knew all of this stuff. It was a waste of two days for me. You just walk up and say that to me gently with love. Well happily refund your money. We have never ever had to do that. But I absolutely will do it without any questions asked. I’m that confident about the workshop and the value and the information and the stuff we teach. Plus, you get to hang out with a bunch of other agency owners. In most cases, this is agency owners. And many people bring like their bookkeeper or their C F O or whoever their money person is along with them so that they can learn together and start talking about how they’re gonna apply what they learn while they’re still with us.

So Money Matters. October 16th and 17th, register now. It always sells out. So don’t wait till the last minute. Go to the website agency management institute.com, go to the How We Help tab on the top. Scroll down. You’re gonna see Workshops and Money Matters is off to the right. Okay? So we would love to see you there. Alright, with that, I wanna tell you about our guest. So Michael Weiss is a fascinating guy. He has given delivered three different TEDx talks. He has trained many other TED and TEDx speakers. He owned an agency for a period of time. So he understands our world. But what he really understands is how can we improve our presentation skills and the presentation skills of our team?

Every day we make presentations. Some are formal, some are informal, some are over Zoom, some are in a client’s office, some are in a prospect’s office, some are in a coffee shop. However that happens, we present every single day. And what we are presenting, our ideas, our analysis, the data that we have discovered, really absolutely the way we present and the information we present can really change our clients’ trajectory. It can change the agency’s trajectory. So we have to be good at it. And honestly, a lot of people in the agency space are not good at it. We’re uncomfortable, we’re nervous, we’re sweaty, we’re awkward, we’re stiff. We are, we do not come off as the confident capable people that we are.

But there are tricks to do all of that better, to be more confident, to have more of a presence, to connect with the audience more. And so that’s what Michael’s gonna talk about. So I don’t wanna waste any more time. I wanna give you as much time sort of picking his brain and learning from him as we can get. So let’s just get to it. Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

You bet. Hey, tell everybody a little bit about you, your background and how you came to have the knowledge that you have around presentations and looking good on stage, whether that’s literal or figurative.

Oh, yeah. Well, it’s an interesting story, and I think what I, what I like to say is that I’m a storyteller. Mm. I’ve been a storyteller my whole life and different facets of my life. I’ve always been, I guess, a sucker for the stage. I like being on stage. I’ve been band my whole life. I was the lead singer and a bass player and jumping around on stage and entertaining people and sort of telling stories through song. Went and got my master’s in counseling psychology, and went to work at a high school where I was helping kids tell their story, figure out what their legacy is gonna be, working with seniors. Mm. Cool. Who were, who were, who were graduating. It was really fun. We did a lot of really interesting non-academic discussions. And it always came down to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, because they’re teenagers, but it was always an interesting group setting and would take ’em on retreats and do all kind of fun stuff like that.

And then I realized education, although I love it a lot, I didn’t make a lot of money doing it. And it was 1997, and my brother-in-law at the time looked at me and he said, the web seems kind of cool. And I said, yeah, it does. Like I

I, I knew that was the first it, it might stick around.

Yeah. It’s like, what, what do do we do with it? I knew a little H T M L and he, he knew game coding. And so we started a, an agency and we started helping brands tell their story online, which in 1997 was ridiculous. Yeah. Had crazy clients who, being in LA we had a lot of entertainment clients who had big movies, and they’re like, what do we do with this medium? What do we do? So we, we learned that we promised things that we, that definitely could not deliver and,

And then figured out how to do it.

Oh my God. Yeah. And we pulled a lot of all-nighters, pulled a lot of all-nighters, trying to deliver, and really started to move into nonprofits and helping them tell their stories and, and using it, using the web for good. Not that other things aren’t for good, but we really started to focus on nonprofits Yeah. And help them spend their money wisely. Got into content management systems. And then my business partner and I had a deal that the day we get bored is the day we leave. So I walked into his office in April of 2011, and I said, I’m bored. He said, all right, let’s figure out how to transition you out. So I transitioned out, became a consultant, and really focused on content marketing, storytelling, and worked with the Content Marketing Institute, worked with Robert Rose over at Content Marketing World, and all those folks.

And just, it’s always about story. It’s always about finding narrative in the data, trying to find what do you present, what do stories do you tell. And I, and I was lucky enough to be invited to the TED stage TEDx stage, I should say, and did three TEDx talks. And they went well. And people asked me to train them for, and help them with their TEDx talks. And I realized, oh, here’s a little cottage industry I could turn something into. And then next thing I knew, agencies were asking me to come in and lead workshops because the agencies as smart and as flashy and as exciting as they are, they had a lot of junior people and a lot of senior people who aren’t comfortable on stage.

And the boardroom is a

Stage. Well, even a lot of, even a lot of owners aren’t comfortable. Right. I mean, they, they’re probably the most comfortable ’cause they’ve had to do it. But I think you’re right. There are a lot of people inside agencies that are brilliant, but you ask them to stand up in front of 3, 4, 5, 10 people in a pitch or something. Or even a client that they already know. Right. And all of a sudden, you know, they’re, they’re a puddle.

It’s amazing what happens. It’s, I call it the five feet of fear, which is they’re sitting around the table and they’re like, Bob, will you stand up and show us? And in that moment when they stand up and they walk those five feet, physiologically something happens. Yeah. Everything changes in their body and their stress hormones are released. Cortisol and adrenaline just run through their veins. And so I, I, I learned real quickly that there’s, I don’t have a problem being on stage. I’m not afraid to speak. I get nervous. Think that’s natural. I’m not a psychopath. Right. So I get a little nervous, but I realized I have some tips and tricks and I can help people through this. And, and it just sort of spiraled into a little bit of an industry and doing some work.

And I wrote a book on it and just keep, keep doing the workshops.

Yeah. I, I am with you on the, on the nervousness. So, you know, I mean, I have been on big and small stages, inbound content marketing where all of those, I and I welcome the butterflies. Like to me. Yeah. So I used to, I used to pitch, I used to play baseball, and every time I would walk towards the mound, I would feel those butterflies. And for me, that meant I had a passion for my upcoming performance and it mattered. Yeah. And so I’ve always felt like if I had to, if I walked up on a stage and didn’t feel a little bit butterflies, that would actually be concerning to me because it means I don’t care that much. If I do a good job, you’re not investing. Right. You’re not. Right. Yeah.

Right. And, and I think I like the nervousness because it keeps me on my toes. Yeah. Why when you have adrenaline, you, what’s happening is you’re having fight or flight. Yeah. And so you got two choices run off the stage or stay and use that energy to get you going. And once you sort of tell people that that’s the physiological reaction that’s happening, fight or flight, like why are my hands shaking? Why is my voice quiver? Why am I sweating? Well, because a long time ago when a saber tooth tiger wanted to eat you, your body had to be prepared. Right. You’re still facing a stressful situation. You’re just standing up in front of a bunch of people, whether it’s five, 500 or 5,000, your body’s gonna react exactly the same. Yeah. And so, I, you know, it happened to me.

I was, my first TEDx talk, I was very excited about it. It was a six minute talk. I was scheduled to go on like seventh or eighth in the day, and I got there early. ’cause I’m chronically early. We can talk about that later. That’s a sickness. I

Was gonna say that. Yeah. That, that’s, that’s a whole different podcast episode. Yeah.

I blame my mother and I got there early and I said, oh, good thing you’re here. We switched it. You’re on first. And every stress hormone just flushed my system. And I started shaking. And they’re like, we gotta get the mic on you. And I’m like, no, no, not yet. And I said, where are the stairs in this building? And I said, they’re right over there. And I said, gimme 10 minutes. And I did stairs for 10 minutes and I just burned it all off. And I said, you’re sweating. I said, yeah. Not from nerves anymore. Right.

I’m sweating because

I burned it off. And so I went on and I was still nervous. And I tell people, be 90% prepared. Leave that 10% for the nerves and the, and the, and the improv.

Yeah. Right. So,

You know, I, I think there’s one other interesting thing that I always tell people. And it was, it Tracy Morgan said it. He was, you know, Tracy Morgan was a comedian and got in a bad car accident and, and didn’t know if he’d ever perform again. And he had the opportunity to go back on the road. And he went on Jimmy Fallon. And Jimmy said, wow, you must be super nervous. He says, you know, Jimmy nervous people can’t wait for it to end excited. People can’t wait for it to begin. And he said, I’m excited. And I, and I, I, I really, that hit home. And I thought, what an interesting way to look at it. Because if you think about it, the butterflies in the stomach could be nerves or they could be excitement. It’s just a question of how you frame it in your mind.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think a lot of it is just the mental position in which you put it. Right.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think for agency folks, this is, this is a challenging area. We get, we get asked about, do you teach presentation skills and stuff like that all the time. Like you and I talked about. And, and I, I find it fascinating that, you know, most agency people, when I think about the people who work in agencies, for the most part, they are extroverted type A entertainers. Right? They, yes. They, they, they like to, to hold a room. They like to tell a story. And yet when they, when they feel like they have to present, it’s that word Right. That they have to present as opposed to just chatting between two people or three, or four or five people or telling a story.

You know, in a bar to eight people, all of that feels normal. But the minute they have to present, as you said, everything happens. Right. They get flooded with all the things, all the worries, all the discomfort, all of the imposter syndrome. Yeah. So one of the things I know that, that you talk about a lot is helping people sort of recognize they’ve earned the right to be in the room or on the stage. Yeah. And trying to kind of quell or manage that imposter syndrome.

Yeah. I think one of the biggest problems with people, and you said it perfectly, they can sit around the table with a bunch of beers with 30 people until the first date they ever had, or the first Rock concert they ever went to with ease. Right. With flair, not even eat Right. With flare. Yeah. With storytelling, with engagement. But as soon as you say, I need you to present your ideas, there’s this, this pit of self worthiness that just opens up and self-worth, and they just don’t believe that they have the self-worth. Like who you said, as you said, imposter syndrome. Who am I? Right? Well, lemme tell you something. It’s 2023. No one’s having meetings anymore unless they need to. So you’re in the room for a reason. They believe in something, whether it’s your boss and your team who believes you’re the right person.

Or the client’s, like, we really want Joe to come in and present because he created the UI in the ux, or whatever it is in the creative copy or whatever he created. I think as soon as they feel that dip of self-worth, as Brene Brown says, it creates a chasm between you and the audience, and you’re disconnected. Right. And as soon as you’re disconnected and you feel that the audience is like, what? Like that, that wasn’t the joke that we had dinner with last night. Like what happened. Right? It’s just that all of a sudden you bring on this enormous responsibility that you’ve put on yourself, that you believe that you’re not, that it’s not worthy. And then what happens? They read the slides, their mood is different.

If, if they’re Zoom, they’re like this, you know? Yeah. They can’t see you. Maybe like they’re squashed down and, and, and their diaphragm is contracted so they can’t speak. Well, they’re not breathing well. So there’s all sorts of things that come into play.

So how does somebody, if they, if they know that they suffer from that in certain moments and, and speaking in front of a group tends to trigger that in almost everybody, whether you normally have imposter syndrome or not, how do you help people manage that? ’cause you can’t make it go away. You can’t just stop it from happening. So it’s really about managing it, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s, well, the one thing that I always tell people is, you know, baseball players practice musicians practice, doctors practice, everybody practices, but we don’t practice our presentations. And so what normally happens is you’re sitting there at your office and all of a sudden you look on your calendar and you say, okay, I’ve got a presentation at two, it’s nine o’clock. No problem. That’s like four hour, five hours away. I’m totally fine. Then all of a sudden a reminder comes up, or an email comes in, is this your final deck? And it’s an hour before, and the cortisol starts to move in your system, and you start to get all rallied up. And then the alert comes up, you’re on in 15 minutes, and Norm, like 50% of what’s happening now is like this on Zoom. Right.

Right.

So it’s already awkward. Yeah, that’s right. And it’s already, and, and, and, and, and you feel you’re gonna be, you know, you feel you’re being judged by the audience and all these types of things. And the one thing that I always tell people is this is that they asked you to do it. As we talked about, you have a reason to be in the room. You have the right to be in the room there. The, you are the person to deliver this information. Now, whether you are going to deliver it in an engaging way or not, is up to you. Whether you’ve rehearsed, whether you’ve found the narrative and the data, and you’re telling a story that’s totally up to you in preparation. But there’s one thing that the audience doesn’t want. They don’t want to see you fail. They’re just as nervous as you are. And they’re happy that it’s you presenting and not them. Yeah. That’s, once you understand that, the audiences, that’s a great, once you understand that the audience is on your side and they want you to be successful, it kind of takes a little bit of the pressure off.

The other thing that I always tell people is we have this feeling that when we’re on stage, we’re the hero that it’s all about us. It’s not, you have all the knowledge, you’re just sharing the knowledge. Right. And if you go slowly and you, and you change it, and you, and you share it, and you do a good job delivering it, then the audience is the hero because they’re the one going through the change. They didn’t know it in the beginning. So it’s very, it’s very Star Wars. Yeah. So, you know, everybody thinks the speaker is Luke Skywalker, but actually the speaker is Yoda, and the audience is Luke Skywalker, and they have to go through a change. So there’s an enormous amount of responsibility on the audience to, especially in agency pitches, an agency reporting meetings and stuff like that, because at the end of it, you’re done.

You’re like, I’ve delivered it. And then the audience, which is the, the hero is like, well, what are we gonna do with that? What’s our call to?

’cause they have to do something with this. Right? Right.

Right. It’s up to them. And so you know it all, and so you share that knowledge and then it’s up to them to take it and do something with it. And then you can kind of sit back and go, what questions do you have for me?

Right.

So I think once you understand that your relationship with the audience is not only supportive, but you’re guiding them and teaching them and leading them to a path, a path of conversion, a path to signing a deal, a path to agreeing on a design or whatever it is, it takes a little bit of the responsibility off. The fear is still there. It’s always gonna be there until you really practice a lot and do it a lot. I mean, with anything, you can’t hit a baseball until you, you know, take the take, take the swing of the back 5,000 times. So you just gotta keep doing it.

Well, the the teacher, not the hero perspective is interesting because I think a lot of people, that’s a much more comfortable role to be in. Presenter is like, I am on the stage to capture their attention and entertain them and hold them captive, as opposed to I know something they need to know. Because most agencies Right, when you’re presenting, you’re presenting for a specific reason, and it’s almost a knowledge transfer of some kind of form. Totally. Right? Right. So even if you’re, even if you’re presenting ideas, it’s still a, you haven’t had this idea yet, you haven’t explored this idea, you haven’t considered this idea. My job is to put it in front of you for consideration.

Right. And it didn’t come from nowhere. Right. You paid us a lot of money. We did a lot of discovery. We figured all this out. Actually, you’re paying me to tell you this. Right? So sit back and listen. And if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They don’t like the idea. They say no, they’re unhappy, they’re frustrated. I mean, it could happen. I mean, it’s the transfer of emotion. And, and again, if you, it’s, it’s a human interaction, and if you are excited and pumped and animated about it, they’re gonna feed off of that. But if you’re up there like, I don’t know, you know, we did this.

Right. The monotone and Yeah. You’re not

Gonna be happy with these numbers. Right? Well, you just set it up. Of course, we’re not gonna be happy. Yeah. But if you, it’s a lot of confidence and believing in you’re there for a reason. You’re in the room for a reason. They’re asking you to do this knowledge transfer as you put it. I love that. And you’re, you’re teaching them guiding and leading them, then it really takes a ton of pressure

Off. Yeah. You go into a lot of agencies to do, to do your training. Yeah. I used to, I used to always believe that the reason why agencies didn’t rehearse was because they ran out of time. But I think that’s a stupid excuse. Yep. They, they control, they control their time. So they could totally, they, they could, even if the deck’s not quite done or even whatever, you could practice with what you have. So Yes. Why do you think we, as an industry, because I do think it is an industry-wide problem, why we as an industry do not rehearse before big client presentations or big new business presentations?

Because it’s awkward. It’s awkward. Yeah. It, it feels unnatural. Right. These aren’t actors. Right. If it was a group, group, a bunch of dramas, drama people, they’d be like, yes, let’s do it. Let’s rehearse, let’s rehearse, let’s get it down. And, and you know, you think about, you hear Broadway actors all the time who do seven or eight shows a week for 10 years.

Yeah.

And they, and they still say, yeah, in the fourth year, I went out one night, forgot all my lines. Right. But, but, but they’re like, but I knew how to get through it. And they practice and they practice and it becomes rote to them. And it becomes natural. Natural. I think rehearsal is unnatural. That there’s no audience. And here’s how rehearsals work in, in, in agencies. Okay, we got 30, we got 30 slides. You take slides one through 10, I’ll take 11 through 12. You take 13 through 20, you take 21 through 30. I’ll come back with the questions. Does everybody feel good? Great. And they’re doing that five minutes before they go on.

Or, or, or they’ll say, okay, well then I’m gonna talk about the metrics. And then you talk about the, but they don’t actually say what they’re gonna say. They talk about what they’re going to say. Right. But there’s never any actual rehearsal of not only what am I gonna say, but how am I gonna pass it off to you from slide 10 to 11 that looks natural. Like we’re actually a team that works together and knows each other as opposed to the awkward handoffs that we’ve all seen happen and probably been a part of,

Oh, oh my gosh. At some

Point in time. Right? Gosh,

I’ve seen it a thousand times. And, and the worst is when the question comes and everybody looks at Bob. Right. Right. The question comes in like, I’m not answering that. What do you think? You take that one. I think what also is fascinating is that when people think about speaking and about Pres presenting, they think of it as a solo. It’s not in agencies, it’s ensemble. Right. It’s always ensemble. It’s always more than at least two people or three people. And to your point, what’s the handoff? What do you do when the other person’s speaking? Do we all stand up and go up and then one step forward? And what do I do with my hands while they’re talking? And how do you, how do I pass it off to Susie? Right? Right. It’s sort of this, well, the only way you’re gonna know it is where’s your mark and when does she come in and do you literally say, and now Susie’s gonna take you through the metrics.

Yeah. You say that.

Right. Right, right.

And so you set it up so all of a sudden you don’t step back and Suzy awkwardly walks to the front and there’s that pregnant pause of 10 seconds, which just feels like an hour. And then, but nobody, nobody practices it in a way that they should because it’s not a meeting, it’s a performance. Right. A presentation is not a meeting. A presentation is a performance. And you’re being paid to get up there and perform, find narrative and data to tell stories and, and entertain, especially now with this medium. I know. ’cause I can guarantee you half the cameras are off, half the people are on their phone, someone’s making lunch, someone’s walking the dog.

Right.

You know, I mean, if you don’t engage them and, and, and they say, you know, you got 45 minutes, you don’t have 45 minutes. You got 10, 10 or 15 minutes to engage ’em, tell the story and get it going, and then hand it back over to the client to get them engaged and ask ’em questions. Because this two D medium is just a killer.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I think too, we are so, is, we’re so worried about being criticized or not being good. That, again, the idea of rehearsing in front of my coworkers Yeah. Is horrifying. Right? Yes. So how do you help people get better at rehearsing? ’cause honestly, I think that is such a critical point. So I’m, I’m asking you this question, but I’m gonna ask you to hold the answer. ’cause we need to take a break. But how do we, and by the way, a lot of times it’s the agency owner that’s like, oh, we don’t have to rehearse, or we can talk about it in the car on the way there, or we can, right? So how do we as agency owners and leaders, a, set the example, and B, get our team to actually rehearse, and then how do we help our people be more comfortable with it?

All that. But first, let’s take a quick break and then, and then I’ll give you time to think about that. And we’ll be right back. Hey, there, just a quick interruption. I wanna make sure that you are aware that you are cordially invited, not just invited, but cordially invited to join our Facebook group, our private Facebook group. All you have to do is go to Facebook and search for Build a Better agency. And you’ll find the Facebook group. You have to answer three quick questions. You have to put in the agency, u r l, you have to talk about what you wanna learn from the group, and you have to promise to behave yourself. And that’s it. And then we’ll let you in, and you can jump into the conversation with over a thousand other agency owners and leaders.

And there’s a robust conversation happening every day. People are sharing resources and best practices and discussing everything from work, from home policies, to maternity and paternity policies, to biz dev strategies. So come join us and jump into the conversation. Right. Speaking of conversations, let’s head back. All right. I am back with Michael Weiss, and we are talking about presentations and the importance of those. And again, it can be an informal, it can be a formal presentation. We do presentations every day as agency people. Sometimes it’s on Zoom, sometimes it’s in a coffee shop. Sometimes we are standing up and making a formal presentation, you know, because we’re trying to pitch a piece of business.

But how do we, how do we encourage rehearsal, real rehearsal, and how do we get people to do it better and more often?

So it’s a great question and I’m hit with it all the time. And, and I think to your point earlier, sometimes the owner or the president takes over and literally, I was with a client once helping them with their presentation. We were in the car and he was literally changing the slides in the car ride over. Yeah. He was moving things around and he says, I’ve moved everything around. Like, can we see it? He’s like, we, there’s no time. You’ll see it when it goes up and then you just see everybody turn white.

Right.

It’s all about being comfortable and understanding each other’s style. One thing that I talk about all the time is that everybody has their own individual style. In fact, a great Rob Rose, Robert Rose story, I had to get up and do a keynote for a content strategy conference, which are not content marketing, content strategy. So a lot of techies, a lot of smart people, people Yeah. Suits and ties in the audience. And I’m in my regular gear jeans and a black t-shirt, and I had an earring and a goatee, and I said, oh man, I should have worn a jacket and a tie. And Rob grabbed me by my t-shirt. He says, don’t ever apologize for who you are now. Get out there and do it. And he was right. Yeah. You know, they didn’t want one of them.

They wanted someone, I was doing a whole thing on, on storytelling. They wanted someone who looked like a storyteller. And so I, I have accepted my style and how I speak. I speak quickly. I use my hands and move around the stage and all of that. I think it’s important that people understand and identify their style and accept it. Then they can focus on the content. Until they do that, they’re focused on, how do I look? What am I doing in terms of ensemble presenting and presenting with other people? You have to understand everybody else’s style too. Yeah. You have to understand how the person you’re meeting with, if they’re monotone and they’re like this, then that’s who they are. Then you need to understand how you work with them. So in my workshops, within the first 10 minutes, I make everybody stand up and tell a personal story.

Nothing presenting, just tell a story. Yeah. First time you went on a date, first time you went to a rock concert, first time you went to Disneyland, whatever it is. So you don’t focus on the content. It’s a story you’ve told a thousand times before. Now as soon as I ask that, everybody’s mind goes blank. And they’re like, I have nothing to say. It’s like, right, you’re in your thirties, you have a life, you have a story. There’s, there is a story, there’s somewhere, and then I say, do this all the time with your cohorts, with your coworkers, with the people that you work with. Especially people that you present with at lunch. Say, I’m gonna stand up and tell a story. Not only do I want you to listen and ask questions, I want you to tell me what I did. What did I do with my hands? What’d I do with my voice? What did I do with my eyes? Did I look at you? Did I look away? Did I seem nervous?

Did my voice shake? And then you start working with each other, not on the presentations and the content of what you’re presenting, but as each other, as storytellers. And then you say, now we know how each other work. Or, or more importantly, sit on a phone call with me. Watch me how I pitch. I did that with a project manager once who I wanted to get into pitching and selling more. She said, I don’t know how to, I said, just sit and listen to me do it. And at one time we hung up, she said, I can’t believe you talk like that to clients. And I said, in a bad way. She says, no, in a good way, you’re so nice. And I said, well, that’s who I am. And she’s like, how do I do that? So I taught her how to do that. Eventually she started pitching, but she list, she sat in and watched me and learned with me. So I would take her on pitches.

And she knew that when I would be on a roll, she knew not to interrupt and or I knew when to stop her because she would go on for too long. So you just gotta learn each other. And then you say, now we’re gonna rehearse our pitches. You’re not as embarrassed or judged when you get up to do your slides and you’re doing your slides. If your pitch is a half hour, your rehearsal is four times a half hour each. It’s two hours of rehearsal. You have to rehearse. Yeah. Enough already. It’s, it’s it, the last thing I’ll say before your question is, it’s disrespectful to the audience. They’re giving you your time. You don’t have, they don’t necessarily have to have popcorn be entertained, but they have to be engaged.

Right.

Unless you guys have it together, then that’s unfair and disrespectful to the audience

And and disrespectful to all the work you did to get prepared with the data. All the homework, all the hypotheses, all the things that you created, the creative, you’ve developed the spec, whatever is disrespectful to all the people who’s pen spent all that time getting you ready to walk in that room. And then Right. You drop the ball.

Right. Because the spotlight’s on and the audience is coming in, whether it’s a client or a TED audience, they’re coming expect with expectancy. They’re expecting something. And they’re at, from a TED conference or, or a conference. You know, if you’re giving the keynote at a conference, they’re, they want their lives changed. They want to be in, you know, inspired. If it’s a client, they want to be inspired too. And they also wanna feel they’re spending their money. Well. Right. Like, you know, we’ve been spending, you know, a retainer of X amount of dollars per month. You guys better deliver and you’re not delivering because, because we don’t feel confident with what you just said. And we don’t understand what you just said because we were focused on the fact that you were sweating the whole time. Right. Or, or touching your hair or saying every other second.

Yeah. You know, and, and one of the things you were talking about before we took the break that I wanted to circle back on is I think people forget that when they’re presenting as a team, that even when they’re not talking, someone’s looking at you. Yes. So you can be three people away from the talker. And if you’re like, playing with your hair or looking around or you know, you’re not enga If you are not engaged with what your coworker is saying, how can you expect the audience to be engaged? And so, sure. You know, we talk about this with folks when we, when we talk on this topic, which is you have a role to play when your mouth is not moving. And that is, you know, are you nodding? Are, are you standing in a certain way?

Are you, are you engaging? Are you laughing at the right time? Are you, are you making eye contact with people to see if they’re paying attention? Right. Like you have a role throughout the entire presentation.

Yes. And you, what people don’t realize, to your point, is that the nonverbal communication, as we all know, is sometimes stronger than the verbal. And if you’re rolling your eyes or you’re on your phone or you’re not paying attention, then the client is seeing that. Whether they see it consciously or subconsciously, that they’re, they’re, they’re taking note of it. And, and, and you have, you have everything you need to do to support your, your, your fellow speaker. Right. Because that could be a junior person who’s like very nervous. And it could be a designer who’s not sure about the design that they’re putting forward, but they took a chance. Right. You know, and it’s like, you gotta support them on that. They’re taking a chance. You can’t be like, Ooh, I don’t know if we should present this. Or, or you’re, or you set up ground rules beforehand, which is like, if I feel you’re going off track, I’m going to interrupt.

That’s usually the owner and the president. President will be like, but they’re hard to hold back sometimes. ’cause they’re drivers, they like, they

Right. They talk too much. Right.

They talk way too much. But you know, and sometimes you don’t bring them, sometimes you don’t bring ’em, it all depends on the meeting, right. Like, yeah. Like he’s like, I, I wanna come. It’s like, you don’t need to be at this. Right. This is a low level meeting. We’re not even standing up. We’re just sitting around the table looking at drawings. Right. Why do you need to be there? Let us, let us work in, in, in, what happens in those situations is that the client and the agency start to form a bond because the bosses aren’t there. Right. And they start to work together. And then the next time they go in and pitch a new idea, there’s comfort. There’s comfort because they know each other. They feel comfortable with each other.

So in a team, if, if you and I are presenting together and you are much more comfortable presenting than I am, you’re more dynamic. You have more inflection in your voice. You’re a hand gesturer, you, you’re all of those things. And I’m an introvert and I’m quiet and my voice is soft spoken. And I hold myself very steady and firm when I talk and my hands stay by my side. Do we try and blend our styles or how do we, how, how in a team dynamic. ’cause obviously in three or four or five people, not everybody’s gonna have the same style. So Right. How do we look like an intact team while still letting everybody know how they present and res being respectful of how they present?

How do you find the balance in that?

Well, it definitely comes it to, to hit home on again on a point. Rehearsal helps with that a lot because then you understand someone’s, how they pause, how they speak, how they end their sentences, and you know, when to step in and when not to step in. It was like, like when they’re actually done with their piece. I was on a webinar this morning, it was a great one with Ogilvy. And they had two women presenting. I’d say one woman took 80% of the presenting and the other woman took 20%. And it was obvious why she did a great job, but she wasn’t as, she wasn’t even front in the camera. She was back. And she never came forward.

I I would’ve like, you know, pushed her up a little bit. You know, so her head was the same size. Right.

You’ve been sending her a text message, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit

Up, sit up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, my, well, I know I’ll get to this in a second, but it was interesting because what she said was poignant and what she said was data. She had data points to say. And so she really hit home on that. And the other woman would play off of it and say, as Sarah said, this is really important. And so if you were soft spoken, I’d be like, you know, Drew really hit it home on this. Like, I would say your name, I would involve you

What I’m Yeah. Kind of magnify that person. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and bring cohesion to the team. Hey Sarah, that was great. And if you guys remember when Drew was talking about metrics and click through rates, you know, it’s like, you know, oh yeah, he did say that now. ’cause I remember two weeks after you give a presentation, they’re not gonna remember what you said. They’re not gonna remember what you do, but they’re gonna remember how you made them feel. Yeah. And that’s my, that’s my angelou. That’s not my quote. Yeah. And so if you can make them feel as if they were part of something exciting, something engaging, something breathtaking, something frustrating, they, they may two weeks later go, man, Drew totally frustrated me in that meeting. We have to get back together with him because I didn’t understand anything he was saying.

Okay. They remember it. Right. Right. At least they remember how you made them feel. And sometimes our meetings are frustrating. Sometimes we deliver bad numbers, and that’s where people get really scared.

Right. You

Know, I’m gonna deliver bad news. Okay. That’s when the president’s coming. Right. It’s like you deliver it. Right. So,

Yeah. I I but again, it, it does sort of, it does toggle back to the more you rehearse together, the more you can also learn how to support each other Yes. In sort of lifting each other up and sort of finding that balance. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think so. And you know, one of the things that I, i, I wanna say before I forget to say it, is that, and I’m not doing it now ’cause we’re doing a long form podcast, but when I do a presentation on Zoom, I have a standing desk, I raise my desk and I stand up. Yeah. And people are like, really? I said, yeah. I said, you would stand up in the conference room, wouldn’t you? I said, yeah. And I said, well then stand up. Because as soon as I said earlier, as soon as you stand up, everything opens.

Yeah. Energy’s different.

It’s totally different. Your knees are knocking. Right. And, and you can move around and you’re not slumped in your chair and talking like this and far away from the microphone or whatever it is. And I think there’s something happens and it, and it, and it changes your approach. And people will recognize that. Whether they see that you did it or not, they’ll recognize that there’s energy because we all sit on our butts all day. And if we hit do our meetings that way, that’s not fair. Again, it’s not fair to the audience. Disrespectful.

Yeah. Yeah. Gotta have an Yeah. There, there is definitely a different vibe when somebody is standing for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, but it is that five feet of fear. I don’t know if it’s on Zoom as much as it is in the conference room, but you know, as soon as it changes from sitting around the table talking about your weekend to get up and present the numbers, just, I had a guy, I was giving a a at an agency, I was giving a workshop and there was, everybody was an account manager except one guy was it? And he’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing here. And I, he said, but my boss says I need to take this class. And he got up to tell his personal story. And I, and I’m not kidding, he was shaking so much. His cheeks were quivering and he and everybody thought he was gonna pass

Out. Pass out. Right.

And I, and I explained the whole thing about, I said, you’ve, you are, you are a case study of adrenaline right now. And I explained how he needed to burn it off. And so the next day he had to give a talk too. And he chose to go last. And they started and he ran out of the room like, all right, I guess we lost him for the day.

He

Sweating. And I said, are you okay? He goes, I just did wind sprints in the parking lot for like 10 minutes. Can I go now? ’cause I’m ready. And we’re like, yeah, go. And he got up there, he was still nervous, you know, he still, and he stood up and he still had the shakes and everything, but so much better than he was before. ’cause he burned off all that adrenaline. And so yeah. Standing up made him just the difference of sitting around the table and standing up changed his entire physiological structure of his body. And that once he burned it off, he was Okay. I kind of went on a tangent there. So,

No, I, I I think it’s, I mean I think it’s a valid point, which is, it is about you recognizing and controlling what’s happening before, during, and after the presentation and managing to it. Right. I mean, that’s part of our job is to understand not only in general the physiology of all of this, but understanding how you personally respond to all of these pressure points. ’cause they are pressure points. And then how do you learn your coping mechanisms that work for you? So for somebody, they might have to meditate for 10 minutes for somebody else. Yeah. They might have to, you know, do the wind sprints or run up and down the stairs like you did or totally. You know, sing, you know, something else. Yeah.

Whatever it is. But find a way to get yourself game ready.

Yeah. I I, I love that. And I, and it’s, you know, before I performed with the band, you know, we played in front of a couple thousand people a few times and stuff like that. I would find a corner in the dressing room, turn my back to everybody and just stare at the wall in silence for a couple of minutes and just had to compose myself. Because if I thought about what I was about to do, oh my god. Right. You know, I’m gonna get up for two hours and perform. And you know, I tell people all the time, you know, the power poses work. You know, I, I remember one time we were doing a big pitch and I said, I don’t feel comfortable with this, gimme a second. And I went into the bathroom, stood in a stall and stood like superman for five minutes, you know, with my arms on my hips and my chest stuck out.

And then, you know, I, it, it opened up my breathing and I felt taller than the five foot nine that I am. Yeah. And I walked in feeling more, more confident, even though I knew it was fabricated, but then I felt more confident and my body felt more confident than I was more confident. So to your point, whatever you have to do to get game ready and know how, and I love what you said there, which is how do you come down after it because Right. You know, it’s, it’s exhausting. If you’re exhausted afterwards, you did a great job.

That’s right.

Just like you ran a race, feels like you ran a race.

Well, not only exhausted, but sort of like pumped, like after you’ve played a big game. Right. It’s like a, it’s like there is an adrenaline afterwards of that was awesome and that felt good and I’m feeling good about it. And Yeah. I think, I think there is that.

I love that. Right. Because how many times have you gotten in the elevator going, we just nailed that.

Right? Oh, that’s a good feeling.

And how many times have you gotten in the elevator going, we just died. Yeah, we just, we that like, you look at each other and go, what were you talking about? Like, where did you go? Right. And why did they do, why’d they go off on tangents and lose it? They didn’t rehearse.

Yep.

And rehearsal is not just, what are you saying? It’s the slide clicks and who’s manning the slides and do you have a pointer? And literally all those details, I’m gonna stand here. You’re gonna stand there. Yep. I’m gonna di lights. No, you’re not, you don’t have di lights. Dark rooms are terrible. I’m gonna put, put the heat up. No you’re not. Everybody falls asleep. Make it cold and bright. Cold and bright.

Right.

So all these little tricks to keep everybody attentive

And, and everybody listening has been on the good end of that and the bad end of that. So Sure. Early in my agency owner career, so decades ago we were pitching this big nursing home sort of group that they had lots of locations and we had done a lot of work in that space. And the thing that made them different that we discovered was that unlike a lot of nursing homes, they didn’t overmedicate the patients. They really believed on sort of managing the medication so that the people weren’t just walking or sleeping zombies. Right. So we did not rehearse as appropriately as we should have. And so I am, I’m teed up to make the big, like one of the things we really admire about you is that they don’t overmedicate their patients.

Well, I was trying to say that they don’t over, they, they don’t sedate their patients. That was the word I wanted. But instead my mouth said seduce. So what I said to them was, you know, one of the things we’ve learned about you that we were really impressed with is that you don’t seduce your patients. And that sentence just hung

Right. It’s like a softball

And there’s no, and because we hadn’t rehearsed as well as we should have, I could not come up with the word sedate to save my life to go, I don’t know what I I don’t know why that came out of my mouth, but here. So I just hung there.

You’re black out to me. Like you’re blacking out at that.

Right, right. So the conversation in the elevator after that meeting was good. God, Drew, we, because I mean, I, there was just no saving. Like we finished the presentation. Right. It was, you know, we walked out and so he was like, yeah, we’re not, we’re not getting that business that we’re right. And I was like, yep, fair enough. I know. So, but

It’s that moment where like all of a sudden you’re having an outof body experience Oh. Where you’ve literally out awful and you’re on the ceiling and you see yourself and you’re just like, how do I get outta here? Right. Right.

Say something for the love of God, say something. Right. And

You can’t think of, and you’re, and you’re, and you feel like you’re having a stroke because you just literally cannot come up with the words to date. Right. Right. And it’s like a couple, it’s like a vowel, it’s like one vowel.

Right. That was painful. So, so let me be the poster child for rehearse people.

Yeah. So yeah, I really, it, it really just comes down to that because if you’re nervous about presenting, we’ve talked about it, there’s the self-worth issue, there’s the imposter syndrome, there’s, which is, which takes a long time to get rid of. But if you’re prepared for something Yeah. You know, I, I ask people all the time, you know, why do you, like, why do you hate presenting? Well, I hate it when I’m not prepared, when I don’t know the material. Okay. Whose fault is that?

Right. Right. How, how, how would you suggest you could fix that? Right.

Right. Exactly. It’s like, again, that’s disrespectful. They’re asking you to come in and present the results to a campaign. You better know it. Right, right. And, and always remember it’s the first time the client is hearing it. So there’s something about going slow. There’s something about taking pause. ’cause I, a, a good flag for me is that when I’m giving a presentation and the client says, hold on, can you go back a slide? Then I haven’t done my job. Right. Because I’ve been like, well, it was a 1% click through rate and click go to the next slide. And they’re like, wait, wait, you just put a whole bunch of data up. Can I look at that slide for a second, it’s like you’ve just gotta slow down. ’cause you got those people who were just on, you know, like they have 10 minutes and they do it in three and a half.

Yeah. ’cause

Like I just,

’cause they just wanna get done. Right.

Just gotta get through this pass out. Yeah.

Before I let you go, let’s talk about slides for a second.

Sure.

So I’ve seen many agencies decks and you would think, given what we do for a living, that they would be brilliant and clear and I could read all the words and, and that people wouldn’t say, I know this is hard to read, but, and then sit on it for 10 minutes. Right, exactly. So a talk about the do’s and don’ts of presentation decks and what you’ve seen that really works and how we should think about them as a tool.

Decks are the bane of the ex of existence of, of, of the agency person because they feel it’s, it’s Linus is blanket. Yeah. If they don’t have it, they feel insecure. And I always tell people, do you need a deck? Because if you show up and they’re like, if at the client’s office they’re like, you know what, we’re gonna do this over lunch. You don’t have a screen and a projector and a, and a computer to look at. Right. You’re sitting at a sushi bar. Right. You better know your material slides. That’s

Right.

Slides are for support only. And a slide deck should mean nothing without the presenter. Meaning if you got the slide deck beforehand, you’re like, why is there a picture of a butterfly? What? What’s that mean? That doesn’t mean anything. Well it does when the presenter’s telling the story about the theory of chaos. Right? Right. Like when the waves blow and then in China there’s a tornado. So I think what I always tell people is one idea per slide. Right? Oh, but I might have 70 slides, then you have 70 slides. Right. Because you’re gonna go through that one idea in seven seconds versus 10 ideas on the slide. They’ve read through it all. They’re waiting for you to click through. There’s no reason for you to be there.

So beware of the bullet points. One idea per slide. I couldn’t believe I had to tell a bunch of agencies this high res images only, but the deck will be 250 megabytes. So what?

Right.

So what? And always deliver it off A P D F if you can, unless you have animations and all that type of stuff. But sometimes you show up at a client’s office, they’re like, you can’t plug your computer in here. You gotta do it off of ours. Well you built it in a Mac and they’re all pc, there goes all your formatting. So always do that. And then other little things which is email it to yourself, bring it on a drive and put it on your desktop. Like those little things. Things

Like that for sure. Right, right.

And, and clean up your desktop.

Be mindful of your, what your wallpaper is and

Right. Yeah. Be mindful of your wallpaper and clear your cash.

Yeah. Right.

But I think from a deck perspective, there’s for support only and your presentation deck is not a leave behind. If you need to leave something behind, build a different deck because what’s the leave behind? Leave behind is the data is the report, send them that. Right. And then say, Hey, on page 12 there’s a whole bunch of numbers there. We’re only gonna talk about the middle number and, and that’s on the slide. And then, you know, you say 12%, whatever it is, and you know, this is what happened with the 12% of the audience or what whatever it is. Like you don’t wanna put your thesis up on the slides and have everybody reading it as you’re going through. So slides are for support, only one, only one idea per slide.

And to your point about it not being a leave behind, if all that’s on the slide is the picture of a butterfly without your voiceover, that is not super helpful.

No, it means nothing. Yeah. And again, they don’t remember what you said and they don’t remember what you did. They only remember how you feel. And they’re like, I love that when he was talking about the theory of chaos with the butterfly, but now I don’t remember what he said. Right. Two weeks later there’s a picture of a monarch butterfly. What’s that gotta do with our campaign?

Yeah. Right.

It’s like, yeah. So, but but to your point, well the other thing is, what I always tell people is start with post-it notes in a sharpie and do it on your wall. Move this post-its around, throw the ones you don’t need. Next thing you know, you’re like, I only need four slides. Don’t take an old deck. Don’t do find and replace, don’t do that type of stuff. Don’t start with technology. Start with the story. Yeah. And you can do that with the Post-it notes and all that type of stuff. And then you can see your thread and be like, now I know what my slides are gonna be. I’ve got seven of the 10 already from an old presentation, but now I gotta create these new ones. And, and, and honestly, you know, I worked at Creative Circle for a long time and, and one of our number one placements was presentation designers hire a presentation designer.

If you’re an account person, you don’t understand, you’re not a designer. Hire

Somebody. Yeah. It’s

Really well spent.

Yeah. So, you know, as, as we wrap up the hour and I’m sort of looking for the thread that weaves through everything you’ve said, it really boils down to having enough respect for your audience Yeah. To do it well and write And that means everything from be engaging, have a story, tell a story, understand what they care about, and make sure that’s what you’re highlighting. Rehearse enough so that you hold their attention and you’ve earned their attention. And you’ve, you’ve demonstrated that you respect the fact that you are in the, you’ve been invited in the room for a reason. Yes. But also even with the presentation versus the leave behind, you’re creating it for them as a tool.

So they’re, they’re using the presentation very differently than they’re using the leave behind. Correct. So be respectful of how they’re gonna use those tools and build them accordingly.

Yes. That was a perfect sum up of everything. Yeah. It really comes down to knowing your material, respecting the audience. And one of the things that we didn’t talk about, but I think it’s important, is you gotta read the audience. If you’re losing them, pay attention. Yeah.

Right.

Tell a story, snap ’em out of it. You know, we’re lucky if we have their attention for seven minutes. Right. So at, at the seven minute mark, tell a story about some amusement park ride you wrote it on. Next thing you know their brain is reset. You got ’em for another seven minutes. Yeah. Because yeah. So I, but it’s respecting the audience at the time of day, their, their attention span. And to your point, they asked you to be there so you’d better deliver.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is good stuff. Michael, if people wanna learn more about your work and the coaching you do for agencies, what’s the best way for them to track you down and, and follow up with you?

If you wanna track me down, go to figure 18 f i i g u r e eighteen.com. It goes to an about me page with a link and, and then also LinkedIn. Okay. I’m Michael Weiss, I’m in Ago Hills, California. And so you can find me that way as well.

This has been great. This, I love that you gave everybody a lot of really practical tips that they can apply right now because this is, this is game day stuff. Like we have to be good at this. Yeah, thanks. And so we can discuss the theory of it all, but without practical tools to make ourselves and our teams better. You know, this is, this is mission critical stuff for agencies. So thank you for sharing your expertise and your experience and your stories and, and for just helping everybody. Even if they just listen to this podcast, they can, they can be better.

Yeah, exactly. Well I really had a good time. It was a good conversation. Thanks for having

Me. It was. You bet. Alright guys, this wraps up another episode. I’m hope you’re taking notes and I hope that you are gonna bring this back and in your next all team meeting or your account service team meeting or your biz dev team meeting, whoever is typically doing your presentations. And by the way, a lot of more people in your agency give presentations than you think about because we only think about the big ones where we all have to put on suits and go get in a car or on a plane. But we’re making presentations every single day and everybody can get better at it. I don’t care how often you do it, I don’t care how comfortable you are, we can all sort of level up, which I think reflects well on us and as we’ve said is respectful of the audience. So I hope you took some great notes on some to-dos that you can introduce to your team or remind them what to do.

And for yourself. Too many of you listening, you probably have been doing this for a few decades and you’re like, no, I’m good, I’m comfortable. I have no doubt you are. But I also know that you could probably get a little better and just a, just a little reminder that sedate and seduce very close together rehearsal, very important. That’s all I’m gonna say. So take this, put it to practice and then let Michael and I know what you did with it. Okay. I wanna give a huge thank you and shout out to our friends at White. Label IQ. As you know, for the last several years, they’ve been the presenting sponsor of this podcast. So they are heroes to many agencies, agencies that don’t have a web dev team or need to expand the team that they have that does PPC.

So they do white Label, design dev and PPC for agencies all over the world. And because they’re born from an agency, they understand how to price their services. So you still make money. These are lovely people, I’ve known ’em for 20 years. So head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami and you can check out the special deal they have for you there. And if you ever bump into them at a conference or at the Build a Better Agency Summit, or if you just wanna send them an email ’cause you love the podcast, that would be awesome. Let ’em know that their sponsorship matters to you and that you appreciate them. That would make me very happy. All right. And by the way, if you hear a little whining in the background, we have a new foster puppy today, and there she goes and she has to go outside.

So sorry about that. But there I couldn’t stop in the middle. The conversation was too good and she needs to learn to be a little patient. So with that, I will say thanks for listening. It’s always great to share this hour with you. I’ll be back next week. I hope you will too. I’ll talk to you soon.

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