For many of you, you’ve been riding the profit line really tight since probably fourth quarter of 2022, and then all through 2023, things have been tight and a struggle for you and you have kept your good people and you have been waiting and kind of betting on the come, hoping that the work would come because clients and prospects were saying, “Yep, we’re going to do it. Yep, we’re going to do it.”

But how long can you carry the load and not make money?

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Hey, everybody.
Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute coming to you
this week from cold and rainy Palm Springs, California.
We're here, with a peer group.
And one of the topics, as you might imagine, in February of 2024 is
how much longer should you keep waiting?
How much longer should you make decisions
based on business you're hoping will come in?
Clients who've said they're going to start on something but haven't quite done it?
Contracts that they keep promising they're going to sign, but they haven't?
For many of you, you've been riding the profit line really tight
since probably fourth quarter of 2022, and then all through 2023,
things have been tight and a struggle for you and you have kept your good people
and you have been waiting and kind of betting on the come, hoping that
the work would come because clients and prospects were saying,
“Yep, we're going to do it.
Yep, we're going to do it.” But they kept pushing it out,
pushing it out, pushing it out.
Well, I'm here to tell you the time has come for you to stop waiting.
You cannot keep carrying that salary load or the overhead load
that you've been carrying if it means that you're
dropping single digit profit or less to the bottom line.
So what I want you to do is I want you to have a plan.
I want you to have a 30-, a 60- and a 90-day plan, depending on where you're at.
If you're at 10% profit or more, it can be 90 days.
If you are at 5% profit or more, it can be 60 days if you are at zero
or or a negative number to 5%, you got 30 days.
You have 30 days to come up with and execute a plan
where you right size appropriately
so that you are back in the black.
So that you are back in a healthier place.
So that gives you some time to try and get those contracts renewed,
try and find some new business.
But at the end of the day, 30, 60 or 90,
you need to commit to yourself and to your leadership team
or to us if you work with us, what you're going to do
to get yourself back in financial or in a financially healthy place
because you've been sort of dragging the agency
in an unhealthy way trying to survive 23, which I totally get.
But we can't carry that habit into 2024.
It's easy to carry the habit and it's easy not to do the hard things.
But you cannot sustain this and keep your business viable.
So it's time to have some really hard conversations with yourself,
with your leadership team, and make some tough decisions.
You have you've been generous, you've been patient for a whole year or longer.
You can't afford to keep riding that profit line so close any longer.
Okay, So tough love today in the video, but important.
So 30, 60, 90, depending on where you're at with profitability
and let's get you back on track to being financially healthy.
All right? All right. See you next week.

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