What agency leaders want and need from agency owners with Del Esparza

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run. Traditional digital media buying, web dev, PR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Bill to Better Agency podcast, presented by a white label like you, will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant.

Please welcome your host, drew McClellan.

Hey, everybody. Drew McClellan here. And you guessed it, I am back with another episode of Build a Better Agency. And today we’re going to talk about leadership. We’re going to talk about not your leadership. Well, I guess actually we’re going to talk about your leadership, but we’re going to talk about your key leaders and what they need from us as agency owners to be the kinds of leaders that we want them to be.

You know, for many of you, you have a handful, one, two, three, four, sort of the human beings inside your organization that you rely on day in and day out. Oftentimes, they’re the people who are helping you run the agency day in and day out. They’re doing, it might be the director of client service. It might be a CLO, but these are people who are mission critical to the agency, the agency’s help, the agency’s growth, and your ability to do your job.

So one of the conversations I’m having with agency owners all the time is it’s so easy for us not to do our job because we’re doing someone else’s job. And in some cases, that’s because you like doing the other job. It’s easy. You’re good at it. It’s sort of a slam dunk. And there are parts of your job that you don’t want to do, so you avoid them by doing other things like serving clients.

But in other cases, especially if you’ve got turnover at a high level, you know, with your senior people, you get pulled back into the day to day of the business if you either have, a key leader who’s flagging, you know, sort of not doing their job, or you have a really great rock star leader who leaves you because they’re not happy.

So these people that you have that are so critical to your businesses success. You know what? If you have to know how to attract them and, cultivate them, how to groom them, how to grow them, how to support them. Because at the end of the day, for many of you, the consistency of those key leaders is critical to the agency’s success.

For some of you, they’re your succession plan. They are the next generation of agency owners. For others, they’re just the people that allow you to deliver on client promises to take care of your team, and for you to be able to focus on the big picture stuff that you, as an agency owner, need to focus on. So many, many years ago, we created a peer group for these folks, which back in the day we called the key executive peer group.

Now we call it the key leader peer group. And so I’ve invited other agency owner, Dallas as who I’ve known for decades. I’ve invited the facilitator of those groups. We have three of them to join me today to talk about, from his perspective, both as an agency owner and as the person who’s hanging out with our key execs twice a year.

What do they need from us as agency owners to thrive and help our agency thrive? So without further ado, let’s welcome Dell to the show. Dell, welcome to the podcast. Now, always a pleasure to talk to you. Always a pleasure to be on your podcast. Thank you for having me. You bet. So for the listeners, I reached out to you and said, hey, you’ve been facilitating the Key Leader group now for, gosh, almost three years, two and a half years.

It would be interesting to talk about sort of what you hear when you’re with them and what they’re hungry for and what they’re thinking, and sort of where their heads at as sort of some insight into for, for all the listeners, these are these are your key people. So at RMI we have this key leadership group. They physically get together.

We have three different peer groups. They physically get together for two days in October and April here in Denver. And Dell facilitates those meetings and meets with them. Walks them through an agenda. Each agency sends. It’s usually like director of Accounts service. It might be a president, might be a CEO, a couple of creative directors. I’m trying to think other common titles who are in that group, they’re all sort of department heads or higher.

Right? Yeah, definitely. I mean, they’re key leaders in the organization. So depending on the size of the organization, sometimes they are presidents, sometimes their head of business development, a lot of accounts. Account leads, senior account people, a few creative people, most of the creative people that are in there oversee, multiple departments. Not just not just the creative element, but.

Yeah, kind of a broad array of, people, but people that are kind of next in line when it comes to making the critical decisions for the for the agency. Yeah. And are really instrumental in the day to day running of the business. Right. And many of them are right there next to the owner or collaborating and offering commentary on what decisions need to be made in order to move the agency board and meet the goals and objectives that have been set for the agency.

Yeah. So, you know, when we started the Key Leadership group, a gentleman that many of the listeners probably are familiar with, Craig Barnes facilitated that group. And at that time, you sent some of your key leaders to the group. So talk for a second about why, as an agency owner, before you are facilitating the groups, why is an agency owner you saw value in sending your folks to this twice a year?

You know, it was it was an easy decision for me. And part of the reason why it was so easy is because I see the value, and I realize the value that I get out of the ownership group. And in talking to Craig, I know Craig very well. I knew Craig very well. He and I were in an owners group together.

Yeah, I, I know how he facilitates. I know his methodology, I know his value system and he knows me. And so I certainly made a lot of sense. We were both raised with am I math that are, you know, it embedded in our brains. We we know the philosophies of that. Am I obviously very close to you, drew.

So it made a lot of sense for, for me to take some of my key leaders to, to get some, some learnings beyond what I was able to, to provide. Sometimes it’s, it’s a reinforcement in other cases, too. It’s allowing them a safe spot to have maybe a conversation or with somebody who understands agency ownership. That could tie them up to having that conversation with the owner.

And so in many cases, what I try to foster in the and a key leaders group is that safe environment. Let’s have a conversation that maybe you need, that you want to have or need to have with the owner in order to meet your personal goals and the professional goals and the overall agency goals. So as a lot of the listeners know, we lost Craig rather suddenly about three years ago.

And so when we lost him, I immediately was like, okay, I need to find someone to facilitate these groups. And you were actually my first and only choice. You and I have known each other. You, Craig and I have all known each other for 20 some years, but you have a heart for mentoring young people, for encouraging growth, for celebrating people in what they’re good at and helping them figure out how to get better at the places where they have room to grow, much like Craig did.

And so it was a natural, I think, evolution, to have you step into the leadership book before we get into sort of what you’re hearing now, when your employees would come back from the key leadership groups, what were you hearing from them? How did you see them change or react to being surrounded by other people? That I think is one of the other big benefits of being in the group.

Is there hanging out with people who are like them, who do are doing a job like them in another am I agency somewhere in the world and so they don’t feel quite so alone. Yeah, well, that key leadership capacity, that role in the agency is a tough role because they have so many different clients and so many different customers.

I mean, the other they have to report to the owner, they have to make sure that the owner is happy. They have to make sure that their employee basis is happy. In many cases, the people that reported them, they have to make sure that the clients are happy and that the agency is delivering on what they’re supposed to deliver for the for the clients.

So they’re it’s a lonely it’s a lonely position in many cases. And so what this form allows is, is to your point, you know, they’re among contemporaries and peers that they’re able to have honest conversations with about, hey, how did you deal with this problem? At the end of the day? I mean, we’re not we’re not brain surgeon.

So, yeah, we’re trying to address issues on new business development and new trends in advertising. How are you going to recruit and retain high performing talent that are in our agency? Yeah. And and so having a forum that allows for those kind of conversations in many cases, and another agency has already solved the problem that you’re facing.

And so you’re able to have those honest conversations. And it has some great takeaways that you’re then able to go back to the agency and implement accordingly and really benefit the owner significantly, because you’re coming back with solutions that can be implemented in your in your respective agency. Yeah. I mean, just like we see in the on our group, there’s just incredible value in being surrounded by people who do what you do and learning from them, even if, even if they haven’t solved exactly the right problem or the same problem.

They ask questions that are helpful and help you sort of sort it out because they have walked in your shoes somewhere along the way. Yeah. And yeah, there’s an incredible amount of pressure for key leaders, too. It has to feel like and many of them feel like they have to be. They have to have the right answer all the time.

And and that’s, you know, that’s just not the case. But they feel like they have to have the right answer. And so having a forum, not just during the year, two times a year in April and October is when we when we meet in for two days, two solid packed days in Denver. But in between meetings, many, many key leaders interact.

They have a slack channel respective to their to their group. They’re asking questions about, hey, how to have any of y’all dealt with this issue? You know, and they’re having one off conversations with peers and contemporaries from other agencies that they’re able to, to talk with and collaborate with and problem solve with. Yeah, yeah, it really is it truly is a community.

Yeah. And it’s one of those things where we all get better faster when we learn together. And, you know, that’s a core tenet today. I mean, I think the key leader group is that. But whether the listeners are going to send people are the key leader group or not. I think every agency owner has people in their shop that you think, if I lost that person, I would cry myself to sleep like, that’s that would be a huge loss for the agency.

We are a lot of owners talking about how valuable some of their more senior people are in terms of letting the owner do their job and not being pulled into client work or things like that. And so I think every agency owner desires to attract great talent, keep great senior talent, grow that talent. So I want to talk today about some of your observations about, as you are surrounded by these, by these young professionals.

And when we say young, it’s or I’m sort of quoting a little bit because some of them aren’t so young, they have 20 years of experience perhaps in the business. So we’re not talking 20 year olds, we’re talking seasoned agents, professionals. What are they looking for? What if I’m an agency owner and I want to make my key leaders sticky?

I want them to stay. I want them to feel valued. I’d want them to keep getting better because they’re going to keep asking me for more money. So I want them to be worth that additional raise or bonus that I’m going to give them to keep them. What are they looking for from me as the owner, do you think?

Yeah. So I’ve been doing this, as you indicated, you know, for going on three years that I’ve been able to get a lot and you’ve been doing it in your own shop. I fact, we should have stopped and said that you’ve had your own agency. For how long? The 25 years. And next year. That’s so a quarter of a century I have been.

I know I don’t look that old, but I do a quarter of a century. Yeah. So again, not of not only have you done this for all of these other leaders, but you’ve done it inside your own organization. So anyway, yeah, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but what do they what do they want from us? You know, ironically, I think a big mistake that owners make and I, including myself, is a they’re the money is that money is a solution.

And giving them a big pay raises is what’s going to be sticky and keep them in your in your agency. You know, the golden handcuffs. You know that you know, a lot of business owners and CEOs used to retain people. In reality, when I compiled my top ten list of what key leaders are very thirsty for money who didn’t even come up in the top ten.

Don’t give it wrong. I mean, if they’re not compensated right, well, and they’re a high performer, they’re going to they’re going to go somewhere else. I mean, sure, right. Yeah. But that’s almost just the price of admission. Yeah. To make sure that you’ve got enough leaders. Yeah. But money is, you know, money aside, there are so many more things that are that are important to them and, and their professional journey.

So for you, what’s the number one thing that they want to get from their job, their owner, the leadership of the organization. So you and I have been a part of the team and together for quite some time. We were in the honors peer group together and I, I was so naive. I never really thought that my key leaders wanted time with me and private there never was.

And that mentoring and coaching that I able to provide just from the years of experience that I have and that’s their biggest search. That’s their number one thing is they want they want mentoring. They want coaching, not just what the honor, but they need to have the with an outside or organization that can be, you know, there’s, you know, there’s this stage organizations am I has the key group which is what we’re talking about.

Yeah. I mean they have to have a forum that allows for that mentoring to take place. Yeah. You know, I, I Danielle coaches a lot of the young leaders and, and or the key leaders and what they need is they need a sounding board, a safe sounding board sometimes. And they and they have ideas and they have the goals, but they don’t they’re not sure how to approach the owner to talk about them, or they know they want to get better, but they’re not sure how to approach that growth plan without showing that deficiency inside the organization.

So yeah, right. I think they do need some outside support. But from the owner itself, like what? What do you think that should be structured like ideally if I’m an owner and I have a key leader or two that I want to keep, how should I think about that mentorship time or that coaching time? Yeah, I, you know, but you first of all, you have to be a number one priority.

Yeah. You’re you’re one of the ones with your key leaders is captive and critical time that does not get bumped for other things is always is always on time, starts on time and has a strict agenda. Things to talk about. Yeah. What I’ve also learned from my to leader groups is they want to be able to share what some of their personal goals are as well, because if they are exceeding on their professional goals that should translate into personal goals being achieved as well.

And so being able to have that open dialog and that conversation with another is important to key leaders. Letting them know, hey, listen, I want to buy a couple of new rental houses over the course of the next five years, you know, and working out a compensation model that could help them with that. Or maybe they want to travel and take two months off, you know, sometime over the course of the next three months and to, you know, travel with an aging parents or, or with a child that’s getting ready to, to graduate and go off to college, you know, things that are really important and on a,

on a personal side that will only make them that much better on a professional side, if they feel supported from, from an owner. So having those one on ones being disciplined, on those one on ones, but also allowing for some personal conversation. And as an owner, sharing your own vulnerability with them strengthens the your relationship with them, letting them know, hey, listen, I don’t know the answer.

I’m, I’m a little nervous about this, but this particular fly in the direction that it’s possibly going, you know, I’m not quite sure what to do. What are your thoughts. And being vulnerable actually strengthens our relationship. It doesn’t weaken our relationship. Yeah. Well, and again, to your point, if I’m not vulnerable then it certainly doesn’t make it feel like a safe place for them to be vulnerable.

Remember, we’re in the power position. And so we have to sort of we have to show our cards first, I think to make that, oh, this is a safe place. You know, one of my, one of my favorite books is a book called Dream Manager. Can’t remember the author now, but it is all about like this idea of when you understand what your employees goals are, personal and professional, and you make it part of your role as their mentor to help them think through it.

It’s not that you have to, you know, give them the money to buy a house or you’re not responsible to make it happen. But you can be supportive in helping them think through how to get to their goals and when they feel like you’re invested in them personally and professionally. Now, a very different relationship is formed. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And the whole idea of sharing what those personal goals are and beating, vocalizing those, there’s a little bit of accountability that goes along with that on both sides. You know, the other side, being held accountable for asking about them or supporting them on that effort regardless of what it is. And then on their end, once it’s vocalize and out in the open, a lot of times it’s there’s a little bit more motivation to get it done.

Because it’s been shared. It’s almost like, you know, do you share it? And, you know, I am so happy that you share this with the my family is the one pager, light plant. You know, we all have our business plan, but we have, you know, that, you know, that one page life plan. And I share my life plan with my entire employee base.

Some of them share their life plan with me. I share with people that are important to me and my in my life because I want to say it out loud here, my professional, those here are my personal goals. And I want my team to own accountable. And I want my close friends and acquaintances to open, accountable.

And I want to be able to hold myself accountable for it as well. And so sometimes just sharing that and use tools like the life plan helps, how that helps us all go take our personal life and our professional life to another level. Yeah, I think so too. So before we go on to the next thing that we need to be doing for our people, just a couple notes for listeners.

Episode 15 walks you through a structure for a one on one meeting and will include the life plan in the show notes, so you can download that PDF and fill it out for yourself. And if that’s helpful, so be it. So all right so let’s assume I’m coaching I’m mentoring my team member. What else do they need and want from me.

Autonomy. They want they want the they want some latitude to make their own decision and not feel like there’s they’re handcuffed with the CEO or the owner of the of the agency I and I learned this the hard way. You know I you know 25 years and prior to that I worked for, you know, large corporations as well.

You know, it’s there’s more than one way to it’s part of the pie and there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Right. And just because it’s my way doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right way. And I see leaders make that some pragmatic and methodical decisions on their own, and then coach them on what worked and what didn’t work.

And in many cases, I learned more from my team based on the decisions that they’re making in their approach that they took, versus me trying to micromanage in the manner I should have. That puts on an owner as well as is immense. And in what it does for key leaders is he starts second guessing themselves. They don’t believe in their intuition.

They don’t. They don’t follow their instincts as much as they as much as they should. And consequently, they’re not. They’re not going to grow as rapidly and it is as much as they would otherwise. Well, I think the other mistake sometimes we make is we tell them they have autonomy, and then we jerk the chain when they don’t do it the way we want to do it.

Or if something doesn’t go according to plan as opposed to teaching, seeing it as a teaching moment or an opportunity, we use it as almost it’s punitive and then we train them like you train a dog not to do something because they got scolded. Now you’ve got somebody who’s even more, you know, second guessing themselves and questioning their decision making.

So I would say if you’re going to give them autonomy to figure out how to give them autonomy. So maybe it’s, you know, baby steps of, of control and decision making. But B once you give it to them you have to actually let them have it. Yeah. And it yeah, I mean, it’s a critical part of the maturation of any company.

I mean, we talk about, at our honors group. Okay. When is it time to, to look at, positioning your agency to be acquired? Well, if you’re going to have an agency that’s going to acquire you, we have got to have a key leader route that has a, the ability to make critical decisions and sometimes stressful decisions on their own and feel comfortable in making those decisions.

Right. Or. Yeah, the value of your agency is just going to be there. And certainly no one’s going to be interested in acquiring it if it’s all based on this owner or the CEO. So training them and encouraging them and celebrating them when they make those, those big decisions in those and those sometimes very stressful decisions.

Is, is at some point. Yeah I agree okay. So I’m going to mentor them. I’m going to coach them, which in theory should make it easier for me to give them some autonomy and some latitude in doing things their way, which, by the way, I’m sure this is not true for you listening, but for other agency owners, their way may actually be better than your way.

Right? And one of the things, you know, they’re younger, they’re learning. They’re you have different experiences. Maybe, maybe the old dog does need to learn a new trick or two. And you can’t do that if you have a tight fisted control over everything inside your shop and delta your point if you ever want to leave it. Yeah, you do have to have a leadership team in tact, leadership team that can run the business.

So yeah, I tell I tell other owners that all the worse than they could ever happen. As you go on a week situation, you’re having a field phone calls the entire time you the case and over. Yeah, over in minutia because your team is not afraid to all right. Is afraid to make decisions without you. Yeah. What else do they want from us?

So invest. They want you to invest in their in their leadership training and education. So am I. And under your leadership, Dru, as you the coursework that you offer, the training that you offer, whether it’s npm, a r advanced, a B, a bootcamps, whether it’s new business development training, whether it’s the key later group that we’re talking about, they want to sell like, you know, the owner is investing in and they’re in their professional growth.

And so sending them to appropriate workshops and seminars is as important to them as all of us is. That is as important as it is, is their salary and they want to feel like they’re being invested. And yeah, so a few years ago, the agency research that we did, we kind of turned the microscope. And instead of talking to people who hire agencies, we talked to agency employees.

The number one thing that they said that would make them stay at their current agency was if the agency owner was invested in their growth, and that was mentorship and outside learning opportunities. So you’re absolutely right. Yeah. You know, and ironically, they want that. But they also want to be held accountable too. So setting very clear and distinct and measurable goals for them, reviewing those goals at your monthly, at least monthly and 1 to 1 meetings and progress toward goals.

What obstacles are, you know, are they facing what resources might they need in order to achieve those goals? And holding them accountable for achieving those goals and objectives that have been set and then celebrating when those when those goals celebrating privately as well as, as an agency is important to them. Yeah. I mean, I think most key leaders are drivers.

They, they they’re their success. They want to know what success looks like so they can accomplish those goals. And so they, they do need, hey, help me understand how I can be great at my job. And then to your point, hold me accountable so I can prove to you. Right. I’m great at my job, which, again, for us as an agency owner, we want them to keep getting better at their job.

That benefits us. There’s there’s nothing worse than having somebody who stays a really long time inside your organization and doesn’t keep evolving and improving because it’s easy in our world to get irrelevant. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We could come down. I mean, look at how much the agency and industry has changed just in the last, just in the last year, year and a half.

I mean, you could become a dinosaur and in a year and a half and be out of business and two and two years if you’re not on top of it, which is a good segue into another key component of what they want from their owners is they want to their owners to foster a growth mindset. You know, with the industry changing as rapidly as it is, you have to have a culture within your organization that fosters professional growth, that encourages, education within the industry and outside of the industry.

You know, what’s happening with search, what’s happening with artificial intelligence and what’s appropriate for us to implement within our organization and what’s not. What are we gonna what are we in a whole lab on? But creating that culture and allowing them to try new things and test new things out and then report to the agency accordingly?

Is is important. You’ve got to have that growth mindset as an agency, if we want to create a high performing culture, you’ve got to have a growth mindset and accountability accordingly. Well, and I also I also think when you have a growth mindset and you understand what you leaders professional goals are and where they want to get better, and you’re mentoring them and holding them accountable, one of the great things you can do to really sort of amplify that growth mindset is have them teach them a firm believer that the more you teach, the more you learn.

The best way to learn more is to teach. And so if you invite them to be a great student and to share what they learn with the rest of your team, now one person hasn’t learned whatever it is, but now the entire agency not only is learning the new content or the new way, or the new methodology, or the new economic, blah, whatever it is.

But they’re also seeing the model of, oh, here’s the department head who’s going to a class or learning something new and sharing with us. I better start doing that too. And so it just really permeates the culture around that. We have to be lifelong learners in the industry that we’ve chosen. Yeah. And regardless of whether you’re a virtual agency, a hybrid agency or a, you know, in-person agency, that growth mindset can take place.

That culture of growth can take place. As to your points, we have every employee in our agency has to report and present, new technology, what they’re using, what they’re not using, how they’re using it on a, on a set cadence. And it teaches them presentation skills and teaches them that they certainly understand the content a lot more than if they were just, you know, reading it off or, or just, you know, sending out an email.

They’re actually getting up or on a zoom, you know, presenting accordingly. And it gives them it gives every employee I’m surprised, you know, what’s the what’s they complete there. You know, you know, whatever they’re completing and they and they present it accordingly. Yeah. It’s gratifying to be the teacher and to be able to teach people things that they didn’t know.

You know, whether it’s a tip or trick about a tool that everybody’s already using or it’s something about a new methodology. It’s it’s all it’s all good for the agency for sure. Yeah, yeah. Let’s take a break. We’ll go ahead. Okay. No, I was just going to say yeah to your point, it’s there. Every employee wants to feel valued and wants to feel invested in.

And so having that mindset, cascade all the way down. So your one on ones are modeled by your key leaders, one to ones with their employees that might be modeled by their, you know, their one on ones or their employees. It’s it’s all it’s all very, very cyclical and has to be a natural part of your, your growth process for your agency.

Yeah. Totally agree. Let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and talk about some of the other things that you think we can do to encourage and support and keep our key leaders. So we’ll be right back. Hey everybody. Thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just want to remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops.

And you can see the whole schedule at Agency Management institute.com on the navigation head to how we help. Scroll down and you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver. And we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody, no matter what it is that you’re struggling with people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered.

So check them out and come join us. All right. Let’s get back to the show. All right. We are back with Dallas Spurs. Dell owns an agency down in Albuquerque called Esparza, which has been to celebrate their 25th anniversary next year. Dell and I have probably known each other almost that long than I think about it. So long.

I yeah, long before I owned am I? Of course I was. Hey, sounds like one of those hair club guys. Like I’m not just the hair club president, but I used to be bald, too. I was in one of the peer groups, and Dell and I were in the same peer group as we were both starting our agencies back in that day.

And, and so we’ve known each other and been great friends for a long time. And he was the natural selection as Craig successor with the key leadership group. So we we’ve been talking on this episode about how we can support and encourage, grow and keep key leaders. What else do we need to know as agency owners about taking good care of these critical employees for ourselves?

I think you want to create development opportunities. And, you know, we talked about the, you know, the key leader group. And, you know, having these forums that are safe for your key leaders to go to. But sometimes creating those development opportunities could also be within the agency. You know, where they’re, you know, maybe somebody who’s never presented in front of a, you know, a prospect is tasked with being part of the pitch team.

Maybe they’re maybe they present analytics to, to a to a challenge. Been client. But he leaders in high performing employees want to have those development opportunities available to them. They might not always like. Yet you might need to work with them and coach them so that they feel comfortable. But that’s how they grow. The only you know, you don’t grow by doing things that are easy.

I mean, you have to you have to, you know, I have a philosophy every day I need to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. Otherwise, I’m not growing and you’re high performing employees. You want to keep. You feel the same way? Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And you’re right. It can be inside the agency in terms of an internal role.

It could be them cheering charitable committee for a nonprofit that they care about that you want to support. It could be it’s just looking for ways for them to step out of their comfort zone and do things they’ve never done before, with your support and coaching. So they can be successful at it. Yeah, yeah yeah. The yeah, I will say one thing that did come up that I was I was surprised with the leaders script is the importance for an owner to display emotional intelligence.

And you know, in talking to the key leaders and I and I, I agree with them. Emotional intelligence is not something that you’re naturally born with. You know, you’re not born. Hey, I could this I can read a person I, I could change my personality accordingly. Emotional intelligence is something that you that you build you refine and you adapt.

Yeah. And so when in order for your team to display and grow their emotional intelligence, in many cases they’re looking to say the CEO or the owner of the agency for them to display that, that emotional intelligence and then allowing them to model behave around that. Yeah, I think I think for a lot of agency owners, they are mature enough professionally and personally that they have developed emotional intelligence.

And maybe we take it for granted that we have it. But and as you and I both know, not everybody has it, but modeling it, talking about it, teaching to it, helping your people kind of catch when they missed a subtle, you know, clue of a non-verbal gesture or something else that, you know, they that they missed it and, and maybe you saw it or vice versa.

But be mindful that at the end of the day, especially at the leadership level, they’ve got the hard skills. It’s now it’s the soft skills that they have to get good at. Otherwise they’re going to get stuck somewhere in your organization and not be able to advance, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, some of these acumen and some of these incredible skills in the industry is great.

But if they do not as a key leader, if they do not have emotional intelligence and cannot read the subtle cues of the client, that’s when agencies lose. Lose clients is not necessarily because of the work or it’s not necessarily because of, you know, your strategies in many cases. And that’s because a client does not listen to the client does not feel respected.

And because they’re not they don’t feel a connection. It also like, and you know that their liaison between the agency is reading them correctly. And so it’s really coming upon us as owners to make sure that we’re, we’re getting our, our cheerleaders appropriate feedback, constructive feedback, which is what they want. They do want that. And I know about that a little bit like how help us understand what they’re looking for from that and, and how they want that constructive feedback.

But now to me number one is that it’s timely. Yeah, absolutely. So what we have is and what they’ve said and key leader meetings is immediately after a presentation. Immediately after a meeting. There’s a, there’s a postmortem where in some cases it can be five minutes in some cases instead of half an hour there where there’s a discussion of what went right, what could have gone differently, what did do you hear?

What did you know? What did everybody else here in our well aligned with the key takeaways that kind of cross conversation can be done virtually that could be done, you know, and in person. But that kind of cross communication helps young employees learn how to be a how to read people, what to say, when to say it, when to listen, when to not to say anything, when to push back, when to acquiesce, that kind of modeling and then having that discussion afterwards helps contribute to their growth.

So in terms of feedback around their job or their role or when it’s not like a group setting, but it’s something. But between the owner and the key leader, how do they want that kind of feedback, especially if it’s if it’s constructive criticism, you know, they want it to be direct and they want it to be measurable. They want examples.

Yeah. Because they want to. Yeah. At the end of the day, their biggest customer is the owner. Even though they might have a lot of clients, they may have employees. Their main focus is making sure that the owner is happy. So, they want immediate feedback. They want it to the structure that they want it. They want a path of how to change their behavior or change their action in order to satisfy the owner.

And they want it to be measurable with specific examples being that egg is, is not, is not what they want. They certainly don’t want you to be nice either, because be nice doesn’t unnecessarily. You could be, procreate and be me and be kind. You don’t have to be mean, but they want direct feedback from you.

And I think a lot of agency owners struggle with that. A the timeliness of it and B, the candor that directness brings that allows everyone to have clear understanding of what we’re talking about and how I can get better at it. And what better looks like. And I think you’re right with the examples, like, I think a lot of times I’ll talk to an agency owner and they’ll say, well, I talked to so-and-so about something, and I’ll be like, well, how did you help them understand what that meant?

And, you know, they give these vague sort of passive aggressive descriptions like that is not helpful. Yeah, I think a lot of agencies are afraid to have that, that radical conversation about. Yeah. The book Radical Candor, one of the best reads that you can you can have I think the, the worst thing you could do for, your key leaders or any employee is being too nice and not being direct.

What ends up happening is this is this underlying tension starts building and building it, and it turns into something that it shouldn’t because a direct conversation never took place. Yeah. I think sometimes we put off the hard conversation and, and by the time we get to it, the, you know, the molehill is a mountain right in our own hand.

I said, yeah, the most important conversation you need to be having is the one you don’t want to have. Right. Those are the ones you need to be having, and those are the ones that they want to have. Many of them are expecting it in the absence of, you know, having it with them the one time they can’t come to their own conclusions.

And those conclusions and items are not accurate. Right, right, or helpful. I mean, they don’t serve your purpose, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been fascinating. So as I think about everything that you’ve shared, I think it all starts with us being very clear that we are invested in them. Yeah. And that we want them to be successful and what success looks like, and that we want to understand what success looks like for them personally and professionally.

And then how do we bring our resources to help them accomplish all of those big, lofty goals that they have? Yeah. You know, I one of the, you know, every agency owner has to make decisions that’s best for their agency. But what a big mistake that I I’ve seen happen is when they invest in a key leader, you know, they start investing in the key later because they had a bad month.

Or are they, you know, they’re you know, they lost a lot of key clients. Those are the times when you need to double down on investing in those, on those key leaders so that those key leaders can help the owner problem solve and right ship the agency accordingly, the push on the gas and then and then let your foot off the pedal and then pushing I guess.

Yeah. That the foot off the pedal is it just sends the wrong message to your to your key leaders. And it’s not fostering their professional growth. And it makes them anxious. Right. Because those so fearful and it’s like what’s going on. And you know, again if you’ve got a high performer, it’s not like they can’t go somewhere else and find a job.

Right. So you want them to feel secure, believed in and vested in supported because that’s the kind of organization they want. They want to grow up in and they want to stay in and they want to contribute. And when you have that kind of a of a culture in that kind of environment where you can have honest, candid conversations and things sometimes go sideways in a, you know, we’ve been in the industry for quite some time.

I mean, as you well know, it’s a roller coaster and you have to you have to celebrate the highs because not every day is a ride. And there’s, a lot of lows. And so, you know, I think making sure that you’re, you’re celebrating with those key leaders, making sure that you’re investing in those in as key leaders and share it, and being vulnerable with those, those key leaders and being able to have those honest conversations.

Hey, listen, we’re not gonna be able to give you this much of a pay raise this year. And here are the reasons why most key leaders are, if they feel invested in, want to be part of that conversation and part of the solution. Yeah, yeah. And at the end of the day, that’s a perfect way to wrap this up.

At the end of the day, that’s what we want. We want them to be as invested in the agency as invested in us, invested in being part of the future of the agency. That’s nirvana for us. Because if we if we have a revolving door of people at that level, it means we can never really do our job.

Absolutely. You’re going to lose clients. You got to lose credibility. They use other employees. It’s a downward spiral. Yeah, yeah. This has been great. Thank you, del, for taking the time to do this and share your insights about the people that you are spending so much time with. On behalf of all the agency owners. And am I? So I’m grateful for you spending the time with us today.

Thank you. Well, and the owners who send, you know, they’re key leaders to the forums and allow me to spend some time with them and coach them and, and mentor them. I want to thank them for having that having number one, the courage to do of it, the belief. And they are my family that we’re there.

Really what we’re doing is we’re building and we’re raising an entire am I community. Yeah. Yeah, I know that Danielle and I are super grateful that, that you are at the helm of the key leaders. I never worry about the quality of the meetings or the quality of the connections, because I know you take good care of those people, and you model exactly what we’ve talked about today, but for all of them.

So it’s like being the it’s like being the papa of the whole crew. I know you’re I know you’re mentoring and growing all of them. So thank you for that as well. You know, I really enjoy it. Thank you for that. Had an example as a meeting Drew and Dan hours course. All right guys this wraps up an episode with lots of action items.

You know I love episodes where you have homework to do. And you know, these are people in your organization. We’re so critical to your success and making the extra effort and thinking about this as a long term play that you really do want them to stick around for a long time, and you want them to keep getting better, and you are willing to invest time, money, resource into helping them do that, because ultimately they help you accomplish the goals that you have set for your agency and for your family, and for your professional and personal gain.

So these people are critical to you. And I think Dell gave you a really great set of sort of best practices to think about. And I encourage you to sit down with your key leaders and either listen to this episode together or say, hey, listen to this episode. And here’s some of the things that I heard. Let’s talk about how can I do this better for you?

How can we do this better together and invite them to be part of the solution of how they want your support and your and your service, because you really should be in service of them, just like they’re in service of you in the agency. So lots of great takeaways. So but put this stuff to good use. It will pay off in the short and long run if you have more.

If you want more information on the key leadership group, you can certainly read about that on that and my website under memberships. Or you can email us and we’ll put a link also in the show notes. You can learn more about that. And of course, I want to say a huge thank you to our friends at White Label IQ.

They’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast, have been with us for many years. White label as you know they do white label design, dev and PPC for agencies just like you. So some of their clients have some of those internal services and they just need some extra hands when they’re super busy. Other agencies have decided they don’t want that skillset in-house.

They just want to have a trusted partner. And in either case, white label sort of delivers that, for them, they are born actually out of an army agency. So they too have grown up with Army math. They know how to price things in a way that you could make money to, and you can be competitive with your clients.

So, check them out at White label icon slash am I? And before I let you go, I got to tell you, I love hanging out with you every week. So thank you for coming back. Thanks for being open to learning from people like Dell every week. And I’m coming back next week. I hope you all too, and I’ll see you then.

So thanks for listening. I’m back next week for another episode designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and other professional development opportunities at Agency Management institute.com.