Episode 470
Your business should serve your lifestyle — not the other way around. Many agency owners got into the industry because it affords them a lifestyle and freedom most people dream of. But it’s easy to lose sight of that when the business gets overwhelming and we fall into agency owner fatigue.
For this week’s solocast, I want to do a deep dive into one of the ways we help agency owners sort out this fatigue and get back on the right track to achieving their goals and dreams — the agency owner life plan.
This plan is a free tool to help agency owners sit with their goals, dreams, aspirations, and legacies and write them down so they feel more tangible and achievable. These legacies don’t have to be lofty, lifelong goals but can be smaller goals that we can start working toward today.
Whether you have a charity you’d like to work with or just want to focus on spending more time with your family, you can use your agency (along with the agency owner life plan) to help you achieve these goals step by step. So if you’re feeling burnt out, fatigued, or discouraged, this episode will help you sort out your dreams and desires and help you get back to using the agency to fuel your legacies.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
In This Episode:
- 3 things that drive agency owner fatigue
- Our business should serve our life, not the other way around
- The agency owner life plan
- Finding 5 legacies you want to leave in your lifetime
- Uncovering 3 things you can do this year to start working toward your legacies
- Choosing 5 people you want to spend more time with to help you achieve your goals
- How to use the agency to support you in accomplishing your goals
“Our business should serve our life, not the other way around. We became owners because we wanted a certain life, and owning a business lent itself to that.” @DrewMcLellan Share on X
“If you’re feeling tired, dragged down, or heavy, and you have all this goodness but you're not enjoying it, that feels sad to me.” @DrewMcLellan Share on X
“Don't wait until you're retired. Don't wait until you're a certain age that ends in a zero to start working on these legacies. Start today. I don't care if you're 20 or you're 70.” @DrewMcLellan Share on X
“Owning a business gives you the chance to change your sliver of the world — not just to live well or make money, but to truly make a difference. You have the power to do that.” @DrewMcLellan Share on X
“On hard days when the mountain looks big, and I have to climb over it, I remind myself it's worth it. I get to build a life of meaning, legacy, pride, and joy. My business helps me do that.” @DrewMcLellan Share on X
Ways to contact Drew:
- Email: [email protected]
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/drewmclellan
- Website: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/
Resources:
- BaBA Summit May 19-21, 2025: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/babasummit/
- Book: Sell With Authority
- AMI Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/agencymanagementinstitute
- AMI Preferred Partners: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/ami-preferred-partners/
- Agency Edge Research Series: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/agency-tools/agency-edge-research-series/
- Upcoming workshops: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/advertising-agency-training/workshop-calendar/
- Weekly Newsletter: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/newsletter-sign-up-form/
- Agency Coaching and Consulting: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/advertising-agency-consulting/agency-coaching-consulting/
- Agency Life Plan: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/OwnerLifePlan-1.pdf
Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent. Make more money and keep more of the money you make the Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ, is packed with insights on how small to mid-sized agencies are getting things done. Bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant.
Please welcome your host, drew McLellan and.
Hey, everybody. Drew McClellan here from Agency Management Institute. Super excited to be with you today. As you know, if you are a regular listener, we go for episodes with a guest, and then it is a solo cast. And the difference of a solo cast, as the name might suggest, is the solo, which means it’s just me, no guest, but it’s you and me really talking about something that I have on my mind.
And the odds are of it’s on my mind is because it’s been on all of your minds. And I’ve had lots of conversations with folks about it. So Danielle and I are about halfway through the peer group season. So for us, that means about every other week we are meeting with 25 or so agency owners spending two full days with them.
And it’s hanging out, talking about their business, looking at financials, doing all the kind of things that we do in the peer group. But we have lots of opportunities to have meaningful, deeper conversations with agency owners about what’s on their mind. And so I’m coming out of five of the nine of those peer groups, I’m coming out of five of those meetings.
And there’s a recurring theme that I want to talk about today, and I want to see how it resonates with you. But before we do that, just a couple housekeeping things. Number one, if you happen to be watching this on video, which I know is probably a small percentage of you, you’re going to see that my background is a hot mess.
We bought a new house. My office is still under construction, so I’m temporarily holed up in one of the spare bedrooms, and there’s just a lot of chaos behind me. Boxes and things on dressers that don’t belong in a studio. But, So forgive. Forgive the chaos that is behind me. There have probably another month or two of that, and then we’ll get into something that feels a little bit more professional and produced.
So I appreciate your patience. Second thing is, and this is much more interesting than the fact that what’s behind me is a hot mess is a reminder that on every solo cast, we give away a free seat to one of our workshops. So here’s how this works. Agency owner goes and leaves a rating and review on the podcast.
Wherever you download the podcast, it might be Apple Podcasts, it could be iHeartRadio, it could be Google wherever or wherever you find this podcast, and you just go and leave a rating and review. And then what I need you to do is I need you to take a screenshot of that rating and review. Why? Because most of you have a username that isn’t going to.
Even if it’s your first and last name, it’s not going to tell me who you are, how to get Ahold of you, what agency you own, and I can’t contact you when you win. So when you take a screenshot of your review, email it to me at drew at Agency Management institute.com again drew at Agency Management institute.com. And you get your name thrown in the drawing and your name stays in the drawing until you win.
So you know, in the grand scheme of world population, as you might imagine, not that many people are leaving reviews for build a better agency. So odds are pretty good that sooner or later you’re going to win a $2,000 seat at one of our live workshops, simply for leaving a rating on the review and sending me a screenshot of it.
So it seems like a very little amount of effort or a pretty decent reward. This solo cast winner is Ashley Robinson, so Ashley owns Green Card again marketing and she left a lovely review for us. Thank you. And now Ashley, you get to come to one of our workshops for free. I have to do is get to Denver, find a place to stay and the rest of it is on us.
So we’re super excited about that. Ashley, I’ll be reaching out to you, to confirm this, in case you didn’t hear it in real time. Here’s the other thing I want. I want you to know that we actually read every single review. We take them into account, we think about them, we talk about them. And so they’re very gratifying to us.
The input is gratifying. The kind words, of course, are gratifying. So please, please, please, give us a little bit of feedback. Let us know what you love. Let us know what you want more of because we’ll see it. And you might also win a free workshop. So again, small effort, big reward. So congratulations Ashley. We look forward to seeing you at a workshop soon.
All right. So what do I want to talk to you about. So I am recording this October 1st. I was going to say October 1st of September. It’s been it’s been a long crazy couple months for us. Sorry. October 1st, 2024. So if you’re listening to this real time, you’re going to hear this in less than a week.
If you are catching up on the podcast or you just discovered the podcast, maybe you’re listening to this a year after I recorded it, but the context is important. So the world is in a crazy place right now. Politically, here in the United States, things are very divisive, and we are going into what may be one of the most controversial presidential elections in our country’s history.
We have strife all over the world. We have multiple wars going on. We have lots of things happening. A lot of people are very concerned about the economy. So it is a it’s a time where there is sort of this underlying tension. I think it’s safe to say. But when I look across the landscape and when Danielle and I meet with agency owners, honestly, most of you are doing pretty well.
You are in most cases making a six figure income even, by the way, if your agency is struggling or flat, or maybe you’ve even had to do some layoffs, you’ve been able to preserve your own salary. Now some of you have taken salary cuts. I’m not saying that that’s not the case in some instances, but for the most part, even those of you that took a salary cut, you still make a decent living.
So you’re making good money. You’re running some expenses through the business appropriately. You’re taking dividends, you’re funding your retirement accounts. So financially owning an agency is working out pretty well for most of you. On top of that, you’re an entrepreneur. You own a business. You have a lot of control over your life, over your work. You have lots of freedoms in terms of how you spend your time.
You have a lot of control over where you work. You are oftentimes the driving force of is your agency in office? Are you hybrid? Are you virtual? You also have a lot of control over who your clients are, who you serve. Many of you have done a lot of really good work around Niching down and sort of specializing in an area where you have deep expertise, where you really can be an expert and a teacher and a coach and a mentor, as well as a marketing partner and a thinking partner to your clients.
Lots of you are telling us that you have the best staff that you have ever had at the agency. You are in love with your team and their passion and their compassion and their desire to do good work. So all in all, for many of you, most of you, life is good. Your business is profitable. It may not be profitable at the level you want it to be, but for the vast majority of you, you’re making money because the business is making money and you personally are making money.
You have a lot of freedoms around your work. You’re surrounded by dedicated, passionate professionals who are good at what they do and are proud to be on your team. You’re serving clients that you like, so lots of good things. And yet there’s this interesting malaise amongst some of you where you seem tired, you seem a little frustrated, you seem overwhelmed.
I’m hearing a lot of it. Used to be fill in the blank, easier, better, more profitable. And so as I as I hear all of these things in this, Danielle and I talk to all of you as we’re coaching you individually, as we are traveling the globe, hanging out with you, we’re sort of noticing this trend. And we’ve been talking about why, if things are as good as I just described and you may not have, you may not check all the boxes of all the good things I said, but odds are you can check most of those boxes.
So if you’re living that life, then what is causing this malaise, this feeling of heaviness or weight? I think it’s a couple things. And I want to talk about how we can think about this differently, because here’s what kind of breaks my heart. We, most of us, live a life that the average person would trade in a heartbeat in terms of our work, our financial security, we have an abundance that many people would love.
But if we’re feeling tired or dragged down or heavy, or it used to be used to be, it used to be, then we have all this goodness, but we’re not enjoying it. And that feels sad to me. That feels wasteful, that feels I don’t know, it feels wrong. It feels like why wouldn’t we feel better about our work and our company and our team and ourselves and what we’re bringing home to our families?
Why wouldn’t we feel better about that? I want you to feel good about it. I want you to be proud of what you’ve built and what you’ve accomplished and what’s ahead. I want you to look forward to all the good things that are coming, as opposed to that sense of the other shoe is going to drop. So I think it’s I think it’s three things.
And we’re going to talk briefly about two, and then we’re going to dig into the third. The first thing is I think there is a sense and again, I think it’s worldwide. I certainly talk to agency owners all over the world. And you know, we travel a fair amount. So I talk to people all over the world. And I think there’s a there’s this tension and nervousness that is happening right now in our world.
So I think some of that sort of splashes up on how we think about our work. So that’s number one, I think. I think the world is in a bit of turmoil, and we all carry some of that stress and strain and sort of apply it to all things. And everything is a little harder to see clearly because we’re looking through kind of a lens that feels a little grungy a little bit.
So that’s number one. Number two, not unlike we have had before. Our industry is facing some of the biggest, most profound change in decades. So, you know, with AI and technology and all of the shifts that are happening in the marketplace, consolidation of some industries, lots of our agencies, our clients are consolidating down to fewer agencies. The idea that we are in a season of change, and we have to redefine the value that we bring to clients and how we how we create that value, again, may not be I, but certainly some of it is AI.
But, you know, we’re working differently. We’re not in the office every day for in many cases, the work we’re producing is different. Our competitors look different. Then we’ve got all this crazy technology around it. So there’s a lot of change swirling around us. And and I get that an end. We are hard wired to resist change. Even those of us who want to be innovative, even those of us who embrace newness.
All of that change, especially as it as it pertains to our business and our livelihood, is creating some uncertainty and some anxiety. So I think that’s another reason why we’re feeling. But honestly, I think the biggest reason why we are not only celebrating all the goodness that our business is bringing us is because somehow we have detached the idea that the reason we own our agencies, the only reason we should own a business, is so that it serves us and our life goals.
Our business should serve our life, not our life should serve our business. But the reason we own a business is because we wanted to have a certain life. And owning a business lent itself to that. But that idea that our business should serve our life somehow has become detached. And I want to re-attach that idea today with you a little bit.
I want you to think about how the business can serve your life. And I think to do that, we have to start with figuring out what matters to us, what how do we want our life to be. I can remember, I think I was probably in college, or maybe I’m sure it was a college assignment, probably in one of my psych classes.
We had to write our own obituary. And, you know, I was probably, what, 20? But that exercise helped me really think about when I died. What did I want to be remembered for? How what impact did I want to have on the world? Now? I am sure if I could find that assignment, which I assure you, I could not, but I’m sure if I found it, there would be some things in that assignment that that 20 year old version of drew wrote that would still be true today.
And I’m sure there are some things in there that I’d be like, yeah, I don’t care about that anymore, or I don’t want to be known for that. Like, I absolutely don’t want to be known for that anymore. Or you know what? I thought that’s what success was or happiness was, and I was wrong. But the exercise itself was really healthy.
It forced me to pause and think about at the end of things, what’s actually going to matter. And, you know, as as I’ve gotten older and I suspect as you have gotten older, I look back on 20 year old drew and I think, oh, boy, you had no clue what life would be like. And in many, many ways.
But I also think that at 20 I did it because it was a school assignment. But it never occurred to me that, I mean, it certainly didn’t feel like it was going to be something I needed any time soon because I was invincible. I was 20, I had my whole life ahead of me, and my whole life was a really far, long distant timeline for you.
And I know now that that’s not always true, that our timeline is what it is. But for some of us, it’s longer or shorter than others. And for many of us, you know, we’re not 20 anymore. So I do think how we re-attach the joy we could and should find in our business, to our personal life, to our life goals, starts with us understanding what do I want out of my life?
And I know that is a lofty question. I know that that’s a big question, but I also believe it’s something that we should explore. So you’ve probably heard me talk on the podcast before about the agency on our life plan, and we will put a link to a PDF that you can fill out on your computer of the life plan.
But I want to talk about some of the elements in this life plan, because I think that it asks some really interesting questions. And I want to I want to just remind you of a few things, and then I really want you to and I want to invite you to do this life plan to figure out what really matters to you.
And I think we know. And I, you know, I think we all would quickly give sort of the standard answers, right? You know, it’s my family. It’s my friends. I you know, I want to have enough money to retire comfortably, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m not saying any of that is wrong. I’m not saying we don’t actually want all of that, but I think there’s a layer underneath it that we often don’t take the times and that we don’t know the answer.
We don’t take the time to actually explore. And even more important, we don’t take the time to write it down. We all know that when we write something down, whether it’s on the computer or by hand, when we write something down while we commit it to paper becomes more tangible. It certainly makes it easier to share with someone else.
Beat your spouse or partner or business partner or team. We have some agency owners that do this life plan every year, and they share it with their entire team, and then they invite their team to do it as well and then share it if they want to, with everybody else in the organization. So I want you to go through the exercise of actually writing it down, but let’s talk about some of the things that you’re going to be thinking about, and some of the things that I believe.
If you have an answer to it, you can have your business serve those elements of your life. And I think it will change how you view the business, because the business will be absolutely directly impacting your ability to achieve your life goals. And I think anything that helps you get the most important things in life is going to be something you’re going to cherish and covet and love and celebrate, as opposed to seeing as a burden.
All right, so in the agency life plan, there’s it’s got a bunch of questions. One of my favorite parts of this plan. And by the way, it’s a one page plan. It’s not a, you know, Warren piece, kind of a document. One of the questions that this asks, or what are the five legacy that I want to live, that I want to leave.
Sorry. Well, you want to live them and leave them, but what are the five legacies that I want the world to have? Because I’ve been here and the word legacies is lofty. So we talk about this work, this worksheet or this effort in the Money Matters workshop that we just talked last month. And one of the agency owners had legacy that feels like huge.
Don’t don’t use that word if it’s overwhelming, if it’s just five things I want to be remembered for, five things I want to change for the better, five marks I want to leave live. I don’t know why I’m having trouble with this. Five marks I want to leave before I go. What are those? And then the next question, three things I’m going to do in the coming year to contribute to those legacies.
I think that’s one of the most important questions on this sheet. It’s great to say I want to be a dad who was known for always being present, always being the biggest supporter and always being a safety net. If that’s one of my five legacies, which is a good one, that’s that’s great. And of course I want to do that.
But when am I going to start? Maybe I’ve started already. Hopefully I have started already, but I love the tangibility of three things I’m going to do this year to contribute to those legacies. So it might be, even though my kids are all adults, I’m going to make sure I spend one on one time with them. Maybe it’s I’m going to plan a family vacation around everybody’s school schedule so that we can all travel as a family together, because I know that’s what an amazing memories are made.
But by committing to doing something this year, I think what that does is I think it takes some of the weight of the word legacy and makes it go away. Why? Because it’s just here. Five things I want to be known for I want to, I want to leave for people to remember and value about me. And here’s what I’m going to do this year to make sure I’m starting on that.
Why? Back to the conversation we had earlier. I don’t know how much time I have. I don’t know how long I’m going to have to get this legacy. So just like we tell you that you should earn your wealth and build your wealth while you own the business, don’t wait till you’re ready to sell the agency and hope you can sell it.
Same thing happens in life. Don’t wait till you retire. Don’t wait till you’re a certain age that ends in a zero to start working on these legacies start today. I don’t care if you’re 20. I don’t care if you’re 30. I don’t care if you’re 70. You can do something right now, in the next week, the next month, certainly in the next year, to start to really make control towards these legacies that are so important to you.
So, you know, we have an agency owner who lost a parent to cancer. So one of the five legacies she wants to leave is she wants to have impact on cancer research. She wants to help find the cure to cancer. And that’s a big goal. And you know what? She’s not going to accomplish that in a year, and she’s not going to accomplish it when she retires.
So what’s she going to do this year to change it to start maybe. Is making a donation to the Cancer Society. Maybe it is volunteering. Maybe it is elevating some research by talking about it. It doesn’t matter what it is, it matters that we’re doing something. But one of the things that you’re going to knit start knitting together is, how does my business help me do these things?
I would like to do to begin to contribute to those legacies? Is it that I have the freedom and flexibility of time? Is it that I have the financial resources to make a contribution? Is it that I can use my agency to promote an event, to raise money, to help cure cancer? Or is it that I get to take an annual meeting as a business owner, which is a legal thing I’m allowed to do in my taxes, but I can also pay for my family to go along with, and we can go to a really great place, whatever it is.
How does the business serve those legacies or that goal to accomplish that legacy that those are? That’s a great series of questions. Five things I want to leave my mark and and what am I going to do this year to contribute to that? And how can I leverage my agency to magnify or expedite making that contribution? Now we’re connecting our life to our business, and we’re seeing that the business actually helps us live the life that we want to live.
All right. We’re going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, we’re going to talk a little bit more about the life plan and some of the other questions that I think you should consider as you think about, how do I get to a place where I’m celebrating how awesome my agency is and the amazing life it allows me to have, as opposed to feeling the weight of it all the time?
All right, 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. Solo cast. We’re talking. This is, this is a deep conversation we’re having. This is a conversation about making sure that our life matters, making sure that we accomplish some of the most important things that will make us look back on our life and be proud of how we spent our time and where we invested our talent, and how we changed our little sliver of the world in a slightly different way.
So if you follow me on social media at all, if you know me very much at all, you know that I am a huge animal advocate. I love animals, and one of the things that I find most heartbreaking is how many dogs and cats are euthanized, I think, all over the world, but certainly here in the United States, because we have we’re not spaying and neutering our pets.
We have overpopulation. We have breeders being irresponsible. And so millions of animals are put down healthy. In many cases, puppies and kittens are put down because there’s just nowhere for them to be. There’s all the shelters are overcrowded. It’s a terrible situation. So one of my legacies that I want to leave is I want to have impact on saving as many of those poor, innocent animals as possible.
So one of the things that I do is I volunteer at a local puppy rescue. I am an adoption counselor. I help match families with puppies. So we bring puppies in from all over the region that are going to be euthanized. And instead we take the man. We put them in a foster program. They stay with foster families, including us.
In many cases, it’s how we ended up with so many dogs because we’re terrible fosters. We keep foster failing, but the organization keeps the dogs. We commit to keeping them in foster situations until we can find them forever. Homes. And I get to do part of that. Why? Because it’s a really tangible way for me to use my time and talent.
Yes, our our agency also does some marketing for them. We’ve made financial donations, but the most meaningful part of that for me is twofold. Number one, the adoption counselor. Number two, we are foster family. And so we bring litters of puppies into our home to make sure that they have a healthy, safe start to life and that they are going to be well protected and cared for until they find their forever family.
That’s what I’m talking about. None of that is undoable. None of that is all that hard. None of it is that noble. It’s just little kindnesses, little acts that help me get closer and closer to my legacy. Well, how does my business help me do that? I have the freedom to do it. I work from home unless we’re traveling.
And so the weeks that we’re home, we often have a whole litter of puppies in our house because we can, you know, we have the financial resources to make contributions. We have the team that can help create the marketing and some of the other materials that the rescue needs. So again, our business is helping us live the life we want to live.
And I love that connection. So also in this life plan, one of the other questions that it asks that I think is really important to think about are who are the five people I want to spend more time with to help me achieve my goals? So these aren’t just people you want to hang out with because you like them.
Might be that too, but these are people that you want to hang out with and spend more time with because they’re going to help you accomplish those legacies. They’re going to help you hit the Smart goals for your professional life and your personal life. They’re going to help you achieve a year that you can look back on and be really proud of.
And often times when you start listing the five people you want to spend more time with, either a they’re people you know through your agency, or maybe there’s somebody, maybe you don’t know them at all. You want to get to know them, and you can leverage your agency and your role in the community to meet them. Or three again, there’s something about the way your agency runs that allows you to fly to New York City once a quarter, to be with one of those people, or to take an afternoon off every other week to have coffee with a mentor who’s helping you accomplish some of those goals.
Whatever it is, I think what’s going to happen is when you fill out this agency on your life plan, you’re going to begin to see all of the ways that the agency is actually contributing to the life you want to lead, or how the agency could contribute to the life you want to lead. Now that you have more clarity around what that life looks like, now that you know the marks you want to leave and the things you need to do this year to get started on and the people that you need to surround yourself with to have that kind of impact, and all the ways the agency helps you get there gets kind of
profound, and it gets kind of humbling that you are as fortunate as you are to own this amazing business that affords you the opportunity to change your little sliver of the world, not just to have a great life, not just to make money, not just to go on great vacations, but to actually change the world. You have the power to do that.
We all have the power to do that. And our business helps us do that. So I really invite you to download the agency on your life plan out of the show notes and spend some time. Look through the questions again. It’s just one page, but see the questions. Let it soak for a while. Don’t just sit down and write the answers, but like just let the let the questions kind of bang around in your head for a few days, maybe a week, maybe longer than that, and then sit down and answer the questions and then what’s not on the sheet, but that that answer.
The next step that I want you to make is once you finish the agency on her life plan. And by the way, if you’re an agency employee and you’re not the owner, the questions have nothing to do with owning a business. So you can do this too. But then the question is, how does the place that I work?
Or how does the place that I own give me the opportunity to live this life to accomplish these goals, to create these legacies, to change my sliver of the world? And when you can see, when you step back from this on, your life plan and ask yourself the question which again, is not on the sheet is how does the agency help me do this?
Or how could the agency help me do this better, faster, stronger, bigger. That’s exciting. And I think what is going to do is it’s going to say, yeah, the world is a little crazy right now. Check. Yes, the industry is going through a lot of change. And that’s going to mean we’re going to have to be innovative. We’re going to have to be clever.
We’re going to have to take new risks. We’re going to have to try new things. Do you know what we’ve been doing that our whole careers? That’s what agency life is. We’ve always been on the cutting edge of that change. So check. Crazy world? Check. Innovative. Lots of change happening now. I want you to go, wow. Instead of this being heavy, instead of this being harder instead of it, I miss the good old days when fill in the blank.
Now what I want you to go is okay. This is awesome. This business that I own or where I work is going to help me do these super important things in my life that are going to make my life meaningful and full and rich. Because I fully believe. I fully, fully believe that as you begin to leave these legacies, as you begin to carve out your mark, one puppy at a time, one friggin puppy at a time, I’m not changing the world.
I am helping. You know, maybe on a given weekend helping 20 people adopt a puppy. We’re saving 20 puppies and that I’m not saving the puppies entire organization is saving those puppies, right? I’m doing my part. So, puppy by puppy, I am beginning to create a legacy. I am beginning to carve my mark in a way that is meaningful for me, and my business helps me do that.
So on the days when the business is hard, or I have to get up super early to catch a plane, or I’m up late recording a solo class because my week got really jacked up this week. On those days when I’m like, this is hard, that mountain looks big and I got to climb over it and I got to climb over it.
Now I can remind myself is worth it because it is helping me create a life of meaning and a life of a legacy and a life of pride and joy and blessing. I get to create that, and my business helps me create it. That’s magic, and that is privilege. And that is the good fortune that I have as a business owner.
I believe if you go through this exercise, you’re going to realize that you have it too. So that’s that’s the message for today is to stop, think about what you want out of your life and then figure out how to start it. Dig in. Get going right now. Don’t wait and see how the business supports and serves you in doing that.
So you can see the business through a more accurate, better joy filled lens. Because that’s going to give you the energy to do the hard things that you have to do to bring innovation and change to the business, to keep pushing, to be profitable, to keep being a great mentor to your team, to doing all the things the way you want to do them.
So the reasons you want to do them. All right. That’s that’s it. That’s what I have for you today. I hope I hope this was good for you. I hope it was meaningful time. I hope I really, really hope you download the one page agency on your life plan and fill it out and just soak on it and recognize that we’re very fortunate that we get to ask ourselves these questions, and that we get to actually take action on them.
Not everybody is in that place. So let’s not waste that privilege. Let’s not waste that opportunity. Let’s live the life that we really want to have and take full advantage of it, because we can and we should, and we can change the world one at a time. All right. Thanks for listening. So a couple things before I let you go.
As you know, our friends at White Label IQ are the presenting sponsor. I’m super grateful to them. Good, good people. They do white label design, dev and PPC. They were born out of an agency, which means that they understand how to price their projects so that you make money and they make a little money, and the clients are happy with the quality of the product and everybody wins.
So whether you’ve decided you don’t want to have either design or dev or PPC in-house, and these guys are going to be your go to partner or maybe just need an extra hand, you’re super busy and one of those areas and your internal team can get it all done. And so you can call on them to give you a hand for a temporary period of time.
Or they can be a permanent part of your team. Great people head over to white label iq.com/emi for a special offer that they have for you, and I hope that this episode underscores what I try and wrap every episode up with, which is I know that you have a lot going on, and I know there are a lot of things you could be doing, and whether I am walking the dog with you or we’re on the treadmill or a subway, or I know I golf with some of you every Monday, whatever.
However we’re spending this time together, I know I can be replaced. I know you could be listening to music or a different podcast, or talking on the phone to your mom. I know that I am taking up some pretty sacred space, and so I want you to know that I am really grateful and humbled that we get to hang out together every week, and that you keep coming back, you keep letting us serve you, and I am grateful for that.
So thank you for listening. Thanks for being a part of the Amish community, and I hope that this episode is proof that we really do care. And we really do want you to love the life that you’re living professionally and personally, and anything we can do to be helpful. And that feels like a worthy endeavor. And so that was why I wanted to talk about this today.
So download it, do the homework, do the heart work, and then connect the dots so you feel really good about the fact that you’re an entrepreneur and a business owner and an agency owner, and you have lots of resources at your fingertips to change the world. All right, that’s it. I’m out. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.
That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build Better Agency. Is it agency Management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.