Agency Success in 2026 with Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan: 

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 sized 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 welcome your host, Drew McLellan. 

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute coming to you with another episode of Build A Better Agency, episode 525. Super glad to be here with you today. Since it ends in a zero or a five. You know what that means? That means it’s a solo cast. So just you and me hanging out, talking about something that I want to make sure is on your radar screen. 

Couple little tidbits that we need to take care of before I talk about what I want to chat with you about today. 

First and foremost, as you know, every solo cast, we announce a winner. We do a drawing of someone who has left us a rating and review on the podcast and whoever’s name gets pulled out of that proverbial hat. You win attendance at one of our live workshops or the Build a Better Agency Summit in May. So winner has to be the owner. That’s who has to cash it in. But all you have to do to get your name in the hat is go wherever you download the podcast and leave a rating or review. If where you download doesn’t let you do ratings and reviews, head over to Apple Podcasts or one of the other places that does leave a rating and review. Take a screenshot. This is the critical part. Take a screenshot and email it to me at [email protected] so we can enter you into the drawing. We read all the ratings and reviews and we’re super grateful for them. So thank you for all your kind words and we are super glad that you find the podcast valuable. But oftentimes when you leave a rating or review, you’re asked to use a username that I have no way of knowing who you are, I have no way of contacting you. So I do need that email with the screenshot so when you win, because sooner or later you’re going to win, there’s only so many of you in the world that are listening to the podcast, so the odds are good for you. So take the five minutes, enter and when you win now, I have a way of getting a hold of you and letting you know that you’ve won. 

So this month’s winner is Steve from Stewart. That’s the name of the agency. So, Steve, I will shoot you an email and confirm this with you. If you haven’t heard it on the podcast, watch for an email from me soon. Or maybe you already got the email and now you’re listening to the episodes, and if so, congratulations on the win. So we’ll love to have you in Denver joining us. 

Okay, before I dig into the topic, of course, you know, I want to say thanks to our friends at White Label iq. They’ve been the presenting sponsor for several years now. They sponsor both the podcast and they are the presenting sponsor of the Build a Better Agency Summit. And the reason why they sponsor both of those things is because they are so invested, much like we are at ami, they are so invested in helping agencies be better, get better, make better margins, solve client problems. And if you aren’t familiar with White Label, what they do is they do white label design, dev, PPC and other ads, digital ads for agencies. So they are basically your partners. 

So in some cases you’ve got an internal team and you just need some extra hands because you’re busy. And in other cases, you don’t have an internal team and you want them to be your internal team. You want them to pitch business with you, which they do, by the way, without charging you for that time. They know that that’s an investment in the partnership. And if you want them maintaining websites for you or building apps for clients or helping your clients with their, you know, project management software, their content software, their email software, they are on board to really be your digital partner in all of those things. So head over to white labeliq.com ami and check them out. If you’ve never worked with them before, they have a special offer for you where you get some free hours on your first project. And please, please, please, if you bump into them at a workshop or at the summit or if you’re on that website, take a minute and send them a note and just thank them for making this podcast possible. We are super grateful for their ongoing support, not only of the podcast, but of all of you and the work that we all do together. So many, many thanks to the good folks at White Label iq. 

Okay, here’s what I want to talk to you about. So, in my last solo cast, episode 520 talked about strategic planning. And what I said to you was, this is not a normal year for strategic planning. And you’re going to have to go above and beyond the SWOT analysis. This feels like change is coming faster and more furious than ever before. We’ve got lots of things changing in our industry. Certainly the most prevalent thing we’re all talking about is AI. But there’s a lot of things going on. There’s the economy. There’s all kinds of things that are influencing the way we do work. It is influencing our clients. And we’ve gotta be smarter about how we enter into 2026. 

So we gave you some really interesting strategic planning exercises that are gonna really take you out of your comfort zone. They’re gonna ask more of you and your leadership team, or maybe you and your entire team than you have done in the past. Super, super glad about that. Got a lot of feedback from many of you who are starting to use those tools and saying that they are really allowing you. They’re kind of leading you to some really great insights. So happy, happy, happy about that. So that’s awesome. 

That’s what the agency needs to do to get ready for 2026. But what do you, the agency owner, need to be doing for these next 60 days of 2025 to get your agency ready for 2026? If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. If you’re not doing your job because you’re busy being a creative director, or you are the lead on an account, or you are the chief fire extinguisher of your agency, and anytime there’s a problem with a client, you’re the one that’s putting out those fires. When you’re doing those kinds of jobs, which frankly, are someone else’s job, then the reality is no one is doing your job. Why? Because there is no one else in the agency who has both the authority and the responsibility and the experience. So authority and responsibility key, but also experience, vision, to do your job, which means that the most important job in an agency is just being left undone. And this is not the year, my friends, to not do your job. So what I want to talk about today is what you, specifically the agency owner, need to be focused on for these next 60 days. To make sure that you come out of the gate on 2026 strong, loaded for bear, ready to take the world by storm. And that your agency is in such a good position for you to be a leader and to dominate the space that you want to dominate. That’s what I want to talk about today is what do you need to do, not your team. 

Now there are people. Now some of this are you going to do by yourself? No. You’re going to have other people help you, depending on the size of your agency, depending on the structure of your agency, depending on if you’re a solo owner or you have partners in the business. So take all of this with a grain of salt. When I say you, I kind of mean the royal you. I’m talking about the ownership entity. Whether that’s one person or six people or somewhere in between. You’ve got to get this work done and you have to influence this work. If not, do this work. 

All right, all right. So let’s talk about the areas where your job is critical. So the first area, of course, you’ve heard me say it a million times, is nobody sells your agency’s work like you do. So you need to be play a pivotal role in new business. Now, that might be actually being the one out there selling. That might be the face of the content, might be you standing on a stage, being a subject matter expert. It might be you working conferences and association meetings. It could be you actually leading the pitch team and the sales team. However that is, if you’re a larger agency, it might mean that you’re overseeing the sales team. Like you actually have sales professionals on yours, on your team, and you’re leading them, guiding them, putting some parameters around them, coaching them. They’re bringing you in at the appropriate time to have the right conversations with prospects. But new business is a critical part. 

Number two. Another critical part that only you can do is that vision part of running the agency. So who are we? Why does it matter? Where are we going and how are we going to get there? So we’ll talk about that in a minute. Then you actually have to run the agency. And when I say run the agency, I don’t mean run the day to day of the agency. Now, if you’re an agency of five people, you probably are doing some of that. But I’m talking about overseeing the finances, paying attention to the KPIs that tell you that the agency is healthy and running well and then orchestrating change when those KPIs get out of whack. 

So you are overseeing the business of the business, right? You’re making sure that you’re hitting that profitability percentage that matters to you and that your AGI percentages are in alignment. And we’ll talk about some of those details in a minute. So you’ve got that going on. Then you’ve got client love. And what I mean by client love is that you are investing time and energy into the clients of the agency. Not by doing work for them, but by cultivating a relationship with them in terms of you, the business owner, having a relationship with them, either the business owner or the business leader, and having different kinds of conversations than your marketing AE is having with their marketing director. You are having much bigger business conversations. You are, you are talking about innovation, you are talking about what AI is doing to their industry. You’re talking about all the kinds of things that business owners talk about that they have no one else to talk to. And you can be a trusted resource if you position yourself that way. All right, and then there is a little bit of your time, 5% at the most of your time, of putting out fires. 

So again, it’s new business, it’s your people. And we’re going to talk about grooming and growing your people. It’s running the business, it is client love and it is putting out an occasional fire. That’s your job. That’s how you should be focusing your time and attention. So what should you in each of those categories be doing in the next 60 days to get ready for 2026? By the way, we will have a download for you in the show notes that captures kind of these to do’s. So we’re going to talk through the how and on the podcast and then we’re going to just going to kind of capture a checklist for you that you can download along with some other things that I’m going to reference through the show. 

Okay. All right, so let’s talk about new business. First of all, new business is a two headed beast. We have prospects. So new money from new people and we have existing clients. New money from people that we are already in a relationship with and you have a huge responsibility for both. So that’s going to be one thing that we’re going to talk about. 

But before we talk about that, I want to step, take a step backwards and figure out who are we, why do we matter, where are we going and how are we getting there? I will tell you, I am always surprised and disappointed to realize how many of you have not done the work of really defining what makes your agency different. I’m not talking about a niche. We’ll get down to that in a minute. But what makes your agency different than all the other businesses out there? Why do you exist? What is the purpose of your business? And the purpose of your business can’t just be making money and it can’t be just doing good marketing. There’s a bigger reason why your business exists and it’s going to be very Personal to you. Here’s why we exist. Here’s. Here’s who we want to be known for. And here’s how we want to be known. Here’s how we want other people to talk about us behind our back. Here’s if somebody says, oh, have you ever heard about XYZ Agency there? What is that next sentence you want them to say? And then when they start talking about you and the values and the way you do business, what do you want them to say? So what is that? Mission, vision and values. And if you can’t articulate those, and if I can’t walk through your office and stop anybody, literally or figuratively walk through your office. So hop on a slack or walk through your office, whatever that is, and say, tell me what the values are of this company. Tell me what the mission, vision and values are. And if they can’t tell me those things, then you haven’t done your work. You haven’t done your job. Because your job is to define those things, to articulate those things. 

Then your job is to teach those things, and then your job is to weave those things throughout the culture of your agency, through every aspect of your agency. And we’ve done podcasts on mission, vision and values so you can go back and find those. But if they’re not woven into the business, if they’re not part of how you interview, if they’re not part of your hiring onboarding, they’re not part of your client onboarding, they’re not part of the way you run your leadership team meetings, if you’re not checking against them when you make business decisions, they’re window dressing. They’re not real. 

And so when you know what your core values are and your team knows what your core values are, and you’re sitting in a meeting and you’re trying to decide how to handle something and someone says, well, if we’re going to live up to our value of X, Y, Z, then we should do this. When you start hearing that, then you know the mission, vision and values have actually been. They’ve taken root inside your organization, and now they are business tools you can use to guide the business so that everybody makes decisions that are in alignment with those things, so that you don’t have to always be sort of the safety net to catch when people are sort of off track. 

So mission, vision, values, for sure, critical, but also equally critical is here’s who we are, here’s how we’re different, here’s why it matters, and then here’s where we’re going. 

Here’s where we’re headed. Here’s where we want to go with our clients. Here’s where we want to go with the team. Here’s the culture we want to create. Here’s the experience we want our clients to have. Here’s what we want to be good at, and here’s how we’re going to do that. 

So that is the strategic planning that you should have done after episode five. 20. That’s a. Here’s how we are approaching our work and the world. Here’s what we bring a value that makes us different than every other agency out there. That differentiates us. That says we’re the right choice. That says we are the safe choice. We’re the most reliable choice. We’re the choice that is not going to get you fired. Director of marketing. That’s part of what you have to define. 

And again, 20. 26. 20, 25. 26. This has been a roller coaster of a couple years, and I don’t really think it’s slowing down. In fact, in my next solo cast, we’re going to talk about that. I don’t. I don’t believe this pace of change is going to slow down anytime soon. We have to get used to the roller coaster. But getting used to the roller coaster also means that we have to know where we’re headed and where that roller coaster is headed and how we’re going to get there in a way that is of benefit to our clients and that is of benefit to our team and ultimately is benefit to the agency. 

And you’ve got to figure that out. You can’t sub that out to somebody. You can’t have somebody else tell you what your company is all about and where you’re going. You have to decide that. Can you do that with your leadership team? Absolutely. But it has to come first and foremost from you, because otherwise other people are going to craft it, and it’s not going to be in alignment with what your head and heart believe. It’s really, really hard to support something that you don’t actually believe or want to create. 

I think some of you are tired, and one of the reasons why you’re tired is because you’ve let the team take the lead on setting the course for your business, and you’re not so sure where they’re headed is where you want to go. And that fatigue, that. That sort of friction, that tension creates fatigue in you. 

So job number one, mission vision values. And where are we going? Why does it matter? And how are we going to get there? 

So think of mission, vision, values with that strategic planning and then how are you going to roll it out? How are you going to tell your team about this? How are you going to get them excited about it? And by the way, this is not a one and done conversation. How are you going to keep talking to them about it? How are you going to help them keep on track? How are you going to help them celebrate the milestones as you get closer and closer to the agency you want to be? How are you going to celebrate people living by the values and getting you closer and closer, closer to the vision of your agency? That’s an ongoing thing and you have to be the head cheerleader. That’s your job. 

So that’s number one. Number two, let’s talk about new business. So like I said before, new business is a two headed beast. It’s new money from new people and it’s new money from existing clients. So you have to separate those two. 

So let’s talk first and foremost about the most important one, which is actually more money from your existing clients. 60 to 70% of your net new revenue should come from existing clients. For many of you that is the only way you survived 2025 was that your existing clients hung in there with you and some of them spent some more money. Maybe you just kept your head above water, but the way you survived the year with new business being so tight and people being so weird about sales cycles and tariffs and all the other things that people have struggled with in this last year, many of you have survived off of the kindness and trust that you have built in your existing clients. 

So as you know, probably we have a whole two day workshop on how to build a system around growing your existing clients. Not going to get into all of that. I don’t have time to do two days worth of content in this solo cast. But I will say a couple things about it. Number one, looking at your AES and saying, hey, grow your book of business is not a success track. They don’t know how, they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the authority and responsibility. They can certainly play a key role, but you cannot expect your 25 year old or even your 35 year old account exec to be able to grow your client’s new business all by themselves. It is a team sport and you need to have a whole operational system around it. It’s not as complicated as you think, it’s not going to be as expensive as you think. But it does take everybody playing their role to make it work, number one. 

Number two, I think there’s opportunity always for Lucky Strike extras for you to hear or see opportunity. And we did a whole piece of research in 2024. Our agency, Edge Research was all about, hey, how, where and when do you give your existing agency more money? So in the show notes, we’re going to give you that executive summary to download so you can take some of the ideas that clients have said. Here’s how the agency should ask us for more money. Here’s when the agency should ask us for more money. Here’s when I want to hang out with the agency and have these big picture conversations and talk about the future. 

So make sure you read that executive summary and you put some of that into play. When we get to client love, we’ll talk about a couple things specifically that you need to do to grow those existing pieces of business, right? To create that, cultivate that relationship. 

So that’s half of new business. And the other half of new business, of course, is new money from new people. The reality is, and I have been saying this since before COVID and I just keep saying it louder and louder year over year over year is if, if you’re not known for anything, if you are a full service integrated marketing agency like all the other full service integrated marketing agencies out there, it is really hard to win clients unless you are winning them through referrals. 

Referrals are great, absolutely great. And meeting them or knowing them or having opportunities come in the door because people know you or know of you as a person, awesome today. But when you go to sell your agency in two years or five years or 10 years, the fact that you, the owner can bring business in the door actually diminishes the value of your business. 

If you don’t have a new business program in place where the agency and the agency’s reputation and what the agency is known for is attracting right fit clients, that is critical. Not just you, the person, but the agency. 

And how do you do that? I know you’re sick of hearing me say it, but honestly, you’ve got to figure out a way to specialize. You cannot be a full service integrated agency and serve everyone and think that anyone is going to differentiate you or know who you are or find you in in an AI search or a Google search and you’re going to pop up for what they’re looking for because no one’s searching. 

No one is searching for. I want a generic agency that works with everybody. Everyone is searching for. I want to find an agency that understands my world or can solve my problem. Niching boils down to two things. I can. I understand your world. So I am an industry expert, right? I am a subject matter expert. Our agency only works with pharma clients who have products for women over 50 that is an industry specific niche. Pharma, not a niche. Healthcare, not a niche. All too broad, but women over 50. Pharma, absolutely a niche. 

So that’s who, right? That you understand me. The other who is. You understand my audience. We understand the millennial mom audience better than anybody else. We understand the boomers better than anyone else. We understand the disenfranchised kids under 20 better than anybody else. Whatever the audience is, if you have a way of connecting with and communicating with that audience, we have a way of reaching disenfranchised audiences who are isolated in communities of their own ethnicity or some other barrier that they don’t break out into mainstream media that we have to find them in a different way. A great example is doctors. Doctors are really hard to reach. So we have an agency in AMI that all they know how to do is get in front of doctors and influence doctors. That’s a niche, right? That’s an audience niche. 

So industry niche, Audience niche. Or we know how to solve a very specific problem. Not all marketing, but a very specific problem. So butts in seats for events or people to participate in trials for new pharma drugs or people to shift from one product like a bank to a credit union. We know how to move the. We know how to make people attend rallies. We know how to make people vote a certain way, whatever it may be. We know how to solve a problem you have, but it’s going to be a specific problem. 

So industry audience solve a specific problem. But you have to find a way to be an expert in something more narrow than marketing or advertising or PR or whatever your sort of niche or specialty in our industry is. 

It’s awesome if you have both of those, right? So it’s a. We are a PR firm that specializes in the automotive industry, whatever that may be, whatever that combination is, that crosshair of industry and audience or industry and problem solved or channel specific. But you’ve got to be more than a generalist. You. It is so hard. We see the financials of hundreds and hundreds of agencies every year. And I’m telling you, the ones that are struggling with single digit profitability, if they’re profitable at all, are the generalists. 

Agencies that have a niche, that have an area of specialty, that are able to say to a client, we are an expert at this. We can fast track getting the work done with you because we’ve done it for clients like you for a decade or more. We understand your audience, we understand your product or your service. We get it. Clients want that shorthand. Clients do not want to teach you their business. 

So number one, you need to figure out how to, how to define yourself in a way that if I’m looking for someone like you, I can find you. You need to be findable, right? And you need to be findable for something that I care about. 

And the way you do that, of course, is niching down and then sharing what you know, teaching, being an expert, doing a research project and talking about that research, standing in an association stage, talking about what you’ve done for clients. However you decide to do that, however you decide to share your wisdom, your knowledge, your insight, that’s how you get found. 

I’m not telling you anything you’re not telling your clients. 75% of the purchase decision is made long before the buyer is known to the seller. Why? Because we have all of these tools where we can find what we’re looking for, whether it’s an AI search, a Google search, some other way, but we’re finding people who have expertise. 

So I’m at a conference and I’m talking to my peers and I’m saying, boy, we are really getting slammed in this area of our business. And somebody goes, oh, well, our agency specializes in that and they’ve done a great job. Really. I would love an introduction. Even, even the verbal searching is around something specific that people are looking for. 

So you’ve got to figure out how to be known, what to be known for, and how to be found and known. That is you. It’s not a committee decision. It’s not something super complicated. Do not allow perfection to get in the way of getting it done. Five niches is not a niche. You know, you can’t create content around five different things. Most of you don’t do a great job of it around 1. 

So you need to really just decide that you are going to commit, you are going to plant that flag in the ground and you’re going to be that agency. You’re going to be that. Oh, they are the fill in the blank agency. What is that? Fill in the blank? And how do you prove it to me? 

Because remember, one of the things that we found in research is not only do clients want a subject matter expert or a niched agency, but they want to hear that you’re a niched agency, not from you, but from other people. They want it from third party sources, they want it from search engines, they want it from referrals inside their trade associations. They want other people to say you’re an expert. 

How do you get that to happen? By being an expert and by sharing what you know so that other people experience and benefit from your expertise. 

So your job, does that mean you have to create all the content? No. But should you be the one that decides with a very small group of people what your niche is? Absolutely. 

And we’ve created a great tool that will help you grade some of your options. I’ve talked about it before, the niche criteria. We’ll put it in the show notes. 

But it’s time for you to stop dinking around with five different niches or no niches and think that that is going to be the way for you to survive the next decade. Because I don’t think it’s true. I think more and more and more subject matter expertise is going to matter. 

So that’s new business. So we’ve talked about mission, vision, values, we’ve talked about new business. I’m going to take a quick break and then we’re going to talk about your people and running your business and client love. All right, I’ll be right back. 

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Hey everybody. Just want to remind you before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AMI community and to find it. If you’re not a member, head over to facebook.comgroupsbabaPodcast. so again, facebook.comgroupsbab podcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader and we will let you right in. And you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are going to be of value to you. So come join us. 

All right, we are back and we’re talking about what you, the agency owner, need to do in the next 60 days to make sure your agency is ready for 20, 26 and beyond. 

So talked about new business, we talked about understanding mission, vision, values. Where are you headed, why are you headed there and how are you going to get there? And now I want to talk about who am I going to take with me, My people. 

So depending on the size of your agency, you may have everybody might be a direct report to you. In most cases, that’s not true anymore. And most of you have a mix of full time employees, part time employees, contractors, partners, and how you treat all of them and how you create and cultivate relationships with all of them is going to be different. But let’s talk about your employees for right now. Okay, These are the people that here in the states get a W2 from you in other countries, get some sort of documentation. They get a paycheck from you, right? And so these are, these are your ride or die. This is your internal team. 

Understand that they need some things from you that are important. Number one, what they need is they need to know that if they invest in getting better and better and better, which you keep asking them to do, lifelong learners, we gotta keep growing. But if they’re gonna do that, if they’re gonna get better, and you’re gonna ask them to do that by having quarterly growth goals that you hold them to, because you’re gonna remind them that if they stay stagnant, they get stale very quickly. In our business, being stagnant is the kiss of death. We have to keep getting better and smarter. And so you’re gonna have quarterly growth goals that they’re gonna identify with their direct supervisor, whether that’s you or someone else. And, and it’s their job to hit those quarterly growth goals to learn whatever it is they’ve set their sights on learning every quarter. So they keep getting better. 

But if they’re going to do that, what you need to also show them is there’s opportunity at your agency. Because the last thing in the world you want is for them to keep getting smarter and better and then figure out that they can’t go anywhere inside your shop, that they’ve, they’ve risen as high as they can, there’s no more opportunity for them. So they take all of those smarts and all of that wisdom and they take it to another agency. That’s the worst Thing? Well, the worst thing actually is that they don’t get any better, that they stay stagnant and then they stay at your shop. That’s actually the worst thing. But the second worst thing is they get smarter and then they think they cannot stay with you and keep growing and taking care of their family. 

So you’ve got to figure out career pathing. No matter how big your agency is, you have to show me the employee how I can keep growing professionally and that there are rewards tied to that title, salary, opportunity. 

And I don’t care how small of an agency you are, there are opportunities. Maybe it’s not Junior Woodchuck to Woodchuck to Senior Woodchuck to Woodchuck, supervisor to director of all the Woodchucks. Maybe it’s not title. Maybe it is in opportunities, Maybe it is in better clients that I get to work with. Maybe it’s in more learning that I get to do. Maybe it is that I get to lead some special teams. But it’s not necessarily being a department head. You’re going to have to figure out how do you keep the work enticing, how do you keep the opportunities plentiful for your team? So that career pathing is really important. 

And again, for some of you, you might have an HR department who’s going to help you with this, or you’ve got an HR consultant. For those of you that are AMI members, you know that we built out like 40 job descriptions, which basically are the building blocks for that career pathing. You can Download those. They’re 85, 90% done for everybody. And all of you are going to have to tweak them a little bit, but you’re almost there. 

So whether you have an HR department, whether you have an HR consultant, whether you’re using AMI tools or somebody else’s tools, or you’re figuring this out yourself, you’ve got to have this figured out because our employees today don’t see the path. So not only do you have to figure it out, but you have to show them the path and you have to show them what they need to do, both hard and soft skills. To move to the next step on that path. 

You need to map out. You need to create this vision for them of what they could be if they wanted to be, have conversations about whether or not that’s what they want to do, and then help them figure out where do they need to get stronger, where do they need more experience? How can you help them have that experience? Where can they find those learning opportunities to map out that Career path. 

So that’s number one. Number two, those quarterly growth goes really critical. Three, understand that it is going to be very hard for 2026 to be a growth year for you if you’ve got a lot of turnover. 

It’s tough. It’s tough to do what we do every day. But when you’re constantly swapping out key players on the team, clients hate it. You have all that downtime of ramping somebody up. So you want to have a retention plan and you want to understand the career pathing is part of that. Helping me understand how I can keep moving through the business and keep growing is certainly part of it. But also you have to create a place that I want to stay at that has a culture where people care about each other, where people help each other. You, agency owner, have to start that seed. Can you do it by yourself? No. But you have to start the seed again. 

Part of that comes from mission, vision, values. But a lot of it is, how do you invest in your people? Are you giving them learning opportunities? Are you bringing the whole team together? I don’t care how dispersed you are, Are you bringing them together a couple times a year so that they can physically have that face, time to get to know each other and to start creating bonds and relationships with one another so that they want to help each other? One of the things that has happened post Covid is the connective tissue between our teams is not as strong. And when that’s not strong, it’s easier for people to leave because they don’t feel like they’re letting anybody down. 

So you want to create a culture where everybody is so interwoven and they value each other, they see each other, they help each other, and that doesn’t happen if you don’t create opportunities for them to cultivate that relationship. So you’re going to do that. 

And then the other relationship they really want to have that really matters to them much more than you think is they want to have a relationship with you. So I don’t care if Your agency is 300 people, 30 people or 3 people, doesn’t matter. Every employee in your shop admires you, the owner and the leader. They want to learn more from you. They watch what you do. They watch how effortlessly in their mind it is that you do those things. You know the answers, you create great strategy. Whatever it is that you do, that magic that you do because you’ve been doing this for a long time, they watch that and they think, I want to know how he or she does that. I want to learn how to do that. I want to learn more from them. I want to hear more stories about their career. I want to hear. I want them to sit in on client meetings, I want them to participate. I want to be able to pick their brain about things. 

You need to create access. And I’m not talking that you’re going to go to every client meeting. I’m not talking you’re going to attend every internal meeting. You don’t have the bandwidth for that because you got to do your job. And that’s not your job. But a part of your job is to be accessible to your team. 

So we’ve talked in the past about, you know, having monthly, all team meetings where you have a presence and people can ask questions. It’s about popping into department admins. There’s several podcasts in the history of our podcast talking about how you can have more presence. This has to be authentic to you. 

So for each of you, it’s going to look a little different. But your team wants to hear from you, they want to learn from you that big things, mission, vision, values, where are we going, why are we going there for sure, those things, but also little things. 

They also want to know that you see them. And so whether you do that by being super observant and actually noticing what they’re doing and commenting on it, whether you ask their department heads to give you a heads up when they’ve had a really successful meeting with a client or something they did went over really well with a client, or they’ve had some success internally so that you can give them a pat on the back and a thank you, they want to be recognized for their effort. 

And when you recognize them for their effort, you will get more effort, you will get more learning. They will tackle those quarterly growth goals all because they believe in you, because they have a relationship with you, they have a relationship with other people, and because you’ve mapped out for them where they’re headed and what the opportunities are for them. 

So that’s super critical. All right. And then the last thing I want to talk about, well, no, that’s not the last thing we have to talk about fires too. But the last thing I want to talk about is client love. 

So client love is not you attending meetings. It’s not you being the AE on a, on a piece of business. It’s not you being the writer on a piece of business. It’s that you cultivate a business owner or business leader relationship with your client on the other side of the fence. So get up as high in the organization as you can. Business owner, CEO, coo, cmo, somebody up there. And you’re cultivating a relationship with them that is really about shared ideas. It’s really about having a thinking partner. It’s really about having them having a confidant that they can talk about, what they’re excited about, what they’re worried about, what they’re working on. 

They can run things by you. They don’t on the client side, they don’t have a lot of freedom and safety to do that. We can be that for them, but they can’t do that with an ae. And odds are they’re probably not even in most of the marketing meetings. There’s somebody who works for them is. 

So you want to escalate above that day to day contact person. And you want to get as high as you can and you want to cultivate a relationship with them. And you’re not going to do this at equal levels with everybody. 

So I would think of your clients as I would rank them as an A, B or C client and that might be a mix of their spend, the value of their brand, the opportunities that maybe you haven’t tapped into yet. It might be if they’re a great referral source. It might be if they’re a known entity. But you’re going to rank them in terms of the value they are to the agency and A clients are going to see you more often than B clients or C clients. 

C clients might only get a little bit of your love. They might only get one event a year with you, a coffee, a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner, you know, drink after a conference, something like that. A B client might get two or three of those a year. An A client might get one a quarter or even more, depending on if you’re local to one another and you’re in each other’s proximity. Ideally these are in person. 

So one of the things that we Learned in the 2024 research is clients said to us loud and clear, one of my favorite times to hang out with the agency owner and to really cultivate that relationship. I know I’m using those words a lot because that’s exactly what it is, is at industry events, I’m already out of the day to day. I’m not running from meeting to meeting. I’m in big picture thinking mode. I am a little bit away from my email or my phone. I’m here to learn and to think bigger. It’s the perfect time for me to hang out with that agency owner or agency leader. And for us to do that thinking and exploring and what if ing together. 

So just a little tidbit of how you can sort of do that. Client love. So client love is again, I’m grabbing breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, coffee, we’re going golfing together, we’re at a trade show together, whatever that looks like, whatever. However you can create that connection with that client, that real genuine connection with that client, and spend a little bit of time with them. 

And by the way, this is not about selling them more stuff. This is you saying to them, you know what, we have not talked for a couple months and I really want to know what’s going on in your space, what’s going on inside the company. I want to give you some insight into some of the things we’re seeing inside the industry. I just want to hear how things are going. And that’s literally the point of the conversation, is for us just to share ideas and insights and observations together. Might it lead to some new business? Maybe. But that is not your purpose. Your purpose is to be a resource, to be a safe place for them to think and imagine and sort of experiment or dream about what’s possible. 

It’s also a safe place for them to ask questions that maybe they don’t feel comfortable asking in a meeting in front of a bunch of their employees. Might be a question about AI or privacy laws or something else, but you need to be their safe place and their confidant. And you can’t do that if you don’t know each other, if you don’t have a relationship. So that’s client love and that’s super important. 

And again, take that little, that little tidbit out of the 2024 research and make sure you for your A clients that you agency owner are at the shows, or at least a show or two, that they are at trade show association meeting, whatever it is, wherever they gather to get more knowledge, you want to be a part of that experience. 

Okay. And then last but not least, putting out fires. There are times when you have to put out fires. There’s sometimes when the fires are burning so bright and so hot that you’re the only one that can put them out. But for a lot of agency owners, this is a knee jerk reaction that anytime there’s a flicker of a fire, you rush to that fire rather than letting your team put out the fire. So 5% at the most of your job should be spent putting out fires that no one else can put out. 

But remember I was talking about your people. One of the things Where I want you to invest time with your people is creating a leadership team. One of the greatest ways for you to influence the wealth of your agency now in terms of just what you can do exponentially, but also the value of your agency when you go to sell it someday, is to have an intact leadership team who actually runs the agency, not their departments. They rise above their departments and they run the agency. 

And I want you to invest a lot of time in these last 60 days thinking about your leadership team. Your leadership team might be just two people. It should not be more than five or six people. Otherwise it’s too big. But this core group of people that can help you run the business, they should be equipped with both the knowledge and the responsibility, but also the authority to put out fires to calm, whether it’s an employee or a client or whatever it may be that they’re able to sort of put out those fires. 

You should not be the chief firefighter. You should be the last resort of the firefighting, not the first resort. You need to build your fire department, your leadership team, and that they can douse most of the fires and most of the problems that the agency has day in and day out. 

Okay, so let’s review. You need to be really clear. And by the way, if you did this five years ago, 10 years ago, it’s time to redo it. It’s time to reimagine. I’m guessing that your mission, vision, and maybe even a value or two have evolved over time. Are they mostly evergreen? Absolutely. But do they change a little over time? And certainly if you did it five years ago or 10 years ago, is the reason why your agency exists and how you’re different from everyone else has that. Does that probably need some tweaking? I’m going to guess that it does. 

Right. Your values might be rock solid, but kind of where we’re going and who we want to be and how we want to be known. I’m guessing there are some tweaks that need to be done there. And even if they don’t need tweaking, I suspect they need recommunicating. Having them in the handbook, great, that’s table stakes. If you’re not talking about them in every altime meeting, if you’re not celebrating them, if you’re not recognizing employees for living by them, if you’re not making business decisions, trying to get closer and closer and closer to them, there is work that you, as the leader, as the inspiration need to do to get everybody there. 

You also need to tell me where we’re going, why do we exist and where are we headed and how are we going to get there and break that down into milestones so I can see whether I’m the most junior person on your team. I can see the progress we’re making and I can participate in that progress then new business, two headed beast. How are we growing existing clients now? We’re getting new money from new clients because we’re known for something and we’re really good at it and we’re better at it than almost everybody else. And we can prove it because we can talk the talk and we can walk the walk. 

Right? People, how am I grooming and growing my people? Do they understand the opportunities in front of them? Are they excited about growing? Are they connected to one another? Are they connected to me? Are they connected to this vision that we have of where we’re going? Do they feel like they have a role in it? Right. All of that is your job in terms of the people, right then running the business. 

So what are the KPIs that make sure that we stay healthy? Is it the 55, 25, 20? What are the numbers that matter and how do I knit running the business with my people? So how do I make those KPIs relevant and important to my people? Are they compensated in some way? When we hit the KPIs, do they understand how they influence those numbers? And those KPIs, do they understand how they can help me pull the wagon in the right direction? 

So I’ve got to spend some time doing, setting those numbers, managing to those numbers, teaching my leadership team how to manage to those numbers, and then making sure that my people are inspired by that. Those aren’t just leadership numbers that my people understand no matter where they are in the organization, how hitting those numbers benefits them, what’s in it for me? Because if there’s nothing in it for me, then why am I going to stay late? Or why am I going to work on a Saturday or why am I going to come up with one more good idea for a client if there’s nothing in it for me? Sure, it’s my job, but we’re all motivated to take care of ourselves. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to weave that in. 

Right? So I’m running the business by the numbers and not a bazillion numbers, a handful of KPIs that really matter to your business. And if you haven’t reset those and you’re not communicating those on a regular basis, that’s Your job, and you need to do it. 

Then we talked about client love. How do you schedule that? And by the way, you know all of the events that are happening in 2026 already, those dates are out. Get them on your calendar now. Why? Because if you don’t, you’re going to not be available. You’re going to go, oh, shoot, that was an A client. That would have been a perfect conference for me to go to. But I can’t. I’ve scheduled a family vacation, I’ve scheduled a client meeting, I’ve scheduled our alti. Whatever it is, I’ve scheduled something and now I can’t do my job. 

So right now, October, November, pull out the calendar. Figure out your A clients, your B clients, your C clients. Figure out how you’re going to give each of them some attention and love. How are you going to cultivate that relationship? Get it on the calendar. You can always move it if it’s not tied to a specific industry event or something like that, but get it on your calendar. You know how crazy your calendar gets. If you don’t manage your calendar, your calendar will manage you. And you’re going to miss the opportunity to do your job. 

And then, last but not least, build a leadership team that can put out most of the fires. Teach them how to be the fire department. Be ready to come in and save the day if you have to. But you should be the last resort. 

You do all of those things, you tee up all of that in the next 60 days and you know, somewhere, you know, when everyone comes back from holiday hibernation so mid January, you bring everybody together and you get them excited about who we are, who we matter to, why we matter, where we’re great, where we’re going to lean into that greatness, where we’re headed, how we’re going to get there, how we’re going to measure it, how we’re going to celebrate it together, how we’re going to benefit from it together. If you do all of that, you’re going to have a great 2026. 

But if you don’t do it, if you forget everything else that I’ve said in this podcast, understand this next sentence. If you, the agency owner, don’t do everything I just said doesn’t get done, and your agency is going to struggle. So do your job. Don’t do everybody else’s job. Do your job. 

We’re here to help. We’ll put as many of the resources as we can in the show notes. We do Q and A’s every month. You can come ask us questions. We’ve got workshops. We’ve got other things to do. If you’re in a peer group or a member, you know how to get ahold of us. You know how to tap into us. You know you can ask in the Facebook group. We are here to help you do your job. But I can’t do your job for you. No one on your team can do your job for you. You got to do your job. 

Okay, Have a Great last quarter 2025. Come out of the gate in 2026 strong, and hopefully we’ll see you soon. Right? Thanks for listening. 

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