At many small businesses in America, health insurance costs are second only to payroll. As a longtime agency owner, I’ve gone through all the typical frustrations of employee healthcare planning. Most providers make it seem like business owners have little control over benefits packages: We can either sit tight and hope our premiums don’t spike every year, or we can look for another provider with nearly identical prices and policies. In this article I contributed to Score.org, I provide tips that will not make healthcare cheap for your small business, but they will help you trim the fat without sacrificing your employees’ well-being. Work with your agent and fiduciary partner to discover more options that could help you save.

Every business needs to make money, but not every founder knows how -- or when -- to collect it. Cash flow problems are one of the top startup killers. The fad of acquiring users now and making money later is over. Companies need to turn profits quickly if they want to survive. To keep the lights on without angering clients or investors, service-based startups should consider the advantages of retainer agreements. Dependable, recurrent income provides security that no investor commitment can match. Investors can always decide to withdraw their support, but a company with paying customers always has a fighting chance. In an article that I recently contributed to Entrepreneur.com, I discuss the mutual benefit of retainer agreements, and why they add value to your client services and how they provide a more productive working relationship. Does your agency utilize retainer agreements, or would you consider it? After you read, I'd be interested to know your stance. 

The only way to keep your agency growing is to get comfortable with discomfort. When you think back on those first few years of owning an agency, somehow the tough parts get muted. That period of discomfort — though some of it was genuinely painful — helped you transform a mere idea into a real, living thing that served real, living people. The uncomfortable period was such a fertile time. It involved constant invention and reinvention and required continuous problem-solving. If you’re feeling stagnant as an agency owner, your clients are probably experiencing that, too. They’re on their own journeys to growth. Show clients how to be brave by stepping out of your comfort zone publicly. Invite clients to join you in your experiments. In this article I contributed to smartinsights.com, I provide ideas for how you can get the buzz of growth back into your agency (and in your clients) and start practicing discomfort. If you’ve been feeling stagnant lately, this may just be the opportunity for you to get back to basics, and navigate your next stage of growth by engaging in the uncomfortable.

When you hear marketing agencies say "content is king," we don’t mean creative is king. Content’s supremacy has less to do with the creative genius behind it and more to do with the strategy that makes creation worthwhile.  Businesses now recognize that creative work is only as valuable as the results it delivers. In the old days, agencies led new business pitches with creative assets. Clients were excited to see new artistic concepts and ideas. Today’s clients want far less of that. Modern companies expect to see strategy and hard numbers, and agencies that cling to a creative-oriented past could lose business to their strategy-driven competitors. Recently I brought up this changing process in an article I contributed to Forbes.com, and elaborated on the need for agency’s to adapt and change to fit their client’s evolving priorities. Think about the clients you want to serve and the opportunities on your horizon. What roles will you need to fill to meet those challenges? What will those clients want from you, and how can you organize your company to deliver on those requests?