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Why Who You Spend Time with is Critical to Your Success

"We are the average of the five people that we hang out with the most." Jim Rohn is famous for making that statement and I believe he was absolutely right. But most business leaders won’t take the time to be thoughtful about the people they surround themselves with and I think that’s short-sighted. Who are you hanging out with? What does your average look like? Determining who your posse is says a lot about you but it also says a lot about where you’re going. The people that inspire you, challenge you, teach you, celebrate you, call you out, push you and fill you with joy are the people we’re going to be talking about in this solocast, so join me and discover: Why I absolutely believe Jim Rohn’s famous adage that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with Why you should go back and take a look at the one page life plan I outlined in episode 10 Spending time with the people who inspire you to commit to excellence in every aspect of your life Spending time with the people you learn from that challenge you to think in different ways Spending time with people that you can teach Hanging out with people who see you more clearly than you see yourself Spending time with people who will call you out when you need to be called out Having people in your life that make you push harder than you would on your own Spending time with the people that fill you with joy Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own [...]

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How to Utilize Innovation Initiatives to Inspire Your Clients and Your Team with Kris Hoet

In the research that AMI does every year, one of the things we hear is that clients are looking for agencies that can bring them fresh concepts, big ideas and innovative solutions. So, what do these kinds of innovation initiatives look like and how do agency owners inspire that kind of thinking inside their shop? My podcast guest Kris Hoet owns the international agency Happiness and is a master of innovation. He loves the idea of messy experimentation and really collaborating with clients on projects rather than following the same old templates over and over again. He’s been on both the client side and the agency side and sees how much good can come when you infuse your agency with collaborative, out of the box thinking.   Come along as Kris and I lay out a plan to help you inspire your team for this kind of action by learning:    Why Kris made the jump to the agency side — and why he started his own agency Innovation initiatives and driving change in every aspect of a company Why small changes across a company are better than one big change Getting ideas for change from other industries Some feeds that Kris follows to get inspiration Finding the time to focus on innovation and learning for learning’s sake while also running a client-driven profitable business Why everybody needs to be involved in an initiative Working in a messy way with these innovation initiatives and why that demands more trust between agency and client Why you can do this with your employees you have (if they’re actual good employees) How to inspire your team to want to innovate How to get innovation started Kris Hoet has [...]

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Why is Communication Important in Leadership?

Why is communication important in leadership? If you’ve been struggling to work with some of your team members, odds are you have not embraced the idea that employees need clarity. Truth be told — most agency leaders struggle with this, especially if they are offering constructive criticism or even tougher — disciplinary action. Agency owners and department heads are notoriously passive aggressive in their management style (you may well be the exception to the rule) and I think there are a few reasons for that. Read more to help answer the question “why is communication important in leadership?” Most agency owners/leaders are accidental leaders  Odds are you were a brilliant writer, art director, account exec or some other tactical role earlier in your agency life.  At some point, you either got promoted or decided to hang up a shingle. Suddenly, you’re the boss and now you have to supervise people. In many cases — the people that used to be your peers.  And you’re flying without a net because you’ve never been trained or coached on how to mentor and coach a team. You don’t have a practice dummy  When we’re trying to learn a new skill, it’s ideal to be able to practice before we have to actually execute. Managing people doesn’t work that way. So you need to ask for a lot of forgiveness as you improve. Admitting that you didn’t handle a conversation well or could have been better at a coaching opportunity doesn’t negate your authority. You may not have good role models   It’s easy to conjure up the name of a bad boss but much tougher to point to someone who really did mentor you, give you constructive and specific [...]

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4 Extreme Leadership Principles and How to Become a Great Organizational Leader with Steve Farber

All you need is love. The Beatles put it to music but my podcast guest Steve Farber has taken those words to heart and put them into action! Steve is an advocate for extreme leadership and has built his business on the framework of love, energy, audacity and proof (LEAP), the four characteristics of an extreme leader. His book, “The Radical Leap” is one of my favorite business books of all time. Implementing these four extreme leadership principles will drastically change the way you think about leadership. For Steve, “extreme leadership is not about your position. It's not about your title. It's not about what it says on your business card. It's not about where you perch on the org chart.  It's about your willingness and ability to step up, to change things for the better, often at the risk of personal sacrifice.” Isn’t this the kind of leader you want to be? Follow Steve and I on the journey to becoming an extreme leader by discovering: The definition of “Extreme Leadership” What an extreme leader does Love in the business place Putting in more energy into your business than you take out Why leaders need to be audacious and willing to fail What agency owners can do to become more audacious How a business that embraces extreme leadership looks different Steve’s book “Greater Than Yourself” How to become one of the greatest leaders by lifting others up What agency owners can do right now to start working on the ideas from this  episode Steve Farber is listed as one of Inc’s global Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts. He is a Leadership Pioneer, Strategist, Keynote Speaker, and Bestselling Author on Extreme Leadership. His expertise [...]

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The 3 Must-Have Workplace Meetings Every Organization Should Be Having

Humorist Dave Barry once said, “If you had to identify, in a single word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”   Most of you feel the same way. The last thing you need is another meeting but I am here to tell you that there are some meetings you absolutely need. They’re an investment. An investment in making your agency better, an investment in your people, an investment in your culture, and an investment in building the best team possible. Join me for this solocast as I lay out the must-have workplace meetings every agency should be having: The daily traffic / huddle meeting for discussing daily vital priorities and how to make this meeting work regardless of agency size The monthly all-staff meeting for informing and inspiring your team The twice a year to quarterly meeting for team building and planning Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies in a variety of ways. He works with agency owners in peer network groups, teaches workshops for owners and their leadership teams, teaches AE bootcamps, and does a lot of consulting. Because he works with a lot of agencies every year — he has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small [...]

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Building Your Business for the Future with Jason Swenk

One of the goals of many agency owners is to build a business that has enough value that someone will want to buy it from them down the road. If you got a call with a cash offer for your agency tomorrow -- would you be ready? Would your agency be? That’s exactly what happened to my podcast guest, Jason Swenk and because he had a plan -- he was ready.   He calls himself the defender of truth, justice, and effective business practices and he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to agency value. In his opinion, the only difference between an eight-figure agency owner and someone who is struggling is their systems. It's not about how smart they are or their experience. It all comes down to having the right systems in place. This is just one area that Jason’s expertise can help you in building your business/agency with the future in mind. Learn more as Jason and I explore: How Jason prepared his agency for sale The importance of systems inside an agency What to do when the systems you put in place make you nonessential for day-to-day operations Lead generation: why this is the biggest pain point for agencies and what can be done about it How agencies can deliver exceptional value to clients willing to pay a premium price and how to get those clients in the first place How to recognize which clients to seek out and which to avoid Jason’s Agency Playbook Things agencies do to get in their own way Agencies and niche: why you need to start very, very small What can agencies do right now to take action on the ideas in this [...]

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Strategies for Increasing Employee Success in Your Agency with Art Boulay

Whether you want to improve the skill, leadership and commitment levels of your current team to elevate them to be the best they can be or you need to add a superstar to your roster – you have to be able to assess their skills, attitudes, behaviors and motivations. How do you make increasing employee success happen? Most agency owners are not development or hiring experts. How do you determine if you have the right people in the right seats? How do you know you’re hiring not just the right person, but the right person for your agency? Do you just go with your gut and hope things will work out for the best?   Having the wrong person in the wrong seat or hiring a bad fit employee will cost you about nine months of their loaded salary. And that’s before you factor in the potential risk of losing a client or team members. My podcast guest, Art Boulay can ease some of this angst by offering common sense solutions for hiring better employees and making current employees stronger. He does this through a series of assessments both of current employees and prospective hires to help you keep your agency on track and moving forward. Art and I discuss the ins and outs of employee acquisition and retention.  Amongst other things, we cover: Assessment tools for hiring the right employee lead to more objective and effective hiring How Art’s tools can assess agencies, what makes them unique, and how that will help to find the right future employees From hire to retire: what employers and employees should do to ensure that employees don’t leave right away The strategies for increasing employee success in any [...]

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Why Accountability Partners are Vital to Your Professional Growth with Adam Carroll

Agency owners are creative by nature and as such, our minds are churning 24/7 with ideas and new initiatives we want to experiment with and implement. But which ones are worthwhile? What should we pursue and what should we skip over? It’s helpful to have a sounding board to explore these potential directions before you take off after them. In this podcast, my guest Adam Carroll has been able to harness the power of great partnerships (accountability partners and mastermind groups) and effective accountability to help determine which ideas really deserve attention and which ones don't. Adam has been able to rely on his mastermind groups for accountability, brainstorming, and guidance, and he leverages his accountability partners for productivity and challenging his habits and patterns. Both avenues, accountability partners and/or mastermind groups, are exceptionally valuable to your business because they help you dig a little deeper and hold you accountable. Adam and I explored these ideas from an agency’s perspective by showing you: How having accountability as an owner allows you to put your time into the ideas that matter, making the most impact for your agency How he makes the most of slow business periods to increase productivity How to find a great accountability partner who will be more concerned with pushing you forward, rather than protecting your feelings How to work on your business, not in your business. How taking five minutes to create a list of the people can help you find your perfect mastermind group. Adam Carroll is quickly being recognized as one of the top financial educators in the country based on his core message of “you are the architect of your own life.” Adam has presented all over the [...]

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Coaching and Mentoring Employees for Success in Your Agency

You look at your employees and you see what’s possible. They’re capable of even more. But what’s in the way of coaching and mentoring employees so that they can get there? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest one is you. You have to make the time for coaching and mentoring employees if you ever want them to reach their potential and serve you, your agency and your clients at the level you’re looking for. In a recent solocast, I walk you through some ideas that can help you find the time to become part of the solution, rather than contributing to the problem. The solution is actually pretty straightforward and is critical to not only the employees’ success but your agency’s as well. In this solocast, I help you explore: how to be a good mentor and teacher on a regular and consistent basis how to set priority or growth goals for your employees how to provide your employees a time and place to ask questions and relay important information how to give your employees the opportunity to toot their own horns or those of their co-workers how to identify obstacles for your employees before they become overwhelming By putting these ideas for coaching and mentoring employees into play, you will not only create an environment where the employees know they need to keep getting better but they’ll be hungry to do so.  It will also help you keep your best employees.  Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- [...]

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How to Clear the Obstacles that Prevent You from Growing and Scaling Your Business with Karl Sakas

Starting an agency is easy. Growing and scaling your business is anything but. There are lots of obstacles and landmines, not to mention just trying to run the agency, which can get in the way.  My podcast guest Karl Sakas and I chatted about those obstacles and how to move around them.   Some of the specifics we talked about included: the number one question owners must answer in order to understand what type of agency they want to grow ways to delegate work so you can focus on what you love about agency work how agencies can manage their time, stating, “no one will defend your time but you” how to figure out where you want to go and get people to help you so you can get there faster. Karl Sakas served as the #2 man in a couple different digital agencies before he created the Marketing Agencies community at Inbound.org, which has over 1,000 agencies in 48 countries. As president of Sakas and Company, Karl advises agencies worldwide about strategy, operations, and leadership.He has recently published a book entitled, “The In Demand Marketing Agency: How to Use Public Speaking to Become an Agency of Choice.” To listen – you can visit the Build A Better Agency site (https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/karl-sakas/) and grab either the itunes or Stitcher files or just listen to it from the web.   If you’d rather just read the conversation, the transcript is below. If you're going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn't you get the benefits too? Welcome to Build a Better Agency, where we show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invest in employees, and best of [...]

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