On your mark, get set, be creative! Wouldn’t it be awesome if being creative on demand was that easy? And it’s not just confined to your creative department anymore. Today, everyone at the agency has to be creative whether it’s your account service team bringing fresh business ideas to clients, your biz dev team trying [...]
How much of your day do you spend working ON your business as opposed to working IN your business? If you’re like most agency owners, you are too busy fighting fires day to day to even think about anything else, let alone focus on the visionary work needed to move your business forward. It’s important [...]
I was co-teaching a workshop on managing a multi-generational agency this week and one of the topics we covered was "interview questions for millennials" but I'm here to tell you -- these are killer questions for candidates of any agency or potential position. Remember to be a better interviewer, you need to be a better [...]
You know my drill – you’ve taken a huge risk in starting or buying an agency. I want to make sure you get the rewards that should accompany those risks. Most agencies have a few KPI (key performance indicators) or agency metrics they track. Unfortunately, most agencies track the wrong ones, like gross billings. I [...]
"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 [...]
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? [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
