I live in the Midwest and as a result, I am fascinated by farmers. They can do everything right and in the blink of an eye — a hail storm, too much rain or on the flip side, a drought can wipe out all of their efforts. It seems like the riskiest and most frustrating [...]
I have had several phone conversations lately with agency owners who have sales pipelines that have dried up. They’re frustrated and scared about business development. I get it. We’ve all been there. But when I asked them about their new business activity, they all admitted that they’d taken their foot off the pedal. Sure — [...]
It’s a rare agency that does not incur any travel for either themselves or their clients. Because travel norms are very different for everyone, it’s important that the agency have a written travel policy that clearly spells out the processes, boundaries and expectations that come along side that employee’s travel on behalf of the company. [...]
Hey there — folks have been asking me what tools I use to create our weekly videos, so I thought I would spell it out for you. Here’s the equipment I use. My criteria for anything I am using is that it has to be durable, reasonable small, and lightweight because every week, I am [...]
In an AMI network meeting last week, the big topic was employee recruitment and retention. If your agency isn’t struggling with this issue, consider yourself one of the lucky few. Agencies (and it seems all businesses) are fighting tooth and nail to find and keep productive, committed employees. Many of you are looking for so [...]
I know there are agency consultants who will tell you that timesheets aren’t necessary. Unfortunately, they’re wrong. I totally get it. No one likes doing them. But they are an important management tool for you as you run your agency. It has nothing to do with how you bill clients or if you’re still billing [...]
Before the recession (we when utter that phrase, I suspect we look like old men in overalls, smoking a corncob pipe and rocking on our porches but...) there were many agency owners who swore that they would never work with outside contractors. They believed that the quality and integrity of their work relied on having [...]
When I started my own agency is 1995 I was about 30 and the perfect combination of arrogant and ignorant. “How hard could running an agency be? If you knocked it out of the park for your clients and delivered results, everything fell into place, right?” As you might imagine, that blissfully ignorant attitude got [...]
When an agency shows a profit, one of the first inclinations of the agency owner is to pay a bonus to the staff. I applaud that instinct. But I don’t think you should do it simply because you have a little extra money. I believe you should have a bonus program that serves your agency [...]
You've probably heard me say it a million times, but timesheets are the source of foundational data that you need to to run your agency in a fiscally responsible way. They may have nothing to do with billing. You can value price, project price or sell your work for chickens...that is not my point nor [...]
