Every day I talk to agency owners who are worried about losing a key employee and every day another key agency employee walks out the door so it's easy to see why finding and keeping talent is the #1 pain point for most agencies today. Unfortunately, having a laid back culture, flex time and more [...]
If there is an Achille’s heel for agency owners, it’s the ability to have candid conversations with members of their team. In our work with over 250 agencies a year, this is a pattern I’ve come to recognize all too often. A strong, charismatic owner is petrified to be honest with a member of their [...]
One of the most frustrating things for agency owners is finding and keeping good employees. Before the pandemic, many agencies were having an amazing 12-18 months in terms of business development but those same agencies were actually choosing to tamp down their new business efforts because they were worried that they wouldn’t be able to [...]
We’re facing a mental health crisis in America. In the last week of June, nearly 11% of over 5,400 U.S. adults surveyed said they had seriously considered suicide within the previous 30 days. If those numbers reflect the larger population, then it’s likely that two or three people on your 25-person team have had similar thoughts. It’s easy to [...]
I don’t believe there is an ideal size for an agency. But there’s probably an ideal size for your agency, based on your goals, ambitions, age, client mix, and the role you want to play in your own shop. Whether you want to have no employees and just use contractors or you want an agency [...]
Every year, I get to hang out with 30+ digital team members from various AMI agencies hailing from California to Connecticut and everywhere in between. They come together once a year to pick each other’s brains, learn about new tools, and share best practices on how to manage a digital marketing team. One of the [...]
A few of the agencies we’re working with have committed to building a leadership team and actually holding each other accountable (you all let each other off the hook way too often) for the internal goals they’d agreed needed to be tackled that quarter. So, how do you create that leadership team? It’s not about [...]
In the last couple weeks, two agencies I’ve been working with onsite, every quarter wrapped up our first year together. As part of their homework, they had to prepare a PPT deck of every goal that they had crushed as a leadership team. I have to tell you — it was impressive. I take no [...]
Attracting and retaining talent is likely a challenge in this unprecedented time. The coronavirus pandemic forced agencies around the globe to go fully remote whether they were ready to or not. Only 16% of HR professionals say they were ready to go 100% digital. Right now, it’s imperative to control what you can, and when [...]
Many agencies are updating their handbooks to reflect new work from home policies and other changes that have come about since or because of covid. One of the policies they're re-thinking is their maternity and paternity leave benefits. I thought it might be helpful to share what seems to be the norm for most small [...]
