As agency owners and leaders, we have 90 days to put 2020 to bed and get ready for 2021. To help you prepare, I’ve created a To Do list for every agency owner to work through in the 4th quarter. Use this checklist to dodge the landmines and give your agency a leg up for the new year. […]
Okay -- so not only is it new, it's our first. Check out the Foundations mini course! Having a strong foundation for your agency is critical any time but right now, it may be the difference of surviving or not. Whether you are new to the agency owner game or even a few years in -- I promise, there will be plenty of takeaways. We've cherry picked some key metrics, decision points and techniques that every agency must employ to be successful. Foundations is a 12-week mini course that is a combo of video lessons (with some homework, downloads, etc.) and a weekly live Q&A call to talk about how you're implementing what you learned earlier that week. We are starting our next 12-week cycle the week of October 5th. Calls are every Monday night at 7 pm central. At this point, we only have a small handful of people registered which means this is pretty much going to be like private teaching/coaching for you for 12 weeks! We'd love to have you join us!
A businesswoman, speaker, life coach, and television host, Liz Nead is an expert in providing common sense wisdom around challenging issues and choices that we face as professionals. With over 15 years of experience in senior management, Nead chose to fully transition her career to become a professional speaker and author. Within the first few days of her new journey, she spoke to her first audience, guest hosted for the largest station in the state, and shot a television pilot. Liz has authored several best selling books and her work has been ranked in BuzzFeed and reviewed by the Huffington Post. She is a skilled story-teller and teacher, creating powerful personal development and team building strategies. She resides in Johnston with her husband, a retired major and 7 kids in their blended family.
Foundations is a 12-week mini course that is a combo of video lessons (with some homework, downloads, etc.) and a weekly live Q&A call to talk about how you're implementing what you learned earlier that week. We are starting our next 12-week cycle the week of October 5th. Calls are every Monday night at 7 pm central and/or every Wednesday at 3 pm central. (Pick the one that works best for you or attend both!) You'll receive the link to lesson #1's video course on Wednesday, September 30th and the first call will be the following Monday. Are you discovering this after October 5th? No worries, you can access all of the video lessons and jump into the calls whenever you register. Here's what we'll be covering: Week one: What will your agency look like in a year/3 years (starting with the end in mind) Week two: Agency math & setting up your P&L properly Week three: KPIs for your agency Week four: Differentiating your agency Week five: Marketing your agency Week six: Building and nurturing your agency’s sales funnel Week seven: Legal docs your agency needs Week eight: Key docs for your workflow Week nine: Client relationship best practices Week ten: Pricing/proposals Week eleven: Upselling clients Week twelve: Building your team (contractors, staff, etc.) Who Should Attend? Agency owners -- whether you're thinking of starting an agency, your shop is a couple years old or you've been doing this for years! We'll have plenty for every agency owner, at every experience level, to chew on. Registration Information: We kick off the video lessons on September 30th and our first Q&A call is October 5th at 7 pm central. Register securely online here Tuition: $997 [...]
Thank you for registering. You will receive this same information via email shortly. We’re looking forward to spending twelve weeks with you, helping you build or strengthen the foundational elements of your agency so that can build the agency you deserve to own. We will definitely be adopting the AMI philosophy of — "you will gain in proportion to what you share" - so I’m hoping that everyone will come to the course ready to learn from each other and hopefully from us as well. We will also be honoring the AMI commitment to confidentiality so please come ready to get to know each other’s agencies — warts and all. Here’s everything you need to know Video lessons: There will be 12 video lessons, one released every week by email. Each lesson will focus on the week’s topics and there will usually be some homework, downloadable tools etc. You’ll get a new link/lesson every Wednesday morning. You’ll have access to all of videos for the entire length of the course and for an additional 8 weeks after the course’s completion. Live Q&A calls: Every Monday, we’ll meet on Zoom for a live Q&A session. The call is scheduled for 60 minutes but odds are we’ll hang out a little longer than that if you have additional questions. We’ll send out the zoom link on Monday morning. Because of the confidential nature of some of our conversations, no one but registered participants are allowed to attend the calls. They will be recorded and you’ll have access to them throughout the course and for 8 weeks after the course’s completion. If so —shoot me an email at [email protected] Thanks, Drew Please check to make sure you received [...]
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 tenure or titles. It’s about who can actually advance your agency. Who is a holistic thinker, rather than protecting his/her department? Who offers off the wall solutions that force the entire group to step way out of their comfort zone? One of the best litmus tests? Who is an influential mentor inside your shop? Who loves to teach and celebrate others? Who lives your core values? Disregard age and title. Who is proving to you every day that they’re ready to lead? I got very prescriptive in an article I wrote for Spin Sucks so you can build a team around you that is equipped to take you and your agency further, faster. I’d love to hear if your leadership team strategy is aligned with mine or if you’ve taken a different approach. You can’t grow your agency alone. Grow your leadership team as you grow the agency. They'll serve each other (and you) well. This was originally published in the weekly AMI newsletter. To subscribe, click here.
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 credit for their efforts other than holding them as capable and accountable. They did all the hard work. I promise you, if I’d shown either agency owner the list of what they presented a year ago and promised them they’d get all of those items done (and done well) they would have laughed out loud. They’d never achieved so much in a mere 52 weeks before. So what was different? Their intentions. They entered into this year-long experiment by making a commitment to each other that they would not drop the ball or let each other off the hook. And they didn’t. Here’s what else made their efforts so successful. They didn’t over commit. One single focus per quarter and they weren’t allowed to chase any squirrels until their original commitment was complete. Regular accountability meetings. They met and reported on their progress. There was no tolerance for excuses, evasion, or the usual “well, we know you’ve been busy....” Measure what matters. We set up a list of metrics and they measured themselves against them every week. They were never surprised and they found that they anticipated shifts faster and better. They decided together which needs should get priority attention. There were no lone rangers, not even the owner. They worked in concert to assess what the agency needed most and what was needed to get it done. They stopped [...]
They say that the only thing we fear more than public speaking is death. That’s some pretty deep seeded fear! On top of the fear, many agencies want to leverage speaking as part of their biz dev strategy but there are so many questions. How do you get in front of the right audience? How do you capture email addresses from the stage? How do you convince event organizers that you have something of value to offer? The good news is – it’s not as scary or as hard as it might appear. […]
I can remember early in my career I was bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t seem to get it all done. My boss started laughing. Like belly, starting to cry laughing. At me. When he finally caught his breath, he said, “Drew, it’s never all done. This isn’t a 9-5, leave when the work is complete sort of job. You need to learn how to work smart but also not let the inbox (back then it was a literal inbox) get in your head. When you can get it all done, there’s a problem.” I’ve spent my entire career, as I imagine you have, trying to define and refine my own work habits to be as effective as possible. I have a much better sense of how I work, when I am most effective at certain tasks, and how to cleanse my palette so I stay fresh throughout the day. But, there are some days, like when I’m on planes all day (pre-COVID), that work has to get done and the time is now. Much of my job requires writing and I can’t wait for quiet, a muse, or inspiration. It’s due and it’s due now. Thrive Global asked me to share how I pack my plane trips with productivity and while my specific circumstance is probably not yours — I’m hoping these tricks and tools will be helpful in your quest to make the most of your workday. Being more effective and efficient is a key component (among many) in our Advanced AE and AE bootcamps (Sept 1-2, 3-4) as well. An AE needs to get the most not only from their own day but in how they frame up the work for the [...]
Agency owners are, for the most part, some of the bravest people I know. They have put everything on the line to start/own their agency and every day they face and move past tough decisions. But if there’s an Achilles Heel for most owners, it’s the staffing issue, especially if your agency has hit a rough spot. It’s ironic but in a typical agency, the higher a person’s salary, the less billable client work they do. They’re running a department, doing admin work, or chasing after new clients more than serving clients. I’m not suggesting their work isn’t valuable. It just isn’t billable. What balances that out is that most of your younger, less expensive employees are very billable. Their billable hours cover the non-billable hours of the more senior staff. If you look at all of the hours your agency employees (including the owner) works — you need to be at 60% billable overall. Most agencies struggle to get into the 50-55% range. Which is why you aren’t making the kind of money you’d like to make. Unfortunately, many of you are out of proportion. You’re over-staffed in general and in particular, you’re top-heavy. You might have a large leadership team or multiple owners. On top of that — you’ve got an employee or two (or more) who have been with you for a very long time. You’ve given them regular raises and now, if you’re honest with yourself, they’re overpaid. Odds are, their skill sets and energy aren’t really what they used to be. But you feel a loyalty to them and so they stay. You’ve been okay with a net profit that’s nowhere near the ideal range and you’ve stayed in the [...]
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