What agency employees said will make them stick around longer with Drew McLellan

Hey, before we get to the show, I just wanna remind you that we have created a private Facebook group just for you, our podcast listeners. There are almost 1500 agencies, agency owners inside that Facebook group every day talking about what’s going on inside their shop, asking for resources, gut checking decisions, talking about everything from pricing to hiring, to biz dev. All kinds of things are happening there. We’re starting conversations. You guys are starting conversations. What I love about it is the community’s coming together and sharing resources, encouraging each other, and just sort of having a safe place to talk about what it’s like to own an agency. So all you have to do is head over to Facebook, search for a Build, a Better, Agency Podcast group, or Build, a Better, Agency Podcast.

And you’ll find the group. You have to answer three questions. If you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. But they’re simple. It’s, do you own an agency or do you work at an agency? And if so, what’s the URL? What are you trying to get out of the group? And will you behave basically? So come join us. If you haven’t been there for a while, come on back. If you haven’t joined, join into the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, PRR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Bill, a Better agency. Welcome back if you’re a regular listener, and thanks for joining us. If this is your first time, this is one of my solo casts, so no guests this week, just you and me hanging out talking about something that odds are, I’ve been talking to you a lot about over the last month or so to the point that I think, oh, I should probably talk to everybody about this. So that’s, that’s the plan for today. Before I tell you what we’re gonna chat about, every time we do a solo cast, we of course give away one seat to one of our live workshops. So here’s how it works. You go to any place where you download this podcast and you leave us a rating and review.

So that might be for some of you, it might be Google, for some of you, it might be iHeartRadio, might be Apple Podcast, whatever it is. But just go ahead and leave us a rating and review. Take a screenshot of that and send it to me. So you’re going to email it to me at Drew at agency management Institute dot com. And the reason why I need you to do that is because in Mo, on most of those sites, you use a username and I can’t match your username, even if it’s cats, our best dogs, our worst 22, I have no idea who that is. So send me the review with your actual name and your agency name, and we will put your name in a drawing.

Your name stays in there until you win. So you know, our universe isn’t that big. So sooner or later you’re gonna win a workshop. And those workshops go for about two grand a piece. So all you have to do is get yourself to Denver and the rest of it’s taken care of. You just have to put yourself up in a hotel. And the workshop is on us So. This week’s winner is Jim Bianchi. Jim owns a PR shop out in Troy, Michigan. So Jim, I’m gonna be reaching out to you, congratulations. But I will shoot you an email and let you know in case that you miss this announcement on the podcast. So we look forward to seeing you soon at a workshop here in Denver.

Okay, so here’s what I wanna talk to you about today. So if you’re listening to this real time, it’s actually the week of January 1st, 2024. And man, many of you are very happy to see 2023 in the rear view mirror. And I get it, but despite all of the challenges of 23, oh, by the way, if you’re watching the video version of this, rather than just listening to the audio, excuse the hot mess that is behind me, normally I try and keep my office pretty tidy, but somehow my office has become Santa Central. And so there’s a lot of packages and gift wrap and stuff behind me, and it’s just too much to get outta here today.

So just enjoy the holiday. Merry min. If you’re listening by audio, then no problem. Anyway, 2023 was a challenging year for a lot of you. Biz dev was challenging. Economics of the year were problematic, but for many of you, there was an upside. And the biggest upside that we heard about over and over and over again is that you really felt like you have the best team that you’ve ever had, that you have gone through all the covid crazy hires and sort of cycled through the ones that weren’t a good fit and have kept the ones that were a, a great fit for your team and for your clients.

And now what you’re worried about and what you’re wondering about is how in the world do I keep these people? So that’s what I wanna talk about. In, This Episode is what, what gets an employee to stick around? How do we make employees sticky? How do we make ourselves sticky for our team? This has always been a challenge, but I think it’s particularly a challenge after Covid with all the changes in workforce and all the changes in how we work, where we work, the fact that our employees now can pretty much work for anybody no matter where that business is. So this, this worry, which you’ve probably always had, has become more exasperated post covid.

So how do we keep those folks? First of all, here’s what I’m gonna tell you. There’s no guarantees you can do everything. I’m gonna tell you every single thing. And the reality is that not everybody is gonna stay with you. You have to recognize that there’s a certain percentage, and for most of you, it’s probably about 50 or 60% of your employees who aren’t gonna stay with you for 10 or 15 years. But there is a core of people who will stay with you for a very long time. I know, you know, when I look at the businesses that Danielle and I used to own and still own, we both have 20 year employees.

And I think there’s, I think there’s a methodology around that. I think there’s an a way to give yourself a better shot at people wanting to stick around and be part of something for a long time. But I, I wanna start this episode with You Can do it all right? And sometimes people just need to go, and I think part of what we have to recognize when they leave us is they’re not doing it to us. They are doing it for them. And us having that attitude of Recognizing, that this is really not about us, that it’s really about their family or an opportunity for to make more money or to move or to move up in an organization or to take on a new role or a new challenge.

Sometimes there’s just nothing we can do to compete against that, and we have to just sort of wrap our head around that and accept it. But there are some things we can do that create a work environment where people want to be a part of it and they want to stay. So I’m gonna start with the thing you should not do, okay? And then I will tell you a bunch of things that you can try and you should do that we know through both empirical data and anecdotal data work, so many of you reach out to me and say, Hey, I want to give one of my key employees equity in the company to get them to stay.

And I will tell you that this is a horrible, horrible idea. So imagine if I said to you, Hey, I have a beautifully wrapped gift. Would you like it? Now, I’m not gonna tell you what it is, but it looks really pretty and it sounds great. Of course you’d say, absolutely, I want to have it. But if I said to you, Hey, I wanna give you a gift and it is gonna cost you some money, and it’s a poisonous steak, now they’re great pets and all you have to do is feed them live rabbits once a week.

But you know what? They live forever. They’re really interesting. They’re a great conversation piece. Most of you would go, no, I do not wanna buy your poisonous snake. That’s sort of what it’s like to say to someone, Hey, I wanna give you equity. I wanna make you a partner in my business. So first of all, everybody’s gonna take it when you offer it for free. But the truth of the matter is they don’t understand what you’re actually offering them. They don’t really get that there are consequences and there are trade-offs to being a business owner.

And honestly, when you say to most of them, probably 95% of them, Hey, I wanna sell you even at a discount, a portion of my business. Most of them will say thank you. But no. So offering someone equity, I I, I cannot tell you how many times unfortunately, an agency owner has disregarded this advice, has given one or multiple people, two, one, 1%, 2%, 5% of their business. And in the beginning, the employee is super excited about it. But you know what? At the end of the day, couple things happen every time a couple things happen, number one, the employee still leaves, and now you have to buy the equity that you gave them back from them at fair market value.

So they’re leaving to go to one of your competitors or somewhere else, and you have to pay them for the gift that you gave them for free. Or because in your haste, you gave them shares without really walking them through what it means to be an owner. The obligations of ownership, the risks of ownership, what you discover is they’re actually not good partners and they’re not someone you wanna share your business with. And again, now, now we have a messy breakup situation on our hands, and you still have to buy the shares that you gave them for free. so if you think that equity is going to keep someone in your shop, first of all, I’m gonna tell you you’re wrong.

Unless, unless they own 20 or 25%, that’s, that’s enough that they really do feel like they’re owners and they feel the benefits of ownership like distributions or dividends and things like that. But the reality is, being a minority partner in a privately held business isn’t all that great shakes, their vote doesn’t really count. Even if you treat them like an equal partner, the at the end of the day, you, your votes trump their votes. So they don’t actually have a lot of partnerships say in how the businesses run. The dividends they get aren’t that big. And if they are gonna buy more of the agency someday, they’re just going to have to use those dividends to buy future shares.

So it just isn’t as attractive. It sounds super attractive when you say it to them in the abstract, I want to give you equity, I wanna make you a partner. But the reality of it isn’t as sexy or awesome as we think it is, or as they hope it is. And so I can think of one example in all the times I’ve seen this happen where the, where the person actually stayed and a decade or so later actually did buy the founding partners out. But that’s it. One time that that strategy worked. And the rest of the time, I, I cannot, I can’t count how many phone calls or texts I’ve gotten from angry, frustrated, disappointed agency owners who gave away parts of their business and then had that partner turn around and leave, and then on top of that had the really unfortunate situation of having to buy back the gift that they gave them.

so if you think that ownership is gonna be sticky, I’m here to tell you it’s not. The only way it is sticky is if they actually buy the shares. And even that, even that when they give you money for the shares with a vision of a future where they’re gonna buy more shares, even that isn’t a guarantee. We just had a situation where an agency owner had sold a small percentage of the business to a long-term employee, and the intention was very clear about this person buying the agency found her out, and she still left.

She still found a better opportunity. She found she didn’t really have the appetite for buying more shares. And so she sort of felt stuck like, I’m not gonna buy more shares and I’m being offered a better gig over here. So you know what? Even though I’m an owner of 3% or 5%, I’m gonna go somewhere else. So just know that that’s not, that’s not the way to do this. I’ll do a solo cast somewhere down the line in 24 about sort of how to approach the conversation. If you really do wanna sell part of your business to an employee, that’s a whole different conversation that we don’t have time for today.

But I’m just here to tell you, if the goal is to be sticky, if the goal is to keep your employees giving them equity doesn’t work. So don’t give away your company. Don’t give away something you’ve worked so hard to build and create value in. There are other ways to make yourself a sticky shop where people wanna stay. So we’ve done, the agency Edge research program is about 10 years old now. So 10 year for 10 years, we’ve gone out and done primary research. And in most cases, as you know, we talk to people who hire agencies and we ask questions like in 23, the question we asked was, how, when and why do you give your current agency more budget?

Because we knew everybody was struggling with biz dev. And so we wanted to figure out how to get more share of wallet from our existing clients. But twice in the 10 years, we have kind of turned the telescope, if you will, and we have talked to agency employees. One was before covid and one was after Covid. And what we were asking them about was how they felt about working in an agency, what made them feel valued, what would make them turn down a job offer from someone else to stay at your shop? Those kind of things. So here’s what we learned, and I will tell you that all of the things we’re gonna talk about today are even more valued and important post covid than they were pre covid.

These were still sort of the highest ranking of, here’s what makes me wanna stay at an agency, but even more so post covid. So the number one answer across the board, both research studies and in just our anecdotal conversations with our key exec groups, our COO groups, all of your leaders, is I want to keep growing and learning, help me find opportunities and take advantage of opportunities where I can keep getting better. Our best employees aren’t content to be static, to not grow. They want to keep grooming themselves growing.

And it’s not just about so they can get a bonus or a raise or a promotion, although that’s part of it. It’s really because they’re just driven to learn and they’re driven to get better. And thank goodness, because in our business the last, the worst thing for us to have is an employee who thinks they know everything and doesn’t wanna keep learning. So they’re looking to us to create opportunities for them to grow and learn. And you know what? Professional development is a shared responsibility, I believe. And so some of that’s gonna be on your time and your dime agency owner, and some of it should be on their time and their dime. And that’s how you’ll know when they are somebody that they’re, it’s really worth investing in when they’re also learning on their own.

They’re listening to podcasts, they’re reading books, they’re taking online courses, whatever that may be, but they’re driven to learn whether you bring up the opportunity or not. Now, a lot of our employees don’t know how or where to even go to look for opportunities to learn. So you may have to serve up some of them, but that was the number one thing is, is help me create a a growth path. So if you’ve been a long time listener or you’ve been around a MI for a while, you know that we are big fans of one-on-one meetings. And in episode 15, way back in the day, I did an episode talking about one-on-one meetings. And I gave you a form to fill out.

And what I love about the form that we created is the very first question on that form is, what’s my quarterly growth goal? And this form is a form that your employee fills out you don’t fill out. But I’m not gonna get into the whole one-on-one thing. ’cause you can go back and listen to that episode, but, but every employee should have a quarterly growth goal. Here’s something I’m gonna learn or get better at this quarter. And you or their supervisor should know what it is and should be working with them, actively working with them to figure out what resources they need, how much time do they need, how can we support you in getting better. So that’s the biggest thing you can do to make your employee feel like there’s opportunity for them.

Many of you are small shops, and so if you don’t create a quarterly growth goal and you don’t identify ways for your team members to grow, they look at your org chart and think, I’m stuck here. I’m stuck in this position. There’s somebody above me who’s not that much older than me and they’re not going anywhere. And so how in the world do I advance my career? How in the world do I advance professionally? So not only do you need to make sure that they continue to grow, but you need to carve out a career path for them. You need to help them see what the future looks like. And we’ve had agencies that have done a really great job of building out sort of this stair stepped for every department, okay, today you’re a junior woodchuck and if you want to be a woodchuck, then here are the soft and hard skills you have to be good at to earn the role of woodchuck.

Now, once you become a woodchuck, here are the soft and hard skills you need to learn to be a senior woodchuck and so on. So building that path out for them and for everybody on your team and helping them understand that even in a small shop, there’s opportunity for promotion, for raises, for professional development, for growth. Those two things combined. When a, when an employee sees that you have a vision for them and that you have a plan, and, and in all fairness, they have to work the plan, they have to get better at some things. They have to learn some skills, they have to learn some abilities that they don’t have right now. They may have to learn some, they may have to practice on some clients or coworkers, but they gotta get better at some things to go from junior woodchuck to woodchuck or from a woodchuck supervisor to director of woodchuck’s or whatever, whatever the progression is for them, wherever they are in your org, in your org chart.

But those two things combined make an employee feel like they can stay with you for a long time and there’s opportunity for growth. So those two, super important. The next one is, and this became really, really apparent in the post covid study, and we hear it all the time. One of the way, one of the reasons why an employee would not leave you is because they feel seen. And you know what, that’s challenging. And when they say that they want to be seen, it’s not just that they wanna be recognized for their work, of course they wanna be recognized for their work, they want to, they want attaboy and attagirls.

They want praise, they want recognition. They want you to know what they’re doing and that they’re working really hard and that you appreciate it. But when I say they want to be seen, what I mean is as a whole human being, they want you to see them. They want you to understand what they’re going through. They want you to know that their mom has dementia and that’s really been challenging for them. Or you know, their kid’s about to get kicked outta kindergarten because she can’t be quiet. Or that, you know, they are struggling because their best friend was diagnosed with prostate cancer or whatever it is. And it’s not always bad things.

It may be they’re working on their MBA and boy, they’re stretched super thin or they’re super excited to start investing in real estate. And so they’ve been looking at houses for their very first rental property. It doesn’t even have to be big things. It it that the fact that their kid’s birthday is coming up in a couple weeks and they’re planning a ice skating birthday party. They just want you to know who they are as a human being and they want you to understand that they bring all of themselves to work the good, the bad, the personal, the professional. And they, and they need us as leaders to care to not only see, but to actually care about their life.

And when they feel seen and cared for and celebrated and supported, that’s a big deal. So watch for signs of them looking to us to see them and create opportunities for you to have conversations where there’s room and space for them to tell you about what’s going on. And honestly, the best way to do that is for you to share a little bit about what’s going on with you. I know for a lot of you, you try and sort of keep a separation between your personal life and your professional life, or you think you have to show up in a certain way in terms of that you know all the answers or you’re not scared or you’re not frustrated by the seventh new business loss or whatever.

And I’m here to tell you that that’s not the way to show up. The way to show up is to be whole and human. And when you do that, it invites them to be whole and human too. So make sure they’re keep learning, carve out a career path, see them for who they really are holistically and care about what’s going on in their life. Create space and time to have those conversations. Back in the day when we were all in the same office and all in the same state, I used to do these things called dinner with Drew. And so I would divide the year up and every employee typically had two opportunities a year to have dinner with me if they wanted to.

It wasn’t mandatory, they didn’t have to do it, but if they wanted to, they could pick the restaurant and we would just show up and the, there was no agenda to the dinner conversation. So some of my employees would show up with a laundry list of work, things they wanted to talk about, and we would go through the list and then we would sort of tiptoe into some of the personal stuff. Other employees did not wanna talk about work at all. They wanted to talk about baseball or Disney or their kids or whatever was on their mind. I loved those dinners. I didn’t care what we talked about. I, I loved spending the time with them individually. I loved getting to know them and I loved that they wanted to share bits and pieces of their life with me.

Today it’s a little harder. So today I have to do virtual coffees and other things to try and make those connections. We always at a MI and the agency, we bring our team together once or twice a year. So we are physically together, we actually travel with our team sometimes where we’ll plan a three day weekend. And it’s sort of a mix of team building and, and just playing together. Whatever it is. I’m just telling you that you have to create space and time to get to know your people. They want, they really need, it’s not even a want. They need us to understand what’s going on in their world and everything that they’re bringing into our workspace every single day.

Good, bad, and ugly, right? So I think another one, and this is probably a duh but I’m gonna say it anyway, they wanna be rewarded for their effort. I often utter the phrase we need to treat everyone fairly, but not necessarily equally. And what I mean by that is that you need to treat everyone fairly. You need to give everyone the same opportunity for growth and for to tap into their potential, to have time with you, to have a great boss, to have a good life work balance, all of those things. We need to, we need to create those opportunities, but we don’t have to do it in the same way for everybody.

So this is part of really seeing them, right? So for some of your employees, different benefits or different work schedules or different opportunities may be more valuable to them than others. And you have some employees who give 112%, they should get 112% back. You have some employees who think of it as a job. And so their whole thing is they’re gonna come in and give you the most, the minimum viable product that they can. And maybe that’s 85 5% of their effort, great. Give them 85% back. Maybe they don’t get as much of your time. Maybe they don’t get as much attention. Maybe they don’t get as many opportunities to travel to conferences or to learn.

So again, let people show you how they want to show up and how much of their effort they want to give you and respond accordingly. But without a doubt, regardless of it, the level of effort that you get from them, you need to see what they’re doing and you need to be grateful for what you’re getting from them. It’s okay that you have some employees that are jobber and they come in, they do their job and they leave and they’re never gonna participate in the after hours activities. They’re never going to really invest in learning. They’re never going to, you know, try and get much better, but they’re a day player and you need that day player because they’re super billable and they’re really good at their craft. And that’s okay for a subset of your employees.

But stopping Recognizing, thanking people for what they’re doing is super important. So here’s a way to do that. It would be great if we just naturally could do that, but I don’t know about you. But once your organization gets to a certain size, you honestly don’t know what everybody’s doing every day and you may not hear about their wins. So create a spreadsheet. I don’t care if it’s a Google sheet, I don’t care if it’s an Excel spreadsheet, whatever it is, create a spreadsheet and list everybody. And then so down the left side list, all your employees and along the top, put all the months. So starting right now in January, January, February, et cetera.

And your job is to make sure that you thank and compliment each employee at least once a month. Now, I know this sounds contrived, I know it would be great if you could just naturally do it. And the truth of the matter is you do do it, but not equally. There are some employees who are quiet or kind of off your radar screen, or maybe they’re two or three people. They have two or three people who are their direct supervisors below you. And so you don’t really see their efforts very often and you don’t really know what to celebrate. And honestly, you have favorites. So you can say you don’t, but you do. So you wanna make sure that you’re not overpraising the favorites at the cost or expense of the people who either aren’t your favorite or just aren’t in your line of sight.

So this spreadsheet will force you to sort of track that you have stopped and said to each employee, Hey, I got an email from client X, Y, Z yesterday raving about how much they love working with you. Thank you so much for being such a great representative of the agency. Or Hey, I heard you wrote some fantastic copy that the client went crazy over. Congratulations. Thank you for doing such a good job. Hey, I love the fact that you were able to close the month and get me the financials by the 10th. You have no idea how much better that feels for me, that I feel like I have visibility into our financials.

Thank you for working so hard to get that done, whatever it is. But by using the spreadsheet, you can sort of mark the date of when the last time you talked to that person and thank them. And so let’s say there’s somebody on your list, you’re like, I have no idea what Wendy does. I mean, I know what her job is, but she’s just too far removed from me day to day. Or she’s, you know, on a different time zone and we don’t talk very often. Or she’s super quiet so she doesn’t say anything in the all team meetings and that’s the only interaction I have. Then talk to her supervisor and say, Hey, you know what? I wanna give Wendy a shout out. Give me some things that she’s done this month that are really meaningful to the agency or our clients or the team so that I can make sure I stop and say thank you.

And when you do it this way, and I know it’s sort of like scheduling date nights you in, in theory, you shouldn’t have to do that either. But you know what? You’re busy and you don’t see everybody as clearly or as often as you’d like. And so if you, if the relationship matters, you’ll go to this effort to make sure that each person sees, feels and sees your appreciation. Okay? Alright, I’m gonna stop now for a quick break and then when I come back we’re gonna talk about some different ways to reward your employees for their efforts that are a little unique. All right, I’ll be right back. Hey there, just a quick interruption. I wanna make sure that you are aware that you are cordially invited, not just invited but cordially invited to join our Facebook group, our private Facebook group.

All you have to do is go to Facebook and search for Build a Better agency. And you’ll find the Facebook group. You have to answer three quick questions. You have to put in the agency, URL, you have to talk about what you wanna learn from the group and you have to promise to behave yourself. And that’s it. And then we’ll let you in and you can jump into the conversation with over a thousand other agency owners and leaders. And there’s a robust conversation happening every day. People are sharing resources and best practices and discussing everything from work, from home policies to maternity and paternity policies, to biz dev strategies. So come join us and jump into the conversation, right?

Speaking of conversations, let’s head back. Okay, we are back and we are talking today about how do we make our agency sticky? How do we create an environment where our best employees wanna stay for a long time? Recognizing that not everybody’s gonna stay and that’s okay. And Recognizing that honestly, we’re okay with the fact that not everybody stays. We don’t necessarily want everybody to stay forever. Now, I will say this, I should have said this right off the bat, I’m assuming that you’re already doing the basics, which is barely compensating people, that you have a good benefit package. And I’ll tell you, I ha I have to say this, you guys are super generous to your people.

When, when you do the salary and benefits survey, the benefits you offer your employees often rival huge corporations. You’re generous with time off, you’re generous with the way you handle health insurance. You’re generous in many, many ways. So I’m assuming that when we’re talking about how do we get, how do we stay sticky, how do we create value for our employees in a way that they want to stay with us for a really long time? That you’ve got the basics covered. They’re well paid, they’re fairly paid. I guess nobody in our business is super well-paid, but they’re, they’re fairly paid for our industry. And the benefit package is good. And obviously that you have an, a work environment where you don’t tolerate, you know, smack talk, racism, sexism, all all of those things, right?

That you’ve created a safe place for everyone that regardless of someone’s religious beliefs, sexual orientation, all of those things that they feel safe and welcome. I I’m gonna assume all of that, if you haven’t done that, what I’m telling you isn’t gonna matter, right? If you have not made that effort. But I know for most of you that’s a given. That is an absolute, you wouldn’t wanna have a work environment that isn’t feeling inclusive and welcome to everybody. So, alright, so before the break I was talking about Rewarding people for their effort and, and Recognizing people for their effort. So one of the ways that some agencies have gotten really creative about Recognizing their top performers and creating that stickiness that we’ve been talking about is how they build out their comp package.

So not only are you thanking them on a regular basis for their efforts, and not only are you seeing them as a whole human being, but you’re really seeing them as a whole human being by letting them participate in building out their comp. And here’s what I mean. So we have several times helped agencies build out a really interesting comp model. So somebody’s got a base salary, they’ve got the basic benefit package, but for some of your employees, you wanna do something above and beyond. And, and we’ll talk in a minute about a bonus program that rewards people based on the agency’s performance. So we’ll get to that in a second, but you wanna reward them in a way that kind of singles them out and makes them feel really special and that they know this is very unique to them.

So what we’ve done is we basically have created a menu of perks and the, and the, and the menu is probably 25 things long and, and I’ll get to sort of how they, how they choose the menu in a minute. But the menu includes things like a, so a $5,000 raise a menu might include things like extra time off. It might include things that are creative like that. They get two plane tickets anywhere in the continental US that they get an iPad or some other technology that one agency owner included in there that he would babysit their kids for them, they could get lawn care or snow removal depending on where you live.

That they could get a, a shopping spree to get a new work wardrobe that they could buy. They could get work a different set of hours, they could work from seven to three rather than the normal nine to five or whatever it is. But basically what we did was we assigned point values to all of these things, Amazon gift cards, all kinds of crazy things. They, we point values to each of these things. And then the boss, the agency owner said to the employee, Hey, I just, I want to, I wanna reward you for the hard work you’re doing and the, you know, you being such an i important part of the leadership team or whatever, whatever it is they’re doing.

And so here’s a menu and you get 100 points. So however you wanna spend the points, you can do that. So, you know, on the raise it would say you could only buy one, maybe the raise was 75 points or 70 points. So that’s a pretty significant one, right? And, and you know, most of your employees are gonna choose the raise, but then they get to custom build their compensation based on what matters to them. And the cool thing is when we build the menu, almost everything on the menu other than the raise doesn’t actually cost you hard dollars. Time off doesn’t cost you hard dollars. The plane tickets and the iPad and the Amazon gift card and the shopping spree, you’re gonna buy all of those things with am with Amex points or whatever your credit card of choice is.

So we built the menu and then each employee, and this is not something by the way you’re gonna do for everyone. This is, you’re gonna cherry pick some of your top performers that you really want to make them feel special and seen and valued. So each employee is gonna then build out a compensation model that is unique to them. And it’s been fascinating to watch how different people value different things. So for example, I can remember one agency employee, the agency was based on the West coast. Her parents happened to live on the East coast and she couldn’t afford, she didn’t have the time off and she couldn’t afford the plane tickets to go see her parents very often.

So of course she took the raise and then she took the extra time off, I think it was an extra week off. And she took the three times a year, two plane tickets anywhere in the continental us. And what she said to the agency owner is, you have no idea how much it stresses me out as my parents get older that I don’t get to see them more often. I, I want eyes on them to know that they are as healthy as they say they are on the phone or on FaceTime. I wanna spend more time with them because I know that time is limited. And so now with this benefit package, now I know at least three times a year I can go see my parents, I can grab an extra day or two and then make a long weekend out of it.

I now can fly to see my parents. You have no idea what this means to me. For another employee that wouldn’t have been the subset that they would buy. They, they, they might’ve bought in but boughten, listen to me, I’m a writer for a living. They might have purchased or chosen the, the monthly housekeeping person or the lawn care things that save them time because they have little kids and they wanna spend as much time with their little kids as possible. Whatever it is. We included tickets to amusement parks. So gift, there were gift cards for cold stone ice cream. and it, the, the, the laundry list of items was long and varied, but what made it special was that each employee got to sort of custom build how they wanted to be thanked for their efforts.

And they felt really, really important and they felt really valued because it, they got to choose exactly what mattered most to them. And again, most of these things didn’t cost the agency a dime, it was mostly points and time. So we’re thinking about, alright, so I mentioned before a bonus program or a rewards program financially that is tied to agency performance. As you know, we are not fans at a MI of the, oh it’s fourth quarter and we have some money, so therefore we’re gonna give out bonuses because that very quickly becomes an entitlement. But when your employees feel like they’ve earned the bonus because the agency has performed well, that’s a big deal.

And honestly, if you, if you use a version of the a MI bonus program, you can really build a compensation model where your people earn good money on your good years. Now in the years that you’re struggling, they’re not gonna earn good money. But what I love about the program is that it’s really an education program. It really helps you teach your employees how agencies make money and how every decision they make, regardless of their role, makes the agency money, saves the agency money or costs the agency money. ’cause that’s the truth. Everything your employees do does one of those three things or a combination of them. So creating a bonus program where they learn how to help the agency make money and how to help the agency grow and, and that they’re gonna benefit from that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

So that’s a great one. And then the last one I’m gonna tell you about is in some ways the simplest and the one we do not do, ask them ask, just say to them, you know what Drew, I gotta tell you, I can’t imagine this agency without you. You are such an important part of the agency, the culture, the quality of the work we do, our clients love you, the team values you. I love having you here and I want you to stay, help me understand what you value about being here and help me understand what else I can do to make this a great experience for you or professionally and personally so that you don’t want to leave.

So that you want to stay here for a really long time and you wanna grow with the business. ’cause I have a plan for you. I have a vision for you and I want us to fulfill that vision together. So talk to me about what matters and what doesn’t matter to you. And let’s figure out a way to make this place the one work environment where you can’t imagine leaving that, that you and your family love the fact that you work here and that you wanna stay here, you want to keep growing, you wanna keep contributing, and, and I want that too. What what would that look like for you? That’s a great conversation to have and I think you’ll be stunned at some of their answers.

And the other, the other thing that you’re gonna find is what they want isn’t crazy. It isn’t completely out of the realm. And if there’s somebody you really value, it’s probably doable. Now them saying that they want full-time, pay for halftime work or crazy things like that, obviously you can’t do that, but most of the employees that you really want to stick around aren’t going to be unreasonable. They’re gonna be very reasonable, but it’s gonna be reasonable in terms that are very unique to them. And just by asking, just by having the conversation of telling them how much you value them, that alone will gain you a lot of loyalty and stickiness.

So that’s it. There are so many things you can do that are the does that, I’m not even gonna go into those. But you know what, I will tell you one more that I love, and this is one that I have done many times and it’s always super meaningful when a, when a rock star on your team goes above and beyond even their normal rock starness level, then send a note home to their spouse or their kids. So I can remember one time we were really crunching and everybody was working long hours. And I sent a note home to one of my employees. He had three boys, and I sent him the, a note to the three boys and I said, you know, hey, I know that your dad has missed some dinners and that he hasn’t been around to play with you as much as normal and as much as he wants to, but I want you to know how important his job is and how, how much we really value him.

And he helped us win a big new client. And that’s a big deal to our, to our company. and it just, it just shows what, how smart your dad is and how good he is is, is at his job. But I know that we’ve taken him away from you a little bit and I’m really sorry about that. So what I’d like you to do is I would like you to find a time to take your dad out for ice cream and I want you to tell him how proud you are of him, that he worked so hard to take care of you and your family and that he’s so valued and important to his company. And I included a, a gift card to Dairy Queen or Coldstone.

It wasn’t a big deal, didn’t cost a lot of money, it didn’t take me a lot of time. He’s a big burly guy. Came into my office the day after that letter, arrived at his house and he had tears in his eyes and he talked about the conversation they had at dinner that night about how important it is to be, to be a hard worker and to provide for your family, and how excited the boys were to take him out for ice cream. And they had picked some time over the weekend to do that. So look for ways, make it personal in ways that are meaningful to your team and quite honestly are meaningful for you too.

Yes, pay them well, yes, give them great benefits, but create an environment where they can keep learning, they can keep growing, they can see a future. They feel appreciated, they have opportunities to do new things. They have your ear, they have your attention, they have your heart. I know for some of you, this is hard stuff. I know you’re not naturally somebody who is effusive in your praise or that you don’t like to sort of wear your heart on your sleeve and show your gratitude in a really sort of verbal or demonstrative way. But I’m telling you, if you are grateful for having good employees and you want them to stick around, you gotta find a way to make them feel seen and appreciated and to genuinely give them opportunity to keep growing and learning.

When we do that, that works much better than giving away our company that works much better than really anything else that we can do. And it’s simple and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. It does cost some time and it does cost some focus and effort and it costs a little bit of vulnerability. You know what? We can all do that. And I am here to tell you, and you know this, if you’ve owned your agency for any time at all, I’m here to tell you, having somebody who has been with your shop for a while, who really loves it the way you do, who cares about the clients like you do, who cares about the team like you do, is gold, is absolute gold.

So don’t squander it. Celebrate them, see them, help them grow and hopefully they’ll stay. Alright, that wraps up this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for being with me. Here’s to a really amazing 2024 for all of us. Big shout out and thanks to our friends at White Label IQ. They’re the presenting sponsor of this podcast. You can learn more about them at White Label IQ dot com slash aami. They do white Label, design dev and PPC. So many a MI agencies, and I’m sure many non AAMI agencies reach out to them when they need an extra hand, when they’ve got a big project or because they don’t want to have those services in-house anymore.

It’s one of the things they wanna outsource. And White Label comes alongside them and partners with them to help them take really great care of their clients. So because they are born from an agency, they understand how to price so that you can still make money and you’re gonna deliver a quality product that your clients love. So check them out. Again, White Label IQ dot com slash aami. I wanna start this year probably like I ended the year, which is I want to thank you. I am so grateful that you’re out there and that you listen and that you find value in these episodes. I, I’ve been doing this for cash almost a decade now. We’re coming up on our 500th episode at some point in time in the relatively near future I think it should be this year.

And I’m, I love doing this and I love learning from all our guests, and I love talking to you on these solo cast. What I really love most of all is when I hear from you and what we’re doing matters to you and it helps, that is super gratifying. So I know how busy you are. Thank you for squeezing us into your crazy busy day. I don’t care if you listen to me at super fast speed and I sound like a chip bunk as long as the information gets to you, I’m good. So thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week with another guest. In the meantime, don’t forget to leave the rating and review so you can get the free workshop and I’ll see you next week.

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