Collaborating with clients in our systems and processes with Xenia Muntean

Hey, everybody. Drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long, and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

And then Agency Management Institute, all one word. Subscribe and search the existing video database for all sorts of actionable topics that you can implement in your shop today. Alright, let’s get to the show.

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 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 Build a Better Agency. And we are gonna talk about systems and processes and how to bring clients into the process earlier in the efficiencies of that. It’s gonna be a, a really interesting conversation. So I’m excited. I’m excited for you to jump in and join us on that. Before I introduce our guest and we get into it, just wanna remind you that we are just launching our new CFO Virtual Peer Group. So that is for any of your money people. So it might be bookkeepers, accountants, CFOs, what, whatever you call them internally, they need to be an employee, not an external partner.

They’re gonna meet for half a day once a quarter. and it is that that peer group is being led by former agency owner and CFO Sandy Couture. So Sandy and her business partners owned an agency about 75, 80 people. I think when they sold it, she always served as the CFO and owner of that organization. One of the most brilliant sort of math and accounting minds, but from an agency perspective. So has been part of a MI for over a decade, really understand sort of a MI and agency math and all the things that we need to know. But anyway, she’s gonna be leading these fearless folks that figuring out how to help their agency owners run the business better.

How, what are the accounting systems and processes that will help you manage cash flow and do projections and all kinds of things like that. So if you want more information about the CFO group, you can go over to agency management institute.com and look under the members tab and you’ll see the, I think we called it the Money People group, because it’s not just for CFOs, it’s for anybody at the bookkeeper level, the account level or the CFO level. So those folks are meeting in July and then we’ll meet again in the fall. So if you’re interested, check that out. Alright, so zania Ton is now one of the founders of plannable, which is software to help agencies produce and collaborate with clients, social media content.

So you’ll wanna check that out. But she started as an agency owner and then realized when looking for a tool, as we’ve heard other people who have developed software talk about when looking for a tool, couldn’t find it and decided to develop it on her own. And so she has a really interesting perspective. More than half of all of their clients are agencies just like you, small, independently owned agencies. And so she’s seeing how we’re working with clients effectively and maybe sometimes not so effectively. So I wanna pick her brain about that. We’re gonna talk about ai, we’re gonna talk about collaborative work with clients. We’re gonna talk about the power of being a little bit arrogant and a little bit ignorant as agency owners and what that, what kind of doors that can open up for us.

So I’m really excited about this conversation and I think it’s gonna be really thought provoking for you. So I’m, I’m excited to welcome her to the show. So let’s do it. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me here, drew.

So tell everybody a little bit about your story. You were an agency owner and you’ve made a pivot. So tell everybody a little bit about sort of your professional history and kind of the trajectory of how you got to where you are today.

Yeah, absolutely. I started a tiny, tiny boutique agency when I was still in university. I didn’t have this big dream of starting a business or being an an entrepreneur. It kind of kind of happened accidentally. I was in a student organization and one of the biggest sponsors of that association was looking for someone to handle their social media. I was like, Mimi, I’ll do it. You know? Right. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do that. I’m studying this. So, you know, that’d be, you know, great, you know, some experience. And, you know, the client was Coca-Cola locally.

It was back when, you know, social media was being run by interns and by students. Yeah. And I was just that. So I was, I was really keen to do it, but also I realized, you know, that hey, I’m, I’m handling this, this one client, it’s a great logo. Why not try to find some more, some more client? Yeah. Right. And, you know, one year into it, I realized, wait a second, I, I think I’m running a company. Is this what’s happening here? Am I, am I an entrepreneur?

So, so you’re what we call an accidental agency owner, which is what most agency owners are. It’s like you start this side hustle or you do this thing on the side and all of a sudden you have employees and you’re like, wait a second, what, what am I doing

Here? I did not sign up for this. Yeah, yeah. Right. But here I was, I had a few people on my team. It wasn’t big. We were, you know, under 10 people at, at the maximum at the peak. And I had, you know, a handful of clients. and it wasn’t just social, it was websites and branding. You know, just like any small agency, you start with something and then you deliver some other services to your clients. So it was all digital marketing, let’s, let’s say, and I was, I was, I, I did that for a few, for a few years and, you know, it was really tough. Agency life and agency work is really, really hard, especially when it comes to services that are, you know, social media was pretty new back then, regionally as a, as a marketing service.

Right. So a lot of the clients, you know, they thought they could do it themselves, basically. And it’s really hard when you have to do pioneering like that with your services and you have to do a lot of client education. Yeah.

Well, and you have to prove the value, because back then, to your point Yeah. Interns were doing it. So they were, they were pushing it down to the lowest denominator Exactly. Inside their organization. So when they pay an agency, they’re not super excited for paying premium prices for the work. Exactly. Even though we now know how labor intensive it is and all of that.

Exactly. But it was really hard. At the same time, I had a lot of friends and a lot of people in around me were in the, in the, you know, were engineers. So I was in the, in this tech space, I was attending hackathons. ’cause I, I love doing design. So I loved participating in, in tech projects Yeah. To do some ui ux to do some websites. So I joined, you know, my second hackathon and someone was pitching this idea of, you know, collaboration product for agencies to work on social. And just, you know, a month ago I was trying to find a product that would help me showcase the work that I was building for my clients for social, not in a PowerPoint, not in a Google Doc.

Something a little bit more professional. Right? Yeah. I couldn’t find

Anything and, and more collaborative. Right. That’s easier to work back and forth.

Exactly. And I, you know, obviously found the usual suspects in social media scheduling, but nothing on the workflow part. Right. So, you know, I tried finding those tools, I didn’t find them. Well, you know, it is what it is. We’ll continue to do it with PowerPoints and, and this guy that I actually knew, he was pitching this idea of a collaborative product where you can actually see how the social media post will look like, which is terrific for clients. Right. And be able to have the clients on the same page. So that’s kind of the, how the story of plantable got started. We were both working in agencies, we knew each other because my home country is very tiny and we knew each other.

So we got started on this project, validated, did a little bit of customer development to understand if this is a problem, just a specific problem that we struggle with. Or is this a wider industry? Right?

Right. Is there a demand? Sure.

Is there a demand here? Or is this just something, you know, very niche. And we very quickly realized that it’s not just us and it’s also not just agencies. This collaboration pro problem. It’s something that is, you know, for social media in-house teams, nonprofits, organizations, everybody who does work for social and is part of a team needs to somehow coordinate. And yeah, that’s kind of how the, you know, the, the transition happened. We got a small investment in the beginning, an angel investment, went to a couple of accelerators, and yeah, the transition, the transition happened. I, I was really excited to build something that is, is scalable.

’cause I, I found that that was my problem with the agency. That was the struggle scaling it,

Right.

Scaling it beyond your region, scaling it beyond the services that you have and Yeah. You know, a tech product, the software product had that appeal of, you know, you make it and then you put it on the market and it’s available for everybody worldwide. That was what I thought, you know, obviously it has its own struggles, but of course the transition was exciting. Yeah.

So at what point did you, so how back that was back when, what was the date of that?

Oh, God, two, 2016. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you, so you’ve had plannable for almost 10, 10 years, right? Yeah.

Almost a decade. Sounds scary.

So when, when did the, when did the trajectory happen and you decided to put all of your efforts into the software product and ramp down the agency. What, what was that process like for you?

Yeah, because the agency was so tiny, and because I also, I, I also struggled, I was a solo founder in the agency, so I didn’t have any partners. Yeah. And that was also, that was also challenging. And withable, I had, I had co-founders. There was, you know, this entire appeal to it, the potential investment. So for me it was a no brainer in terms of making that switch. Yeah. And, and the agency was very tiny. You know, we, we, we had just a handful of clients, so it wasn’t that hard to wind it down to wrap it it up, wind it down exactly. And, and make that switch. But I, I, I kind of made it, you know, in the course of a couple of months, the entire transition, not just winding it down, we moved countries.

So we moved from one country to another. Oh, wow. So yeah, we left, like our families and friends and everything, my co-founder dropped out of university. So everybody just dropped everything they were doing

To I can imagine the conversations with parents at that stage. Exactly. Because you were young, right? You were Yeah,

We were, we were 20, 22, 23. Yeah. And my co-founder, the dropped out of, out of university, he was 19.

So, hey, mom and dad, I’m, I’m dropping outta school to start a software company and I’m moving to another country. Yeah.

And that’s, and that’s, you know, mine, that, that’s not Silicon Valley. Right? That’s Eastern Europe.

Right, right, right.

Startups, what is that even? Right. Yeah. So, but, but it was interesting. And we didn’t have anything. We just had that angel investment, like this crazy idea. And I think it was also great because we didn’t have much to lose. We were very, very young. Right. So that was, that was a little bit easier on us. Right.

You could take the risk. You didn’t have a family, you didn’t have a house to pay for. Yeah. You didn’t have kids, you know,

And the co the careers, you know, the careers, we were just at the beginning with it, so we could, you know, always come back and pick up where we left. But yeah, it was, it was, I’m, I’m in awe with how brave we were at that point.

I often say I was a little older than you when I started my own agency. And I often say that it was sort of like the, everything was aligned for me. I was young enough to be both arrogant and ignorant. Like, I didn’t really know how risky it was. So that ignorance sort of paid off for me. And I was young enough to be arrogant, to think, well, how hard can this be? You know, I, I later found out how hard it is to own a business and all of that. But, but it that, like you, I was young enough, I didn’t have a lot of obligations. Yeah. And so I was like, all right, what the heck? Right.

The ignorance part is so important. I remember when we started out with Plannable, we were thinking, I’ve never seen a tool like this anywhere. You know, nothing close to it. And then, you know, obviously you get into this space and you realize that it is a very, very competitive space. There are so many tools in the social media space, and they’re all different, but it’s such a crowded market and, you know, we didn’t know that. So I think that was that was good. That was good. That we didn’t know. I don’t know if I would’ve started it knowing how wildly crowded the space is. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think there is some value to, to ignorance and Yeah. And maybe as business owners, as more mature business owners, we have to find ways to sort of artificially create some of that arrogance and ignorance to stay in the business and keep taking risks. Yeah. And, you know, be willing to sort of look beyond the black and white of the situation and, and sort of push to the dream of, of what we think

Is possible. Yeah. Distort your reality a little bit. Yeah. That’s how I’m thinking about it.

Yeah. So, so you went from agency owner to software developer and entrepreneur. I’m curious, but you obviously work, I have to think a lot of your clients are agencies

Yeah. With this tool. Right. More than half of them. Yeah. Yeah.

So I’m curious, as you look back on owning an agency in 20 16, 20 15, 20 16 to today, and the interaction that you have with agencies, I’m just curious what your insights are because you know, you, you were inside the bottle, right? But then you stepped outside of the bottle, so now you can kind of read the label. You know, you can sort of see our world from as sort of an informed outsider. So what, as you look at agency life today, what strikes you about how agencies are functioning today and what the demands are and all of that?

I’m, I’m focused on the back, on the backend of things, on the, what happens behind the curtains of the work that’s being produced. Right. So the workflows, the operations, all of that stuff. And what strikes me the most is that so much has changed in the agency world when it comes to trends, the work people are delivering the talent. It is, it has progressed and it has evolved so much. And services are better. And everything that junior agencies are delivering is, you know, is, is better. And it’s changing a lot. But when it comes to the back end of it, it just surprises me how little has actually actually changed.

I’m still surprised to talk with a lot of agencies that operate on the same things, on PowerPoints and emails and the same, you know, generic tools that we were operating 10 years ago, where even, you know, I, I still hear sometimes from some smaller agencies how they work with their clients on WhatsApp. And I’m like, how, how do you even handle that communication on WhatsApp? And, and some things stay the same, you know, the, the generic tools that people use and the, the, you know, the fact that processes and operations are still the last on the list of priorities. And, and that’s, you know, that’s understandable. You have so many things happening.

Yeah. The agency founders are so incredibly busy Yeah. With getting clients, retaining them, delivering, you know, the best work possible, making the team and the, the, the talent team that, you know, thinking about all of the processes and the operations that go in, that goes into the work. You know, as long as it works, people don’t try to kind kind of, you know, fix it or improve it that much. So that’s what surprised me the most.

Yeah, I think that’s true. And I, I, I think, you know, we’re entering, I think, I think post covid is the opportunity to be this renaissance season for us where we really reinvent the way we work, you know, with or without ai. And I’ll ask you about that in a minute, but I just think, I think coming out of the pandemic it is and was the opportunity for a lot of agencies to really reinvent themselves and all of that. And I’m curious from your unique vantage point, why don’t we do, why do you think we don’t do more of that? Is that just simply we’re too busy to think about it. We’re just in the grind.

I, yeah. I think 90% is that the gr the grind of running an agency and maybe a, a part of it is also, yeah. This, the, the education maybe that, that’s missing in this space on this, on this topic I’m looking at in, in the marketing industry at large, actually, I’m looking at our engineering team and how much is in the engineering space around workflows and, and how teams work and, you know, scrum and Agile and Waterfall and so many frameworks and so many ways of, of Right. Doing work as a team and delivering that work.

And I, I learn a lot from our engineering team about that, but there’s not, I mean, a lot of those concepts are being applied in marketing as well, and they partially work, partially don’t work, but they, you know, they’re not designed for, for marketing teams. Right? Yeah. And there’s not that much around processes and workflows and frameworks like that in the marketing industry for some, for some reason. So maybe education and is, is another part that’s missing.

Well, I think for a lot of agency owners and leaders, being process minded is not our native language. Yeah. If you will. Like we, that’s not why we were drawn to agency life, right? Yeah. It was because we loved the strategy or we love the writing or the design Yes. Or, or the coding or whatever. But I, it’s a rare agency owner that is super systems and process minded. Yeah. For most agency owners that, that’s, like, those are follow words, right? I mean that you have to follow the rules. I mean, Mo a lot of agency owners, and I, I suspect you were this way too, and you may still be, but we’re not great at, we don’t like rules.

We like to make up our own rules. We like to do it our own way. It’s why we took the risk of owning a business in such a crazy industry. And so the idea of rules feels limiting as opposed to what we really know, which is systems and processes actually free us up to do better work because we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day.

Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s a, that’s a great explanation. And I’m thinking about the engineering teams and, and product companies, although it is a creative profession as well, right? You’re making products, there’s something more methodical, more practical and, and writing code, right? Yeah. Whilst marketing and creative services, you know, they, there’s some sort of a freedom to it, but just like you mentioned, systems and processes are not there to, to restrict us. It’s actually to free us up. Yeah. And, you know, more time and make more space for, for that creative and strategical thinking that, that we’ve all, you know, went into business for

Well, and to, to the conversation we had about your own agency. I think when I think people who are engineering minded start with scalability and predictability, right? So it’s all about building it and making it be able to grow and evolve as you get smarter. And agencies, I just don’t think are agency owners as a general rule, don’t start with the scalability. They start with a, I wanna creatively solve a problem for a client. How do I do that? Oh, the client has this problem too. Oh, I’ll solve that one. Oh, the other client needs this. And then all of a sudden, you know, your house is sort of Frankenstein esque in terms of the way you’ve built it, because you just keep kind of bolting on new services where there’s demand as opposed to really being methodical as you use the word to think about how to build it in a sustainable, scalable way.

And I think agencies get to a certain size and then they’re like, oh, I, this is too hodgepodge. I gotta figure out how to scale it. But it’s just not how we’re natively wired. And we certainly didn’t start the business that way. So then you have to kind of crawl it back

Yeah.

And rebuild it to scale. And I think that’s, I think for a lot of agency owners, they’re like, that doesn’t sound fun at all. It doesn’t sound profitable. I don’t wanna do that. Right. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s what I like to call operational debt. Right. Also a concept stolen from engineering technical debt. Right. When you build a product and you, you’ve kind of put it together quickly and you have so many bugs and so many issues, you know? Yeah. Technical debt. Same with operations, you know, you’re reactive to growing your, your agency. So you just build it whilst you’re flying the plane, right? Yeah. Then at some point you’re gonna accumulate all of that operational debt, so you’re gonna have to pay for it. Right. Because it’s

Not, or, or get stuck, right?

Yeah. Or get stuck. Exactly. Yeah. Because it, something’s gotta give. So, yeah.

So I’m curious you by your own sort of admission or definition, were not systems and process minded when you started your agency while you were still in university.

No.

Have you changed or do you just surround yourself with other people who are more systems and process minded than you? Like did, did you, did you see a weakness or a deficit in yourself and solve it with other people? Or did you evolve to be more scalable systems, process minded?

It’s such an interesting question. ’cause you, you were talking about agency founders and I, I was thinking about how I evolved myself and one of our investors has referred to us as one of the most disciplined, disciplined run company. And I think I, I don’t know if this was in me from the get go, but I am definitely all about efficiency and, and structure and making things, you know, very in a disciplined and thought away. And I feel like I’m thriving in this type of environment Yeah. More than in a very hectic one.

Yeah. But I, I, I think this was, I think this was something natural to me that I just didn’t have the right tools or the right education when I was, you know, building and running my agency. But I think it was in me and I just, you know, got surrounded by the right environment and the right knowledge to, to actually have the tools to execute on this.

And I, my last philosophical comment, and then we’ll get more practical, but it makes me wonder then, is it a chicken or egg thing? Like our agency owners sort of habitually not system and process minded.

Hmm.

Or is it just the business doesn’t demand it’s that, of that, of us when the business is small. So we build a business that isn’t system or process mind. And we sort of put that aside. So in other words was, was that innate in you and you just didn’t use it as well as you could have or should have because the business didn’t demand it when you started the agency? Or is that a learn thing that because we’ve put you in a different environment Yeah. You had to learn how to be more systems and process minded.

I, I think it’s sort of both. Yeah. I think I learned it, but at the same time, even with Plantable in the beginning, we didn’t need a lot of structure. You know, we didn’t know if this thing is real in the first place. So why, but, and I, I, I think that applies to agencies as well. Why invest a lot in it? Right. Right. But be cautious that you’re gonna have to pay for it later. Right.

Right. As you grow, right. As you go

Cut corners, that’s fine. Cut corners with your product, cut corners with the way you work as a team, you know, deliver, you know, work fast, break things, you know, fail fast to see if yeah, this thing works or not. But at some point, you know, kind of, you have to embrace the fact that you have to fix that. ’cause it, it’s, it’s not, it’s not the successful, you know, you’re not up to, you’re not up to success when you’re Yeah. When you’re in a place where things are not very well structured and it’s a bottleneck, it becomes a bottleneck.

Yeah. Right. And often it’s the agency owner that becomes the bottleneck.

Yeah. Yeah. In, in, in many ways. I don’t know what you thought about, but sometimes it’s, it’s about yeah. Letting go and Yeah. Finding, finding your, your place in the, in the, in the company, in the team and Right. Delegating and all of those things.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So I wanna, I want to ask you about sort of how you are seeing agencies operate in terms of work process and all of that. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll get into the more practical part of the conversation just about some of your observations through the plantable lens of how agencies are showing up today, and some thoughts you have about how we might show up better. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come right back. Hey, everybody, just wanna remind you before we get back to the show, that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AAMI community.

And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com/groups/ba podcast. So again, facebook.com/groups/ba podcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader, and we will let you right in and you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are gonna be of value to you. So come join us. All right. We are back and, and we’ve had sort of this big picture conversation around sort of how it, how we all came into agency ownership and our, our strengths and maybe some of our foibles around scalability and planning and systems.

But you have a very unique vantage now that you know over 50% of the plantable, well first of all, very quickly just tell people what Plantable does and how it works so they understand the lens that you see us in.

Right. So Plantable is a work zone collaboration tool for teams that produce social media content. So if you’re an agency and you create content calendars and social media campaigns for your clients, and I’m talking more specifically on the organic side, then plannable is basically the place where you present that work to your clients. You create it, you plan it, you build that content calendar, you showcase it to the clients, you get feedback, approval, review from the clients and from, you know, any internal review and any internal approvals that you, you might have.

And then all the scheduling, analytics, performance, insights of the content. So it’s basically this entire relationship with the client and it’s all around the content that you’re building for them. And the collaboration that needs to happen

Needs happen. Okay. So yes, as you are observing your clients and you’re watching the way they work, talk a little bit about your observation because again, you have this unique vantage point, like you used to be the client and now you’re looking at them sort of from this global lens. Talk a little bit about how you’ve thought about how agencies should collaborate with clients and how, how we, what we gain or lose by having the client. So I think in the good old days of agency ownership, agencies were thought of as having all the answers and you kind of didn’t want the client to get see behind the curtain and sort of see the messy part and see you kind of working on the product.

You know, I can remember early in my agency career, you know, when we would show creative to a client, there was this big reveal, like we were all in a room together and, you know, everything was like flapped and you would talk about it and then you would like lift the flap and they would see the work. And it was like, like this, you know, if you could have had trumpets heralding the work you did, and, and it was, it was a very different time when we were supposed to have all the answers and sort of show them a finished thing. Right. And I think today, one of the things that’s challenging for a lot of agency owners and leaders is if they grew up in that sort of tadda era Yeah. Of agency life, the idea of clients seeing it when it’s not done Yeah.

Or seeing it when it’s still messy is uncomfortable.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of agencies make the mistake of not getting feedback until the very end. Right. And then the client’s like, yeah, I hate it, or it’s off mark or whatever. And then you have to go back and redo all the work again, which means your profitability is gone and all that. Yeah. So I’m curious what you think best practices are around collaboration with clients in the work process and getting their feedback.

There’s still a lot, a lot of skepticism when it comes to involving the clients in the process, getting their feedback, getting their approval. A lot of agencies would rather, you know, not have any approvals in place and they, you know, just, you know, create whatever content they think is best for the client and have as minimal involvement from the client as as possible. But I agree with your point of view, you know, in order to have the best results you do have, you do need client input and to, to, you know, retain the clients, keep them happy. So we’ve, we’ve recently done this positioning exercise with Plantable and we’ve looked at our agency clients and we’ve noticed two, two types of agencies, the smaller ones that, you know, had less clients, maybe local clients, clients from their neighborhood, you know, tiny agencies.

They didn’t have a lot of involvement from the clients on their account. Not a lot of collaboration, not a lot of feedback happening or, you know, approvals. It was more like planning and maybe the clients had access and they looked at the content, but they’re not, there was not a lot of discussion around it. Yeah. Just the, the larger clients, you know, the larger agencies, the ones that, and when I say larger, I’m not, you know, below a hundred. Yeah.

Not enterprise level agencies. Yeah,

Exactly. Yeah. Not group network agencies, still independent agencies, but, you know, with a solid portfolio of clients, clients that were either regional clients or international, very recognizable brands, maybe with a local presence in their, you know, in the Netherlands, in the uk, in the us Those, those agencies have a lot of, a lot of approvals, a lot of feedback happening in their accounts. There was a lot of back and forth on content and you know, much earlier on in the process, just like you mentioned. And now, you know, again, I’m not sure if this is the chicken and the egg, you know, did they become more successful because they involve their clients in the process?

Right. Or, you know, you get to a point where you have to, to a caliber of clients where you have to involve them in the, in the process.

I was just thinking, I was like, is are the clients more sophisticated? And they sort of expect that, right?

Yeah, exactly. But no matter what, you get to a point where this is the best, you know, this is the best tool and the best way to do it, the best way to do the work for your, with your clients. And there’s a few things that I’ve noticed from, from with our most successful agencies. It’s a lot about the way they present the problem to us. When they come to us, what they’re looking for is more transparency and more communication and how to achieve that in the best way possible with their clients. Right? So how to give them real time updates, how to have the client see the progress in, in real time. How to have those check-ins more regularly and how to present the work in a, in a clearer way and make the clients actually see, see the work.

Right. Right. Because that’s, that’s what’s most important, you know, that, that is a very, very important part with, especially with very visual, very graphic content, which is all social and all content marketing. How do you make it interactive? How do you make it engaging for the client so that it’s not just, you know, it’s not this boring spreadsheet where they have to click on links to see the visuals and the captions, and how do you make it exciting for them and very, very clear, very digestible, very straightforward for them to look at the work and also be able to interact, engage and understand it.

Right? Yeah. I think that’s the challenge. And that’s most modern and most successful agencies, they, they ask themselves this question and they try to build on that, right? They try to build on that client involvement, you know, not involving the client just in the, not getting just insights about the business so that they can make better content. That’s obvious, right? You need that knowledge, you need that know-how, from the clients, but also how do you make it easy for them to give you feedback? How do you have shorter feedback loops? How do you have very straightforward approvals and, and how do you reduce all of the back and forth and it happens on content Yeah.

So that you can get to market faster and basically

Yeah. and it kind of expedited too. I was, as you were talking, I was thinking part of this is how do we, especially with social, how do we do this Yes. Faster so we can be live, especially if something is topical

Yeah.

In, in a, in a timely fashion. Particularly if you have larger clients that are more complicated or need legal approval or all of that sort of stuff. Like how do you expedite all of that when you have more kind of cooks in the kitchen?

Right. and it, it’s important to be as real time as possible with social ’cause friends memes, right. You know, met gala, whatever, Oscars. And you have to, you have to jump on those things. And some of them might be cheeky. You have to be brave with, with social content to, to stand out. So Right. How do you get that thing moving fast and, you know, have that feedback, have that client buy in on the content, but how do we make it fast Yeah. Is the big question. Right. Basically. Yeah. And, and that’s up, you know, that’s all about systems and processes.

So when you observe some of your larger agencies sort of interacting with clients, what do you, what do you notice that they do different from the smaller shops with the local clients? Is it, is it how often they get feedback? Is it how early they get feedback? Is it both,

I think it’s a lot about their willingness to think deep about, think deeper and also customize the, the workflows per client.

So talk a little bit about that, because that sounds sort of like, like we’ve been sort of preaching systems and process. Yes. And, and now you’re saying no customize, I know it for every client. And so everyone’s listening, it’s like, yeah, I wanna do that. I wanna customize it for everyone. So talk about how do you, how do you, how do you marry the idea of Yeah. Customizing workflow with having a system and process that’s efficient and effective?

It’s, it’s such a balancing act, obviously you can’t just have completely absolutely different ways of working, right. You’re just gonna go insane for, for each client. But you have to have flexibility, obviously with clients, right? So you have to have a, a foundation of what you think is the best process to your clients. And then, you know, deriving from that, being flexible and adjusting it for each client, you know, tailoring it to each client individually and, and keeping it flexible. And there’s no secret recipe for that. It’s very intuitive depending on the client’s needs. But yeah. You know, some clients might prefer to work more async, others might prefer to review the content with you together or, you know, have those, you know, review meetings.

Other clients might need multiple stakeholders involved in the, in the approval process and, you know, others might wanna be involved in the co-creation process. Right? So those are very different needs and you can respond to them with basically having more or less the same foundation for, for the process. You know, having the same environment, having that same tool stack and a lot of the processes internally you can control them. So I’m talking about adjusting it as much as possible for the clients, but all the internal kitchen that can be more or less the same for, for each client. Right. But yeah, I think, you know, being agile and, and very adaptable, especially in today’s environment, you know, is pretty essential.

This is a very fast paced business, very fast paced industry. Things are changing a lot, especially in social, but overall in digital marketing. So we can’t really afford to be very, very rigid with the way, with the way we were working with clients.

So I, I think one of the challenges for agencies that you again, sort of get to see from a different perspective is in most agencies we, we don’t teach people how to present work. Right? Yeah. And again, I think because the world has changed, you know, when I started in the business, we did get taught because it was really presentation skills and it was salesmanship and it was, there was kind of a show, right? Yeah. ’cause you were doing it live in almost all cases. Literally we’d get on a plane and fly to a client in another part of the country if we had a big presentation because we didn’t have tools like Zoom and all of that. Now we just email them PDFs or whatever.

And so there’s like no sizzle with the stake. It’s just like, yeah, send this stuff. So I’m curious, as you observe your cl your agency clients, what do you, what do you note in terms of sort of best practices around presenting work effectively and kind of in the best light and how to speed up the approval process and less sort of naval gazing, you know, change after change, after change? ’cause that’s one of the things that kills agencies in terms of profitability, is that constant, you know, revision, revision, revision. So what are you seeing around the agencies that seem to do it well?

Yeah. So obviously this show don’t tell Yeah. Thing, right? So the old way of presenting work, especially social work, was the, was the content calendar, which was a, you know, spreadsheet, lots of links, lots of, you know, a column for caption, a column for the link, a column for this other thing. And now it’s all about making it, you know, helping them see the work, you know, show don’t tell. And a lot of agencies are doing it through very beautifully developed presentations, which require a lot of work, a lot of editing, a lot of, you know, changes and,

Well, and to our earlier point, way down the process

Yeah. Way down. It’s

So if, if the b if we put all this effort into it, the art director spends hours, you know Yeah. Getting it ready and it’s off the mark, we have to go back and do it all again.

Exactly. And some other agencies, I’m, I’m seeing them working on presenting concepts to the client presenting scripts, right? So for example, scripts for TikTok or concepts for Instagram grids or concepts for posts specifically. And getting feedback initially on that, getting feedback on that first, you know, on the idea for the, for the calendar or on, on the idea for the tiktoks. And getting, you know, buy-in on that initial level. And then presenting, you know, going through all the internal stuff, you know, creation, execution, internal approvals, internal feedback, quality assurance, all of that stuff. And then, you know, presenting it.

But having that initial buy-in on the script level, on the concept level. And then, you know, obviously on the more, on the polished on version and that absolutely produces the back and forth and the risk. It still can happen. You know, the client can still Sure. Look at the concept and say, what an amazing concept. Then, you know, it happened to me as a client as well on the other side. You know, you see it and you think, what a great idea. And then you see the final version and you’re like, oh, I changed my mind. Nope. Right. Nope. Not gonna work. Yeah. ’cause it’s, you know, one thing is the concept and then, you know, the other thing is obviously the, the final deliverable, the execution on the idea and execution of the concept.

But at least having that initial buy-in reduces, reduces that risk a lot. And that’s, you know, that’s what we’ve seen, you know, some of the most successful agencies working with their client. That’s the way they work with their clients on social content. Yeah.

And when they’re presenting at the concept level.

Yeah.

How unfinished is it? Because I think, I think we, thanks, thanks to the computer. Everything looks done even when it’s at the concept level. So what are you seeing, like how done is done enough to run it by a client at the concept level with it, without them going, oh, I hate that photo. And it’s like, well that’s just in for positioning. It’s not gonna be that photo.

Yeah. So I’m not gonna go with the TikTok script example. Okay. ’cause it’s a pretty, it’s one of the, you know, newest formats of content people are working on. Right. What I’ve seen them have is the actual script. This is what’s gonna happen in the video. We’re gonna go there and kind of like a directors type of script, right? Because it’s all become production. Right? Right. So this is the script and, and also, you know, links structure, the structured document, you know, bullet points very well organized, but still in the end there’s no, they haven’t done like a quick video on it themselves, right?

Yeah. They haven’t shot any footage or

Anything yet. They haven’t shot anything. Yeah. It’s just the script. This is the concept, this is where we’re coming from, you know, some context on why they thought, you know, this is a good idea. And also sort of a mood board, but basically to the inspiration. ’cause a lot of the TikTok, TikTok stuff is this trending sound or you know, this meme that’s going viral right now. Yeah. And this product or this thing from a, from your company that we’re, were from the brand that we’re gonna tie it to. And this is kinda, you know, the logic of the script and how we’ve come up with it. And that’s what, you know, that’s what the client read reads, that’s what, you know, the client approves and then, you know, go into, into the production phase and the next step for the client is to actually see the video, right.

With the music and the trending sound and everything. But yes, that initial buy-in especially because the cost of producing social has really increased, you know, with Yeah. As I mentioned, it’s become like this mini studio, this mini production house Yeah. That, that you have to run. And, you know, shooting this video with maybe multiple people is not the same as, you know, it’s still expensive to create, you know, designs and visual assets, but a video is another level of production. Yep. So it’s even more important to have that initial buy-in.

Yeah. So how is AI shaking up from your perspective, the agency world, your world? Like, where do you see, you know, we’re recording this in the summer of 24, if someone’s not listening in real time to us, as you look out at the agency landscape and you know, from, again, from your own products point of view, where do you see AI playing a role and taking us, and, and is it friend or foe? Is it both? What, what, like, what’s, what’s your perspective on that

From at least what we’re hearing from, from our clients? It’s more on the, it’s more on the friend side. It’s more on the copilot assistant side, optimizing things, you know, improving it. There is a full component, especially for, for agencies that have to, you know, they have to deal with long form content blogs as CEO, that kind of stuff. You know, it gets very tricky. Yeah. Some lose, you know, the, the competitive advantage. Everybody can write a draft, everybody can write an, you know, an article with JGPT and now it’s more and more about deep expertise that you then use AI of course, to flesh it out, to tweak it to, you know, make it longer, shorter, all of that stuff.

But it has become more and more about that deep expertise that you have on a specific topic and yeah. Less about some of the other, you know, manual things that you can obviously, you know, optimize a lot. But I’m, I’m actually curious what you’re hearing drew in the, in the space about ai, what, what, what agency founders say.

Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting because in the beginning, I think everybody thought of AI the way you’re talking about, which is, oh, we can write blog posts faster. Yeah. And we can create content faster. Yeah. But I mean, sort of thematically to our conversation, what we’re seeing now is agencies are starting to look at AI in terms of can this help me be more efficient operationally? Can this help me systemize or create process around our work? Yeah. So now we’re starting to see them not just look at it as faster, I’m gonna put in air quotes better

Yeah.

Content, but really looking at it in terms of are there things especially like around analytics or, you know, we have a lot of agency owners that are now using various tools to evaluate job candidates and like grade them on a criteria that the machine is able to look at them really objectively and sort of say, well, this candidate has this experience or that has that. So we’re starting to see people actually see it as a way of helping them run the business of the business better, rather than producing the product of the business better.

Yeah, I love that.

So that’s where I think it’s gonna be really interesting is how, how does it change the way we, to use your phrase, sort of the back of the housework as opposed to the front of the housework.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah. But I, I do, you know, I I think we are just scratching the surface of that.

I know it’s, we have no clue where this is, you know, where this is gonna go. Right. And it’s, it’s just so rapidly evolving that it’s, yeah. It’s, it’s a little bit insane.

Yeah. Well, and it changes every day, which is part of both the, what makes it interesting and exciting, but also challenging to kind of, you know, lasso and, and control a little bit and, and bring into your business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for, for making the time to, to sit with me this morning and have it. So,

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, drew. Yeah.

So if people wanna learn more about plantable or they wanna follow sort of your thought leadership or connect with you, what’s the best way for them to, to do any or all of that?

Yeah, so I’d be happy to connect with anyone listening to, to this podcast on, on LinkedIn is the best place. Just let me know. You heard me on this podcast and I’ll be Yeah. Excited to connect with you. And then if you wanna take a look at plannable, that’s plannable.io. We have a free trial. You can test it, you know, take a look at it, see if it’s, you know, if it’s helpful to your, your agency. But yeah, basically our website and LinkedIn. Typical channels.

Yeah. So we’ll, we’ll include both of those in the show notes. So my last question for you is, how do you think agencies are gonna look different in three years?

Hmm. I think it’s the last topic we discussed. It’s really hard to predict because of ai, right? Yeah. It, it just, three years is, I feel like forever for, for ai. and it just, I, I can’t even imagine how it’s gonna disrupt the, how it’s gonna disrupt or how it’s gonna enable or, you know, empower. But I think that is the key in order to, you know, imagine the agency world and in three years.

Yeah. ’cause it’s hard to imagine an agency that has not figured out how to embrace AI and whatever that makes sense for their business, their clients Yeah. To be relevant in three years.

Exactly. It’s, it’s been, I think a year and maybe a half since Chad GPT launched. Right, right. And took the, the world by storm. Right. But I feel like it’s been here forever. So that’s that

Why Well, and, and it has in a lot of ways. Right, exactly. I mean, Netflix and Amazon have been using it forever to recommend like it’s been a part of our world, but just in sort of the background and now all of a sudden it feels

Like it, it’s not in, not in not in such a mainstream way. Right, right. And especially, you know, LLM models and generative AI in such a, such a mainstream way. It’s been here for maybe, you know, one, two years. Yeah. and it, it, it, it has evolved immensely from just text to analytics and to images and videos and, you know, people, avatars and so many things, you know, influencing the UGC space and influencing, you know, the real validity of content on social. So who knows what the world is gonna look like and the agency world specifically in three years, but definitely AI is gonna play a big role.

Yeah. Yes. An interesting time to be in the business, for sure. Yep, yep. Yeah, thank you again so much for being on the show today and, and thank you sharing your insights. I appreciate it. Thank you Drew. I had a lot of fun. Yeah, me too. Alright guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. This was, this was a great conversation and I’m hoping it allowed you to sort of step back a little bit and, and look at your business almost like an observer that you’re sort of looking at. You know, are there places we can embrace the concept of system and process? Are there some ways we can invite the clients into our creative process earlier to actually get it right faster and better?

Are there some ways for us to approach the work in a way that is more collaborative but also more efficient and profitable? I mean, at the end of the day, I don’t care how much you love to create things, you started this business to make money. And so you also want the practicality of how do you run your business in a way that helps secure clients, retain clients, but also keep clients super happy at a profitable rate. So lots of, lots of food for thought in this, in this episode. And I hope, and I hope it got you kind of scratching your head a little bit and thinking about your business and, and what you bring to the party in terms of inspiring that kind of thought process or that kind of experimentation.

You know, maybe it is time for you to get a little more arrogant and ignorant like we were talking about, and, and stop assuming you have all the answers and be more curious and exploratory in that sort of ignorance phase. And, and honestly, with ai, we’re all ignorant. It’s changing every day. It’s evolving. We don’t have any idea where it’s going. So maybe this is the perfect time for us to sort of embrace that and say, all right, I’m gonna experiment with this. I’m gonna try both in terms of client facing work, but also inside my own processes. It’s time for me to be willing to not know all the answers and try different things. So anyway, I hope this episode was thought provoking for you, that it’s getting you open to the idea of systems and processes don’t have to be bad.

In fact, they can be great and they can really serve you and the client well. And maybe some new ways to explore that so that if we can get all that out of this episode, that would make me super happy. So before I let you go, a couple things. Number one, thanks to our friends at White Label IQ, as you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast and we are super grateful to them. So they do white label design, dev and ppc, and you can check them out at White Label IQ dot com slash aami. And as you know, they have a special offer for you on your first project. And last, but certainly not least, I, I’m a lucky guy. I get to hang out with you every week. I get to talk to interesting people like we had today.

And I don’t get to do that if you don’t keep coming back and listening, because if it’s just me talking, nobody’s gonna make the time. So I am grateful for you to come back every week and listen to another episode and let our, and let our guests know that you heard them and reach out to them on LinkedIn and thank them because that’s what allows us to bring great guests like today. So I am, I am grateful to you and for your participation in all of this. And you know what, I’ll be back next week and I hope you will too. So I’ll talk to you then. Thanks for listening.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.