How Partnering with a Nonprofit Can Create an Impact for Your Business

Want to leave a lasting legacy in your community, engage your employees, thrill your vendors and be able to serve and help those who really need it? It’s possible, practical, profitable and probably the last place you would look for a business opportunity – pro bono work for the nonprofits in your community.     As an agency you are inevitably going to be asked by a nonprofit for free work. Make that inevitability a win-win for everyone involved by serving the nonprofits in your community in a way that is bigger and better both in the short-term and the long-term.    Join me in this solocast as I walk you through: Why short term nonprofit projects don’t do much good for your agency or a nonprofit Creating a contest for nonprofits where the winner will become your client for a year How this contest and resulting year-long relationship will bring in a ton of PR How this lengthy commitment with a single nonprofit allows you to gracefully turn down other nonprofits that you don’t have time to work with What to ask for in applications to find the right nonprofit to work with How your relationship with a nonprofit can be a great business development opportunity Why you need to get in front of the nonprofit’s board of directors How this relationship will dramatically change the impact that the nonprofits you adopt can make What your process for setting up this yearly project should look like Why your team will love doing work with a nonprofit Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as [...]

February 10th, 2017|

How to Achieve Your Dream Life

There’s always a lot of talk about building your dream life or living out your dreams.  For many people, that’s a myth. They don’t have the opportunity to make the changes and choices that will allow them to move closer to the life they aspire to have. But business owners have a unique set of circumstances that make that a real possibility. In this solocast, I’ll tell you a little bit about an exercise that I believe can help you define how you’d like your life to be and begin to move in that direction. I know it can be a powerful experience because it has had a huge impact on my own life and getting closer to living my dream life. Join me in mapping out the future that you are uniquely positioned to create. In this episode, we’ll talk about: A CPA I recently met in San Diego who has built his life around what he loves most of all An exercise that a coach I had about 10 years ago shared with me and the impact that exercise has had Why my life would not look like it does today if 10 years ago I hadn’t visualized what I wanted it to look like ten years down the road Why it’s okay if everything doesn’t play out exactly the way you visualize How to do the exercise my coach gave me Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 20+ years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year, give him a unique perspective [...]

March 17th, 2017|

7 Things to Consider When Taking On an Employee as a Partner

Let’s say you have an employee named Bob. He’s a great employee. Not just great, stellar. You can’t see the agency functioning without him. You don’t want to lose him. So how do you ensure that he’s happy and not being wooed by a competitor? Or maybe you’re 55 and beginning to think about your exit strategy. What if Bob could buy you out? Or you could still keep a piece of the business but not work so hard? In both cases, the solution I often hear agency owners come up is, “Why don’t I offer him some sort of equity or employee partnership in the agency?”   Taking on an employee as a partner may be a brilliant solution all around. Or it could be the demise of your agency. This is a huge commitment that involves many more moving parts than you might be considering. My solocast sheds some light on the issues that I have helped agency owners walk through as they are considering this option, including: Why you need think long and hard before making employees partners Why partnerships will look different if you’re a C Corp than any other structure (S Corp, LLC, etc.) Why you need to make sure someone actually wants to be a partner before you offer them a partnership Why you need to sell shares and not gift shares Why you should only bring on one partner at a time Why -- if your employee doesn’t have the skills they need to be a partner -- and they probably don’t -- you need to teach them Why it usually takes about 10 years to groom someone to take over for you Why you really need to [...]

April 21st, 2017|

What Does Business Development Do with Jake Jorgovan

​​My podcast guest Jake Jorgovan from Outbound Creative made a provocative statement.  He said: “Block out at least an hour a day, typically in the morning, as a way to put time in working on your own business before you dive into client work.” I can feel many of you twitching already. Not look at your email first thing in the morning? Not fill your mornings with meetings? Not jump like Pavlov’s dog to every ping, text or slack addition? You might even wonder “what does business development do?” It may seem radical but it is one of the many ways that Jake suggests to jumpstart your biz dev efforts. Jake believes that most agency owners hate new business because they’re not sure what to do and feel stuck. Let Jake and I take you through his simple, no-nonsense approach to growing your business through new business development with: Why you need to look at new business as an art form How to get started getting better at new business How to make the most of your time at conferences as it relates to new business How to effectively follow up with contacts you make at conferences How to stay top of mind with people who aren’t ready to buy now Why your prospect list can’t be too big and why you need to stay very personal with them Why strategic partnerships have gotten even more important as agencies become specialists Why you need to carve out at least an hour a day for working on new business (and why it’s a good idea to do it away from the office) Why you need to figure out what your actionable objectives are and then break [...]

May 12th, 2017|

The Top Agency Trends of 2017 (Part 2)

Working with 250+ agencies a year gives us a great perspective on the top agency trends that impact (or are going to impact) us all. With that in mind, I hope you were able to listen to podcast episode 85 where I covered the half of the trends that I expect will have the biggest influence on your agency in the next 2-12 months. This solocast will cover the second half of those top agency trends of 2017. This would be a good episode to share with your leadership team because it’s all about the realities we need to be prepared to face in the coming months. Our conversation will cover: Augmented reality and virtual reality: what you need to know about this technology that is coming fast Influencer marketing: connecting your client’s brand with their audience through social influencers who have built an audience around a specific topic Ratings & Reviews: How agencies can turn a profit by solving this problem for existing clients (and how to use it as a door-opener for prospects) Why agencies are developing relationships with more people inside companies than just CMOs Why you need to play nice with the other agencies that you share a client with If you’re not being offered exclusivity, do you need to offer it in return? Selling what you know and what you think instead of “stuff” ROI: why it’s not an optional conversation Why you need to be transparent on your fees Bragworthy benefits like a student loan repayment program Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an [...]

June 29th, 2017|

Best Practices when Forming an Agency Leadership Team

The smartest, most successful business owners have surrounded themselves with a strong, powerful leadership team. They don’t go into battle alone and they know that it’s easier to climb the mountain as a cohesive team. If you really want to scale your agency, build it for eventual sale and exceed your goals – you need a strong group of invested professionals around the table. In this solocast I look at agency leadership teams and how they should function, who should sit on one and why you’d have one in the first place. I explore the best practices around having a functional leadership team that helps the agency owners guide and run the agency day-to-day. Before you put your leadership team together, be sure to take a listen as I walk you through the steps with: Reasons to build a leadership team Why you should never start a leadership team out of frustration or overwhelm Why your leadership team is a great place to mentor employees ready for the next level How building a leadership team fits into your succession plan What kinds of employees should be on your agency leadership team (and why you shouldn’t just look at employees with certain titles) The huge decisions that you as the agency owner have to make before having your first leadership team meeting What leadership team meetings should accomplish Why every leadership team member needs to leave the meeting with a goal to accomplish before the next meeting How to decide when to include your agency leadership team in the decision-making (and the three levels of decision-making you can use) Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has [...]

August 3rd, 2017|

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October 17th, 2017|

Types of Agencies: What Kind of Agency Do You Want to Build?

Agencies face all sorts of challenges as they struggle to decide what kinds of clients to serve and what kinds of deliverables to offer, and there are many different types of agencies you can be as well. For this special solocast (it’s our 100th episode!), I want to get you thinking about what kind of agency it is that you are trying to build and nurture. Some agencies build custom solutions for every client – a very labor intensive, creative endeavor. Others have a more limited list of services and products and do less custom work. There are pros and cons with each but you really need to decide which makes more sense, based on your goals. Problems tend to arise when these types of agencies don’t make a conscious choice as to which kind of agency they would like to build and nurture. Both are fine choices but you have to make a choice. Join me in determining which kind of an agency you are suited to build and why. We’ll cover: Two types of agencies: “Artisan bakery agencies” (every project they produce is custom made for a client) and “Wonder Bread factory agencies” (where they follow systems and processes to produce the same limited set of things for every client) Why clients often work with both of these kinds of agencies, sometimes even at the same time Misconceptions owners of both kinds of agencies have about each other Assessing what type of agency you own (and why it may fall in the middle of these two types) Some of the pros of running an “Artisan bakery agency”: you can hire millennials, you can be a partner for your clients, and the prestige that [...]

September 7th, 2017|

How the Creative Director Role is Changing in the Digital Age

Our industry isn’t just changing, it’s evolving. What we offer clients, how we’re measuring success and the tools we use are all constantly changing. While the changes are helping us grow our agencies and future proof our businesses – it also means some painful changes to how we’re structured. The biggest change I am seeing within agencies is the shift in how we use the creative director role. I’m seeing more and more agencies realigning their agencies to meet the current demands of today and more often than not, that doesn’t include a traditional creative director.   Creative directors have played a significant role in agencies since their inception but now, out of necessity, they are morphing into all sorts of new roles. Join me as I detail out the changes that agencies are making to revamp their creative director roles such as: Why the days where creative led agencies have passed and why creative has been replaced by strategy, content, and lead gen The shortage of writers compared to the abundance of art directors and why that’s a pretty big issue for agencies Why the creative director role isn’t in that high of demand anymore, and what traditional creative directors look like in the agencies that have them Administrative, account service, and creative services: the three departments that make up most agencies today The triad of leadership - a writer, art director, and digital producer form to lead the creative services department in lieu of a creative director Why you don’t usually even need to produce spec creative for a pitch anymore Figuring out which roles inside your agency you still need Allocating funds from cut positions elsewhere to serve your clients better Drew [...]

October 12th, 2017|

The Biggest Advantages of Out of Home Advertising with Betsy McLarney

If you’ve been in the business for more than a decade – you’ve done a fair amount of outdoor advertising at some point in your career.  But, when we say outdoor advertising, most of us think billboards. We’re very right but we are also very wrong. Today, that’s just a sliver of what outdoor (now called out of home) advertising can deliver for clients. Out of home advertising includes wallscapes, and visual messaging on commuter rails, subway, taxi tops, airport advertising, cinema ads, sporting arenas, grocery store ads, fitness clubs, and the list goes on and on. But out of home goes far beyond any sort of sign. Think of on site activation, boots on the ground people doing sampling and so much more. My guest Betsy McLarney, the President of EMC Outdoor, has had a bird’s eye view of the different changes in outdoor advertising over the years. Betsy is on the podcast to share with us some unique ways out of home advertising can be used to help us deliver our client’s core message. Join Betsy and I as we think of bigger and broader uses of out of home advertising by learning about: Out of Home (OOH) media: what is it? What are some advantages of out of home advertising? How digital outdoor advertising really makes the experience come alive for consumers Using OOH to hit consumers with messages on multiple touch points throughout their day It’s not just for B2C: how B2B can utilize OOH to enhance their campaigns Using street teams effectively to get your message out to live people Why OOH isn’t just for national brands and can be used effectively for even local campaigns Matching the budget to [...]

December 7th, 2017|

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