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SMART Goal Planning is Key to Running a Successful Agency

I recently recorded a podcast about the value and process of smart goal planning for your agency. I know you’re crazy busy with the day to day. I get that you never have more than 10 minutes uninterrupted.  Which is why you absolutely MUST carve out time to put together a plan for where you want your agency to go and how you’re going to get there. But before you do that – I want to encourage you to also think a about your own life goals and why you’re working so hard. As part of the podcast, I walk you through two documents – The Life Plan and the One Page Business Plan.   In the Life Plan, you’ll get very clear about what you want from your life, the legacies you want to leave and some tangible steps for creating a life of purpose and contentment. With the One Page Business Plan, you’ll identify the #1 goal you have for your agency in six key areas and prioritize those goals so you know which one to tackle first. I promise if you use these two documents, you’ll be stunned at what you will accomplish over the next twelve months. Just like you tell your clients – the lack of smart goal planning is a plan, just not a very good one. Take this opportunity to get very clear on where you want to take your agency and why. Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies [...]

Essential Business Building Strategies You Need to Grow Your Agency with Jason Falls

As an agency owner, you know that if you're not ready to evolve your agency with business building strategies, you'd better get ready to retire. The agency business is undergoing an incredible metamorphosis and most agency owners are running at full speed to keep up. That's where my conversation with Jason Falls, Senior Vice-President, Digital Strategy at Elasticity and author of several books on social media and email marketing, started. (listen to the podcast here) From there we move to agency hierarchy and structure, the impact of millennials on current day politics and the importance of building strategic alliances. It's a whirlwind hour of debate, stories and a few good laughs.  I think you'll not only enjoy it, but you'll also get some business building strategies you can put into play right away. To listen – you can visit the Build A Better Agency site (https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/jason-falls/) and grab either the iTunes or Stitcher files or just listen to it from the web. If you’d rather just read the conversation, the transcript is below. If you're going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn't you get the benefits too? Welcome to Build a Better Agency, where we show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invest in employees, and best of all, more money to the bottom line. Bringing his 25 plus years of expertise as both an agency owner and agency consultant to you, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan. Drew: Hey everybody, this is Drew McLellan, and I am really excited to be with you today. As an agency owner, I know all too well the risks we take every day. This podcast is about making sure if we're going to take [...]

One page business plan template for agencies

Every good agency is big on planning for their clients. They facilitate strategic plans, they build marketing plans and they guide clients through the process of developing a digital strategy that can be woven into their overall communications plan. But agencies stink at planning for themselves.  Which is why I created a one page business plan template for agencies.  Everyone can fill out a single page, right? I'm not going to preach the reasons why planning matters.  You know why.  You preach it every day. Instead, let me tell you a little bit about the plan template and how you can use it to grow your agency in 2013.  I designed the template to accomplish a few goals. You need to grow your agency holistically -- rather than focusing on just one or two problem areas. You need to do more than just identify some goals.  I want you to flesh out the first few steps of actually getting started. Every goal has obstacles.  This template will help you identify those right up front. You shouldn't forget the less sexy aspects of the business like systems as you do your planning. You can either work through this planning on your own, with your leadership team or depending on the size of your agency, with your entire team.  While the end goal is to have a map for the upcoming year, one of the big benefits of putting together a plan is the process itself.  These are the kinds of conversations you don't have very often.  Listen carefully and closely to what your employees have to say.  You might gain much more than you bargained for when you use this one page business plan template for [...]

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