How Will You Sharpen Your Saw?

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, coming to you this week from Chicago. You know, I've been having a lot of conversations with agency owners about the professional development plans that they have for their team. But very seldom do agency owners think about or talk about their own professional development plan. I think after we've been in the business for as long as we have and as we've owned the joint for as long as we have, I think sometimes we forget that we too need to keep educating ourselves, we need to keep learning, we need to keep staying relevant. And it's not only on the front of the house stuff, the ways that we serve clients but it's also on the back of the house stuff, how we're actually running our business, and making more money, keeping more of the money we make. So, my message for you as we go into the New Year is what's your professional development plan? Are there books you're going to read? Are there podcasts you're going to listen to? Are there workshops you're going to attend? Are there conferences you're going to go to? And I'm not just talking about AMI, there's lots of great stuff out there around running a business well. And so, I'm going to highly encourage you to find some ways every quarter to add to your own sort of professional development and growth to challenge yourself, figure out where are you least strong? I was going to say deficient but odds are you're not deficient in anything. But where's your weakness? Is it finances? Is it HR policies? Is it biz dev? Is it operations? Is it process and systems? Whatever it is, maybe 2022 is the year that you level up on that. But that's not going to happen if you don't plan for it. You know how crazy your schedule is, you know how busy you are. So if you don't bake it in, if you don't build it in, if you don't budget for it, it's not going to happen. So while you're thinking about your team's professional development, do not forget yourself. All right? I'll see you next week.