AMI Videos

Slow and Steady

It's fascinating to think about how powerful water is. It consistently and steadily does the same thing over and over. And over time, that consistency allows it to reshape landmasses, change the way our weather behaves, and have a global impact simply by doing the same thing over and over and over again in small, minute ways. So you watch the tide come in, you watch the tide go out. I think sometimes we think, with AI and everything else going on in our world, that we have to make these massive, dramatic changes in our business to make our company better or stronger or bigger or more profitable. And the reality is the agencies that are sort of slow and steady, that do the right things consistently over and over and over again, are the agencies that historically perform better and grow consistently year over year. And, you know, we see the financials of hundreds of agencies. And I can tell you, it is not the agencies that make these dramatic sorts of swings. Still, the agency owners and the agency leadership team get better and better by doing the same thing and just making it incrementally better each time they do it nice and steady, knowing it's the right thing to do. So, as we go into the fourth quarter of 2025, what I want to ask you is, what could you do with more consistency? What could you do in a more steady, repeatable fashion that you know would, over time, build the strength and profitability of your agency? Watch »

Check in

In the last couple of weeks, we have talked to several clients who got some bad news from their clients, which was that we're not renewing contracts. We're not happy. We want a new account exec. We are going to another agency. Some level of “we are unhappy” news. Several times, when the agency owner jumped on a call, picked up the phone, or sent an email to that client to find out what happened, the message they got from the client was the same. Which is why you are asking now? Why haven't you asked over the last three months, six months, nine months, a year? Why is this the time that I'm hearing from you now that I'm ready to cancel my contract or cut back my budget, or in some way impact you financially? Now all of a sudden you care. And you know, at AMI, we always talk about how agency owners need to invest a certain amount of their time in what we call “Client Love.” That's just cultivating relationships with the clients, spending time with the clients, as high up the food chain as you can go, but that you're having conversations that only business owners or business leaders can have with other business owners and business leaders. If something's not quite right, you want to hear about it on the early end, not on the way out the door end. And that doesn't happen if you don't cultivate the relationship before there's trouble. So if you don't have booked into your schedule client-love time, today is the day to start booking that time with all of your clients. Watch »

Are you meeting your client’s expectations?

We were just with a peer group, and one of our conversations was around how often we should be taking new ideas to clients. How often should we be trying to show them that we're thinking about them? And again, let's reframe the word “sell” so that we're not trying to sell them something they don't need. We're not trying to sell them something to benefit us, but we are trying to help them by having ideas that will help them hit their KPIs and grow their business. And how often should we do that in a way that doesn't feel like we're always putting our hand in their pocket? Well, when we look back at the Agency Edge research over the last several years, particularly the year when we specifically said to clients: How, when, and where do you give your agencies more budget? One of the facts that we talked about yesterday, which was a great reminder to everybody, is that clients expect, and I want to underline the word expect. Clients expect us to bring them new ideas consistently—not once a year, not in a big dog and pony show, but on a regular basis. So that's why Danyel and I wrote the new workshop, Growing Your Existing Clients, which we're teaching again in September. In that workshop, we identified a whole bunch of places where you should talk to your clients about new ideas. So here's your homework for today. I want you to go back, talk to your account service team, and document how often you present new ideas to your clients. I'm going to bet it is not as often as it should be. Remember, clients expect us to consistently deliver new ideas to them. Watch »

Depth and breadth

There are probably more than a few agencies that do not think about how the world views them, how prospects or even their clients view them, and they don't have a strategy for expanding that lens so that the world can better understand the depth and breadth of what they do. The risk, of course, is that it's easy to quickly become pigeonholed as the fill-in-the-blank agency: the PPC agency, the newsletter agency, the web building agency, whatever it is. You have to decide if that's good for your business or not so good. If you want the prospects and the clients around you to better understand the depth and breadth of what you offer, you need to have a concentrated plan and effort to help them know that you do more than what they think you do. By the way, that is not filling your newsletter with talking about yourself. It is about your thought leadership, what you teach, how you teach it, where you teach it, and what you talk about on your social channels. But it doesn't happen by accident. So if you don't want to be a one-trick pony or be known just for country music, you will have to do something about it. And it's worth talking about and putting together a plan. Watch »

What do you cause?

There's not an agency owner on the planet who is not thinking about how technology, AI, freelancers, the cut—the-contract-economy gig—all of those things are influencing what we sell to clients and what they want from us. And one of the things we've seen for years in our Agency Edge studies is that the demand for making things, the things that we as agencies sort of historically have always done, whether it's making TV spots or radio spots or producing podcasts or producing digital ads, all of those things, the demand for those is going down. And the increase is the strategy. The increase is the thinking. The increase is what or how we should talk about the client's business as opposed to the stuff that we make. It's not that agencies aren't still making money when they make stuff, but the demand for that is reducing, and the tolerance for paying for that stuff in terms of paying $175 or more an hour is also dropping. And so as you look at the future of your business and you say to yourself, between AI and the gig economy and all these other things, what do clients really want from me? That's a very worthy question to ask yourself to be saying, okay, not only this year, but next year and in three years, what do I think? Where do I think that puck is going, and how do I move my agency that way? I was doing a podcast interview with a really interesting gentleman from the UK named Robin Bunn, and he said something that really stuck with me. He was talking about how agencies aren't great at differentiating themselves, aren't great at talking about how they are different from their competitors. And he said this sentence, which has just been banging around in my head, and I want it to bang around in your head. Watch »

Unreasonable Hospitality

I'm rereading a book called “Unreasonable Hospitality,” which talks about all of the little ways any business can go out of its way to make a moment or an experience magical. So one of the examples in the book is that the author is a restaurateur, and one of the things they did in their restaurant was make sure they knew if the restaurant patron had driven into town to go to the restaurant. And if they had parked to the meter, one of the things they did was they found out what kind of car they drove and where they parked, and they fed the meter so that that patron didn't have to leave in the middle of a long, enjoyable meal to feed the meter so that they didn't get a parking ticket. So his point was that for $0.50, a handful of quarters, they made an ordinary experience—something that the diners could get anywhere—extraordinary. It had nothing to do with the food or the ambiance. It was just looking for a little way to do something small but memorable that made the experience and how the person felt about the experience really magnified in some way. And we don't do a great job of that in our business. I think we do all the big things right. We get all the big things right, check all the boxes properly. But I do think there's an opportunity for us to do the little things better. So that's my challenge to you this week. What is one little thing? Watch »

What do they do wrong?

When we wrote the book Sell With Authority, one of the things we really emphasized was the need to differentiate your agency, to look, sound, feel, and be different from all the other agencies out there. Otherwise, you just make it harder for prospects to choose you. One of the things that I think people get stuck on when they differentiate themselves is that they think it's all about who they serve. And that's absolutely important. Having a niche and serving a subset of all humanity in all businesses is important, but it's also how you serve them, what you do for them, and what you believe. We talk a lot in the book about your point of view, which brings a unique perspective to your work. So as I think about that, that's often for agencies, one of the hardest things for them to land on is their point of view. What is their core belief? So, at AMI, the example we always give: At AMI, our core belief is that most agency owners are accidental business owners. They're great at the client-facing work. They know how to do that. But the actual running of their business in a profitable, sustainable, scalable way is something that they haven't been taught. That's something they didn't learn at school. That's where AMI steps in, and it is helpful. And so think of it that way. What do you know about your audience that most people don't know or ignore, that you can actually help with, that you could lean into? So one question I want you to ask yourself as you think about this is... Watch »

Take the risk

I think sometimes we, as agency owners and leaders, act as though every decision we make puts us in front of a lion or a hippopotamus. The reality is that, for most decisions we make every day, that is not true. We elevate the risk of decisions, I think, disproportionately to the truth of the matter. And I think we get frozen in time, particularly if things are not going well, if new business is slow, if you're having problems with an employee, if the you know all the things that are happening around us right now with the economy and the political environment and all of that, it's easy to feel like we're at risk and to feel paralyzed. So we act as though every time we turn around the corner, we will bump into a lion or a hippo. And the truth is, it's much riskier for us to stand still. We should keep moving, moving past the perceived risk, because for us, the risk isn't as real and the real risk for us is getting stuck and getting further and further behind in our decision making, in our progress, in our innovation, in our adoption of AI, whatever it may be, whatever, wherever you're stuck because it feels like a really weighty decision. For us, most of the risks are relatively small, and we just build them up in our heads, which paralyzes us. So my message to you for this week is whatever you're trying to decide right now, pick a lane, pick a direction, and start moving towards that decision, even if it's in tiny little steps. Forward is important. We have to keep moving forward. The risks and threats to us are not that great in most cases. The biggest threat of all is getting stuck, so don't let that happen to yourself. Watch »

Fieldtrips

You probably hear a woodpecker off to my right, and a warthog just walked by a little while ago. So this is a very unusual environment for me to shoot a video in. And actually, that's the point of this video is changing up your environment. We've been here just a couple of days and I have already had all kinds of interesting ideas that I'm not sure I would have had at home. The environment, the change of pace, the people, the scenery, and the people watching all of it give me new ideas. Back when I was a copywriter – both at other agencies and my own agency – one of the things I used to love to do is pair up with my art director, and when we were working on a concept, we would go somewhere. Now, this was back when we all were in an office together, but we would go to a toy store, coffee shop, park, or wherever we thought might give us some inspiration. And I think with all of us working in our houses or working hybrid, I don't think we do that anymore. I don't think we go on field trips, we don't go to art museums, we don't go to amusement parks. We don't go places that stimulate our imagination, our curiosity, our sense of innovation. Just giving us a fresh perspective. And so I want to challenge you to look for ways to create field trips for your agency, to create outings. I don't care if it's going to the latest animated film. I don't care if it's going to a Comic-Con. I don't care if it's going to a modern art museum or a nursing home to sing Christmas carols. It doesn't matter what it is. What it matters is that we're shaking things up, and that we are forcing ourselves into an environment that isn't the norm, isn't where we sit at our desk, trying to come up with ideas. And so I believe firmly, strongly that we have got to shake up our brains, that we have to give ourselves some fresh perspective. It's pretty hard to be curious. It's pretty hard to be innovative. And honestly, that's what our clients pay us to do. So here's your homework. Figure out a way for you and your team to go on more field trips. Watch »

Protect yourself

If you do not have no solicitation and confidentiality agreements signed and in place with every employee, you're putting yourself at unnecessary risk. We hold a lot of confidential information about our clients and about the agency inside our agency, and share it with our employees, and we want to make sure that that stays sacred and safe. If you have those in place, I want you to consider renewing them every year with every employee. Why? A couple of things. Number one, sometimes language has to be updated. Number two, it's a really great reminder for those long-term employees who signed those documents years and years ago that they're still in place and they're still being held accountable to them. I have seen many agencies successfully defend against a former employee who violated a no-solicit agreement. I've seen many employers, agency owners, be able to course correct an employee with a confidentiality agreement reminder, whether they fired them or not, they were able to sort of put their behavior in place when they had that document to refer to and to remind them that they had signed that that document, and there are consequences. This is something you're going to want to have done in advance before the problem bites you. Seen lots of agency owners, very grateful that they had them, or very sad that they didn't have them. Don't be one of the sad agency owners. Go ahead and get that in place today and renew it every year. Watch »