The Chats with Chip Podcast: Recent Episodes

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You can listen to part 2 of this special crossover episode on the That Solo Life podcast.

In this episode, Chip is joined by Karen Swim and Michelle Kane of the That Solo Life Podcast for part one of a special crossover episode exploring the practical effects of AI on agencies, solos, and the communications industry.

Karen and Michelle share their view that AI is no longer optional. Practitioners who resist it risk falling behind, while those who embrace it can dramatically expand their capabilities. The conversation goes beyond basic content creation, exploring how AI can elevate strategy, reinvigorate professional skills, and free up time for deeper, more creative thinking.

Chip, Karen, and Michelle also discuss the importance of treating AI like a new employee — providing context, voice, and guidance to get the best results — and address common concerns around ethics, privacy, and copyright. They encourage communicators who haven’t revisited these tools recently to dive back in, as the technology has advanced rapidly and shows no signs of slowing down.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “The scariness AI or the bad things that can happen from it is more than outweighed by the fear that we ought to have of what happens if we don’t embrace it.” * Karen Swim: “I think it is a mistake to think of AI or no. That’s just not going to work, and you’re going to find yourself sitting over on the side line, like a 90-year-old saying, get off my lawn, yelling at AI and resisting the change.” * Michelle Kane: “Anything that can help me be a better communicator, to do my job better, to serve my clients at a wider breadth and depth is good.”

About Michelle KaneMichelle Kane co-hosts That Solo Life, with Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro, a podcast supporting solo PR and communications professionals. She is also the founder of VoiceMatters LLC, where she helps organizations turn their messaging into measurable growth through strategic communications, content, and public relations. Her work focuses on building visibility, credibility, and connection for businesses and nonprofits.

About Karen SwimKaren Swim, APR, is an accredited public relations professional, speaker, podcaster, and authorShe owns Words For Hire, a full-service B2B, Healthcare, and Technology PR agency working with clients across the globe. Karen is also the President of Solo PR Pro, a membership organization for independent professionals in public relations, communications, and related fields.

Resources* That Solo Life Podcast: https://thatsololife.podbean.com/ * Connect with Michelle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelledawnkane/ * Voice Matters website: www.voicemattersllc.com * Connect with Karen: linkedin.com/in/karenswim * Solo PR Pro website: https://soloprpro.com/

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I am your host, Chip Griffin, and I am delighted to have with me two guests in part one of a special crossover episode of this podcast with the That Solo Life Podcast featuring Karen Swim and Michelle Kane. Karen, Michelle, welcome to the show.

Karen Swim: Chip, thank you so much for having us, Chip. Yes.

Chip Griffin: It is great to have you and I’m looking forward to, to part two where we do sort of the law and order style crossover between shows and there, there will be, you know, no murders or crimes committed here in the next 20 minutes though. As far as I know.

Karen Swim: Watch out Dick Wolf, coming for your empire.

Michelle Kane: That’s right. Oh man. Right. We’ll, we’ll see if Ice-T might be able to show up by the time we do part two.

Chip Griffin: And, if only we could generate the same kind of revenue that those shows do, but

Michelle Kane: seriously. Right?

Chip Griffin: Alas.

Michelle Kane: Well.

Chip Griffin: So we’re gonna talk about two things that are related. In the first part here on my show, we’re gonna talk about the impact of AI on agencies, solos, the communications industry. And then we’ll talk in part two on your show about the overall business climate that we’re in, economic world affairs, all those kinds of things and how we function as business owners, in that universe as well.

So I think it should be productive and lots of interesting conversation. It’s always good talking with the two of you. And, so let’s dive right in and start talking about AI because it seems to be on everybody’s minds these days. It’s almost impossible to just go about your normal daily life, let alone things in the world of PR and communications without hearing about it, without having some people be super excited about it and some people just terrified of it.

So let’s just start with that big picture question of how do you see AI in the worlds in which we operate professionally?

Karen Swim: I think it’s an essential, honestly. I think we’re way past the point of being resistant to this technological change, and we should all be pretty deep in utilizing it. Refining our, not only our workflows, but how we think about the job and really becoming more innovative. Because I do believe that it’s important to be at the forefront and not trailing behind. That’s how you get lost, you know, in the shuffle when you’re trying to catch up. So, you know, I know that there are probably practitioners that still have not, you know, fully embraced AI and I think this is your wake up call to get in the game.

Michelle Kane: I agree. I mean, at this point, it’s a tool that we really need to harness and use, you know, not just to service our clients, but to grow our business and to at least, at the very least, be able to speak the language and understand what’s involved with its use. I mean, you know, in the back of my mind, of course, is data centers and resources, which, you know mmmm.

But that’s not going to stop it. So we still have to be smart about it and, you know, know what we’re doing in that realm because, you know we say AI and I know when we say it, we probably think through a certain lens. Of course, it’s, you know, it’s a massive concept. And I think probably people in different industries have different notions about it.

I know my friends in academia are still hating it for decent reasons, of course. But as far as being a communicator, it’s absolutely necessary.

Chip Griffin: I mean, academia is kind of known for resisting many new technologies beyond when the rest of the world has adopted it. So that’s, that’s not particularly surprising.

But unfortunately, I think in PR there’s also oftentimes a lot of resistance to technology and change. And so I’m curious, in your conversations with other solos, small agency owners, that sort of thing, are people generally adopting this same mindset that you have or is there, is there more trepidation and resistance there than, than you think there ought to be?

Michelle Kane: I have seen it’s mixed. I have seen, you know, my colleagues, they realize it’s a good tool, but at the same time, I don’t know if you have noticed this, we’re all sort of hating on the cookie cutter social media graphics that all look like they were made by the same Americana agency with the dark wood back.

You know, we’re cognizant of spotting it where people might be overrelying on it. But at the same time realizing that even though AI will certainly change the landscape of what we do and how we do it, the human touch, the human mind is still going to be necessary, which is good.

Karen Swim: Yeah. I think you know, I love Chip by the way, that you have an AI survey and I took the survey and thought the questions were really thoughtful.

So I’m really interested to see, because what I see is what Michelle sees. There’s a mix. But what I see the majority of PR practitioners doing is scratching the surface with AI. So they’re still kind of locked into the content and you know how my media database uses it and they haven’t gone levels deeper.

Here’s the thing. I just read this article that talked about, because, AI, for example, is training. They’re, they’re doing like deeper work. So they’re, you have this group of attorneys that are teaching AI to replace their jobs. They’re scientists. If you’re training it to do scientific discovery, you actually need human beings that are doing scientific discovery.

So what that means is, in that sense, AI is creating a demand for highly skilled positions that are not directly AI related because you need human beings that have those, those specialties and have that type of expertise. And I think as a PR practitioner, if I’m somebody who really has gone deeper into AI and I understand how to utilize these models to improve the way that I do work, to reignite the way that I think, to take the time because it takes away a lot of the busy work. And to now take the time to think deeper about what are the other ways that I can change this job going forward? How can I get better at analyzing markets on behalf of my clients? How can I make this, make me think deeper as a business person, as a CEO? The more skilled I am, the more that I’m protecting my own job, but it’s not me against AI, it’s me using AI to reinvigorate my skillset. And, I don’t think everyone’s there, unfortunately.

Chip Griffin: I think far too few are there. In fact, I mean, most people look at AI in my view, as sort of a, well, this can, it can replace this task for me or it can do, you know?

And, and usually it’s in our world, usually it’s around content creation, whether that’s an image, an article, a social post, something like that. But it, it has so much greater power available to it. I hear plenty of people say, well, you know, you still need us for strategy. So, you know, AI can’t do that.

Baloney. AI is actually pretty good at strategy today. And, if you tested AI 18 months ago and haven’t gone back, yeah, I mean, it, it wasn’t great then. But the models that are out there today and readily available. They actually, you know, do a passable job at strategy and ideation and even creativity.

And so, you know, we need to be much more ready to, as you say, I think, partner with it and treat it more like a team member as opposed to just, you know, a functional tool. And, I do worry that, that as an industry, we are not doing that. We’re too worried about, well, what does this mean for our pricing models?

And you know, I see, I see plenty of complaints about that. Well, you know, it’s, it’s driving down, it’s commoditizing. No. You, because you’ve gotta find new ways to create value. It’s like when we started, you know, having fax machines and email.

Michelle Kane: Exactly, yes,

Chip Griffin: It saved time from other things that we were doing back then.

And so we didn’t say, well, we gotta change our pricing model because we’re becoming more efficient. We’re not standing at the copy machine for half the day copying things. We found other ways to utilize that time and create new value. We need to do the same thing with AI if we’re gonna be successful. And not spend all this time complaining

Michelle Kane: So true, so true. The press release. Put it in an envelope.

Chip Griffin: So my other pet peeve is,

Michelle Kane: No, go ahead. Sorry. I was on delay.

Chip Griffin: Sorry that there was a little technological hiccup there.

Michelle Kane: Sorry.

Chip Griffin: So, my other pet peeve, and I wanna talk to you both about this. Obviously we do create a lot of content and we were referring earlier to the cookie cutter nature of some of this.

And, so I do see lots of complaints. I’m just filled with AI slop and all of that, so, you know, how do we think about that? And I see people saying, well, you know, you need to write your own stuff. And, honestly, this reminds me of the early days of social media where we had these inane debates about whether CEOs needed to sit down and write their own Twitter posts and blog posts and that sort of stuff, which was dumb.

They didn’t do it before with op-eds and that kind of stuff. And why should they do it with that? And, to me, I think we’re missing the boat if we are focused on who wrote this. It’s a question of is it good quality? And if it is, I don’t really care how we got there. But, but are you seeing, you know, more resistance to this or more embracing of the technology getting you to where you need to go?

Karen Swim: Resistance all the way. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, as you said, and you know, some people are like, oh, you mean like chat GPT? Well, if you still use chat GPT, but there’s like tons of other models and I’m sure you have experimented with lots of them. I am always adding, like I used to, you know, in the early days I learned on chat GPT, but then I started playing around with Perplexity and wove that in.

And, you know, I love Claude today, but I, I use everything. I use Jasper and no tool is perfect, but I think you’re right around the strategy piece. I think people miss it. How really good your strategy can get with AI as a partner and how good your content can get with AI as a partner. They don’t realize that you can give it your voice.

You can teach your AI to write like you. You can feed it different ideas. You can take raw notes and upload it and have it do something that would’ve taken you a long time. And it just takes that work out. It doesn’t take away the high quality, it doesn’t take away the creativity. It just makes it easier for you and saves time.

And so I think it is a mistake again to think of AI or no. That’s just, it’s not going to work, and you’re going to find yourself sitting over on the side line, like a 90-year-old saying, get off my lawn, yelling at AI and resisting the change and saying, this is what people can do. And no one’s gonna hire you because your rate structure is old, your processes are old, and you’re gonna have 22 year olds running circles around you doing 10 times the job that you can do while you’re over here saying, this isn’t gonna work. Robots can’t replace people.

Michelle Kane: I could not agree more. I especially as, as you both brought up, it is a partner. And if it helps you serve your clients better, because at the end of the day, we are still the people giving it the green light.

What it gives us, we will either synthesize into our thoughts or, there are times, oh yeah, I didn’t think of that. That’s an excellent point. It’s, it is just a tool that we really, as you say, Karen, we really need to start adopting. And you know, Chip, you put it so perfectly, or else we are going to get left behind.

We can’t be reluctant. And, you know, as far as pricing structure, no one says, oh, you had an employee do that, so I need to pay you less. What? And, again, it’s not gonna replace, but you know, I, I am print out the press release, put it in the envelope and mail it years old and well, that took a ton of time.

Chip Griffin: Yep absolutely.

Michelle Kane: Yeah, like you say, no one batted an eye when we switched to fax and email and FedEx so.

Chip Griffin: Although I do remember debates back in the day with some folks that I was working with who were like, no, no, we need to mail these press releases. I’m like, but we’ve got a fax machine.

Why? Why don’t we send them by fax and they’ll get them faster? They’re like, no, no, we’ve always mailed them. I’m like, yeah, but it’s like 1992. We don’t need to do that anymore.

Michelle Kane: We’re so modern now.

Chip Griffin: We’re so modern. Right. And then of course, we’ve had a lot of developments since then. But I wanna pick up on something that, that you mentioned there, Karen, because I think that we all need to be thinking about how we train these tools and, you know, I think one of the reasons why we end up with so much AI slop is because people just go in and say, write me a blog post on x. And so it will dutifully salute and do that. But you would never think of having an employee or a contractor that you go to and just say, give me a blog post on X. You’ll give them guidance. You’ll say, and here are some recent pieces I’ve done that you might wanna look at for my style. And my voice.

And, and so you need to be thinking about how you’re training it if you want to get the most out of it.

Karen Swim: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And so in the conversations that you’re having. Do people understand this is there, you know, what do we need to do to help educate people about this? Because in my view, AI is like an employee and you have to think about how you would manage and train an employee when you’re thinking about how you manage and train the AI agents.

Karen Swim: I agree. I mean, from the beginning I talked about keeping your own personal prompt library, but I think it also goes to exactly what you said. With an employee you’re gonna have an onboarding document, you’re going to have, you know, brand guidelines. You’re gonna have that style guide. So I think that you have to really think about it in that same way.

What would you give a human being that was starting with you? How do you talk about the company? What’s the tone of voice? Who’s the audience? What’s the objective of this piece? What are the goals? I don’t divorce my PR background, you know, my professional skillset for AI, because it’s easy. And I even have trained my models to ask me deeper questions.

Mm-hmm. Which honestly has made me like my job a lot more because I’m free from doing mundane tasks. I’ve been able to automate some really complex things that make it fun for me to look at this data and to dig into things. And it makes it fun for me to develop these strategies and frameworks because I’ve got this assistant saying, When you ask me to do this, what are you thinking? And like, what’s the end goal of this? Or what, you know, I noticed this thing, what about that? Or pointing something out like, Hey, when I pulled this, I saw this trend. Is that something that you wanna dig deeper into internally? I 100% agree, agree. No, it’s not a human, but you should absolutely be treating it like an employee.

Michelle Kane: Agree. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: As, as we think about trying to, to treat it more like an employee, how, how do we get more people to come along with this view in the communities that we serve? I mean, as I think about the solos that, that you all serve with your show and the work that you are doing through Solo PR Pro, et cetera, there’s a lot of potential here for AI tools to make you bigger than you are as far as capability. You don’t necessarily have to become, you know, larger in terms of clients that you, but your capabilities can expand substantially. So, and I think that’s more important than ever today because, you know, the single specialty hire, even on a contractor basis, just, it’s not quite as appealing to organizations where they want a little bit more of the one shot solution.

Is that, how do we get more people to come along with this view that it’s clear the three of us have, but it’s also clear that our, the industries we serve in terms of agencies and solos, just that there’s too much resistance. Is it scaring them or is it motivating them, or you know, what is it?

Michelle Kane: I think there’s certainly the fear.

The fear of the new, the fear of the replacement. But honestly, anything that can help me be a better communicator, to do my job better, to serve my clients at a wider breadth and depth is good. Why would I not want that? And, I think that’s the mindset that we need to come around to. Don’t be afraid of it.

Like Karen said, dig deep. I mean, I have a friend who’s a photographer and she has used it to help work her brand and she is the coolest sassiest person that I know. And she’s like, oh, I talk back to it. I say, I don’t talk like that. This is how I say it. And I thought, you’ve got it. Like you have grasped it and you know, keep going.

So that’s really, you really do have to interact with it. Now, I understand for, for some people that may just be way too creepy for them. And I get it, but it, I don’t think it’s gonna take over your toaster in your house today, you know? Or burn your house down. So I think it’s okay.

Karen Swim: Yeah. I mean, I think that we’re gonna lose some people.

Yeah. I’m just gonna be realistic. There are some people that are like, this is my exit ramp. I want no parts of that. But I think that this, what we’re doing today is a step. Educating people, talking about use cases, making it a little less scary, making sure that people understand where to go to get educated, you know how to get trained.

Some people function really well with taking a course and learning how to do it. They’re not comfortable jumping in. Encouraging people, you know, giving them those beginning steps. If you’re not familiar, here’s where you can start. And putting out things that kind of guide people and making it a little less scary, but also teaching them, you know, this is not without its problems.

So it’s communicators. We have to be aware of ethics. So we don’t wanna, you know, we wanna make sure that we’re not putting sensitive information into public models. We want to learn how to make sure that we double check that we are not, you know, breaking copyright laws, that we’re not stealing other people’s content.

We wanna learn how to look for the things that are popping up now where AI is pulling true things, like from client stories and putting it into something else that’s not true. So you’ve gotta start to train yourself. And then understanding risk, like what do I give my AI models access to? So you still wanna make sure that you’re protecting, you know, ethics, copyright, and privacy.

So there are things that I don’t do. I mean, funny enough, like when everybody jumped on the Alexa bandwagon, I did not because I had concerns about privacy. That is, you know, and people think that’s funny, ’cause you know, I’m a tech girl, but that was just the one thing and I was like, eh, no thank you. I don’t want anything listening to me in my house that has that kind of access.

I lock down certain things on my phone. I do. I do things where I see a risk. I will not give my models access to write all of my files. Or access to my drive. Because I need to protect my sensitive information. So be smart about the use, but you won’t be able to be smart if you’re not using it and you just shy away from it.

I mean, and at the end of the day, learn how to be sensible. You know, reality is our stuff is out there anyway. I mean who are we kidding? Like stuff is out there. There are so many things getting hacked on a daily basis. If you use a reputation service, it will make your head spin the amount of times that your data has been compromised.

So I think that we do the best that we can to protect ourselves, but we don’t allow that to stop us from moving forward and progressing in how we do our jobs.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think that makes total sense. I mean, to me, at the end of the day, the scariness of, of AI or the, you know, the bad things that can happen from it is more than outweighed by the fear that we ought to have of what happens if we don’t embrace it.

And, you know, I tell people, if you do not adapt, AI is absolutely coming for your job. So I’m never gonna sit here and say that, oh, you’re, you’re fine. AI’s never gonna take your job. It absolutely is. It will take the job that you have today. So it’s your job, whether you’re in an organization, or you’re a business owner, to create the job of the future with the help of AI.

So I, I really, I, I think we need to drive this point home repeatedly because I think there’s just far too much resistance to these new tools and technologies. And if you haven’t touched them recently, go in and use them again, because you’re gonna find that it’s a lot different than when you kicked the tires a year or two ago, and it’s only gonna get better from here.

People always like to say, this is the worst it’s ever going to be. It’s true. It is accelerating at a rate that most of us just can’t even fully appreciate, even if we are deeply steeped in it, which I think all three of us are.

Karen Swim: Right. Yeah, for sure.

Chip Griffin: So with that, that will draw to a conclusion part one of this crossover series episode. I don’t know exactly what to call it. But stay tuned for part two on the That Solo Life Podcast. For now, we will wrap up this episode of Chats with Chip. I’m Chip Griffin. Thank you for joining me, Karen and Michelle. It has been a great conversation. I look forward to part two on your show shortly.

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In this episode, host Chip speaks with Emily Allard, the founder of 24 Sports Marketing. Emily shares her journey from being a professional softball player to starting her own sports marketing agency focused on women’s athletics. She discusses the challenges and opportunities in promoting women’s sports, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and education in digital marketing.

They also delve into the growth of women’s sports, the impact of key personalities, and the need for strategic and integrity-driven business practices. Emily offers insights for aspiring agency owners and highlights the potential future directions for her business.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “My view is if you want to be miserable, just go get a regular job. It’s a lot less stressful than running your own business.” * Emily Allard: “I just feel this protection around the integrity and wanting to do good work for our current clients versus chasing some of these other big logos.” * Chip Griffin: “Everything that I do and the content I produce and the consulting that I do is really just sharing what worked and what didn’t work for me when I tried it, so that you get the experience of my first time instead of having to do it with yours.” * Emily Allard: “My biggest advice is how you move throughout the world is going to come back to you tenfold.”

About Emily Allard24 Sports Marketing – Founder & CEO
Emily Allard is a veteran digital marketer with more than a decade of experience executing tailored marketing plans for a wide variety of brands. With a special focus in women’s athletics, her work has led to record-breaking online sales days, membership and event registration milestones, and successful paid and organic marketing campaigns. From nonprofits to multi-million dollar companies, Allard has garnered sustainable success regardless of budget, size or resources.

Informed by a 21-year softball career that took her to the pros, Allard founded 24 Sports Marketing, LLC to fulfill her lifelong dream of moving women’s sports forward. She brings high-level and multi-channel digital marketing experience to an industry with unlimited potential.

Allard holds two degrees from Northwestern University and is a 2022 NU Athletics Hall of Fame inductee.

Resources* 24 Sports Marketing website:https://24sportsmarketing.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/24sportsmarketing
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/24-sports-marketing/ * Connect with Emily Allard:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eallard24/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eallard24/

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Chats with Chip podcast. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me today the founder of 24 Sports Marketing, Emily Allard. Welcome to the show, Emily.

Emily Allard: Thanks, Chip. Thanks so much for having me.

Chip Griffin: It is great to have you, and I’m, I’m really interested to get into your story, for reasons that will become obvious to listeners as as we go on, hopefully. And if not, I’ll spell it out for them just to, to make it simple. But before I do that, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself with our listeners.

Emily Allard: Sure sounds good. So my name’s Emily Allard. I was born and raised in the Bay Area. I grew up playing sports literally since I could probably walk, is what my parents would say. I ended up playing softball for about 21 years and was able to take that career into division 1 and then for a couple years into the Pro League at the time.

And as I was going through all that and really just trying to understand how much I was loving marketing and all the things behind the scenes. I was able to merge those two passions, over the last couple of years. So bringing high level digital marketing back to an industry that really needs it in women’s athletics.

So, 30 seconds. That is the story arc, but there’s a lot in between that I’m sure we’ll get to.

Chip Griffin: I, I was gonna say, we’ll, we’ll dive into lots of that. And you know, I mean, I love that you were able to take something that was a, a passion of yours for most of your life and, and find a way to parallel that as you moved into the agency world.

And know there, there’s a lot of debate in agency circles over whether you should have a passion for the kinds of clients you serve and the work you do, or whether it should just be profitable work or mm-hmm. And I, I’m a firm believer that there’s a Venn diagram where those two can intersect and you just need to find it.

Emily Allard: Sure. I think that’s a great point. And I am definitely the type of person who wants to wake up in the morning and like, enjoy opening my laptop and enjoy what I’m doing. That is me for sure. So I lean on that passion side as well. Very much.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. And, and you know, my view is if you want to be miserable, just go get a regular job.

It’s a lot less stressful than, than running your own business and, and all that entails. So.

Emily Allard: 100%

Chip Griffin: Go be miserable and let someone else cut you the check.

Emily Allard: I like it. I like it.

Chip Griffin: So, for those of you who may not know, one of my side passions, side businesses is sports photography. And so that’s one of the things that, that particularly drew me to this conversation and, and the fact that you have a background in sports and, you know, I kind of dabble with it.

For those watching on video, you can see a picture of a mocked up front page from the local newspaper where they were thanking me for some of the pictures I had given them over the years. And so it’s, it’s always part of me. And so, you know, finding this intersection is, is really interesting ’cause we don’t see this all that often.

And so, and I particularly like that – and we were talking about this pre-show – that you’ve sort of found a niche within a niche. So you’re not just doing sports marketing, you really are, you have a special focus on women’s athletics. So talk to me about, I mean, other than the passion bit of it, was there a, was there business thought behind being that focused, or was it really more driven just by the passion?

Emily Allard: It’s a great question. I would say it’s a little bit of both. So the passion from me as I grew up playing softball specifically, I got to see so many different levels of women’s athletics, little league, travel ball, college, Pro. And we’ve seen a huge shift, I would say over the last three to five years in women’s sports.

But while I was playing, it was lack of resources, lack of investment, lack of this ability to like hire the right people and, and all of these different things. So I saw both sides of, wow. Once I was learning more about marketing, I was like, this would be amazing for teams and programs and schools and leagues to be able to have this type of just high level foundation and bringing that to an industry that really needed it.

So it was a passion project for me. It still is, but at the same time, I think there was this need in this niche that I spent a lot of my time just educating clients on what’s out there and what are the channels that we can use and how can we best like fit within them.

So it’s, it’s a lot of fun and I think it, it’s both.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I, I like how you sort of, you bring those two together and, and you’re absolutely right. I mean, you know, women’s athletics has had a transformation in, in recent years. Yeah. You know, it, it’s still not where it, you know, probably could or should be.

And it hasn’t really fully trickled down or, or really trickled down all that much to the youth level, which is where, I spend most of my time. Sure. And, you know, I, I, my, given my preferences, I generally prefer to shoot women’s sports in high school and those kinds of things, really in part because I’m not competing for as much space with other photographers and it’s not, they don’t get the same level of attention, so they’re more appreciative of, of when I show up at a game.

Emily Allard: Very much so.

Chip Griffin: And, and that’s unfortunate, right? Because sometimes these games are, you know, better than the, the boys’ variation of, of the same sport. Yeah. But there’s fewer people in the stands, there’s fewer media there. And, and so I, I think there is real opportunity to be had in doing more to promote them.

So, as, as you are going about doing this, are, are you focused at, at a particular level of women’s athletics? Hmm. For the work that you do, is it, is it mostly professional? Is it collegiate? Is it, you know, youth organizations? Who are you working with within that subset?

Emily Allard: Great question. So we are currently avoiding the college landscape because it’s a bit of the wild, wild west.

Currently. We don’t have to get into that topic. But our big focus is really the companies that are within sports. So not the athletes. At some point we’ll get probably into the team space, I would say, but we are working with like nonprofit organizations, sporting goods companies, tournament companies and organizations. We’re trying our best to help prove the value of being in the women’s athletic space. Mm-hmm. And we firmly believe the more that we can grow the companies, the more the industry itself is going to grow. And then, you know, give back to the players, the teams, the universities, et cetera.

So we’re in that company specific space, but of course, will expand at some point, wherever that goes.

Chip Griffin: Sure. I mean, any good business owner is always willing to listen to opportunities. There you go. And, and, and follow the Golden Brick road, wherever it goes.

Emily Allard: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: So, you know, as you do that, I mean, talk a little bit about the kinds of things that you do for these companies in organizations in order to, help them break through, if you will.

Particularly given the special challenges that women’s athletics have versus men’s.

Emily Allard: Sure. So I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but a lot of what we’re doing is education of just, you know, tell me about your marketing efforts right now. A lot of times we’re working with companies that have really small staffs or you know, a lack of resources, lack of budget.

So us even just coming in and being a second pair of eyes, a sounding board, like, oh, this is really interesting. Tell me more about X, Y, Z. Have you ever thought of doing paid media? Or, you know, we have some clients who are still emailing like BCC, not using a platform like we are really working to bring, elevate this level of marketing, right? So we have certain services, email, organic social, paid media, SEO, things like that. But a lot of times, again, we’re educating clients what SEO even is. So there’s a lot of consulting I think that just happens naturally from that. And then we can start to direct them into maybe some service specific channels, if that makes sense for them.

Chip Griffin: So it certainly sounds like there’s some, some low hanging fruit to be had. Very much so in a lot of these, which is, I, I think always helpful, when you’re starting a new client engagement is to find those because it gets you those quick wins that shows progress to clients.

Emily Allard: 100%. Yeah. Yep. Couldn’t agree more.

Chip Griffin: You know, what, what would you identify as the, if they exist, the particular challenges of reaching the, the women’s market versus the men’s market when it comes to this kind of work? I mean, is it, is it or, or is there really no distinction? You’re just kind of doing it all and it just, it it sort of, it all floats to the top as a result?

I mean, are you doing direct outreach targeted at women and supporters of women’s sports?

Emily Allard: Sure. So we’ve been very fortunate as of late where word of mouth is our biggest marketing vehicle for the company. We will be getting into maybe some direct outreach here, I would say in the next year or so, but a lot of where we’ve gotten clients in the past have just been from my past connections through softball. Clients, I don’t wanna speak for them, but they seem very happy. So they’re sharing our work with others. And then it really is just, it goes back to that education piece of just companies knowing that this type of marketing exists. I worked in a nonprofit for about six years and when I left, I went into corporate agency world and I was blown away.

I was like. Oh my gosh. Like all of this can come back to that. I know. We don’t know that this exists. You know what I mean? So there’s just this big hole in a lot of areas that we’re really working hard to fill.

Chip Griffin: Mm-hmm. One of the things I’m always curious about when I talk with agency owners is sort of the, the thought process that went into deciding to pull the trigger and start the business.

Mm. And, you know, there’s all sorts of, of different ways that we become agency owners. A lot, It’s purely accidental. We’re just doing some freelance work and, oh, look, I’ve got an actual business here I need to do something about. You know, I, I can say that’s, that’s how I started my first agency, you know, back 20 some years ago. It was very much, I was between jobs and so I called myself a consultant ’cause it sounded a lot better than unemployed. And

Emily Allard: yeah,

Chip Griffin: pretty soon I was signing up clients and figured I ought have set up an actual business around it. But yeah. So talk to me, you know, was it, you know, was it a well thought out plan, to go down this path?

Or at least as well as it could be at the time? Yeah. Or, or was there something else to it?

Emily Allard: Great question. I had a very similar path as yours. So once I went to that corporate agency side, our, my first freelance client, real client was the company that I used to work for. So stayed in touch with my boss, who is a dear friend and mentor, and as soon as I left, maybe six months later, she was like, Em, what you’re doing now, do you think that would help our association? And I was like, absolutely. And then again, it’s this education conversation of here’s what I’m learning, this is how it’s impacting, this is how we measure. I would love to see what we could do, you know, with the association for this.

So that’s how it started. As that builds to your point, now I’m up at 6:00 AM working on my freelance clients, starting my real job at 8:30/9. You get the idea, you can only sustain that for so long. But I am very, very, I will jump off a cliff, but I’m very calculated when I do it. So I built a safety net.

I like worked on an emergency fund where if I quit my job and then every single freelance client canceled. I would have a cushion to figure out my life. So I just, I worked both for as long as I could, and then it was the scariest thing I’ve ever done to take that leap. But I have not looked back and I will proudly say I have not dipped into the emergency fund yet.

We’re almost two years in, so I feel very proud about that.

Chip Griffin: That is fantastic. As, as you look at the, those two years, what has surprised you the most? In being an agency owner, for better or for worse?

Emily Allard: Yeah. This probably will not surprise you one bit, but it is literally everything that does not have to do with marketing, right?

So all of the behind the scenes, the hiring my first employee, I probably cried for nights over that. Am I doing this right? Are the benefits correct? You know, do I have enough to pay a full-time salary? Taxes, thank goodness for CPAs, also would cry myself to sleep, trying to figure out how to do taxes. Just all of those different requirements.

I’m very much, I want to do it right and have that integrity and accountability. So, that’s been a big piece of just something that surprised me or I didn’t think would play as big of a role as it does, but trying to do it the right way.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. No, and and that is, that is not surprising to hear.

That is. Yeah. That is a lot of what I do at SAGA is helping, you know, handhold agency owners as they’re, they’re crossing those various bridges. What I can say to you is that the good news is once you cross those bridges, it’s so much easier. Totally. I always say that the, the hardest employee to hire is the first one. After that it almost becomes too easy at times. And so you, you’ve gotta be, you know, probably cautious that you don’t overdo it.

Emily Allard: Totally. It’s good to know.

Chip Griffin: But so having, having those systems and processes in place gives you the flexibility to make decisions that are right for the business without, yeah. I’m not gonna say without any stress, but without the same level of stress.

Emily Allard: Totally. I think there, Brene Brown calls it an FFT, um, I’m not sure if we’re allowed to cuss on here, but it’s blank first time. Yeah. And anytime you go through something for the first time, it always comes with its own challenges to your point, but it gets easier as you go. So, thank you for that.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And, and what I always say is that, that everything that I do and the content I produce and the consulting that I do is really just sharing what worked and what didn’t work for me when I tried it, so that you get the experience of my first time instead of having to do it with yours.

Although even then, you know, everyone’s situation is different. Yeah. As we, as you think about the future of marketing in women’s athletics.

Emily Allard: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: You know, what are the, what are the biggest opportunities and what are the biggest challenges ahead? Sort of, you know, looking in that, that larger crystal ball.

Emily Allard: Yeah. I would say 10 years ago we were really adamant while we were playing in the pro league about telling stories, telling our stories, which is what marketing is all about, right? We’re storytellers. But the, to your point, you know, photographers aren’t there. It was really hard to get media companies there, us being on tv, like all of those things.

There were so many cool stories to tell, but just one, no one was capturing them, and two, no one could hear about it. And I think that’s a big shift that we’ve seen over the last three to five years is now there are people in this space and there are people listening. And because it is visible, you know, a little girl can turn on the TV and see so many different women’s sports.

So it’s, that has come such a long way. I think, in terms of the maybe opportunity side of it is we’re starting to see a lot more investment in women’s athletics. There’s lots of conversations that happen where, you know, the NBA was around for X number of decades before they ever made any funds. There’s a lot of these leagues that were subsidized by X, Y, Z, like getting that type of investment on the women’s side to then see that return, I think is the, the next like big opportunity.

And we’re starting to see it, but I think there’s a lot more that can be done there.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I, I, and one of the things I’m particularly curious about is, you know, your thoughts on, on the focus, the extreme focus on one or two individuals Hmm. When it comes to women’s sports and, and is that, I mean, obviously it, it draws a lot of attention to, you know, the various leagues.

Emily Allard: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: Is that, is that sustainable? Is that, do you think that that then, you know, lasts, you know, five or 10 years down the road, even as the personalities change, do they have to get replaced by new personalities? I’m cur because it, it strikes me that the growth in, in a number of things. I mean, if we look back, you know, 25 years ago to, to women’s soccer, that was, you know, it was personality driven by a single team.

Emily Allard: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: Now we’re having the WNBA driven by

Emily Allard: mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: One or two personalities. Sure, sure. I’m, I’m curious. Your thoughts on that as a marketer? Yeah. And what that means long term.

Emily Allard: It’s a great insight. I, the thing that comes to my mind first is it’s a double-edged sword, right? Like there one of one to two individuals have certainly put a league farther on the map, let’s say. Everyone knows that the WNBA has existed. Now we’re on this whole different level because of one or two faces. As you were talking, I was thinking a lot about like LeBron. Jordan. Kobe. Like we’ve always had those one or two individuals on the men’s side too. And my favorite thing is like SportsCenter will tweet, post whatever, something on LeBron, and then all the comments are like, shut up enough about him.

Like we’re, we’re so tired of listening to him. I think you’re starting to see that a little bit too on the women’s side, which I think is a good thing. Like it’s a, like people are listening, they’re engaging, they’re interacting, and now we have an opportunity to spread that publicity across multiple different things.

I think my favorite thing I’ve seen recently is A’ja Wilson’s campaign for her new shoe, through Nike. It was a like, so incredibly well done video, and I think there’s just a lot more of those opportunities that are gonna keep coming because of one or two faces who came in and kind of push this, this envelope.

So, a rising tide lifts all boats. Right? That’s, that’s what I’m hoping for.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And do you, do you foresee this trickling down to more of the youth levels? And maybe changing attitudes and, and attendance, frankly, at, at a lot of those things. Or is, is it really gonna, is that a longer road? I mean, you, you’ve obviously experienced every level possible within women’s athletics personally, and so, you know, you probably are, are better suited to, to speak to that than just about anybody.

Emily Allard: I appreciate that. I do think there is trickle down effect for sure. I think as the pro leagues continue growing, you know, when I was growing up, I went to men’s sporting events. I, we went to Giants games, we went to A’s games, we went to, you know,

Chip Griffin: I’m so sorry.

Emily Allard: Hey now, hey now. you know, but that

Chip Griffin: I’m a Red Sox fan, so you know.

Emily Allard: That’s fair. That’s fair. You can’t beat Dollar Dog Night though. I don’t know if that still happens for A’s Games, but we were balling on. I know.

Chip Griffin: The Colosseum is the worst stadium I’ve ever been to personally and I, Ugh. Anyway.

Emily Allard: Imagine that being your home though, like. That’s, that’s all I knew growing up.

And I was like, this is the greatest. Now I’m,

Chip Griffin: and then you went to other parks and you’re like, oh my God. Totally. They actually can be built properly.

Emily Allard: Totally. 100%. 100%. Um,

Chip Griffin: sorry to take you off track.

Emily Allard: No, no, you’re good. And there, there is that trickle down effect though for sure. I think what will be interesting and why I am not a good person to talk about this is I’m not a huge fan of this NIL landscape.

Like I certainly think that we should be, like compensated maybe for name, image likeness. But my understanding of that when it first came out was like, you know, someone buys my jersey and I get a royalty. Not I’m getting paid and you know, I’m moving schools and all these, so anyways, we don’t have to get down that road.

But I do think the landscape in youth sports is changing and I am very much a passion driven person. You play the game the right way, the game will give back to you. And I think we’re seeing a lot of money and profit involved in sports right now, especially at the youth levels with tournament organizers and things like that.

So sports in general is shifting. And it’s, it’s been really interesting to see that. And I think that has a larger trickle down effect on the youth, just landscape than maybe some of these pro teams.

Chip Griffin: So with all of these changes taking place and your optimism for where things are headed Yeah.

What, what does that mean for your agency, you know? Yeah. Where do you see yourself headed, in the business and, you know, what, what are your ambitions, for the future?

Emily Allard: Great question. We have right now, we’re really service driven from like a digital marketing perspective. I think one of our growth areas that we’ve really been looking at and trying to grow into well and strategically is branding. I think that’s a big piece, especially in the sports world, but for women’s sports specifically and helping, helping companies establish a brand. And even things as simple as like a brand guide or, you know, those types of things. Consistency across all of the different things that we’re doing and look, feel, messaging.

That is a tap, an untapped area we believe that I think we could fit well into. And also dream. We really wanna get involved in pro women’s athletics, whether that’s, let’s say a WNBA team, running ads for a league, like just that kind of stuff. We are, I would say more in the youth, nonprofit, sporting goods, retail space, and I think it would be really fun to get into that pro scene.

So those are just a few areas that we’ve been toying with and thinking about, but again, very smart, very strategic, not trying to grow too fast and trying to, to go into services that we feel our clients would fit within versus just growing to grow.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. No, that’s, that’s smart. You know, it’s, a lot of agencies try to, to grow too fast because they, they, you know, they chase the big logos and things like that as opposed to thinking about how do we, how do we grow and scale intelligently.

Sure. And I’ve seen a lot of agencies struggle when they manage to go out and win that big logo way too soon. Mm. And, and they don’t have the know, the know-how, the bandwidth to handle that kind of a client. It can be really challenging.

Emily Allard: That’s really interesting and we, we’ve had a couple of those like kind of opportunities and I, the first thing I tell a client too is like, I’m so appreciative that you thought of us first.

And also I want to make sure that we can deliver. So, you know, gimme some days and times to, to think this through a little bit. And if we aren’t the best fit, I’m gonna tell you and then we can have a conversation about maybe some recommendations. But I think, I don’t know if it’s because it’s mine. Or like I started it or whatever that is.

But I just feel this protection around the integrity and wanting to do good work for our current clients versus what you’re saying, chasing some of these other logos. So, that’s definitely something that has come up a few times for us.

Chip Griffin: And it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s tough because you get, it’s really easy to get excited by the prospect of working for large clients. And I’ll, I don’t have any particular experience with sports leagues or those kinds of things, so I can’t speak to them.

But, but in other sectors, a lot of the big businesses, frankly, are pretty abusive towards their agencies, whether that’s in payment terms mm-hmm. Things like that. And so, you know, oftentimes it becomes a little bit of an albatross. Sure. If you could say a little bit of an albatros. Yeah. For the agency when they win them.

And so, you know, oftentimes being more mid-market can be helpful, at least for a period of growth until you figure out how to navigate those waters. That’s a really, if you were, if you were talking to someone right now who was you know, thinking about building an agency, you know, maybe it’s based on their own passion.

Yeah. Maybe like you, they’re, they’re an athlete and they kind of want to, you know, to find a way to, to continue to keep their foot in that game a little bit. Even though they’re no longer playing. What, what would be your advice to them as they’re thinking about doing that?

Emily Allard: Be really strategic in how you approach business. And I, I think what I mean by that is, clients talk, your employees talk, people who know you talk. And I think every day we try to approach doing good work, doing work well, communicating again under promising, over-delivering, like that integrity piece, I think is the most important part, especially when you’re handling clients’ money.

Whether that be paid media budgets, their retainers, whatever that looks like. So I think my biggest advice is how you move throughout the world is going to come back to you tenfold. And like we’re talking about chasing logos, you know, I’m not a salesperson either. I just love what I do. So I try and say that as well of like, I’m not trying to sell you anything if this isn’t a good fit, like, let’s move on, or I’m happy to steer you in the right direction. So just that integrity piece I think is, has served me really well and hopefully will serve others in the same way.

Chip Griffin: Well, I, I don’t think I could find a, a better way to, to wind down this interview because that is, that is the exact kind of advice that we love to share with listeners because it’s the, the practical things from your own hard won experience.

And I think that’s what, what tends to resonate with other owners the most. So I certainly appreciate you doing that. If someone would like to learn more about you or have a conversation with you or whatever. How can they do that?

Emily Allard: That’s a great question. So the company itself is on LinkedIn and Instagram, but I will be honest. We try our best. Like I said, 95% of the time we’re helping clients. So that 5%,

Chip Griffin: the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, right?

Emily Allard: Totally, totally. Our own website, SEO don’t come for me, but, so the, the company, 24sportsmarketing.com is our website. We did just start a newsletter, so if you wanna subscribe to that, that would be amazing.

You can find that on our website. Social media is the same at @24Sportsmarketing. Me personally, if you wanna follow my shenanigans on Instagram. It’s E and my last name Allard, A-L-L-A-R-D 24. Those are probably the best places to start. Professionally you can find me on LinkedIn as well.

So yeah, that’s, that’s all I got.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. Well that those are lots of opportunities for people to connect. And I would certainly encourage them to do that. Thank you. This really has been a, a great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time, Emily, to Yeah. To spend with me and, and the listeners and, you know, I wish you all the best as, as you move forward, because I think what you’ve got is, is not just an interesting business, but also a good mission.

And, and something that, that needs more attention.

Emily Allard: Thank you, Chip. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me on. It was a delightful conversation, and I’m looking forward to learning more as well.

Chip Griffin: And thank you to everyone who has listened all the way through here. We, we do appreciate it, and I look forward to having you listen to another episode very soon.

View Details

In this episode, Chip speaks with Ken Jacobs, principal of Jacobs Consulting and Executive Coaching, about providing constructive feedback to team members.

They discuss the importance of leadership coaching in the PR and communication space and the challenges of becoming a good leader without formal training. Ken emphasizes the necessity of providing constructive feedback that builds trust and respect, as well as the importance of listening and asking open-ended questions.

Chip and Ken also highlight the continuous process of coaching and the significance of maintaining open communication with team members to encourage their growth and success.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “I often equate the role of a manager to being like a blocking back in American football, your goal is to clear a path for your team members to have as much success as possible. It’s not to have them serve you in that process.” * Ken Jacobs: “Leadership is a two part choice. Your conscious decision to lead. And their conscious decision to follow you.” * Chip Griffin: “High performers have a tendency to like to talk. But the reality is that you need to be willing to sit back and listen.” * Ken Jacobs: “The best leaders are coaches.”

About Ken JacobsKen Jacobs, PCC, CPC, ELI-MP, an experienced consultant and certified coach, is the principal of Jacobs Consulting & Executive Coaching, which serves agencies, companies, senior leaders, executives and managers in the public relations, corporate communications, integrated communications, advertising, and marketing space.

Since 2007, he has helped agencies grow and manage business, improve client service and relationships, and enhance staff performance, communications, and leadership skills, while empowering communications CEOs, presidents, leaders, and senior managers to achieve and surpass their goals.

Jacobs holds Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credentials from the International Coach Federation (ICF), and is accredited as a Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Master Practitioner and a COR.E Leadership Dynamics Specialist by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC).

Resources* Ken Jacobs on LinkedIn * Jacobs Consulting & Executive Coaching

Related* Leadership lessons for agency owners (with guest co-host Ken Jacobs) * Managing small agency employees to maximize performance * How to hold agency employees accountable

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Chats with Chip podcast. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me one of my most regular guests, Ken Jacobs. Welcome to the show, Ken.

Ken Jacobs: It is so nice to be back. Thank you for having me, Chip.

Chip Griffin: It is nice to have you. We have a very important topic on tap. We’re gonna be talking about providing constructive feedback to team members. But before we do that, before we dive into that topic, why don’t you share a little bit about yourself with anyone who might be listening who hasn’t heard you on one of my shows previously.

Ken Jacobs: Sure. There might be a few. So, I’m Ken Jacobs. I am the principal of Jacobs Consulting and Executive Coaching. So from that you can guess some of the things we do. We offer leadership coaching as well as consulting in a few areas, primarily to those in the PR and communication space. Primarily but not limited to those on the agency side, but we, we have some clients that fit, you know, outside of that.

So coaching, consulting, and training. Every year there is more coaching, which is great because it’s very fulfilling. And I like to say we help leaders who are willing to do the heavy lifting to be more effective, inspired, and inspiring leaders to achieve their organizational goals, personal goals, career goals, and to become the leaders of their dreams and, and that their followers and their peers and their partners and their bosses and their clients need them to be.

Chip Griffin: That’s great. And, and the work that you do is so important because so many folks in the the agency world, they end up in leadership positions, but without any formal leadership or management or executive training really of any kind. And this is true for owners as well as employees. And so getting that foundational knowledge, getting that guidance and mentorship that folks like you can provide, I think really is, is important and it’s, it’s key to what we’re gonna be discussing today because, in order to be a good leader or manager, you have to be able to interact with your team to help them get the most out of themselves and therefore the most for the organization.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah, I, I agree. You know, we do… You know, I, and I was a PR agency veteran for many years before launching this business. And I will tell you that in agency business, but in a lot of fields and a lot of areas, we promote people into people leadership because they’re, they’re good at the thing, right? They go from being student to practitioner, to even supervisor, maybe to manager.

And then we promote them into leadership. Maybe they’re great with biz dev, growing new business, which is important. Maybe they’re great with clients. But that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna have inspired followers who make the choice to follow them. And, and leadership is a two part choice. Your conscious decision to lead. And their conscious decision to follow you. And just because you see people you know on an org chart in your office or on Zoom, it doesn’t mean they’re following you. So that’s, that’s a very different kind of choice that both of you need to make.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And, and I think part of the challenge too is that, that because our bosses often didn’t get this kind of training and support, we are modeling the behavior typically of those, you know, who oversaw us, but it may not be the right behavior that we’re modeling. And so, you know, sometimes you need to have those, those gentle nudges, those course corrections. And so folks who are open to receiving that kind of advice, and, and that kind of coaching from someone like you can be very helpful. And I, and I think this particular piece that we’re gonna focus on today is, is one of the most challenging for a lot of folks, particularly for high performers, trying to get additional performance out of their team.

When you start thinking about providing constructive feedback. It can be really frustrating for the high performers who, as you say, they get promoted not because they have management skills, but because they were good at what they did. They simply tend to expect that other people can perform as well as fast as they do, and so finding a way to be constructive in your feedback to help them get to that same level or close to it is very difficult.

Ken Jacobs: Well, it can be. I think that, you know, part of the challenge is knowing everybody’s on a different journey. Everybody with a different speed and what, you know, your leader led you. They didn’t just manage you, they led you, right? And so the tools and techniques that leader might have used review and all that…

Well, my, my boss didn’t have to manage me at all. Well, it’s like, let me talk to your boss Because I’m sure they led you and it was by design and they were very good at it. And if you didn’t realize it so much, the better. Right? But, but what you needed from your boss might be quite different from what your people need from you.

And if you’re leading three people, what person A needs might be different than what person B needs and might be different than what person C needs. Now you’re, you’re gonna show up with your core leadership style, but truly effective leaders are willing to customize or modify that style, whether I’m leading Chip or Gini or, or someone else.

Chip Griffin: And, and I think that tailoring is vital. Even more so today than maybe it was 30 or 40 years ago, I think it was still important then, but I, but I think the, the culture has become such that employees and team members are much more willing to be vocal about their desire to be managed differently and to learn differently.

And so it, it behooves us as leaders, as managers to help tailor each program based on, on what will be most effective for that individual. Because otherwise we might be tailoring it for what, what would’ve worked for us when we were in that same spot. But we all are different. I mean, some of us, you know, can, can learn by watching. Some of us learn through formal training.

Some of us, you know, do better when you’re just blunt with us and just say, this is what you need to do differently. Other people need to, to think it was their own idea. There’s all sorts of different permutations here that you need to, to explore and, and really get to understand with all of your team members.

Ken Jacobs: And I, I think this, this leads something you just said to, to one of the definitions of, of I think really effective leaders. Really effective leaders are humble, so they understand that what worked for them is irrelevant. And they understand that it takes work to lead effectively and, and you know, anyone who watches the podcast or or sees me speak or sees what I write, you know, they know that I’m a big believer in servant leadership. That you get to a point where you say, it’s no longer about just my success.

That’s what got me where I am. But what’s gonna get me where I need to go and get the organization where it needs to go is how do I lead each person into their greatest success? Success they didn’t even know they could achieve. That to me is today is all one of the hallmarks of great leadership.

Chip Griffin: So let’s assume someone’s listening to this and, and they accept the premise that we’ve now established because, because if not, you might as well tune out. Because I’m not sure the rest of it’s gonna be all that effective for you. Yeah, yeah. But, assuming that you’ve listened this far and, and can agree with the premise. If, if you’ve got team members where you want to provide them feedback, how should you be in general thinking about it?

Understanding it needs to be tailored for each individual. Yeah. But, but what are some general pieces of advice that you would offer folks in order to be constructive in their feedback?

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you used that term because so many people think about it as constructive critique or constructive criticism.

And in my experience and in talking to leaders and in those who, who they give feedback to, unfortunately the leaders go so quickly from constructive to critique. And that’s kind of where they live and that’s where they stay. And I always say to them, well, what does that do to your person’s desire, your follower’s desire to stay in the room, to listen to what you have to say and start to either change their work output or their behavior.

And if you are feeling critiqued… You know, you’re, you’re, you’re not gonna be listening. You’ve shut them down. What’s the point of that? So that’s why I encourage them. And I, and again, I’m glad you used this term to think about constructive feedback, because to me there’s a big difference between constructive critique.

Constructive feedback is feedback that constructs, that builds. What does it build? It builds trust. It builds respect, it builds the relationship, and it builds their desire to stay in the room. Listen to your wisdom. Let’s hope and improve. So the number one thought is give up constructive critique. Don’t call it that.

Don’t think about that, but call it constructive feedback. And look at the session and many sessions, not just as a chance to discuss the work output or behavior, but a chance to build something. That is much bigger and much deeper and it requires you to get better at it. So that, that’s, that’s one thought.

Another is to acknowledge that your mindset is contagious. Your mindset is contagious. Your energy is contagious. So if where you are living when the session’s about to start are, all the things Chip does wrong, just stop there. That’s setting the wrong tone for the discussion. Because you’re dealing with an entire person.

So if Chip, and I’m gonna call on Chip, not Gini… beat beat beat because I just made her laugh if she’s listening. But we’re, we’re gonna use you as the test case. But, but you know, you bring an entire person to the workplace. If I’m only focused on that release wasn’t written well, or God, he just doesn’t get the, the, you know, active voice versus passive voice or, my God, Chip just never gets that critical third client message in there.

That’s not where I want to live. I want to be thinking about Chip in the totality and then start to think about now there are some things where I can help him succeed more. And one of them might be writing, okay, that’s what today’s session is gonna be about. But, but my entire mindset, my entire energy is I’m fortunate to have Chip on the team.

And he’s doing well in many areas. Now, let now let’s work on a few others. I think you can sense that that shift is gonna have Chip or anyone much more open to what we might discuss. So that’s sort of number one.

Number two, consistently communicate respect. Consistently communicate respect. People must feel respected to listen to your wisdom, your feedback, whatever you want to call it.

And I think it can be challenging to communicate respect when we feel, oh my God, I told Chip this three times already. Yeah, well maybe the problem is how you presented it, but you know, or Wow, what he said at that client meeting was so inappropriate. When the work is really not where it should be and when the behavior is egregious, you know, that’s when you really must consistently communicate respect.So that Chip will stay in the room with me.

Third point I’ll make here, and then we’ll maybe shift it back to you, is that we think these discussions should be me talking 90% and the person’s gonna be listening and no. Change that ratio. You need to under, I need to understand where is Chip coming from.

Does he understand he got it wrong? Does he understand he keeps repeating the same? I mean, I, I need to know where Chip is and how can I know that if I’m talking, I can’t. So focus on listening. Have a ratio of maybe 40 talking, 60 listening. Ask a lot of questions. Because when I tell Chip something, I’m not learning anything.

So this change in listening style: to question, listen deeply, question again, listen deeply and then decide what you want to share. But I, we need to encourage response from the people we’re sharing this feedback with.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I think that that last point is perhaps the most important. It will help you in a lot of different elements of what you’re doing, not just in providing feedback to team members, but the more listening that you do, the more effective you’ll be, frankly, in even things like business development.

But you know, one of the things, high performers have a tendency to like to talk. Maybe not as much as I like to talk. But they still like to talk. And, and so, you know, and there is this, this impulse to dump out everything that, you know, when you’re trying to, in your mind, help someone to up their game or change their behavior or what have you.

But the reality is that you need to be willing to sit back and listen. But more importantly, I, I think it’s to try to invite the individual to share their perspectives because you might not be entirely correct in the feedback. Yeah. That, that you want to give. Now, there are some, there are times where it is egregious and blatant and you, and, and obviously it needs to be handled, but sometimes there may be differing opinions and, and you want to hear from that team member both what they think worked and didn’t in a particular situation or a particular piece of content or what have you.

And I always like to, to ask individuals, how would you do it differently next time, given the opportunity? Because my experience is a lot of times, they already know what needs to be done. And so I don’t need to sit there and keep talking and beat them over the head with it. Because they know. Yeah, and, and if you allow them to do that, it improves their confidence, but it also means that they’re then buying into the solution as opposed to being force fed something in their mind, even if they would’ve gotten to the same place on their own.

Ken Jacobs: Well, here’s the thing, you know, we start these conversations generally with so much talking. And you want to first find out, as I said, where they are. If I sit down with Chip, let’s talk about the last release. And Chip says, I know it wasn’t in the active voice, that the, the quote was too over the top. I used the phrase, I’m excited to, you know, the client’s excited to launch, which we don’t want to say I buried the lead, or whatever it is.

It’s like, oh, they, they, they know what they got wrong. Great. So what are you going to, what’s your plan for next time? And they say, well, I’m gonna have someone else proof it. I’m gonna have a checklist of things that I know are my watch outs to get it right. Da da da. I’m gonna go through and count. Did I include all three client men?

You know, your people can course correct and by them saying it, you can say very little. They may re, they may surprise you with how much they know they got wrong and more importantly, their plan to get it right the next time. Now, you might, they might be aware of what they got wrong, but when you say, what’s your plan to improve?

They go, I don’t know. I keep hitting a wall. I, okay, what are some of your options? Which kind of segues into the next section and maybe it should have been the first. I don’t know.

Chip Griffin: So before we do that though, I want to build, I want to build on that one particular area. Yeah. Because I, I think, you know, the other thing that we need to do is we need to accept that we may have had some responsibility in the outcome ourselves.

And so, you know, one of the things that, that I will frequently ask is, what could I have done differently? Not what you could have done differently. Mm-hmm. But, you know, mm-hmm. Because sometimes it’s, I didn’t give you enough time to do it. I didn’t give you the resources that you needed. I didn’t give you enough guidance about what the client was looking for or what my expectations were.

So we need to understand that, that when our employees don’t succeed to our expectations, sometimes, not always, but sometimes it has to do with something that we did as a precursor to it. And, and the more we accept that. And invite that into the conversation, the more we typically can help.

Ken Jacobs: Well, there’s that humility we talked about.

There’s that servant leadership. And I tell leaders, what do you do if you’re not getting the outcomes you want? Like, what’s the best tool? And my answer is a mirror. Look at yourself. How could I, and not even, what should I have done last time? I’m not a big believer in beating ourselves up over what we did wrong.

Because I always say all my clients, all my associates, all my influencers, if you will, the people who recommend me, they’re very smart people, I’m fortunate to say. But the one thing you know, they’re not time travelers. They can’t go back in time, either. The person can’t go back in time, you can’t go back in time.

So I encourage people just to focus on the what do I do next time? Yep. Because it takes that sort of self-loathing.

That’s right. That’s right. Learn from the past, but don’t relive it.

outta it. Right? Yeah. Yep. But, but, but a very important point related to the ratio of, of speaking versus listening is, is the power of an open-ended question.

If I tell Chip, Chip, you know, here’s something you really ought to do, Chip might write it down. He might be nodding his head and that’s great and I feel like I’m getting buy-in, but do I really? Possibly or probably not because. I haven’t lit up the part of the brain, which is the front, you know, that’s the part of the brain where things like passion, executive function, creativity, action, collaboration, and memory live. Okay, the front of the brain. Passion, action, creativity, executive function. Collaboration. Did I say passion and memory? That was seven. That time my, my memory’s working so well. So obviously I want to light that up if I want Chip to embrace change. Telling him does not light up that part of the brain. It is only by asking open-ended, empowering questions to which there it’s not a yes or a no answer. That’s how we light up that part of the brain. And now Chip is really using his brain power to figure out what he wants to do next. So, you know, ask, don’t tell is so powerful.

It shouldn’t come in my view. If you want change. It doesn’t come from your brain and your mouth. You’ve gotta figure out how do I get it to come from the other person’s brain and mouth? And in that open-ended, empowering questions are your best friend. And this has been backed up with MRI studies. MRI studies looking at the activity in the front of the brain when, so we, you know, we put Chip in the MRI, I’m the MRI technician.

Chip, here’s three things you gotta do next time. Alright, we’ll get a little bit of activity, but if I say, Chip, what are you, what are you gonna do next time? And we start to get Chip going and we say, Chip, why is this important to you? Oh, we’re gonna see activity. Then Chip, how will it feel if you can get your work to that place?

And it’s uh, I always say misquoting Miss Alicia Keys. This guy’s brain is on fire. And I, I attended a webinar, a coaching webinar by one of the many research scientists who talked about the MRI Studies, showed us the, the, the slides of the MRI and just seeing that visual activity. In front of the listener’s brain.

It’s really powerful. And here’s a little, you can use it in leadership, you can use it in coaching. I mean, the best leaders are coaches, aren’t they?

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, you know, I often explain to, to new managers that your job is not to assign tasks and hold people accountable and sort of all the classic comic strip management things that, that you see.

But it really is to be a coach, a mentor, an advisor. To your team members, and, and I often equate it to being like, in, in American football being a blocking back, your goal is to clear a path for your team members to have as much success as possible. It’s not to, to, you know, have them serve you in that process.

And I, I think that the open-ended questions and really getting your team members to communicate with you. Is a really effective approach, but I think a precursor to that is you’ve got to have ongoing quality communication with your team members. It can’t be simply when you’re looking to try to, to provide feedback or solve a challenge.

But that’s a, it’s a mistake, particularly in busy agencies that often happens where we don’t make the time to have these conversations with team members on a regular basis like we ought to be doing so that they feel comfortable opening up to you when you ask that open-ended question. Because if they view you as the scary boss and you ask an open-ended question, they’re gonna kind of turtle up and and not want to say anything because they’re not sure how you’re gonna accept it.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. Well here’s the thing. You know when that happens, silence is your friend. Silence is your friend. And so if you’ve experienced that for any reason and they say, I don’t know. So, well, I think you could figure this out. Let’s just sit for a minute, let that silence work to say, I’m not answering it for you.

I’m gonna fight the urge. And, you know, it builds the leader’s ego a bit to solve the problem. But that’s not really leadership, is it? That’s not really getting people to grow to their greatest potential. So it, you know that this approach of asking, not telling takes discipline. But it’s also easier. It takes the pressure off because you don’t have to have the answers for everything, right?

You just need the questions. So you know, why is that important to you? What’s the worst that can happen? What are you two best choice? I mean, there’s all those que, if you are just intellectually curious, you are gonna have the questions. And so again, we don’t get that ego rush of, I solved it again. But you’re getting something far more powerful, which is helping that other person build their problem solving muscle.

And yes, I get it. The brain is not a muscle. I understand. We don’t have to send letters, but, you know, but, but that to me is one of the gifts of coaching when you help someone figure it out. And if you help them figure it out by coaching, by open-ended questions, you’ve given them this, this just enormous gift.

And that’s why, you know, coaching can be so fulfilling. And that’s why truly effective leading, I think, is so fulfilling because you’re helping people, you know, again, do things they didn’t know they could do that. Kim Sample’s, one of my favorite leadership experts, the head of the PR Council, and her quote is something like, I’ll mangle it a bit, but you know, it’s something like, truly effective leaders help teams and individuals do things they did not know they could do.

Just imagine, you know, how exciting that is. And, and again, it’s less pressure than your having all the answers.

Chip Griffin: So before we wrap up, I, I want to address one of the questions that I sometimes get from clients, which is, okay, Ken. Okay, Chip. You know, I, I buy into every, I buy into the premise that you sold.

I buy into the approach that you’ve suggested. But what happens when I get that, that team member and I get to this point, and they either, I can’t get them to buy in on what, what they need to work on. I can’t get them to buy in into a solution that I think will actually work. I mean, how do I deal with those?

Yeah. Yeah. Those recalcitrant edge cases where the, the, the employees, they’re still good. They, I’m, I’m not sitting here saying that they are not, they’re not worth keeping around. It’s not one of those, but, but they’re not quite seeing the light.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. How do I do that? Yeah, so I think it goes back to something we said earlier, which is to look within and say, am I really asking?

Not telling. Am I really giving them the opportunity to engage their brain and figure it out, right? Am I fighting the urge? Because in most cases, I, you know, it starts with a question and they immediately go into, tell. No, don’t do that. You know, trust the process, it works. Stay with it. So that, that’s sort of thought one.

Thought two is there are times that if they figured it out and you’re not sure it’ll work. You know, look, it’s, it’s, it’s PR, not ER, for the most part, it’s, we’re not doing brain surgery and for most of us, we have the space that let them try it their way. It might actually work, and many of us are not, you know, humble enough to accept that, you know, try it, let them try it their way.

They then come back, they tried it their way. Because you know they have buy-in. If they came up with it, at least they have buy. You know what’s better: trying it their way with buy-in or not quite trying it your way. Because they didn’t really have buy-in, right? So let them try it their way. Ask them what worked, ask them what gaps remain.

Ask them, well how might you figure that out? Shall we brainstorm some other ideas? So you’re still engaging them in that process. Sometimes it takes a second round, but being, I think being true to the process will work. And then, you know, sometimes, very good is good enough. Some people may not have the capacity to get to excellent, but if you can take them from average or they take themselves, let me be true to what I’m saying, if they take themselves from average to consistently very good, from good to consistently very good.

That’s a matter of your perspective of not worrying about the gap between very good and excellent and saying, well, you know, what can we achieve here if all my people were consistently very good? It’s very good. It’s pretty good.

Chip Griffin: That’s right, that’s right. You know, those are all great points, and I love that you describe it as a process because it really is, and, and I would simply add the modifier.

It’s an ongoing process. Oh, yeah. And, and so we, even when we, we provide feedback, we get them to buy into the, you know, what the challenge is and a, and a good solution that they’ve come up with. It’s still gonna take time. These are not overnight things and they will still repeat some similar mistakes in the future.

And, and so we need to accept that and just keep working on it. Keep working on it. Just like we work on ourselves.

Ken Jacobs: Yeah. Well I think it’s the classic three steps forward, one, maybe one step back, five steps forward, two steps back when we are trying to drive change individual or you know, organization wide.

Let’s accept that that process happens and be prepared for it. As a leader and a coach, be prepared. They’re gonna miss the mark a little, and then you get, again, ask a question, get them talking. Let’s talk about your work the last month versus the previous three. What are, what are you, you know, ask people how their performance is.

You might, you might be surprised at the honesty. You know, with which they’ll respond and it is far more effective than you are saying, you know, I think you’re a C. Right? You know, if they say. Well, I think I’m a B minus. Well, what do you want to be? I want to be an A. Okay. Let’s talk about that.

Chip Griffin: Right.

And, and maybe that’s a topic for another show. We can talk about the, the pros and cons of rating employees, which spoiler alert I, I think is ridiculous process. Okay. But, but anyway.

Ken Jacobs: Worth a discussion.

Chip Griffin: For folks who might want to gather more of your insights or talk to you about your expertise and how you might be able to help, where should they go, Ken?

Ken Jacobs: Yeah, two places. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m the only Ken Jacobs as far as I know, with a set of initials after my name, so that will help you find me. Or you can go to the website www.jacobscomm.com or email me ken@jacobscomm.com and tell me that you heard this conversation with Chip.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. And we’ll include all of those things in the show notes. So if you’re listening to us on the treadmill or in the car, no need to fall off or crash or any of those kinds of things. They’ll be, they’ll be right there for you when this is all said and done. And you’ll have nice, convenient access.

So, Ken, I’ve really appreciated this conversation and the time that you’ve taken to spend with me and my listeners, and I’m already looking forward to the next opportunity we have to talk again. So. For now, I’m gonna sign off and thank you all for listening to us and I hope that we’ve given you some useful advice in the constructive feedback that you’ll be providing to your team members in the future.

View Details

In this episode, Chip speaks with agency advisor Tim Kilroy about the challenges and strategies for running a small agency. Tim shares his extensive experience in digital marketing and agency coaching, highlighting the importance of flexibility and adaptability in leadership.

They discuss the notion of many agency owners being ‘accidental’ and the necessity of creative problem-solving and rigorous operational procedures in today’s tough economic and technological landscapes. The conversation emphasizes fostering a supportive and clear environment for agency teams, allowing for autonomy and decentralized decision-making to drive success.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “To me, the businesses that tend to be the best are the ones that you come upon out of necessity or an opportunity that’s staring you right in the face. And I think that’s helpful for most agency owners because the vast majority of agency owners are accidental.” * Tim Kilroy: “As the agency leader, your job is to not make happy clients. Your job is to create teams and systems that create happy clients.” * Chip Griffin: “One of the challenges that agency owners have is understanding when and how to pivot. Because pivoting is good, but you can also do too much of it where you’re basically being carried by the latest breeze.” * Tim Kilroy: “So many agency leaders never give their teams the skills, authority, and autonomy to make the right decision. And that’s the difference between working to succeed and preventing failure. Those two things are not the same.”

About Tim KilroyTim Kilroy is an agency growth coach with a no-BS style, a sharp strategic brain, and a heart for founders who want to build businesses they actually want to run. After years in the trenches -launching, scaling, exiting and breaking agencies, he created the WTF Agency Method to help founders unclog revenue bottlenecks, fire themselves from sales, and turn their teams into content powerhouses.

Resources* Website: https://timkilroy.com * Connect with Tim on LinkedIn * WTF Agency Assessment

Related* Should your agency pivot to a new focus amid economic shifts? * Building trust and letting your team shine * Delegation for control freaks: How to let go and trust your team * Do you trust your agency team members?

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I am delighted to have with me today a fellow agency advisor, Tim Kilroy. Welcome to the show, Tim.

Tim Kilroy: Thanks, Chip. Super glad to be here. And I must say that that intro was very sort of like NPR like.

Chip Griffin: Well, you know, I, I do take some inspiration from, from old fashioned talk radio, in how I do things including the microphone that I have, which is sort of a classic of the talk radio world. But yeah. So, and, and we are classics now, right? That’s, that’s why we get to be advisors.

Yeah.

Tim Kilroy: I, so it has, I, I don’t, I don’t like to think about myself as a classic, but I think that’s probably true.

It’s, you know, I definitely fit into the classic car realm. Anyways.

Chip Griffin: There you go. And, and if you can listen to classic rock on the radio and identify with it, you’re probably a classic. So,

Tim Kilroy: Often when I’m with my kids, there’ll be something that comes on, like in the grocery store, you know, the muzak and like, ah.

That was high school right there, man. That was like, there you go. Like, that was like, I remember jamming that in middle school and they’ll be like, what? Mm-hmm. Like, anyways.

Chip Griffin: Oh, well. Well, for those, for those who who don’t know you, what, what would you like to share about yourself that could perhaps introduce yourself to them?

Tim Kilroy: So, well, first of all, obviously if you are watching… devastatingly handsome. If you’re only listening, unbelievably hilarious. So those are the two things you probably ought to know. But actually I’ve, I’ve been in this, the, in the world of agencies… actually. I’ve been in the world of digital marketing since 1997. And, have been in agencies or senior leadership positions on the client side since 2001.

And I have, you know, I’ve started three agencies, crashed one so hard they had to call in FEMA. And, you know, started and exited two. And just as we discovered earlier, just about the same time you did, I stumbled into agency coaching quite accidentally and have realized that this, like me helping you figure out what the f is going on in your business – like that is, that is the best way to leverage my experience and point of view. Because whatever agency problem that you have right now, I have either had or created some version of that problem for myself. And because I’m a slow learner, I have probably done it more than once. So I have all sorts of solutions to help you figure it out.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. As I always like to tell people, I, I can’t necessarily give you the right answer, but I can tell you a lot of the wrong ones.

Tim Kilroy: Right. Yeah. Yes.

Chip Griffin: That’s from hard won experience.

Tim Kilroy: Exactly. Exactly.

Chip Griffin: And I, I do, I do like how you, you mentioned that, that your current business, you sort of came into it accidentally and, and I, and earlier we were talking and, and you mentioned being an accidental agency owner before that.

I, I think that, that there’s a, a key theme here and, and I’m a big believer that many of the best businesses, if not most of the best businesses, were not intentionally created. Someone didn’t set and in fact, I’ve tried doing this myself where I go out and say, I wanna start a business and I’ll talk with people about different ideas and things like that.

And, and then you sort of pick one. But, but to me, the ones that that tend to be the best are the ones that you come upon out of necessity or an opportunity that’s staring you right in the face. And, and I think that’s something that it’s helpful for most agency owners to appreciate because the vast majority of agency owners are accidental.

The vast majority didn’t, didn’t wake up one morning and say, you know what? I think I’m gonna start an agency.

Tim Kilroy: Right. I would so happily put myself in the line of fire and the line of responsibility for creating ads that are supposed to generate sales on the other end of something where I don’t have full control.

Absolutely. That’s exactly what everybody wants to do. Yeah, you know, I actually think about things. Like your life is just a series of pivots. You know, you can be super intentional about your day-to-day actions, but, but over the course of your life, you know, you are constantly pivoting from one experience or one point of view to the next.

I mean, there might be a through line that makes them all consistent, but rarely is your intentionality expressed over a long period of time. And so you’re thinking, this is what I’m going to do today and tomorrow, and maybe, you know, next week I’ll do that. But by the time you get to next week, your ability to predict the circumstances is pretty poor. So you then actually, you know, then you’re, you’re forced to pivot your, you know, your way of thinking and your way of being. And, and I think, and I think that’s why those businesses that appear less intentional are sometimes more robust.

Chip Griffin: Mm-hmm. Well, and, and I think that, that this notion of pivoting is, is critical because the, the best businesses do frequently find the need to pivot. In fact, if you look at a, a lot of the, the best companies in the world, what they started out as is not what they are today.

Tim Kilroy: Yes. Slack, for instance.

Yep. Absolutely. Right. They were, they were a gaming engine and they peeled off a tool.

Chip Griffin: Yep.

Yeah. And, and it’s just, it is one of those things where I think that, that one of the challenges that, that agency owners have, at least in my experience, is understanding when and how to pivot. Because pivoting is good, but you can also do too much of it where you’re basically being, you know, carried by the latest breeze.

Yeah. And, and you have, you have no rudder control at all, or you’re so fixated on saying this is the way to do it, that you’re reluctant to pivot and so, so finding the right balance there, I think is right, is something that a lot of owners need to do.

Tim Kilroy: And if, and if you are reluctant to pivot, you are either a genius or you’re really stupid.

You know, because there sometimes there are people who are so pure in their vision, and when they turn out to be right in their vision, it’s extraordinary. Sure. But I think, but I think that those, those, sort of focused geniuses are, are very rare.

It sort of a, a sort of, you know, reminds me of, and I don’t know if this is a true thing that Thomas Edison said is like, he did not invent the light bulb.

He just found like 10,000 ways that it didn’t work, and one way that it did.

Chip Griffin: Well, whether that story is, is true or not, it sounds good. And, having started my career in, in politics, we used to always say, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. So, so we won’t do that here either. No fact checking allowed.

All right. So, you know, obviously I, I, I think, well, let me ask would you first of all agree that we are in challenging times for many agencies?

Tim Kilroy: Oh my goodness. Yeah. As we talk, I think. So I’ll tell you the, my first agency, I started in the, in the rubble of the dot com crash. My second agency, I started just seriously, weeks before the 2008 financial meltdown happened.

So, you know, I’ve been through some challenging times in agency ownership. But I can honestly say that this particular circumstance where we are fighting macroeconomic issues, macro technological issues, and a rapidly changing social dynamic, I think is, is this could be the hardest. This really could be the most difficult time to be an agency owner that, that I have ever seen.

Chip Griffin: Well, yeah, I, I, I think part of that is right, because the, you, you’re creating challenges that are not just in the business, right? Yeah. So some of the things that you’ve enumerated in the past, those were largely business challenges. Yes. But here, owners are, and employees are facing, and clients are all facing issues, not just in the business, but in their personal lives as well, because a lot of these dynamics are directly impacting them there.

Tim Kilroy: Yeah. You know, and, and I think as I’m, as I’m, as I often say to my clients when they’re talking about macro issues, you know, like most agencies are not big enough to be directly impacted by macro issues. By the time you get to be like WPP and you’ve got a very big footprint. Yes, yes. Global macroeconomic and social issues do impact you. On the, you know, if you’re a $3 million agency, you are not really being impacted directly by macroeconomic or social issues. You’re just experiencing some of the friction. And so, so much of the way to survive these, you know, these really difficult times is by being intentional. And creative. And so both allowing you to, to like make very rational, thoughtful choices and also being open to like following a stupid crazy idea that, you know, that in the words of, of the Scooby Doo gang, you know, this might just be crazy enough to work.

And so, and I, and I really do think that, you know, that the only way to get, the only way to make it through difficult times is through rigor and experimentation. And those two things are actually, people don’t carry them around in the same bucket.

Chip Griffin: So operationally, how do you think about this when an agency owner comes to you right now and says, Tim, you know, it’s, it, it, it’s tough sledding. I’m not sure exactly what to do. How do you help them to operationalize this rigor and experimentation?

Tim Kilroy: Yeah, so, so the, so the very first thing is we, we talk about what are the connection points between the activity that your team is doing and the outcomes that your clients expect. For many, many, many agency owners, they have built SOPs and they are having their team follow SOPs, but those SOPs are not evolving at the same rate as you know, as technology or, or the, the demands, of the business, change. Because changing SOPs is hard. Like it’s really hard. And so the very first thing that we, we do that when I’m helping somebody rethink and, and sort of re-energize and reshape their workforce is to say, Hey, we’ve gotta get a better operating procedure put together, but guess what? Mr. or Ms. Agency owner, you are not the person to lead that effort because you are too far away from the work. You know, you, you were thinking about this operationally, and your team has a much better grasp on thinking about it tactically.

And so operations is like an abstract thing, tactical things or a to-do list.

And so by helping people or ceding ownership of, of process to your team is, is the most effective way to revitalize and frankly, right size your, you know, your team efforts. It does demand however, that you as an agency owner be unbelievably clear, like crystal, overly, so over explained, kind of clear about expectations.

And so the people, you know, if you’re, if you’re a, a, you know, a media buying agency, the people who run your accounts and the people who do your creative and the people who manage your budgets and your reporting, like they know how to do all this stuff. What they need is a clear, beautifully described, you know, like crystalline expression of the desired outcome of the stuff that they do.

So your job as an agency leader is to make everything super clear as, as, as Brene Brown says, clarity is kindness.

So, if you are exceptionally clear about the expectations of your team and the outcomes that you expect for your clients, you can trust your team to organize themselves. For the most part in a way that will accomplish those results. Now, if they aren’t successful in doing that, the first thing that you have to say is, do they understand what I’m trying to, what we’re trying to accomplish here? And if not, that’s on you. But if they, if they understand what you’re trying to accomplish, and then their activities are still not pushing them in the right direction.

They are probably being held back by something that is maybe, an old expectation or a way of things, way of doing things that they used to do. But you have to free them from the tactical expectations in saying, listen, you can do this in whatever way is most effective. You just have to be very, very, very clear in being able to defend yourself and your actions in saying that this particular set of actions, this process, this course, this, this course of, of direction is bringing us closer to your expressed vision, not further away.

So if, if they have built a process that is neither, that is not bringing the result closer. That’s not a process that’s effective.

And so, and if you put it that way and say, Hey, you are free to do exactly what you think is the right thing, and you can say, okay, cool. If I do these things, that brings us closer to the goal for this particular client. Then that’s a success.

The other thing that is so treacherous is that agency owners want to systematize everything so that their team does not use any of their own discretion. And the landscape for every client is slightly different. They have a different product selection, a different pricing strategy, different customer service policies, a different audience.

So the actual tactics that your team puts together is going to vary by the particular situation. That is why you need to get your team to think about, not you do thing one, thing two, thing three, thing four. In that order, you think here are the bucket of things. Here’s the collection of tools at our disposal.

At this stage in the engagement, we have to make sure that we’re assembling the tools in the right order to get us to, to get us closer to the desired end state.

And yeah, that works just so much better because everybody feels respected and valued. And there’s a real sense of ownership.

Chip Griffin: Yeah.

And that’s increasingly important with today’s workforce. I mean, if I think back to 35 years ago when I first got started, you know, it was enough to just be clear in your expectation. You know, now I think you need to, to be not just clear about, you know where you’re going, but why, and Oh, absolutely.

You have to, to make the team feel like they are part of that. Ultimately, you’re the boss. You, you are the leader. You still have to make final decisions and, and they need to understand that it’s not a democracy. But at the same time, you need to, you need to open up the tent a little bit, bring them in and help them to understand the purpose behind what they’re doing.

Tim Kilroy: Yeah. So, so, you said something, you said something relevant that it’s not a democracy.

But there has to be a democratic approach to opinions. So everybody needs to have the the permission to say what they think.

Chip Griffin: Yes.

Tim Kilroy: And that, I don’t know, like when, when I was coming up, that was not a thing.

No. Like you were told what to do and then yousaid, okay, I’ll do that. And, and you could not say, oh, you know, the result wasn’t right. ’cause the process wasn’t good. Like where you weren’t clearing your expectations. I just remember bringing stuff to one of my bosses and him looking at it like, this is crap.

Like, why? Like, what made you think that this would be the right thing? Yep. And I was like, because that’s what you said.

Chip Griffin: Right?

Tim Kilroy: But, you know, I remember, when I was growing up, my, my dad was a, well, let’s, let’s call him, he was an emotive guy to be, to be kind. And he would often say things like, you know, like, what are you stupid? Because like doing that, there’s no way it’s gonna get you where you said you were gonna go, right? Like what are you, like, how, like can’t you think? You know? Like, good job dad, way to be supportive. But, but you know, I think that is the way that management used to work.

And now management today is much more about, okay, team, like this is where we’re going, this is why we’re going there. And actually there’s a, there’s a brilliant, like a truly brilliant sort of exploration of, of the sort of modern management in Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership book. I dunno if you’ve read that.

Chip Griffin: I have not.

Tim Kilroy: So there’s a part about decentralized decisioning, which essentially says, Hey, your job, in order to accomplish anything, your job is to say like, here’s the really big thing that we’re trying to accomplish, like the, the big goal. Here’s today’s mission, or this month’s mission, or this year’s mission, and here’s how it connects to that really big goal and why it’s important to that really big goal.

And here are all the teams that are going to be involved in us in today’s mission or this month’s mission. Here’s what they all do. And so then everybody has a, has the full context of how their work fits into the, into not only the, the big, far away, goal, but today’s mission or this month’s mission, and they understand how the other teams are contributing to it.

And the most beautiful thing is there’s this, there’s this idea that you have autonomy to do the right thing. Whenever you see that there’s the possibility that we’re not going to accomplish the mission. And so that allows you to like have agency inside of your agency to say like, oh, you know what, like this keyword strategy, it might be right, but it’s not sufficient so I can do more.

Right? Or, or like, this thing is not relevant to that client so we can leave it be. And as long as you can be as, as long as you can sort of express your thinking about that your leadership team needs to be like completely open to trusting your discretion because you have the, you as a, as an agency worker or as agency staff, you actually have all of the context necessary to make the right decision.

And so, and so many and so many agency leaders are so afraid that their team will make the wrong decision. They never give them the skills, authority, and autonomy to make the right decision. And that’s the difference between working to succeed and preventing failure. Like there’s those, like those are not the same.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and I think giving discretion and a degree of autonomy to the frontline particularly because as you noted, they are the people who they know best. They, they are in the trenches every day. They see exactly what’s going on, on both sides of the ball and, and, and they can help make some of those decisions.

The more context that you give them, the more information you give them. It enables those micro decisions to be more likely to be correct. Exactly. Then not. And if you withhold that information, it’s not going to. I, I do want to say that, you know, we, we were talking earlier about the, the challenging environment we’re in and, and in my experience, agency owners, agency leaders tend to become much more controlling, the more challenging the environment around them is.

So the irony is that the things that they really need to do in order to continue to succeed goes entirely against the natural instinct of almost every owner I’ve ever worked with.

Tim Kilroy: Yeah. So, and, and here’s the, here’s my, like pithy encapsulation of this. As the agency leader, your job is to not make happy clients.

That is not your job at all. Your job is to create teams and systems that create happy clients, right? So, and this is, this is the most counterintuitive thing for agency owners. Especially us accidental agency owners. When you start, you are thinking like the, like the thing that I’m supposed to do is work inside the business so it works. And that’s great if you are a freelancer or maybe you’re a freelancer with a helper. But as soon as you hire somebody with skills, your job is no longer to be the subject matter expert or the best marketer in your business. Your job, totally 100%, is to create an environment to get the very best performance out of the team that you have.

And so your job as an agency owner, believe it or not, is to run the agency, not do the stuff that the agency does. And so many people have, it’s so difficult for them to elevate above that. And, you know, part of it I think is like identity maybe. Like I know that, that, at my last agency Ad Chemics, we were doing this like nifty cool neato stuff with data enhanced, you know, and LTV enhanced sort of calculations in paid search.

And so when we started, and since this was all my idea, holy moly, I knew everything about paid search. You know, like where the comments go, where’d that go? You know, which button to push, which lever to pull? And I would’ve put my technical knowledge up against anybody. But you know, 15 clients into it, and a team, like I might be pretty nifty, but I am not nearly as smart as 15 paid search geniuses.

Mm-hmm. And so I had to pull myself out of that idea that I needed to know everything about paid search. I didn’t. Shouldn’t. Yeah. I need to know everything that paid search could do for our clients, so, so that we could help them hit their goals. Like the leverage, you pull the buttons, you push the pulls, you wrangle, not your job.

There’s people who are better at that than you are. Yeah. And also they have, generally speaking, more focused responsibilities so they can go deeper.

Chip Griffin: Well, I just, I really want to underscore what you said about, creating the, as a leader, your job is to create the environment in which your team can successfully do things for clients, where they can be successful themselves.

And, and I think part of the problem is that, that most agency owners don’t have any formal or informal management training. They don’t provide any, of, of the same to their own managers, individually. And, and the whole, the management paradigm that people think of is not really what works. And it’s not, because I talk to, to folks all the time about management and they say, well, you know, my job is to assign tasks and hold ’em accountable to meet deadlines.

No, your job is to, you’re a facilitator now. As a manager, your job is to create the environment, as you said, where, where they can be successful. You are there, I often, make it akin to being a blocking back in American football. Yeah. Right. You know, you are there to clear the path for them, figure out what obstacles are in the way, what resources they need.

If you think about it that way, as opposed to assigning and holding them accountable, you’ll be in a much stronger position to have a successful team.

Tim Kilroy: Yeah, absolutely. So, so I, although this, this, the person who said this ended up being less like this statement. After one of my agencies was acquired, I spoke to the acquiring CEO saying, wow.

Like, like it’s gotta be like pretty complicated to have all these people working for you. You know, there’s just so much to handle. And he looked at me and said, work for me? No, I work for them. Now. As it turns out, that was a giant pile of poo poo from his perspective. But it sounded good. But it’s very true, you know, as the agency leader, like your job is to make everybody else better.

Yeah. Like, that’s it. You know. You might think like it’s about big executive decisions and strategic thinking. No. It’s about thinking, okay, I got these like 15 really smart people who want to accomplish great things. Like what do I need to do to get the best out of them? What do I need to do to help them be the version of themselves that they want to be in this environment?

Chip Griffin: Well, I, I think the perspectives that you’ve shared today have, have helped facilitate that for our listeners and, and hopefully they’ll take some of those lessons away and start applying them in their own businesses. If someone would like to take advantage of, of more of your insights and advice, learn more about you and, and the resources that you provide. Tim, where should they go?

Tim Kilroy: Okay, there’s three places. So one, I spout off on LinkedIn a lot. I’m not hard to find there. And I think it’s pretty entertaining. You might not, but whatever, you know, to each his own. I, I agree. Yeah. So that’s one place where you can get, you know, get the sort of unfiltered version.

If you’d like to hear from me a little bit less, I do have a newsletter. At www.agencyinnercircle and that also comes with the Slack group, it’s totally free. You know, if you get the newsletter, click on all the ads ’cause I have five kids. And then an offer: something that if you need help and understanding where you might be meddling a little bit too much in your team’s activities, I do have the WTF to WTF assessments.

And that’s, and by the way, that’s what the f to wow that’s fantastic. And that, you can find that at timkilroy.com/wtf-assessment and that will take you like 10 minutes to, to, to, to fill out. And you’re gonna get back sort of a comparison about like where you stand relative to profitability growth. Revenue per employee and your, and how deeply you are involved in the functional areas of your business. And it will give you a roadmap or at least a snapshot of the things that you probably want to fix in order to create bigger opportunity for yourself.

Chip Griffin: Well, that’s great, and we will include links to all of those in the show notes.

So if you’re listening to us on the treadmill, in the car, please don’t fall off the treadmill or crash your car or something like that, trying to write down these URLs. They will be in the show notes and you can just click on them right there.

Tim Kilroy: Wow, thanks. So maybe I, I will use the show.

Chip Griffin: My lawyers made me add that.

Tim Kilroy: That’s the reference for my own stuff later. That’s good.

Chip Griffin: Okay, so there we go. So on that note, Tim, thank you for, for joining me. You’ve been a great guest with lots of insights. I would encourage everyone to check out the resources that, that you mentioned, and I appreciate everybody who has listened all the way through.

And I look forward to having you all back listening to another episode very soon. Thanks for joining.

Tim Kilroy: Thanks Chip.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Melissa Vela-Williamson of MVW Communications about her unique journey in public relations and the importance of content creation. Melissa shares her background, highlighting her non-traditional path into PR and her passion for using public relations for social good.

They discuss her focus on helping nonprofits and education clients, her role as a content creator, and her work as a columnist for the Public Relations Society of America. Melissa also delves into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on her business and the strategic approaches she took to maintain client relationships and grow her firm.

They explore the significance of writing books and producing various types of content, emphasizing the value of building relationships and demonstrating thought leadership in the communications industry.

Key takeaways* Melissa Vela-Williamson: “I took the first job I could get, which I always tell new grads to do, take anything near communications, just get employed. You’ll be more desirable if you’re employed.” * Chip Griffin: “Contact work now is very common. I know a lot of kids who come out of college who go straight into contracting as opposed to when we were out there in the workforce at first, that was a very unusual thing to do until you had a fair amount of experience.” * Melissa Vela-Williamson: “There’s a misconception that you write a book and that book’s going to make you a lot of money. Well, it could, but not in the way you might think.” * Chip Griffin: “Often people talk about creating lead magnets and funnels and all of that kind of thing. But really in the agency world, we’re trying to build relationships with potential new clients.”

About Melissa Vela-WilliamsonMelissa Vela-Williamson is an internationally recognized public relations strategist, author, PRSA national columnist, and podcast host. She is accredited in PR, is an elite PRSA Fellow, is certified in diversity and uses PR for social good through her boutique firm, MVW Communications.

Resources Connect with Melissa and follow MVW Communications on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram * MVW Communications website * Smart Talk Series podcast * Smart Talk: Public Relations Essentials All Pros Should Know book * Latinas in Public Relations: Shaping Communications, Communities, and Culture* book * Melissa’s PRSA “Cultural Strategy” column

Related* What kind of content should you create to market your agency? * Creating video content to help your agency grow * Content, consistency, and conversions for agency biz dev (featuring Lee McKnight Jr.) * Grow your agency without selling * How podcasting can help grow your agency

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Chats with Chip podcast. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me today Melissa Vela-Williamson of MVW Communications. Welcome to the show, Melissa.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Hey Chip, thanks for having me. I am excited.

Chip Griffin: I am very excited to have you. We’ve had a great pre-show conversation, so I know it’s gonna be a great episode. But before we dive into the topics at hand, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself with the listeners.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yeah. Thank you all for tuning in, listening in. I’m thrilled to speak with Chip today about this.

I’ve been listening to many, many episodes and shows of yours, Chip for a long time now. Just getting that mentoring advice that is so helpful to us in our entrepreneur journey. So for everyone here, I own a small boutique public relations focus firm called MVW Communications. It’s our 10th year Congratulations.

So yay. Congratulations. We made a decade congratulations. Also the longest place I’ve ever worked because I am so multi-passionate, but particularly passionate about using public relations for social good. So we try to do a lot of that in our firm, in the work that we do. Serving a lot of nonprofits, education type clients or for-profits who want to help out others. And I’m also really excited to be a content creator.

I am super passionate about writing. I have been my whole career. We’ll talk about that Chip, I know in just a minute. I do a lot of content creation as a national columnist for the Public Relations Society of America. My column’s called Cultural Strategy. So I want to integrate how people think and behave and work naturally and how we do our PR practice because that just makes good sense to me and build deep relationships with people.

And I also am an author of two public relations books. Smart Talk: Public Relations Essentials All Pros Should Know, and the latest, which is an anthology, Latinas in Public Relations: Shaping Communications, Communities and Cultures. And the reason I wrote those two books is a big part of why, we’ll, what we’ll talk about here today, Chip, which is about pushing the practice forward in the industry, inviting others in, and really empowering those who are doing the work, who are coming from all kinds of backgrounds, right?

I don’t have a traditional public relations major, so I’ve learned everything kind of the hard way. And I want to make it easier for others and really encourage them that they belong in public relations. They can do very purposeful work here, and what they’re doing today can really benefit society tomorrow.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and you really are a, a content powerhouse, and I definitely want to dive into that, but, but before we do, I, I’m, I’d like to touch on, on how you got into PR in the first place, because you have a little bit of an interesting story in that that’s not what you set out to do when you first went to school.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yeah, absolutely. And what I find over time is the more that I share it, the more helpful it is to others. Learning about our imperfect path into public relations seems to be very helpful. So if you’re like me, please do share your story because it matters particularly to aspiring prose students. Some who maybe have PR majors, but maybe have something in their personal background that they don’t feel really good about.

Right? Sometimes it’s things that we’re brought up into or things that happen to us that we don’t realize our lived experiences can be such an attribute to how we perform this work. And then also, you know, students who may be English majors, right, how many English majors are looking for really good jobs.

Public relations could be great for you. Those who are interested in business marketing, communications of all kinds, I mean really, just about any major, you can intersect that with PR and there’s probably a fit for it. So I didn’t realize that until later. I was a first, the first member of my family to go to university.

My mom was the first to go and get any kind of education beyond high school. She was, she went back later in her life after working 22 years as a cashier. And so it was very impressionable on me. I was about middle school age when I saw her, you know, go from the grocery store work she had been doing.

To help keep our family going and go after a certificate in dental hygiene. Completely different career and life shift. But her taking me to the library on weekends really spurred my love of reading and I kind of would grab every book I could, mostly about animals. So I thought I was gonna be a veterinarian, right.

Because that’s what kids put together is like, we could be veterinarians, lawyers, teachers, or doctors. Well, I’m really passionate about telling people about public relations to kind of open up another job role out there in, in people’s minds. But anyway, I thought I was gonna be a veterinarian, maybe. I knew I loved to read and then later on I was, I identified by a teacher going into ninth grade.

I was kind of a falling off the wagon educationally, right. I was bored in classes. I was probably gifted and talented, but I hadn’t been identified as such. And one teacher said, you know, I’m gonna put you in ninth grade honors English because you are a good writer.

And no one had ever told me that before.

And sometimes labels can be a really good fit for us. And so if you have that chance to identify something positive about someone, I, I really hope you take that chance to do so because it could change everything for them. So all of a sudden I put that hat on and said, okay, I’m a good writer. As I got in English Honors and I liked the competitive nature of my peers there and the kids behaved in class.

I went to some pretty tough schools growing up. And there was just a different vibe. And I really, really rose to that occasion. Went to the counselor’s office, said I want all honors. Those are my people. And that’s been the kind of individual ever since Chip, that I’ve been. So I took all the creative writing classes I could, became a published poet in high school.

Went into a small private university, followed some friends there because I was too scared to go to something larger and got a major in English Communication Arts, knowing, well, you know, I’m, I’m gonna try. Let’s see that veterinarian track, right? Let me not declare that major. I took a couple labs. I was like, this is gross. I can’t do this, and way too slow. And then I realized, oh, it’s not just playing with the puppy.

Chip Griffin: You’d rather dissect sentences than animals, right?

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yeah. Yeah. And even still, I kind of, it’s funny, I have an innate gift for writing. But I can’t exactly tell you what’s wrong with your grammar. I just know it’s wrong.

Chip Griffin: Right, right, right.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: So kind of, I probably would’ve done that on the vet side too. So it’s a good thing I didn’t go that path. But I’ve been able to do a lot of fun things with animals in my career. You know, I’ve done marketing and PR for beluga whales and horses and, you know, dogs and cats who need homes and I mean, that’s really fun.

But that’s what PR has, has been for me, is a way to pull in all the things I’m passionate about as a person and find a way that was more sustainable of a career to, to pursue them. So long story short, in my university experience, it took me those four and a half years to figure out what I was gonna do for a career option, majoring in English and communication and kind of best of both worlds, right?

The literature and creativity with actual grammar and all that stuff, the technical stuff. And my last senior semester, my semester of my senior year, we had a capstone class and we all had to introduce what job we wanted and we did research on it. And so I talked about being an advertising copywriter because that’s all I could figure out what to do with my passion for writing.

You know, my, like of marketing, I’d done a marketing internship at a theme park and that was fun, but it was kind of, you know, soulless. I needed something deeper. But then a peer presented on her internship and her desire to work in public relations, and I had never really thought about PR. I had never considered it.

We had one class in my university experience and it was more historical. Right. PT Barnum and that kind of story. And I just didn’t connect with it in an applied sense. But when the student talked about her internship in public relations and how they literally had helped people missing arms and legs, learn how to water ski and empowered them in that way.

And then she showed the newspaper and her article that she had worked on a journalist with, and it was published. I was like, that sounds so cool. Like that sounds like it matters. It sounds like marketing. It sounds like writing. There’s photography in it. That was a passion of mine too. And there’s so much I can do with that.

So I thought that sounded a good way to pay off my private university loans, a little more sustainable of a career because there’s very few copywriting jobs and, you know, marketing jobs are tougher, at that time. And, public relations is, has been, you know, my passion since. So I actually took, the first job I can get, which I always tell new grads to do, is like anything near communications, just get employed.

You’ll be more desirable if you’re employed.

Chip Griffin: Right.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: So I took a small grant writing job right out of school, to just start paying off my loans, but I kept looking for public relations roles. And back then it was like the newspaper, right? And the classifieds. But, my mom had taught me, she was very resourceful and she said, look, I don’t know people who work in your industry, but I do know, talk to everyone about what you want to do.

Somebody’s gonna know somebody. And I’m so thankful she did say that because I told my spin instructor, I went through this big weightloss journey in my college years. Kind of went the opposite route, like dropped a hundred pounds versus gained the freshman 15. Right, right. Either way, that really shaped who I was and how I see things as a person.

But that experience also led me to PR because I lost weight in that spin class. And the spin instructor, I was talking to him one day and said, I really want to work in public relations. I took this little, you know, grant writing job. It’s not really for me, but you know, I don’t know anybody. And he said, well, that’s funny. My wife owns a PR firm. You should talk to her. She hires freelancers. I said, oh, okay. So he gave me her phone number and I was brave and I called her and, and she said, yeah, you know, you can moonlight for me. And I said,

Chip Griffin: great.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: What’s moonlighting?

Chip Griffin: Right?

Melissa Vela-Williamson: I always like to throw that term out there just in case someone like runs into it.

Right. I want to define things as much as I can, and so

Chip Griffin: I think these days, everybody just calls it a side hustle, I think. Right? Your side hustle, the term moonlighting has disappeared and it’s been replaced by side hustle.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yeah. I like to just, you know, be a little old school and vintage with it.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely.

Absolutely. I’m with you on that.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: So I was like, you know, like Uber right side. Okay. Contract work. So that’s what’s cool is like, now we have different models of doing that in our economy, but back then, you know, this is like 2002. Not really. So…

Chip Griffin: Now it’s very common. I, I know a lot of kids who come outta college, including my oldest son, who, you know, they go straight into contracting as opposed to, you know, when, when we were out there in the workforce at first, you know, that was a very unusual thing to do until you had a fair amount of experience.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yes. And I think it’s very valuable if we teach young people how to be freelancers how to contract because they may not find, and often I tell them, Hey, you’re not gonna find that dream job right outta college. And you may need to make your own income and you can. And of course if you have a traditional employment, you know you have a traditional job, that’s great, but what if you lose it?

Right. So learning that skill’s always valuable. So I teach my interns, my apprentices, anyone who works for me how to contract.

Because I find that so valuable for them. So it was for me, I did that on top of my full-time grant writing job. Within two months I was offered full-time employment in public relations, and I said, yes, jumped in, never looked back. But that first firm I worked at in-house public relations is what it was called at the time, was two owners and me. So it was very close to the business I have now: boutique, focused and agile, and I really value that in the work I do today.

Chip Griffin: And so, so you’ve been really charting your own personal path professionally from, from a very early stage, which, which I think is great and, and a great lesson for others to take away as well, that, you know, there’s not a, a straight line linear path that you always have to take.

Yeah. And, you know, take advantage of opportunities, look for serendipity, and follow your passions as, as much as you can. You know, as long as you’re still making a living doing it. So, you know, I, I, I think you’ve, you’ve touched on obviously that the, you know, you very early on you discovered that you were a good writer, that you had creativity.

Those are tremendous skills to have in the communications world, in the agency world, but I think that that one of the underappreciated things, and one of the things that a lot of agency owners probably don’t focus enough on because they’re so busy heads down for clients, is how they can build the reputation of their agency, build their own personal brand, demonstrate thought leadership.

And, and I obviously am a, a huge advocate of that. And you’ve lived that. You’ve demonstrated the power of it. And, and as we touched on very early on in this episode, you are a content powerhouse. So I want to touch on that, and, you know, at what point did you decide that this was something you needed to be doing?

In a substantial, meaningful way in order to grow your business. And so how did you get started with that?

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yeah, I would say it was 2020 when the pandemic hit and it really shook up everything in everyone’s lives. It really shook mine. I had a fifth grader who went on spring break, didn’t get to go back.

I had a kindergarten boy, very active little boy, that went to spring break and couldn’t go back. And the leadership, I had to demonstrate for my clients like double that for home. Because really everyone’s like, what are we gonna do? And so thank goodness for public relations work and being able to really predict what, what might be coming next and seeing the patterns.

And I realized, hey, these rolling school dates of when they’re gonna close and when they might open, this is emotionally hitting the kids harder, and me harder than, than what I imagine. So we’re gonna say until further notice on that and then realign how we think about life. And for our clients like, I was supporting Meals on Wheels in my market area.

They were all of a sudden serving the most vulnerable client, you know, on the planet, right? A home bound senior citizen. It all of a sudden it was just tremendous pressure. And during that time, I also realized the best thing I could do is keep myself steady so that I could be a good advisor for my family and for my clients and my friends.

And so I did a lot of self work. And during that time I realized I better virtually put myself out there.

Because I can’t go to all the PRSA and the Marketing Association and the Advertising Federation and the chamber events that I was used to going. Right. Because most of our work is referrals.

Most of our work is organic in that they want to trust us and know us, which means they often would like to meet us and conversate with us. And there’s repeated touch points you need to have with an individual before they might become a client. And for me, in public relations, the most natural way is building relationship with people before they’d become a client. And I saw a direct correlation when I was not at industry events, what would happen to the business, right? What the referrals would happen. Because sometimes just me being there be like, oh yes, I’ve meant to reach out to you. I have an idea, or we have a need. Something’s coming up, an anniversary’s coming, whatnot.

And so not being top of mind because I was there in proximity, I knew it was gonna be a problem in the work that we did. So I really took that time to go okay, it’s now or never for most things, right? We had no promises of life expectancy anymore. Like it really shook me hard. I was also kind of dealing with understanding an adult onset of asthma, which was kind of a terrible time to experience that with all the messaging around lungs and covid.

So yeah, life became very real to me and I said, you know what? I’m gonna go bold or go home because there’s no promises anymore. And I need to make sure that I have enough income for my family and, and what we need here and keep this house steady. And, and I realized those steps I took also helped again, the business and the client. So, I really doubled down on content creation as of 2020 because virtually there was a way to be in the room with others without physically being in the room with them. And so making sure that I was offering more advice. I did more webinars on how to communicate during turbulent times, which is still a very popular topic today.

Yep, yep. I think 2025 feels like 2020 for me. I’ll just say that and leave that there. But those principles of what good public relations is, what good, you know, humanist is like, they still matter and help today. Mm-hmm. And so I kind of doubled down on the fundamentals and the disciplines of the craft and what really stood the test of time, what was timeless in those areas.

Because that really works during chaos. And so the content I started creating was around that. And so I launched my podcast, the Smart Talk series during that time. At the same time, there were some grants for small businesses coming out, and luckily I had all my financial books in order and reports in orders that I could really try to leverage that opportunity.

So I use those grants and opportunities like that to help fund some of those new passion projects around having this podcast where I could have these conversations of depth on public relations practice, on marketing, on culture, on how to work with people and, and really elevate them versus, you know, excluding or pushing down to make our wins happen.

And those seemed to resonate with people. And it was interesting for me, like what was hitting. And then just trying to double down on topics that I thought were important, but also seemed to resonate.

And so a lot more of the blog post creation about, okay, look, here are the newsworthy criteria, principles, and I would add a ninth, which is like, what’s trending on social, because they’ll report it just because it’s viral.

Right. So keep that in mind for good and for bad. And you know, when I was just a little more candid and commonplace about how I describe things in our world. People seem to connect with that.

And so I offer that for you all to think about too, is like, how do you make it simple for people to understand and, and has a little more story around it.

So that really powered that. And, during 2020, the book came to my heart because I literally went to church as a strategic risk that we took as a family because my kids were so done being at home and they were so done being alone. And they said, mom, you know, can you take us to church? I mean, when your kids ask you to take ’em to church, you should probably go to church. I’m just saying. I was like, okay, but, I’m really important to you all and my clients and I, I don’t know what this asthma’s gonna do with me. So I am gonna sit in the lobby, you can go to the kids’ church. We’re all masked up. because this was still kind of height of it in 2020. And I went and I sat in the lobby, Chip and I streamed the service.

I was getting ready, so I was streaming the music while I was waiting. I said, I’ll just be here away from all these people in the auditorium, and I’m gonna pray for guidance. I realized so quickly during that year how much each word mattered. And not only what we wrote, but what we spoke. I remember, you know, when all the different policies and the advice was coming out and it’s like exactly how you messaged it mattered so much to people. And whether they believed it or not, whether they took action or not. And I was really watching all that I said, and I would notice how terms like essential mattered. Like if I could get my clients deemed as essential, and the mayor just say they’re essential. It was like some kind of title being bestowed on someone and they were able to do business. Yep. They were able to get paid, they were able to go out. So I was like, wow, look how much words matter. I always knew they mattered. Okay. So I was actually praying for mojo and optimism and advice and the right words, and I remember saying, oh, you know, getting a little spiritual with y’all, so come with me and just said, you know, God, give me the right words so that I can help influence what should happen.

Not really knowing what was gonna happen. And I started hearing phrases and because I had this poetry and creative writer background, like when you hear something like that, it’s like those shower moments, I take ’em down, right? Yep. I say, Ooh, this could be, I don’t know, a post or a, a press material or whatnot.

And there were some times I’d hear a line from somebody, I go, Ooh, that’s great way to say that, right? Yeah. So I started hearing these little phrases, so I just started jotting ’em down on my notes app, and after I felt kind of done, I looked and I was like… I was scrolling. I said, oh my, ugh, this is a table of contents, right?

Like what do I do? And it was like literally almost like each chapter of my first book, and I found that I wanted to explain what public relations is, what isn’t, how you could work in the field, how you should be practicing today, where it needs to go tomorrow in terms of culture and DEI principles and practice.

Some new models like it was, it was wild because the last thing I needed was a new assignment. But it changed everything. Because I answered that calling and I said, yeah, in case something happens to me, I would like to document everything that’s in my head and explain it in case my kids want to follow in the practice. In case they decide they want to do something else, but they come back to PR and marketing.

It’s all the advice I would’ve given them if I had time to sit down with them and try to say, here are, you know, the hard things and all the aha moments I had in about two decades of work on the ground. Yeah. Because again, I didn’t have the major, so I made a lot of mistakes and, and they’re fun. They stick with people, but I’d like for them to leapfrog over those as they go forward.

Chip Griffin: Sure. One of the things I I’d like to drill into is something you said a moment ago, about using the content to build relationships. And I, I think that this is, this is something that, that is also underappreciated throughout all businesses, as we think about content marketing and, and those kinds of things.

So often I hear people talk about, you know, creating lead magnets and talking about funnels and all of that kind of thing. But really in the agency world, we’re trying to build relationships with potential new clients. And that is a, it is a fundamentally different way of thinking about it as opposed to just thinking about how do I get as many eyeballs, as many email addresses, et cetera.

And so let’s talk for a minute about how you, how you’re creating this content in a way that you’re using it to build relationships. So is that something that you’re doing strategically? Is it something that you sort of discovered along the way that that’s what it was doing? So let’s talk about that relationship piece to the puzzle.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Yeah. I think for me I realized it was helping others based on the reactions, like, and that was what I think my heart wanted. Right. And I, I really think about PR being such a helping career. And, and much like you, I’m like, if someone wants to talk with me and ask me a question. Why not? Absolutely.

Who knows where it’ll go, right? Yep. Who knows, who they’ll be in a few years where I’ll be in a few years and we can all help each other and be a part of my circle and network. And my content is a way that I could scale answering questions and giving advice and sharing a point of view, because I did realize that sometimes just Chip you and I could say the same exact phrase.

But just because of what I look like and my background, where I live geographically, my experiences, someone might hear that differently or perceive it differently. Absolutely. Than they would from you and vice versa.

And I realized that mattered and the representation also seemed to matter very much for people.

Again, I could be on this show today and there may not be a strategic intention of, there’s an avatar and you want to reach this person, or who knows who will pick this up based on your guess.

But the feedback, I would get people who would send me a message in LinkedIn if they were even brave enough to do so and they didn’t know one of us.

Right. It seemed to be from a lot of women, a lot of women like me who were Hispanic or Latina, who were kind of shyly or quietly saying, I’m so glad you said something. I’m so glad I heard from you. I’m so glad you talked about, you know, you made mistakes. You talked about that you don’t have a major. You talk about that you don’t speak Spanish, because that’s an expectation in our culture, which makes it very hard for Latinas to practice PR with as much confidence, I think, as peers sometimes, right?

Whether you should or shouldn’t speak Spanish and how much and pressure to do your work in two languages is quite incredible. And I just want to leave that there for people to think about. Which led me to book two because I kept kind of getting bubbling up for me. Yep. So sometimes a topic, a phrase, a comment, feedback will bubble up for you, keep coming up and you go, I’m noticing this a lot. Maybe I need to dig into this further or, or really research what’s behind it or, you know, what’s the challenge here? And those are my best pieces of content, whether it’s an interview or a story I told, or a webinar or a workshop. It’s what I’m actually just saying the things that people are saying back to me.

It’s like us with marketing, right? We’re like, oh my God, I love, yeah. I say that all the time. We connect to it. Yep. And I think we need to think about our PR practice that way. So I think it, I was learning by doing, and then I did more intentionally from there.

And I try to do that way, but I will tell you.

Especially about books because a lot of people will ask me about writing books, and there’s a misconception that you write a book and that book’s gonna make you a lot of money. Well, it could, but not in the way you might think. Right?

Chip Griffin: But not directly. Almost, almost nobody, except for a handful of bestselling authors actually make money writing the books.

It’s the other doors that it opens.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: That’s right. For you. It’s the positioning, it’s the credibility. Even telling people, I was working on a book, they were like, Ooh, and all of a sudden they could hear me better.

Right? And or they followed advice of mine better, and that’s everything in our work. So I said, well, this is incredible.

Okay. So I started that first book journey for me, and then really, all books should be for us, right? Yeah. So what is your goals behind it? So using those planning skills, strategic communication, planning skills to say what are my actual goals around writing this book or starting this podcast or having a vlog or this, you know, whatever it is that takes your time as a business owner, I think that really matters.

And positioning, setting myself apart, making sure I was in the room, like I said, with people when I couldn’t be or didn’t want to be. Right. Right. I, I’m a working mother. My kids have aerials and soccer and theater and they have their own little successful lives coming, so I’m here for it and I want to be here for it.

So I think that’s part of it too, is that this work, anything you document can live beyond you. And certainly a book has such credibility around it that when I give someone it for free, like, they’ll squeal sometimes they’re like, yay. You know, and there’s nothing we can give out that way.

Chip Griffin: Yeah.

And I, I think I, I think these days there are so many tools available to everybody to create content, to build those relationships, to demonstrate thought leadership, to build personal brands, and we can all lean into whatever we’re most comfortable with. It might be video, it might be podcasts, it might be books. It might be articles. It, it can be some combination of all of those for people like you and I who are crazy enough to say, Hey, let’s just do it all. Let’s have fun.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Let’s try see what happens.

Chip Griffin: But I, but I think the, to me, one of the, the key takeaways from this conversation is that, that there is real power in this.

And if you’re not investing in this as an agency owner, it’s something you should at the very least, take a very close look at because I think it would likely benefit your agency if you did that. For folks who, who are interested in checking out any of the content that you are producing, getting a copy of the book, listening to your podcast, checking out your articles, or maybe they just want to have a conversation with you and, and see what else they can learn as, as we’re drawing to a close here, why don’t you share a little bit about where people can find you and, and what kind of resources you have for them.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Absolutely. Well, thanks again, Chip. This has been an honor of mine and I’d be happy to speak with anyone. My main website where you can find everything. Again, trying to take, let’s take care of our own houses, people, right? And make sure your website is your foundation of your communication story.

Absolutely. It’s mvw360.com and you’ll find my bio, what our firm does, and you know, links to articles, the books, the podcast, and I’d be delighted to connect with anyone and make them part of my community.

Chip Griffin: Fantastic. It is a, a great hub of information for all things about you and your firm. We will include that link in the show notes, so if you’re listening to us on the treadmill or in the car, don’t fall off.

Don’t crash. Just, just check out the link after the fact and, and you will be able to get all sorts of things. Melissa, it’s been really fantastic to have you on, you’ve, you’ve shared a lot of, of practical stories that people can apply to their own businesses and, and take those lessons away. So I, I really appreciate it and, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with my listeners.

Melissa Vela-Williamson: Thank you so much. I encourage everyone to, to tell your story and help your firm and help your community by doing so.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And thank you everybody for listening, and I will see you all back on another episode very soon.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Rachel Sales from the PR agency Enunciate about managing client communications in a chaotic world.

Rachel discusses the importance of empathy and strategy in addressing news and its impact on clients. They explore whether brand leaders should comment on current affairs, emphasizing the need for authenticity and aligning with business goals. Rachel shares a process for determining when and how clients should respond to news events.

The conversation also covers the evolving media landscape, the shift towards contributed content, LinkedIn strategies, and the importance of humanizing client messaging in turbulent times.

Key takeaways* Rachel Sales: “You’re not going to connect and you’re not going to be human unless you understand what people are going through.” * Chip Griffin: “Understand the risk of taking a stand. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but you need to make sure that you’re at least thinking, you know what, if I lose business from this segment of my population, I’m okay with that because I feel that strongly about it.” * Rachel Sales: “Our clients who are impacted by news that’s happening, every single one has kept going. Some of what I’m advising them to do is not necessarily to comment on what’s going on, but to just keep showing the amazing things that they’re doing. Keep telling their story, keep inspiring their audiences. Keep showing what they do, what they’ve always done, no matter what the changes are.” * Chip Griffin: “You can’t turtle, no matter how bad it is, how chaotic it is, whether it’s COVID, whether it’s politics, whether it’s something else, you need to keep doing what is right for your business.”

About Rachel SalesRachel Sales is the Founder & CEO of Enunciate, a marketing and PR agency that specializes in creative content. At Enunciate, Rachel works with mission-driven organizations all over the world to tell their stories and amplify their impact. Before launching Enunciate, Rachel co-founded Pink Pangea, the community for women who love to travel. Rachel has a BA and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She spends her days doing exactly what she loves.

Resources* Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn * Enunciate’s website * Should I Comment on What’s Going on in the World?: A Step-By-Step Guide * The Ultimate LinkedIn Content Checklist for Entrepreneurs

Related* Communicating in the face of chaos, confusion, and conflict (featuring Karen Swim)

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Welcome to another episode of the Chats with Chip podcast. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me Rachel Sales of Enunciate. Welcome to the show, Rachel.

Rachel Sales: Hi. Thank you.

Chip Griffin: So Rachel, you’ve got a, a, a PR agency based out of New York.

But why don’t you, share a little bit about yourself with our listeners, and then we’ll, we’ll dive into the topic at hand today.

Rachel Sales: Sure. Thank you for having me. So Enunciate is a boutique marketing and PR agency that specifically focuses on content strategy and content creation. And we work with mission-driven organizations of many different industries all over the world to tell their stories and amplify their impact.

Chip Griffin: That is very succinct. I love it. So, today I thought we would talk about, you know, people realize I think that we are in kind of a chaotic communications environment today in a chaotic world, frankly. And so, one of the things that, that I’ve talked about on a lot of my shows is, you know, how we can navigate that as agencies from a business development perspective, but we haven’t talked about it so much from the perspective of.

How do we help our clients get through these times? And so I think that would be a good place for us to get started today. And, and thinking about the work that you’re doing with your clients and, and how do you help them to think about this chaotic environment and, and what, how does that influence the advice that you’re giving to help them get through it?

Rachel Sales: Yeah, thank you. So I will say that working in marketing and pr, our job has always been to find how our client’s story connects to the news, right? Like make it timely, make it relevant, what’s going on. They have a product they wanna push, they have partnerships they wanna share, they wanna speak to their audience, right?

If it’s not timely, it’s not gonna cut through the noise. Now we’re actually at a completely different time where we don’t even need to try in some ways, right? We don’t, the news every single day we’re finding is impacting our clients no matter what industry they’re in, right? And we have clients from FinTech to education, nonprofit.

I mean DEI, like it’s a huge fan. And just every single day what’s happening, the news impacts them. So now. There’s two issues. Number one is a human issue, which is we know that our clients are impacted by the news in a lot of different ways every single day. How do we approach them with increased empathy and acknowledge what they’re going through, what they’re experiencing.

It could be good or it could be very bad, right? And then number two, how do we create a strategy that actually defines whether they’re going to comment on the news. Weigh in on the news, acknowledge news, not acknowledge the news. So there, those are kind of like the two things that we’re dealing with every single day with every single one of our clients.

Chip Griffin: Well, let’s start with that second piece first because you know, we hear a lot that, you know, consumers want to hear brands speaking out about the issues of the day. And so there’s, there’s really this been, this drumbeat for probably the last three or four years about, how brands really need to take a more active role in the conversation.

And, and honestly, I’ve consistently pushed back against that. I, I don’t, I, I think that it’s, it’s very much situational and I think the default position should actually be, you generally don’t. Unless it’s impacting you or it’s core to your mission or something like that. But I’m, I’m curious, has that changed and, and how do you see that and how do you work with your clients on that piece of it?

Rachel Sales: So, I think there has been a bit of pushback because there were times, let’s say five years ago when every brand was kind of sharing, okay, we support this cause and then there was cause of, you know, slacktivism, right? Like you have never actually done anything for this cause and now you’re just like putting up a social media visual and saying, I support this while not actually doing anything.

So there has been a lot of pushback and we have to be really, really careful with our clients. Not to get into that, but a lot of our clients actually are leaders in different, you know, in industry leaders, different causes or things that they really care about from a business perspective and, and that they stand for.

And we have to say, okay. When is the time for them to take a stand and when is the time for them to not take, take a stance, right? Like a lot of what we’ve been finding is that there’s a lot of chaos and we wanna make sure that our clients are not just adding to that chaos and adding to the noise and kind of sharing feelings like, oh, we are so unhappy that this is happening right now, but they don’t actually have any actions to take any suggestions, et cetera. And so, so that’s something that we need to be careful about. The other point is that sometimes our clients, they have audiences that actually are, like you said, expecting them to say something, right?

Like they are leaders where they need to, like their audience needs them to say something. And we have to be careful that they’re not just saying the thing that everyone is saying. So we actually do have a process that we work through to help our clients kind of figure out like something happens in the news.

Is it time to, you know, should they actually comment on what’s going on in the world?

Chip Griffin: Can you share a little bit more about what that process is and, and how you help them think that through?

Rachel Sales: Yes. So something happens big in the news, okay? Our client says, I must say something, right? So first we say, okay, hold on one second.

Let’s, let’s first say what is the major news item in question, right? Because a lot of times something will happen that’s big, but it’s actually related to a lot of other different issues. So we wanna like get very specific. What’s the one thing that you need to comment on? You think you need to comment?

Okay. Number two, how does this news item actually relate to your work? And impact your organization, right? Because sometimes it will just be, you know, things happen in the world. They’re impacting us professionally, but also personally, right? And those might not intersect. So we need to say, does this actually impact your work and impact your audience?

Or is this just something that you feel passionate about as an individual? Number three, how will commenting on it align with your business goals? Does it have anything to do with the business goals? Will it, will it help? Will it hurt? And then we always wanna look into how are competing, or like minded organizations commenting on it, if at all.

How might their audience react or, you know, not react if they comment. And then a lot of times, you know, organizations are told, think about, you know, one persona, right? Think about your persona and think about how they will feel about your acting. But I always like to say, look, yes, you have a persona, but all of these personas are actually people, right?

They’re people and they don’t all feel the same way. So say half of your people don’t like what you say and half of them do, how will you feel? And sometimes we’ll take, you know, our clients for that whole process and they’ll still say okay, this doesn’t align my business goals, but I must say something, I still must, because I need to be authentic.

So we’ll say, okay, let’s say something in the best way possible that is in your brand voice, speak and speaks to your audience in a way that’s not going to hurt you.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I really love that analysis that you do with them and, and particularly reminding them that, that not all of their customers or constituents think exactly the same way.

And, and I, you know, we are in an environment where a lot of us have, have blinders on and, and we see the world through a particular lens, and we surround ourselves with other people who, for the most part, probably share that same worldview. And so it’s very easy to forget, or frankly, not even realize that there are a lot of people that we depend upon for business, for other things, who may think 180 degrees opposite on it, whether it’s a political issue or an economic issue or a social issue.

And so you need to understand the risk of taking a stand. It, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but you need to make sure that you’re at least including that and saying, you know what, if if I lose business from this segment of of my population, I’m okay with that because I feel that strongly about it.

I think the problem is that a lot of organizations don’t do that math and then they’re surprised when there’s blowback against them for whatever position they’ve decided to take.

Rachel Sales: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I also think that sometimes we need to kind of translate for their, you know, where they are to their audience, right?

So, and the same, you know where we are. Like it could be sunny in New York, where, you know, sunny emotionally and weather-wise and where they are, they’re experiencing something devastating, right? So we need to think, okay, let’s put ourselves in their shoes. But at the same time as we’re putting ourselves in their shoes, we also need to make them put them in their audience’s shoes, right?

Like you’re feeling this way, by the way, your audience who’s maybe an entire ocean away, does not feel the way you do. Does, like it does not have the same mentality and you, you, we need to make sure that we can, you know, reach, fill that gap, bridge that gap. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And I, and I think that that understanding

those differences is absolutely critical for agencies today in working with their clients because business and, and everything else is much more global than it ever was. And, but even within, say, the United States, there are differing views from one state to the next, one coast to the next. And, and trying to, to navigate all of that and making sure that you’re putting yourself in those shoes and understanding what those differences are.

Is really vital and, and I’ve been fortunate over the last decade or so to have done a lot of international work and, even though I always considered myself fairly global in my viewpoints, you’ll learn so much more every day as you talk to people in other places with other backgrounds and, and how they’re perceiving the exact same piece of news and information that you are because they’re getting it reported to them differently.

They have a different life experience. And, and so the more you can do as a communicator, as an agency leader to, to adapt to that, I think it’s important and you have to help your clients with that as well. Right.

Rachel Sales: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I think also you need to like, you know, we’re, we’re all reading like hopefully the front page news every day, right?

We’re reading a variety of sources, we’re reading. And so I think, you know, I, we’re not just reading to be informed, but we’re also reading to think like anyone we’re talking today, how is that news going to impact them? Like, for example, we were doing a PR for an orchestra, right? And some of the people that we were interviewing were in LA and that was the time of the wildfires.

So we were actually, you know, and here we are talking about an orchestra, such a nice thing and who knows what they’re going through. So I, you know, we keep reminding our team like. Just think about who are you, who are you talking to, where are they located? Before you start the conversation, make sure you are in touch with what they might be going through right now.

Acknowledge it and then see if they’re ready to move on to the conversation, right? So like for a lot of our clients, the conversation we’re actually gonna have, you know, have actually has nothing to do with what’s going in the world or even in their neighborhood. But you’re not gonna have a good conversation.

You’re not gonna connect and you’re not gonna be human unless you understand what people are going through.

Chip Griffin: So as you try to understand what people are going through it, it seems to me that it’s, it’s kind of important to, to pay attention to the news. But I talk to more and more people today, including in the agency world, who tell me, I just, I can’t even bear to put the news on anymore.

It’s, it’s all confrontational. It’s, and regardless of your world where you just like, I just can’t take it anymore. And, and so they’ll, they’ll say to me, why do you keep watching? And I always say, because in my conversations with clients, I need to understand what’s going on so that I can, you know, communicate with them based on what I know about it.

But, you know, so how do you, how do you overcome that? Are you hearing the same thing from your clients that, that they just don’t wanna pay attention to it either? And, and does that create any additional challenges or is that, is that something I’ve seen, but you haven’t yet?

Rachel Sales: No, thankfully all of my clients seem very news aware and are still reading just as much.

And, and definitely we are. I think, you know, there is a level for sure of compartmentalization that we all must practice, right? At the same time that as agency leaders, we need to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes. And a lot of times, look, the things that our clients are facing that are hard may not be the things that are hard for us, right?

Like, it’s not like everything they’re experiencing that devastating. Or great is devastating or great for us, but we need to under, we need to make sure that we understand. And same thing for us, like what might actually weight on me has nothing to do with them. So we need to be aware of what’s going on. I did just receive an, a marketing email from somebody that was like, well, I haven’t written in six months because the news has been so dire.

So I just didn’t wanna read and I, I just didn’t wanna write, I didn’t wanna say anything. I was like, you know what? I. Look, that’s, that’s where they’re coming from. But like, you have to keep going. Right? And I think, and, and it, that, that just doesn’t work. That doesn’t work for the world, doesn’t work for being human.

Doesn’t work for business, right? And for our clients who are impacted, you know, and all of them are by news that’s happening. Every single one has kept going, right? Whether they’re, you know, some, some of what I’m advising them to do is not necessarily to comment what’s going on, but to actually just keep doing and showing the amazing things that they’re doing.

Keep telling their story, keep inspiring their audiences. Keep showing like they are accomplishing what they do, what they’ve always done, no matter what the changes are. And that grows their audience so much. Or a lot of our clients are, are showing themselves to be the solution. Right. These issues are happening.

They are the solution. That’s not fake. That’s real. Right? So we’re trying to show, okay, how can we take, ’cause I, I actually really believe in like positivity and marketing like, anything you can say, maybe you can say it in a positive way instead of a negative way. I think it positivity does a lot better in the world.

So we are advising our clients. How can we share unique perspectives, share inspiration, share solutions, move the conversation forward, move the world forward, help your clients. I mean, I know that you talk about that a lot, right? Like how do you, you’re there to help the people you serve, you’re actually there to be a helpful resource.

So that’s what we’re trying to help our clients do for their customers and stakeholders.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, and I wanna come back to that in a minute because I, I think that it’s, it’s so valuable that you’re encouraging them to focus on, on what their core mission is and, and their need to do that despite all of the chaos that’s happening around them.

And that you can’t lose sight of, of your ultimate goals and the things that you need to be doing. Before we do that though, I, I do wanna touch on one last piece of this, talking about the issues of the day piece for organizations. Have you noticed any trend in terms of organizations being more or less inclined to speak out.

On the one hand, you see people, you know, talking in much more powerful language than I think I, I can remember it probably in my professional career about the issues of the day. At the same time, you see a lot of reporting that organizations are pulling back from talking about some things like DEI, ESG, et cetera, that, that are you know, real lightning rods in the, the current communications environment. So have you noticed a trend with the clients that you work with? Whether they’re, they’re more or less inclined, or is it really situational?

Rachel Sales: I think there’s definitely a trend across the board. Our clients do not wanna be political.

They do not wanna be perceived as political. They are political. We’re all political people, right? We all have how, you know, what, what we feel, what we believe, but they do not want to come across as political because they, they don’t want to, to hurt their business. Right? That being said, yes, I, we have noticed that clients may be a little more reticent to speak up sometimes. And,

in some cases, we actually have needed to prod them along to say, listen, take the time to think. Take the time to think about what it is that you want to say at this time and to add value. But in some cases, their audience actually really needs to hear from them, needs to hear, you know, sometimes you actually need, humans are just this way.

Like we need our leaders. When something bad happens in the world, we actually just need our leaders to say, Hey, this is bad, I, I’m here for you. Right? Sometimes we don’t, sometimes they add to the chaos. Sometimes it actually just needs to be like an individual text message or phone call. Like, you know, something that’s not on LinkedIn or social media.

But some, but for some of our clients who are really big industry leaders and have very sizable audiences, they do need to say something. They need to say something specific, something that stands out, and they can take the time, but they can’t take too much time.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, so, so bottom line is you, you know, you need to be focused on what your audience wants or needs to hear and, and, and tailor your communications plan around that.

So let’s, let’s now pivot to the, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, how you handle the issues of the day from a, a commenting or not commenting on them standpoint. But now let’s talk about, you know, we’re, we’re trying to just communicate generally in this chaotic environment. And because there is so much attention being paid to all of the various crises and debates and all of that, you know, it, it can become harder, particularly as the, the size of the news media shrinks to communicate your messages as a, a PR agency on behalf of your clients.

So how do you work with your clients to help them, as you talked about, keep their head down and focus on their core mission and get the word out and, and cut through all of this clutter that’s around them.

Rachel Sales: I think in a lot of ways, I mean, I think we had training for this during COVID where, you know, like the first three months or maybe just like the first three weeks, everybody would be like, Hey, how are you doing?

How are you doing? Right? And then it was like, oh my God, we need to keep this wheel turning. We need to keep generating revenue. We need to just keep going. Like, this is our reality. Let’s go. So there’s, there’s the point of like, look, we need to stay in touch with the news, see what’s happening, what changes are, because the changes are not fake, right?

Government programs are closing. You know, people are getting fired. Like, things are happening. Those are gonna impact some of our clients. We need to be aware of that while still saying the world keeps turning and as long as it’s turning, we need to keep pushing our message in a way that feels sensitive. You know, we’re always thinking, okay, what just happened? You know, we, we are very careful not to schedule social media too far in advance because, and even when we do schedule it, we, we will often hit the pause button because it’s like, oh no, something happened in the news that’s going to look ridiculous if we post that right now.

Or like, we need to tweak it. So I think there’s that, there’s those two pieces of like, you know, you, you can’t take a week often. You know, something big will happen in the news. I think sometimes the organization will be inclined to be like, wait, okay, let’s just like pause marketing for a week until we get our bearings.

But it’s like, hmm, maybe pause for two days and then let’s keep going. Right? Like, we need to keep going. The world also moves fast.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I, I, I think that’s great advice because you and I always tell people, you, you can’t turtle, you know, no matter how, how bad it is, how chaotic it is, whether it’s covid, whether it’s politics, whether it’s something else, you know, you, you need to, to keep doing what is right for your business.

You can’t worry too much about the what ifs and you really need to just, you know, buckle down and, and, and get things done, because what’s gonna happen around you is gonna, most of us can’t impact in a, in a meaningful way, the events that are taking place around us. We can contribute to that change, but we, you know, we’re not gonna be able to affect it directly ourselves.

For the most part. If you happen to be one of those listeners who can, great. Please do. You know, it’d be kind of fun. But it, for the, for most of us who are just, you know, keeping our heads down and doing our, our day-to-day jobs, we need to keep doing them and not get so wound up by what might happen if, or how is this going to, you know, how are we gonna deal with this policy if it happens, you really need to just keep moving forward. And, and so, you know, I love that that’s something that you’re focusing on with your clients.

Do you get pushback from clients on this? Are, are they, is it tough to keep them corralled and focused on doing the day-to-day? You know, do you feel like they are more distracted than they have been in the past? By everything that’s going on.

Rachel Sales: Maybe we’re really lucky, but our clients, you know, just wanna keep pushing ahead. I mean, they have companies to grow, they have revenue to increase, et cetera. So, so no, definitely like they and, and I think a lot of them know and believe that what they can do is positive for the world and positive for what they believe in and making a difference.

So while, yes, I can see that they are. It’s on their, things are on their minds and this is weighing on them. And these are things that we have to address in communications. No, everyone has kept going.

Chip Griffin: Now, I know obviously your agency provides a mix of, of PR and marketing services for clients. Have you seen that mix change as the environment has shifted?

You know, are you doing more of one thing, less of another or, or has it really kind of just been steady state?

Rachel Sales: A hundred percent. I will say that, you know, of course, everyone is who’s listening to this podcast is aware of all of the layoffs at different media agencies and shutting down and all of that.

So of course, like the, it has changed a lot. Personally, I love contributed content, especially when we’re dealing with very sensitive issues. One of our clients recently wanted to weigh in on something that was happening from a governmental change, but was worried about doing so because didn’t wanna come across political, didn’t wanna come across too aligned with the changes, didn’t wanna align their business with the changes, and then like it would, you know, have bad repercussions.

So we said, okay, you know what, let’s do a contributed article where we own the message in a non-promotional way for a leading industry paper. And it got accepted. And, you know, that was, I think, a great, a great way to get the message out, be timely, but also do it in a way that felt comfortable.

And like I said, they own the message. Another thing is, you know, we do a lot of LinkedIn strategy and content creation. I think that, I mean, everyone knows the world of PR is changing and I think that one;s media outlets can really be – one’s social media outlets can be their media outlets, right? You can get,

you can make noise, you can, you know, we see like with different partnership announcements with clients or different products, announced, like no one’s covering product announcements anymore, right? Like nobody cares. But social media cares. So you can make a huge, a huge, you know, a, a big deal of that on social media, on, you know, LinkedIn specifically, let’s say, and your customers, your stakeholders will say, wow, this company is doing amazing things.

They’re always having new product releases, new partnership announcements, right? So yes, things are moving a lot more to social media, to LinkedIn, to these kind of like thought leadership videos where you’re really getting to like sit down with the leader and hear their industry insights and, and recommendations and, and, and we love it.

We love the changes.

Chip Griffin: Would it be fair to say then, from what you’ve described, that, that it’s more important than ever to humanize your clients for their target audiences and, and really get the people behind the organizations out there and, and less so the logos?

Rachel Sales: Definitely, it’s all about the people.

They, everyone wants to know who these leaders are. They’re inspired by their stories, but they, they wanna hear their stories. But we still need to make sure what the, you know, that the business, that it, that the com you know, that the business, it makes business sense, right? Like the product, right, there’s alignment there.

Business, yeah, there’s, there’s alignment. But yes, definitely, definitely that’s, yeah, we are seeing that, that the human aspect is, is hugely important and our and our clients are game. They understand this is what it takes. And I always say like, whenever you go to a event, take videos, take, take this and just blame us.

Just blame us.

Chip Griffin: If I asked you, as we get ready to wrap up here, to pull out your crystal ball and, and look at, you know, how, how is the, the media landscape changing, how is the client landscape changing and how does that impact the work that you do on behalf of your clients over say the next 12 or 18 months?

Rachel Sales: I mean, people are flocking to LinkedIn. I don’t think that’s anything new. I think that’s gonna continue. And, you know, LinkedIn, as we know, is pushing this video. These, you know, video contents a ton. And right now the video content is actually pretty elementary. It’s really just people sitting at a table talking, you know, sharing their advice.

So I am hoping that those LinkedIn videos get a little more sophisticated, TikTok or you know, Instagram reel level. But, but we’ll see. Right now it’s really not that hard to break in.

Chip Griffin: And you’re trying to push that directly yourself. You, you’ve been working some, some really nice ones out there, so for anyone listening, you should absolutely follow Rachel on LinkedIn to, to check out some of these more creative, business oriented videos.

Rachel Sales: Thank you so much. But I think, you know, don’t, I, I always say like, don’t be afraid. You know, don’t be afraid. Let’s see, like things are changing. We don’t have control. Let’s go where things are changing and really I want these industry leaders, our clients, to get out, what really makes them stand out. Their thought leadership, what sets them apart, and, and people wanna hear from them.

Chip Griffin: I, I think that is a great note to end on. If, if someone wants to learn more about you, or what Enunciate does, where should they go?

Rachel Sales: Go on LinkedIn. You can find me at Rachel Sales and you can visit us at enunciate.xyz.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. My guest again today has been Rachel Sales of Enunciate, and hopefully you all have gotten some good tips on, on how to navigate the chaos with your own clients.

And, I hope to have you all back here again listening to another episode very soon. Thanks for joining me.

Rachel Sales: Thank you so much.

View Details

In this episode, Chip discusses with Patrick Rogan of IgnitionHR the challenges small agency owners face in supporting stressed employees.

They delve into the impact of both work-related and external stressors on employee performance, noting the increased stress during and after COVID-19. Patrick shares strategies for addressing these issues, such as maintaining open communication, offering flexibility, and utilizing employee assistance programs.

They also discuss the balance between being supportive and maintaining business operations, emphasizing the importance of creative solutions and understanding regulatory requirements.

Key takeaways* Patrick Rogan: “Looking at some recent data from the Society of Human Resource Management, 44 percent of US employees right now feel burned out at work, 45 percent feel emotionally drained and 51 percent at the end of the day are just out of gas. And 84 percent of workers believe poorly trained managers are a factor in their work and stress.” * Chip Griffin: “Just have a human reaction to whatever your employee tells you, as opposed to the natural instinct, which is, well, what does this mean for me and my business? Because that’s not how you resolve a situation.” * Patrick Rogan: “Don’t focus on the missing deadlines, focus on what’s causing the missing deadline. So what’s going on here? And then don’t talk about the deadlines anymore. Focus on how can I support you with this?” * Chip Griffin: “The bottom line is that you’re not sitting on an island alone. There are a lot of resources for you. There are resources for your team.”

About Patrick RoganPatrick Rogan, SHRM-CP is the Founder and Managing Director of IgnitionHR. He has been helping senior executives in both large and small organizations meet their strategic talent needs for the past 25+ years. He specializes in developing programs that help his clients attract, align, manage, and retain top talent.

Resources* Ignition HR’s website

Related* CWC 25: Patrick Rogan on HR for small-to-midsize agencies * CWC 16: Patrick Rogan on strategies to hire and retain talent in the PR industry * Focus on agency employee retention

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I am delighted to have with me one of my most frequent guests. Patrick Rogan of IgnitionHR. Welcome to the show, Patrick.

Patrick Rogan: Hey Chip, happy to be here.

Chip Griffin: I am happy you are here because, because I wanted to talk to you about getting help.

So I, I turned to someone who can give that kind of help about how to get help. And let’s see how circular we can make that. But, before we jump into that topic, if someone has, for whatever reason, never heard you on one of my shows, or doesn’t know you otherwise, who are you and why are you here?

Patrick Rogan: Sure.

My firm is IgnitionHR. I help organizations with their people challenges, which is part of what we’re going to be talking about today. My focus is in the human resources area. I do, fractional HR leadership roles. I do spot solutions for individual problems. I do a lot of work in a policy area, all that.

Chip Griffin: And, and you work with a lot of, of agency owners, including some of my SAGA clients, which I really appreciate because you are, you’re able to help navigate all the challenging situations that, that we all inevitably come up with as, as small business employers. And, and today we’re going to talk about, I think one of the toughest things, which is how do you help employees when they need help, when they’re feeling stressed? I’m not talking about work performance so much. Work performance may be a symptom or a result of what we’re talking about here, but I’m talking about the stresses that come to employees. And some of that may be work stress, but I really particularly want to focus on stress outside the office that perhaps is, is bleeding over either into their actual performance or just their demeanor and I mean, sometimes you just know something’s wrong and you can’t put your finger right on it.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, this is, this is the number one hot topic that I’ve been getting from my clients. It, certainly took, an uptick five years ago with COVID. And it is diminished some, but not as much as I would have anticipated. So, you know, I see it in just unusual things in the workplace that I used to not see before.

There are anxiety related things that you’ll see manifested in the workplace, some of which are maybe the result of the workplace. More often than not, they originate outside of the workplace and there’s a lot of confusion with business leaders and agency owners in particular about what do I do about this?

And the first question I typically get is, is it just me? And the answer to that is no, it’s not just you. You know, I was looking at some, some recent data, a couple of SHRM survey, the Society of Human Resource Management, surveys out there, you know, 44 percent of US employees right now feel burned out at work.

You know, 45 percent feel emotionally drained and 51 percent at the end of the day are just like out of gas. Totally. And 84 percent of workers, by the way, believed, poorly trained managers are a factor in their work and stress. So that’s just something to keep in the back of our mind. But yeah, it’s, it’s big, it’s a, it’s a big honking challenge right now.

Chip Griffin: Well, it’s, it’s tough too because, you know, agency world is, is known as a stressful environment, right? Right. Yeah, it is. It, in large part, and we’ve, I’ve certainly talked about this on all of my shows a lot and in articles. Part of the problem is that a lot of agency owners don’t manage their businesses effectively.

They don’t price effectively. And so that means we ask our teams, including ourselves, to do a lot more in a lot less time. And so that, that just, you’re starting with a stressful environment. So if you have other factors that are contributing to that, some of which may be work related, it could be, you know, a particularly difficult client that’s not being managed well or something like that.

But a lot of it is the external things, that you allude to, and, you know, right now we’ve got, a situation where there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world, domestically, internationally, economically, and these are, are causing issues for the team members of a lot of small agencies. Whether it’s because, you know, your spouse works for an organization affected by some of the, the budget cuts that’s taking effect. Whether you know, some of the societal issues are, are concerning you. Whether you just are, you know, kind of stressed out because you see all the headlines and you don’t know what to make of it all.

There’s a lot going on that, that can be difficult. And so as a, as a small employer, it’s tough. And I, and I’ve been in this situation a lot of times over the years where I’ve had an employee with external stress and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. In part, because sometimes you’re not quite sure what that stress is.

And I’ve always wanted to be careful about prying too much into the personal lives of employees. For are all sorts of reasons that I’m sure you can elaborate on. So, so when you, when you look at the situation and you figure that as far as you can tell, it’s not work stress, it’s likely to be some kind of stress outside the office.

How do you, where do you begin?

Patrick Rogan: Yeah. So. I think it’s important to make sure you’re keeping the lines of communications open. So hopefully you’re running your agency in a way where stressful situations that are contributed from either you or how your organization is set up or how you manage your employees or not is not contributing to stress.

Hopefully it’s relieving stress and that’s, you know, the things are generally moving in the right direction. What I’m seeing a lot of now is either behaviors or changes in output or indicators that are really unusual for someone who normally is either going at a steady pace or even at a very, very, you know, aggressive pace in terms of getting things done.

All of a sudden, things change. And it’s important, I think, you know, to address that as early as possible is when you’re noticing it’s happening because particularly if it originates from outside of the organization. And there are so many, you mentioned a few, but there’s so many other reasons for stress outside of the organization, whether it’s in the family or political disruption related or, you know, environmental, whatever, you know, there’s a gazillion of them out there.

I think the earlier you can address it, the better it is, because you can at least be aware of what it is that’s causing the problem. So, for instance, I was working with an agency recently, and we had one of their high producing employees all of a sudden who was missing time from work. His productivity was down, and they, you know, quickly got on top of it and said, Hey, you know, we noticed things are a little bit different.

What’s, what’s going on? You know, or turns out one of his parents was ill, and they were like, well, you know, do you need to take some time off to deal with this? And he was like, you know, I didn’t know that was an option. They’re like, of course that’s an option. You know, it’s, you know, and they were very

upfront, they were, you know, they didn’t let it linger on. He did take some time off. He was compensated for a good chunk of that. He was able to resolve the problem. And you know, a month and a half later, when he came back, he was like 100 percent productive. I mean, it was just like a textbook example of how to deal with an outside stressor that’s respectful.

And what I like best about it is he was he didn’t need to share this with them. He did. He also shared it with others that he worked with as well as what the leadership team did to support him. So you took a, you know, a very negative situation, you know, a problem. But yet at the end of the day, he was able to take care of the problem.

He came back working gangbusters and the entire organization, it wasn’t a huge agency, everyone saw what happened. They were like, wow, this is really cool. This is why, this is why I work here. So I do think you can, you can, you can flip it around, but I think it’s important, particularly when things just don’t seem right, have a conversation. And along the lines of, Hey, listen, I noticed things aren’t like they normally are.

I noticed we missed a deadline. That’s very unusual for you. Ask a very open ended question. What’s going on? You know, and, and just see what they say. They don’t have to tell you specifically what it is, if it’s outside of work related, but asking the question and opening the door for that conversation is totally good, and the best way to do it is with an open ended question, just like that, is typically how I would approach it.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think, I mean, I think honestly one of the challenges that a lot of small agency owners have is that they don’t encounter these circumstances all that often, maybe, maybe for many of them, it may be the first time that they’re encountering some, particularly when you get into the specifics of what the issue might be.

And as a small agency owner, you don’t really feel you have someone you can, you feel like you’re on an island. And, and who do you talk to about this? You don’t have a senior leadership team you can sit down and bat things around with often. You know, I, you and I worked together in a larger agency and mm-hmm

You know, if and when, and, and I did have issues with, with my team members having things going on outside the office on a number of occasions. And, and I would just walk next door to your office and say, Hey Patrick, let’s talk this one through. And, and so I think that’s part of the challenge that owners have.

So. You know, what advice do you have to them other than obviously hire someone like you or me who can say that, hey, this is how we’ve done it, right? You know, how do you go about even figuring out how to navigate these things?

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, I think that the first thing to do is to do the best you can to kind of lower the pressure.

So if you happen to be working at the same facility, I’m, I’m a big fan of going out for a cup of coffee or, you know, or, you know, lunch or, or whatever, like, like something outside of the building can be very kind of relaxing and disarming. I think, you know, scheduling some time at a good part of the day when the employee is most productive and like, maybe for some people, it’s like first thing in the morning, let’s have a chat and talk about this.

Being sure that you uncouple the organization from the, whatever the problem might be. So, like, if you’re, if the, if you’re noticing things in the workplace, like, maybe it’s production or missing deadlines or, you know, all those kind of things. Don’t focus on the missing deadlines, focus on what’s causing the missing deadline.

So what’s, what’s going on here? And then don’t talk about the deadlines anymore. Focus on well, how can, how can I support you with this? You know, in the example I gave earlier, giving some time away from work to help the employee deal with that was the perfect solution. It may not be that, you know, there are a million different ways to help.

Sometimes just having someone they can talk to, is very helpful as well, too. But I think that’s kind of like the, The, the best model that I’ve seen is find a space of time that has the least amount of stress naturally in it. Like, so you wouldn’t want to have this conversation, you know, during a, you know, performance review discussion.

Right? Right. That’s, that’s emotional enough already.

It’s a very bad time.

Let’s not throw this on top of it. So, kind of, kind of make it as neutral as possible would be my recommendation.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, you know, if you know that they’re crashing on a deadline for a client, you know, maybe then is not the time to add that extra stress.

So, hey, let’s go take an unex, you know, an unexpected half hour out to go have a cup of coffee, which in your mind is, hey, that’s a nice thing. In their mind, they’re like, how am I going to get this done? Yeah. Right. So, you need to have that situational awareness. But I, you know, I, I particularly like the fact that you suggest open ended questions here because I think, you know, one of the challenges that, that owners also have is they sit there and they see an employee who is, is suddenly not performing the way that they used to it.

And too often I think they jump to the conclusion that it’s because they’re just getting sloppy, they don’t care, that it’s, you know, and the reality is, at least in my experience, more often than not, it’s because there is some kind of stressor, whether it’s work or non work, that is impacting them. And so asking those open ended questions and not assuming that they’re simply being derelict in their duty.

Is a helpful starting point because you can then start to understand what the root cause of it is. And then frankly start by acting human. Just, just have a human reaction to whatever they tell you as opposed to the, the natural instinct, which is, well, what does this mean for me and my business? Mm hmm.

Because that’s, that’s not how you resolve a situation.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah. I’ve seen more than one such more than one occasion where, you know, there’s a stressful situation, an employee’s dealing with something. The business leader knows they’re dealing with something and they call at a very, very, very stressful point in time that they know is going on.

Someone’s passed away or something. Hey, I just have a quick question. Can you help me with this? No, they can’t. They’re dealing with something really stressful. So that’s, that’s an example. You don’t make a bad situation worse, right? You know, and obviously, If you have good processes and good policies, you’re, they’re, they’re a lot less likely to happen, but the things that you have no control over that are happening, what are things you can do to be supportive and for heaven’s sakes, please don’t make it worse.

Chip Griffin: Well, and I think, you know, a part of it is, is you all, you need to sort of adapt to the individual circumstances, right? You mentioned someone close to the employee passing away, for example. So that there, there’s a difference between things that are, are likely to be long lasting impacts versus things that are more likely to be shorter term impacts.

It’s not to say that someone passing away doesn’t have long term impacts, it absolutely does, but it tends to be more acute in the moment. As opposed to someone has got a very difficult illness that they or a family member are dealing with. Those are more likely to be long lasting. So, so is there a way you would approach them differently based on that nature of it, whether it is more short term and acute versus long term chronic Issues that need to be addressed.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, so with the, the, I’m seeing more of the long term chronic things in the last couple of years than I, than I have in the past. So they could be emotional related. They could be, you know, someone, a personal illness, you know, that is going to have a long recovery period. It could be you know, a family member who has an illness that’s going to have a long recovery period.

I think that being open to flexibility as much as you can, can go a long, long way. So look, you know, let’s say you have a strong performer on your team and you know something’s going on. And they’re typically, you know, kicking out 50, 60 hours worth of productive work every week. But you know that for them to be able to deal with whatever this other problem is, that’s not going to be sustainable.

Like maybe they’re going to be for a period of three or four or five months, maybe you need to change that expectation. You know, I, I’ve seen, employees ask to go, Hey, can you just put me on like part time 30 hours a week and let me deal with this? And for a high performing employee. You know, most agency owners will bend over backwards to find a way.

The last thing you want to do is have to replace this person, right? So if you, if you get two thirds of them, you know, for three months versus the whole person for that three months, you know, most are going to say, heck, yeah, I would do that. But yet in this situation, lots of times what I hear is now I really need this work done now. You know, this is a critical client. This is a critical need that we have. And this is where I need that person’s focus. And I find that to be a little bit tone deaf. Because if that really is a top performing employee for heaven’s sakes, why in the world are you risking losing them because you have a client need that you’re going to value higher than their need?

I mean, all needs have to be met. But I think sometimes a little bit more flexibility and at least sensitivity to the situation is, is probably the most important thing. You know, well, let’s talk about we have a client that’s really important. Let’s think of another way, you know, we have someone who works on your team, maybe they could have a little bit, you know, kind of just be open to different creative solutions to get things done in a way that meets the needs of the employee at the same time.

Does that make sense?

Chip Griffin: It does. And I think you’re touching on, on really the, the crux of the problem in many cases, once you get past the initial communication aspects of it and things like that is, you know, how do you strike that balance? Because as a small business, you, you and as a human, you want to be flexible, but as a small business, you also don’t have the same level of resourcing that you might in a larger organization to absorb someone who is not able to perform at their fullest.

And so trying to figure out how you, how you can balance it out, I think that’s, that’s really one of the trickiest things to do. How far do you bend? And in some ways, the new work environment has taken away some of the best tools that I had in the past. When I encountered these situations because I would, I would immediately sort of on my checklist start offering remote work, flexible hours, things like that.

Everybody’s got that already. Yes. So, it’s no longer really a meaningful gesture to, to say that. And so, because I found that I was often able to offer that as a good way to sort of just at least start down the path of being human and helpful, and then we can figure out where to go from there.

But now, everybody’s already there, so you don’t have as many of those easier tools that you can deploy. So how do you make that judgment where you’ve bent as far as you can, because you still do have a business to run? And I do agree that too many are short sighted about the cost of replacing an employee, both in actual cost as well as the impact to the business.

But at some point you can only be, you know, so forgiving and so flexible until you get to a point where it’s just not tenable anymore. How do you figure out when that is?

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, it’s different for, for every agency, you know, and, and where that point is. Sometimes it’s, well, you know, in the example I gave before, they had the, they had the employee off work for a long period of time.

And they were able to find a solution to, to totally backfill them. In some cases I see, you know, take advantage of a freelancer to help. In other cases it’s, you know, have someone who’s a level or two below kind of put them in a stretch role and see what they can do. Sometimes it’s the agency owner themselves that steps in and fills the gap.

So I think the, the trick is to be creative with that, but make sure you’re aware of all of the, the tricks you have in your bag to solve that problem. Sometimes there’s a, there’s a solution out there. Maybe that you hadn’t considered. And some may be cost ineffective for a period of time. If you can live with that, I would suggest you consider it.

If you can’t live with that, then you have to figure out, you know, what’s the, what’s the best solution for you. But, in general, you know, I encourage to be as flexible as you can, particularly when you know it’s going to be temporary in nature.

Chip Griffin: Right. And I, I think that’s, that’s part of the, the calculus here, right?

I mean, the longer it’s likely to last, the harder it is to maintain a level of flexibility. And so the more you may need to, to figure out how to either have a permanent fix or, you know, go separate ways if that’s necessary. I think it’s also, this is also a good point to, to pause and say make sure that you are considering any legal or regulatory requirements that, that may be in effect for whatever circumstance presents itself. Because there are, there are things that you need to be thinking about here, you know, if you, if you allow employees to take leave, typically you have to allow them to, to come back to their role, depending on the exact nature of their leave and all of that kind of thing, but there are a lot of those things that you want to be consulting with someone like you, Patrick, or an employment attorney, or something to make sure that you’re not tripping up. And every state is different on these things, too. So, you just want to make sure that you’re not getting yourself into trouble, and honestly, it is one of the challenges when you ask those open end questions.

Sometimes you get, you do get information that now puts you in a box. Right. Because, because now it’s, it’s tripped a regulatory tripwire, if you will. So I still encourage those open ended questions, but be aware that, that you may now gain knowledge that, that means that you need to treat the situation differently from a legal perspective.

Patrick Rogan: Yes. And, you know, keep in mind that there are federal regulations and there are state regulations and sometimes there are even local county regulations that, based upon a whole number of factors, including the number of employees you have, which, you know, could be, 15 could be 20 could be 50 or could be 1, depending upon how the regulations are done.

So, yeah, I would say when you’re at the point where you think, parting ways might be the best option, make sure you have your bases covered from a, from a legal perspective.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, it’s a lot safer and, and I would generally encourage you to start asking questions of your professionals before you get to the point that you think you might have to pull the trigger because, you know, there are certain steps along the way that can make it easier if that’s where you have to go with it. And/or you can at least plan for it if you know, Hey, I can’t do this. I need to offer them their role back or I need to do this, that, or the other thing. The sooner you know that, the easier it is to plan. You don’t want to be shocked when you get to the point where you’re like, Oh, I can’t eliminate their position because of X, Y, or Z.

That becomes even more difficult to handle.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, I hate, I hate when I get the call. Hey, I, separated this employee and I need some advice, versus I’m thinking about maybe separating with an employee and I need some advice. Like the latter is so much easier because you know, the options kind of are done once you call me after it’s done, you know, I have to unmess it up. That’s a lot harder than helping you do it the right way from the beginning.

Chip Griffin: So, you know, one of the things that in larger agencies you tend to have is an HR team that you can, you know, bring in to help and you can perhaps refer the employee to them.

Many larger businesses have employee assistance programs and things like that that can be helpful. As a small business, you’re unlikely or less likely at least to have those resources. Are there resources that, that smaller businesses can offer to employees to be helpful in these situations beyond, like, particularly if you think you’re in over your head as far as actually advising the employee beyond just working through the, the work parameters?

Patrick Rogan: Sure. There, there are definitely resources. There are organizations like mine, you know, where there are HR consultants who are available, who do a lot of work in this area and can help you navigate both the legal ramifications, as well as the organizational and motivational pieces that go along with this. Sometimes the best solution is an employment attorney, depending on how far you are along the process.

If you, if you’ve already done something and you want to make it better, you probably need to go to an attorney. If you’re thinking about doing something, go to a consultant like me, there are a billion people who do – not a billion – millions of people who do what I do. And,

Chip Griffin: I guess I was thinking more about who can help the employee.

Are there, are there, are there resources that you would give to the employee for people to talk to or should you just leave that well enough alone?

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So one of the things you can do is you can, it depends upon how frequently you’re going to have this problem. So I have some clients who will just put in an employee assistance program, which can be, you know, typically cost next to nothing.

Usually one of your insurance providers will throw it in for free. So if you don’t have an employee assistance program, I would recommend everyone get one. Because even if you never use it, the one time you need it, if it’s there, it’s a resource. They’re open 24 hours a day. The employees can call on, they can get support.

I found them to be really, really helpful. And I’ve gotten really good feedback from employees in terms of having employee assistance program. For agencies where you’re seeing a little more, you might want to go one step beyond that. So there are also, counseling services that you can pay for.

They’re not horribly expensive. It’s all subscription based, where you have more frequent use if you need it. So those are options that you have. And then there are things, you know, you can offer, you can throw in, like, get a Calm subscription for all your employees or one of the other tools out there.

So people, if they want to work on meditation or, you know, those kinds of things, they can come in really happy too. So there’s, there are a lot of things you can do, but I think having an employee assistance tool is really good because it’s always there. If you need it. In my experiences, you know, all levels of the organization I’ve seen take advantage of that tool from an entry level employee to the most senior agency owner. All have needs from time to time and my experience is most of them provide really really good service. So those are some ideas I have there.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think the bottom line is that you’re not, you’re not sitting on an island alone.

There are a lot of resources for you. There are resources for your team. I guess I would, I would wrap up with, with this question. When you’re, when you’ve got an employee who’s kind of working through things, maybe there, it hasn’t risen to the level that they need to take time off, that, you know, that it’s not necessarily beneficial.

How much, how much rope, do you give them on the performance side of things? You know? So maybe it’s just that they’re, they’re just not performing at the same level. The quality of the work isn’t quite as good. It’s not, it’s not bad enough to let them go necessarily. It’s not an obvious dismissal. But it’s, it’s not where you would like to see it, you know, how long do you kind of let that fester, if you will, in, in the goal of being flexible to the individual before it becomes just problematic for your organization?

I think this is, I’ve talked with a lot of agency owners over the last couple of years about this, where they’ve, they’ve taken the approaches we’ve recommended so far, which is, you know, be human, be flexible. Be understanding. But where do you draw the line? Is there, is there, is it just totally situational or is there some guidance you could give as to how to think about that?

Patrick Rogan: So I think it is situational, right? The answer is, as always, it depends, right? Yeah, so this depends. I do think it’s important that agency owners are very careful that they’re weighing all the pieces, right? So, it is a business, right? You know, we can’t, we don’t operate at a loss. We, we have to generate revenue to pay our expenses and, you know, salaries and, and all that kind of thing.

We do have key clients that we have to keep. I think the, the trick is in the communication with the employee. So if, if you are giving some leverage, if you’re giving some space to the employee, and let’s say, let’s cut back your time a little bit. So you can deal with this situation. Well, I think it’s important to say.

All right. So I’m giving you some flexibility. Recognize that you’re doing that. Make sure they’re aware that you’re giving them that. And what I expect from you is for the time that you are working, I want you spot on, right? I need you to be, you know, everything needs to be perfect, just like it normally is that you deliver.

And if, if it isn’t perfect, then maybe we need to adjust that. Maybe, maybe that’s not a little bit too much time. We need to cut, you know, figure out what, what the route, what level is of their work that gets optimal performance. And that at least puts you in a situation where you don’t have to correct things.

You get good things, but maybe just not at the right output. That’s one. But the other thing is the economics or the economics. It’s still it still has to work. We have to take care of our clients needs. And maybe maybe you need another creative approach, you know, to solve that problem. Or maybe this just isn’t going to work out.

Just depends upon the situation. But I think keeping that communication open and recognize, make sure the employee, like when you give something, make sure the employee understands what you gave them, because that’s important, right? Sometimes it’s sort of gloss over. It was like, well, I’m doing the best I can.

Yeah, but you know, we’ve cut you down to, you know 70%. So, we’re covering the rest of that for you. Let’s make sure we’re aware of that. Does that make sense?

Chip Griffin: It does. And I think, you know, I, I think you have, you know, really underscored the fact that, that yes, you’re human, but it is also a business.

You do need to achieve results. And to me, I think one of the, one of the places where you really draw the line is on, you know, is it impacting the actual outcomes for clients or the outcome of your agency with that client? In other words, if it starts to threaten the relationship or it starts to threaten what you promised to do for that client, that’s a bigger deal than if it’s just not at the quality that someone used to do.

Or, you know, maybe they cut it a little bit closer on deadlines versus missing deadlines. I think the magnitude of the impact needs to be an important consideration here because I, I don’t think there’s any sense in getting worked up if the work is good enough still. It’s really a question of, do you need to make a fundamental change because it’s impacting the outcomes of the business?

Yep, I totally agree.

So with that, if someone would like to reach out to you for more advice on this, or maybe a particular challenge they have, or just learn more about the resources that you put out, where should they go?

Patrick Rogan: Well, it’s real easy. I’m at ignitionhr.com. You can click a button and schedule an appointment with me right on the front page.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. Well, I can, I can vouch for your Your wise counsel and ability to navigate lots of really tricky situations. You and I have dealt with some really fun ones over the years, both in our work together as well as for clients. So, with that, we will wrap up this episode. I thank everybody for listening and Patrick, I thank you for joining me yet again.

Again, my guest has been Patrick Rogan of Ignition HR.

Patrick Rogan: Thanks Chip.

View Details

In this episode, Chip chats with Lee McKnight, Jr. from RSW/US about the findings from their latest survey on agency and marketer perspectives.

They discuss key topics such as the discrepancies between agencies’ efforts to productize services versus clients’ preference for customized solutions, the increasing trend towards fixed-fee pricing over hourly billing, and the importance of staying ahead of trends to meet client expectations.

The conversation touches on the effectiveness of direct outreach and the role of AI and short-form video in modern agency practices. They also highlight the need for more meaningful client conversations and the diminishing popularity of RFPs as agencies focus on quality over quantity in their business development efforts.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “If you ask a client if they want something that is productized or customized, everybody’s going to say customized. But every creative firm that I’ve ever worked with has a process that they follow. That is productization.” * Lee McKnight, Jr.: “There’s never been a better time for an agency to get in there and create some of these short-form videos.” * Chip Griffin: “AI is a perfect thing to help in doing a proposal production. If you’re going to do proposals, and I would rather you didn’t.” * Lee McKnight, Jr.: “There’s nothing worse than, especially on LinkedIn, taking these shortcuts where they just have the AI spit out a gratuitous business cliche. But I think there are ways AI can inform research and inform messaging in a way that maybe you hadn’t thought about.”

About Lee McKnight, Jr.Lee is the VP of Sales for RSW/US, and earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Kentucky and JD from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, AL.

After graduating law school, he worked for an internet healthcare start-up in Nashville, a grocery wholesaler brokerage in Cincinnati, and then to RSW/US in 2007, where he’s worked with marketing agencies of all types to help drive their new business efforts.

Resources* RSW/US website * RSW/US 2025 New Year Outlook Report

Related* Content, consistency, and conversions for agency biz dev (featuring Lee McKnight Jr.) * Smart use of content helps agency business development * Fresh research on agency new business

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I am delighted to have with me one of my favorite guests, Lima Nightmare, AKA Lee McKnight from RSW/US.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: I’m back and it’s good to be back. Chip. Thanks for having me again.

I love it. I, so I have to, I did bring a little toy, eraser sushi that I will be nibbling on throughout the show. It is important that, yeah, don’t. They literally are erasers.

Yeah, that’s probably not a good idea to be erasers.

But I did bring something.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. I mean, I can always count on you to have a prop of some kind whenever you’re on any of my shows.

So hopefully people are watching this on video. And if you’re listening to it, go back and watch the video because I mean, it’s, it’s part of the entertainment that we have. But in addition to entertainment, we’re going to get into some substantive things here. And because Lee, you and RSW are really expert in business development topics and, and you don’t just opine, you actually go out and do research. You’ve done some research recently. And so we’re going to talk about some of the findings from your latest surveys.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Absolutely. No, and thank you. And we released this little bit of background, oh, about a month, but I think what’s interesting is interesting is how evergreen a lot of these topics are staying.

And we, we’ll, we’ll get into it, but we added a couple of new questions we found to be, you know, really interesting and, thing, you know, one of the things we talked about before we started was, well, I should finish, shouldn’t I? What we do is we survey agencies and marketers. This is one of the three survey reports we release over the year.

Where marketers are included, and it’s probably the most popular, probably not a surprise to hear, in terms of hearing both sides and where they play out, you know, in the answers to some of these questions. So, there’s, there’s the, setting the table there. I think that survey went out end of November release.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think that’s, that’s really what does stand out about this, is that you are looking at both sides. The client side and the agency side, which is, which is relatively unique. I mean, folks like myself, we, you know, I do a lot of research, but I tend to focus just on the agency side. And so being able to bring both pieces of it into the equation, really, I think.

Has surfaced some, some interesting nuggets, that are worth looking at.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, for sure. And I think we, we decided to start with some of the disconnects, which are always, it’s a fun place to start. I think, and I know one of the ones that you’d mentioned specifically wanted to talk about out of the gate is productization piece, which I’ll try to say that over and over again, it won’t happen, but.

Just to set the table there are so, 52.4 percent of agencies say they sometimes, productize their services yet, 65 percent of marketers still prefer customized services over productized solutions. So there, there’s a, there’s a gap in expectations. And I thought that that 50 percent number maybe seemed a little high.

I wanted to see what you thought, but definitely a gap.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, it, it, the number does seem perhaps a little bit high. I think, you know, part of the challenge that you run into here is definitions, right? Because you know, there are, I would argue that the vast majority of agencies have productized their services over the years.

When, when I go in and I look at the engagements that agencies have, it looks pretty similar from one client to the next, and the pricing is pretty similar from one client to the next. So effectively that is productizing. It’s not doing it in a branded way, you know, where it’s in your face. And so I think that, that some of this may come down to, is it overt productization or is it subtle productization?

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Oh, that’s great. I just wrote a post on this. I’m going to go update it. Because I hadn’t really thought about that because you’re exactly right. I mean, if you look at marketers, SEO firms, I mean, these types of firms that have bundled for lack of a better order productized services for quite a while, you know, I think it’s interesting because I had an agency principal email me, not one of our clients, but just that happens to know a great firm, but, and it’s small to midsize firm, but it said, can you get like 10 minutes?

Cause what do you, what exactly do you mean by like productized services and how would we, a creative agency, we’re not even thinking about that. So that’s very interesting. So we did have a little bit of a conversation about it and he said, I don’t, I don’t think we want to do that, you know, as a creative agency, I can see how, but it’s interesting because you’ve got a lot of consultants and, you know, folks out there saying that this is the way it’s going. This is the way professional services firms are also going, and I can see that as well, whether it’s a law firm or what have you, but, but it’s interesting how I see a little pushback too in terms of creativity and that customization and, you know, what, how are you going to do that year over year, or I should say month over month.

When clients start to wanting you to get away from your nice little bundle or, or what you, you know, how you productized it, then, then what happens? And I think we know where that tends to go.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look, I mean, I, I think that, you know, if you ask a client if they want something that is productized or customized, I mean, everybody’s going to say customized, right?

Sure. And, and it’s, it, it just, it feels better. It feels like you’re giving me better service. I, so I think we always need to be careful when we’re doing these things in thinking about how it’s being heard on the other end. So same thing with, I’m a big advocate of paid discovery as a first step in agency client relationships.

Yes. However. I don’t believe you should ever call it paid discovery with the client, right? Because that, that it’s just, it’s off putting. And so you need to have a different way to describe it. Same thing with productization. You know, you don’t necessarily need to say that here’s our packaged product that we’re selling you, but you do say, Hey, we have a, a standard process that we use.

It’s absolutely customized to you. But it’s like going into a restaurant and asking them to hold the pickles on the burger or something like that, right? You’ll, you’ll make adjustments. But you’re, I mean, even a creative firm, if you’re doing logo design or web design, you’ve got a process that you follow.

Every creative firm that I’ve ever worked with has a process that they follow. That is productization.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: No, I do agree with you, but I, I, what I tend to see, and especially just even lately in like writing this post, I just wrote, I’ll keep going back to that, but, but digging into it a little bit more. Is that there does seem to be this push for like, we put it again for like the over productization.

Yes. Where they are saying like, no, we have this package and we need to be doing this. And here, many agencies over the past three months or so asking me and saying, here, this is our plan. Productizing X and X. And it’s not that those, I mean, who am I to say it’s a bad idea without, I mean, I’m, we don’t, we’re just scratching the surface with them out there, but, and I’m not sure where exactly it’s coming from, but there seems to be that push for overproductizations.

Yeah, I knew it. And, yeah, I’ll be curious to see where, where that goes.

Chip Griffin: And I suspect some of it depends on what clients you’re trying to sell to, right? I mean, if you’re selling to, you know, Fortune 500, my guess is that they are going to be less receptive to the idea of an overtly productized offering.

Whereas if you’re in the SME space, that’s a lot less off putting to someone like that because, you know, that’s probably how they’re selling a lot of their stuff too these days. Well, let’s move on to, another topic. You know, one of, one of the ones that, that really jumped out at me, was the, the question of, clients paying for specific deliverables.

And, and those numbers have changed a little bit.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: So we had, 53 percent of marketers or clients now preferring paying for specific deliverables up from just 5 percent in 2016, which I thought was very interesting. It was, so it was 59 percent of agencies charged clients from deliverables instead of hours.

88 percent of clients prefer to pay for deliverables over hours. This is much more in your domain, Chip, I have to say, because we don’t, we work somewhat with clients on pricing, but, I mean, what’s your take?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, I, I think this is, this is the, the direction that a lot of, professional services folks are, are generally moving, right?

You know, where it’s, I mean, you know, whether you call it paying for deliverables, you just call it, you know, fixed fee or things, people are generally moving away from, hourly billing, time and materials, those kinds of approaches in part, because there are a lot of folks out there advocating value pricing, and I’m not going to go on my anti value pricing rant because I, I think that it’s just, most people don’t understand it and, and most people are implementing it incorrectly. But I think that in general, clients like to know, what am I going to get for what I’m paying for? Honestly, it’s generally good for the agency as well, because then there’s a lot more certainty on their side, and so I, I think the hourly model is, is, you know, not necessarily gone, but headed out the door and really only useful when you have truly unpredictable projects where you really something like say crisis communications, where you have absolutely no idea what the bounds of the deliverables are going to be.

Because it’s going to evolve. But if you’re, if you’re, you know, designing a logo, building a website, launching an ad campaign, all of these things are, are, are things that you can, generally speaking, put a fixed fee and tell the client what they’re getting for it.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: And it’s directly related to those tangible outputs, which makes sense.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Now the trick is, if you’re going to do that, please don’t tell them the number of hours that it actually took to do it, because I’m seeing this one not infrequently, where someone has a fixed fee for the deliverables, but then they still report to the client on how much time it took.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: They’re being transparent, Chip.

Chip Griffin: No good comes from that. You don’t do it. That’s very true. And if you get asked for it, you just say no.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Right. It’s in the calculations. No, but in all sincerity right now, that’s not, interesting. Okay.

Chip Griffin: So, I mean, I, I think overall on, on pricing though, I, you know, did you have other questions on pricing in there? I can’t remember it.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Well, I mean, I have to kind of want you to get into the value base a little bit, but if that’s going to, if we’re going to go off…

Chip Griffin: I’ll go on, I’ll go on my rant. So look, here’s the thing with value pricing. Most of the time when someone says they do value pricing, they’re just doing fixed fee for deliverables.

True value pricing really requires you to be almost a business analyst and to understand the exact value that a client will receive from the work that you’re doing. But the problem is that most of the things that agencies do It’s not that easy, and the client can’t give you a square answer. I mean, how many clients can you think of who could, who could really help you pinpoint the value of a logo?

Right? Right? I mean, it just, and, and, and logos are one of the, the ones that always seem to come up in value pricing. Well, you know, it’s You know, yes, it only took me, you know, three seconds to do the swoosh for the Nike, but you know, it’s worth billions of dollars in revenue to them. The vast majority of clients can’t answer that question.

So you can sit there and poke and prod at them and say, well, what would it be worth to you if we did this or that? And, and to me, it’s not, it’s not a particularly useful way of spending your time. And, and I do agree that fixed fee is, you know, generally speaking, a better way to go, but let’s call it what it is.

It’s fixed fee. It’s not value pricing.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Okay. No, I like the rant. Interesting. Okay, there, there’s another, disconnect that we talked about a little bit before we jumped on I wanted to get into while we’re still there, and that’s one that we talked that, you know, that, maybe not a shock, but what’s interesting to see is that we had

77 percent of agencies who are confident and staying ahead of trends. Marketer confidence dropped to 62. Now you may look at that initially and say, well, okay, and, Lee? Well, it’s dropped four years in a row and it’s risen four years in a row for, for agencies and for marketers. And I think it’s, I just, I like to bring that up while maybe it’s not as mind blowing.

It’s important for agencies to realize. And it goes back to the order taker, and we’ve talked about this before, Chip, you know, where it’s hard to do, you have to do the work. But I think if we continue to see these trends move, that’s probably going to be an issue, right?

Chip Griffin: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s probably Yeah, I mean, one of the, one of the most common reasons that clients give for ending an agency relationship is that they, they feel like the, the agency is no longer coming to them with fresh ideas, that they’re just going through the motions.

And, you know, I think that, you know, that really is, what’s represented in part in, in this question and, and the results. I mean, it is particularly concerning to me. It’s not surprising to me that there’s disconnect. It is particularly concerning though that that agencies seem to be deluding themselves into thinking that more and more they are in touch and clients are feeling that they are less and less in touch.

So you don’t what mean the disconnect is one thing. But the fact that it’s getting worse It is certainly a concern. And I think there are a lot of reasons why agencies may look this way to clients. One is they may actually be behind the times, right? I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s possible because some agencies just get so busy and, you know, nose to the grindstone, just churning out stuff that they don’t invest in, professional development and R& D and, and give their time, their staff time to work on those things.

But it’s also, I think, in part, symptomatic of the fact that when agencies do bring new ideas to clients, the client often says, sure, let’s do that. But they also don’t say, and we’ll pay more for it. And so it just gets added on. So I know from a lot of the agency owners that I work with, they’re kind of, they’re, they’re a little bit timid in bringing these new ideas forward because they’re afraid that they’re going to be stuck with doing the work without getting any extra compensation.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Oh, totally. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And you go, it’s the same thing in an office environment, right? I mean, how many times have you, you know, heard an employee say, well, I’m not gonna suggest that to the boss ’cause he’s probably gonna tell me I have to do it.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: And it, it plays into another question that we asked and we asked, we’ve asked this for years, and that is asking agencies and marketers what they thought in terms of those trends.

What, what, you know, what’s at the top and not shockingly of course it’s AI and right behind that is short form video. Which I think, you know, as an agency, you’re going to have to get vested in both of those in some shape or form. Obviously now that could mean services, but it could also mean business development, which I strongly suggest to agencies.

I mean, I don’t think… so, a lot of them don’t have the wherewithal to be as active as you are on social and on LinkedIn. I think that that can be very hard for small, mid sized firms. But just like those, the YouTube shorts, I mean, we went from doing my 3 Takeaways videos that were three to six minutes and our views were kind of going down and, and I’m waiting for you to say, well, whose fault is that?

But, not because of the talent. I mean, the talent’s there obviously, but we really can’t see for whatever reason, and we had actually, we’re rethinking that now, like, did we just get a hundred and something episodes and maybe it’s just time for a different format, something like that. But then those YouTube shorts for an agency on their phone, which is what they want you, you know, it’s more the TikTok that’s becoming everything, kind of those more raw, personal, shorter videos.

There’s never been a better time for an agency to get in there and create some of these. And it’s, it’s, it feels kind of weird sometimes and it’s different and plus I’m old, but. I, our views skyrocketed comparatively on those shorts that we’ve done and we’re still kind of experimenting with it.

And then with AI, good lord, yeah, I mean it, I find it helpful, I, I can’t speak, I can speak a little bit to services on the agency side. But I did have one principal raving about this GPT he created has cut his proposal creation time in half. I would love to see what those look like, you know, given kind of what we know about AI so far, even though it’s evolving exponentially, I’m just throwing out a couple of those things there that I think were interesting.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And look, I think that that agencies ought to be using a lot of these new or at least newer tools, and platforms too, to help grow their own business. But frankly, it’s a great way to learn. And so, you know, rather than experimenting on a client with AI or short form video or those kinds of things, experiment yourself with the agency. And so if it works, it’s a twofer, right? You’ve generated business and you’ve learned how to do it so that you can now frame it more accurately to a client and go sell it to them so that hopefully they will pay you more for it. So absolutely, I mean agencies need to be getting into all of these different things and figuring out how to use them. And to your specific point I think AI is a perfect thing to help in doing a proposal production.

If you’re going to do proposals, I, and I would rather you didn’t, I’m, I’m anti proposal.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: I don’t think I knew that. Okay. Interesting. Sure. I, I can guess why, but.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it’s to me, it just doesn’t make any sense to, because proposals are a way for the client or the prospect just to kind of put you off and say, just send me a proposal, you know. You know, and, and there needs to be much more of a dialogue back and forth and have a meeting of the minds on what you’re going to do and roughly what it’s going to cost.

And then go ahead and once you’ve, you know, got a sort of a handshake agreement that says if this works, you know, if, if you can really do this for this price, we’ll, we’ll sign. Now, okay, go ahead and put together a statement of work, but don’t do a proposal. I, I think.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: And that’s a fair point because I, you can, yeah, I’ve seen agencies default because they kind of, either they’re not comfortable enough or savvy enough, whatever the right phraseology is, where they just default to, we’ll just send over a proposal.

Yeah. Then half the time they take two or three weeks to even send that over. Which drives me nuts. That’s a whole other episode, right? I mean, it’s like, what are you doing?

Yeah, if you’re going to do them, you got to turn them around quick.

Got to turn them around quick. And that’s also part of the problem is some of those, they can get so bespoke that you’ll be up all night turning that around quickly.

Chip Griffin: Well, and the biggest problem is that too often they’re done with very little actual information. I mean, how many proposals have you seen that an agency turns out after one or maybe two calls with a prospect? How can you put together any kind of decent proposal for a client based on that little information? You simply can’t. You’re just, you’re guessing.

And so I would rather you be having, you know, more in depth conversations with the prospect so that you can figure out, yeah, this is what we want to do, this is the direction we want to go, and here’s roughly what it’s going to cost. And then go from there and you will waste a lot less time on your side and you will waste the time of the prospects a lot less as well.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, that’s fair. I think it’s tough to pin down those prospects sometimes to get that info that you need, but that’s nothing new.

Chip Griffin: But if you can’t pin them down when they’re looking for a solution, imagine how hard it’s going to be once they become a client. So that’s something you need to factor into your pricing too, right?

If you’re chasing them when they’ve come to you or they’ve agreed to talk to you to solve one of their problems, It ain’t going to get any better.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: That’s very true. And that’s where the frustration begins to set in. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: I mean, I, I will say at least you, your, your study did show that, that RFPs seem to be less popular with agencies than in the past. So that, I mean, while I disliked the proposals, I really hate RFPs, so.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: I was gonna say, I mean, I, yeah. Different than RFPs and I figured that that’s what we were gonna say, but, you know, no, that, that was heartening. That was good. It was, fewer high volume responses and, and 24, agents, agencies just focusing on quality over quantity overall.

As RFPs become less universal with some opting out altogether and those percentages kind of keep going up. So that is really good to see. I bet that hamster wheel, I, I mean, I, again, we’ve talked about this before your higher ed or some of the other CVDs, you have to do it, you know, every three years or whatever that is.

But otherwise, I mean, that’s anytime we, our own clients, agency clients or prospects, like we are not here to chase RFPs for you because why would you ever want that? We don’t ignore them because. Some may actually be the right fit, but a shiver goes down your spine.

Chip Griffin: I mean, I think, I think that, I mean, it’s, it’s really encouraging for me to see it because a lot of these things that we’ve talked about, RFPs, you know, excessive proposal writing, that, you know, these are, are symptoms of agency leaders who want to feel like they are doing something on the business development front.

Even if they aren’t necessarily. Same thing with, you know, redesigning your website or things like that. You know, you convince yourself that these are meaningful steps that will help grow the business when really what you need to be doing is having meaningful conversations with actual people. And, and that is more likely to win you business than anything else.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Yeah. Interesting that you, that you say that because another piece of it, the top four ways that marketers find agencies, you know, we ask that every year as far as business development goes and, and by the way, if we want to get back to RFPs, but, I always find it interesting.

Well, you know what? It’s not interesting because we know what the number one is. It’s referrals. No shot there and it will probably never change. And, and hey, referrals are great, but what has been steadily rising, at least over the past four years, is direct outreach. Which is kind of interesting because agencies hate to do that or they’re not good at it or all of the above, or they just legitimately don’t have time or at least make the time. But I think it’s 52 percent of agencies, I think it came in third, direct outreach.

So, you know, as a biz dev firm, it, you know, it, it is good to see. And I think that while it, I think it’s gotten progressively better. We talked about this over the last several months and a couple of quarters, breaking through now is so different than even it was five years ago in terms of like email deliverability or the thing, and I’ve certainly met ops people that do that and know much more than I do, but it’s, it’s tough.

And so I think I especially can see for small, mid sized firms, you’re not going to have the budget for a lot of these platforms and, and there’s so many shiny things as well that, that it just, I, we get the frustration. Thankfully, we have people that, you know, are then part of that, that, that test a lot of those.

I had, it’s coming out that would work, but it’s good to see agencies still committing, you know, at least more than half to it.

Chip Griffin: So, you know, either from the, the study or obviously direct outreach is, is very much in, in your wheelhouse, for RSW. Is that, are there any types of direct outreach that, that seem to be more effective?

Is it You know, is it, is it more thought leadership driven? Is it just a straight up, Hey, let’s have a conversation about how we can help you. What, what are you seeing or what is the study show as far as the kind of direct outreach that’s most effective right now?

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Good question. I think, and some of this has got to be more what we’ve, what we’ve seen.

I think that. We’ll certainly just a mass email. We personally aren’t really about that. Just give this image back too late. Comes vomiting that out, you know, and you spray and pray. I’m always been not a fan of that at all. And who is? Having said that many still try to go there, and I don’t know how they don’t get dinged and completely blocked, which they probably are. But you know, I think what still holds true and it’s not just because we do it, I mean, we see it out there is because you don’t know where these folks live, your prospects, you have to be careful about only devoting yourself to one platform and/or channel, meaning if you’re just emailing and emailing away, I’m not saying that doesn’t work, but the phone still works.

I think the key there is making sure that if you can have some thought leadership in there, you almost have to these days, and it doesn’t mean that you have this it’s not going to be your full time job. And that is actually where AI does help. I think going back for a second, there’s nothing worse than, especially on LinkedIn, taking these shortcuts where they just have the AI spit out whatever gratuitous business cliche.

And I’ve seen agency owners, owners do this and it’s like, you can tell so quickly that’s the AI and I don’t know what, what, what are you getting out of that? But I think there are ways it can inform research. It can inform messaging in a way that maybe you hadn’t thought about. Today anyway, you should not take that directly and just pop it wherever or, or get it out to a prospect.

But I’ve had, I’ve been trying to learn more just along the lines of prompts. I think it’s so much deeper that I didn’t realize even two weeks ago, I got on the sub stack and I was like, Oh my God, that’s, that’s a huge prompt that I had no idea it got that complicated for lack of a better word and I learned a lot from it actually.

And so I think we’ll see where that goes, but I think making sure with that outreach that you get more of that. It’s going to take a little bit more time, but I think for small and mid sized firms, if you’re able to really target those prospects, and this might sound like, well, coarsely, but targeting those prospects so that you could have some of that personalized outreach, ultimately get to those conversations that you’re talking about, Chip, where you are able to show them specifically, this is how we can help you and solve this business challenge because our clients are doing it. Versus the fluffy stuff and I think agencies have gotten better. But man, there’s still a lot where to your point. I mean, they all look alike in many ways. It’s gotten better. But, you know, I think alternating those platforms and alternating those touches is one of the best ways to get in the door.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think you, you touched on something really important there, which is to make it personalized.

And, and real personalized, not using AI to fake personalize

it, which, I mean, I’ve seen that go horribly wrong in my own inbox on a regular basis. Right? It’s not, yeah. It’s just awful. And it’s, I mean, LinkedIn is, is terrible these days. You know, it seems like every time I accept a connection request, it immediately is followed by a sales pitch.

And, and so it, it really, it frankly has made me reluctant to accept LinkedIn connections in the way that I used to in the past. I really kind of have to know who you are now before I’m accepting it. Even if you look like, you know, someone that I ought to be connected with, because I’m just tired of that, you know, poke me in the eye with a sales pitch right away. And, and you’ve got to work on building relationships and, and it’s, it’s about quality, not quantity.

I mean, as you said, spray and pray, vomiting it out. That’s not the approach.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: No, that’s interesting. Specifically to LinkedIn. I mean, I typically. It will be several weeks, minimally, and two or three touches of a part of my job is bringing agency clients on board, for every day to connect with them. Because I want them to at least have the diversity sublevel of permission, where to your point, you know, we may not have built a relationship yet, literally, but they’ve opened an email or they’ve responded to something.

It’s like, well, now that door’s open and they don’t have to, to, you know, accept it. But I most certainly then do not follow with any kind of pitch. It’s, hey, thanks. You know, it’s usually something where I’ve done a little bit of homework, and I’m bringing up something, either a newsletter I read, that they put out, or a post that they had.

To at least show them, look, I’m doing a little bit of homework here. This is not just, there’s, here’s why I’m reaching out. There’s a reason.

Chip Griffin: Well, and, and you do a lot of things like this research, which acts as a great door opener to conversations. And, and, and that is the right way to do it. And more agencies ought to be looking at those kinds of things, frankly, even doing their own research.

It, I mean, does it require work? Absolutely. But you can learn a lot from it and you can leverage it to build a new relationship.

Are you seeing more of that with agencies you’re interacting with?

I’m certainly seeing agencies doing more innovative things to try to build new connections. So that might be putting on their own events, for example, you know, that showcase both their abilities, but also makes connections with people who might be likely prospects for them.

I haven’t seen as much on the original research side, which I think is, is really an untapped opportunity. I agree. It doesn’t. You know, it doesn’t have to be a monumental piece of original research, you know, but a little bit goes a long way.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: It really does. And I feel like I’ve seen a little bit more, kinda hard to like quantify, but I feel like just because that’s what I’m doing day in and day out and interacting with either agency websites or literally with them.

But, and I will make sure and compliment them and not, not try to blow smoke, but just say that, I mean, you don’t know how, I mean, you probably do because you’re doing it, but how invaluable that can be and to your point does not have to be war and peace or the treatise that tells us all something that we never found out, but a little bit does go a long way and I think putting that into place in the key, of course, is getting it in front of your prospects and making sure that, you know, again, that the Kevin Costner build it and they will come is not a thing.

It simply hasn’t been for years. You’ve got to get it out there and that’s, that’s hard.

Chip Griffin: And you gotta do something to stand out because there is so much of this AI generated garbage that’s out there. And so, you know, doing things like original research or events or webinars or those kinds of things are things that, that can’t be replicated by AI.

And so it’s, it’s a way for you to stand out and, and really connect with the people that you’re trying to talk with. Absolutely. Well, I think that’s probably a, a good spot to, to wrap up, this, episode on. Because I, we always try to stick to roughly 30 minutes. You and I have a really hard time with that though, because we could really go on for…

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Well I make it hard for you.

But yeah.

Chip Griffin: Um, if someone is interested in having a meaningful conversation with you, accessing this research, learning more about RSW/US and all the other great things that you do, where should they go? Lee?

Lee McKnight, Jr.: So our site is the best place to start. So rswus.com and got a bunch of, all of our research is actually there.

Absolutely. All at no cost.

Chip Griffin: Fantastic. Well, as always, you have been a great guest, and I look forward to having you back again very soon.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

And I appreciate everybody who has listened all the way through here, and I look forward to having you back, listening to another episode very soon.

Thanks, everybody.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro about the challenges faced by solos and small agency owners in the current chaotic environment. They discuss the impact of economic, political, and societal issues on public relations and communications, emphasizing the need for adaptability in business strategies.

They highlight the importance of diversifying communication tactics beyond traditional media relations, focusing on owned and internal communications, and the value of continuous business development. The conversation also covers managing anxiety among employees, clients, and agency owners themselves, and the importance of peer support and professional community engagement.

Key takeaways* Karen Swim: “Stop pushing the lever of media relationships as your only tool in the toolbox. We’ve been saying this forever. Public relations is so much more, media relations is a tactic. It is not a strategy.” * Chip Griffin: “The places where we typically have gone to help clients communicate are disappearing and/or changing substantially. And so we need to learn to adapt to that as a business.” * Karen Swim: “You should be doing business development consistently, no matter how many clients you have. Full stop.” * Chip Griffin: “You may need to adapt what services you’re pitching or who you’re pitching to. But as a solo or a small player, you have a lot more flexibility to do this.”

About Karen SwimKaren Swim is many things but clients agree that she is genuine, hard working and cares deeply about their personal and professional success. Works with clients in a variety of industries including technology, healthcare and nonprofits. President of Solo PR Pro and co-host of That Solo Life podcast.

Resources* Solo PR Pro website * That Solo Life podcast * Connect with Karen on LinkedIn

Related* Turbulent times ahead for agencies? * The role and impact of solo PR agencies today (featuring Karen Swim) * Mistaken thinking about agency pricing

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
CWC with Karen Swim

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me one of my most frequent guests, a very smart individual who always has great insights for us, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Swim: Thank you, Chip. It’s always great to, to be with you and, I’m going to apologize to your audience because I do have the flu, but the flu could not keep me away from doing your podcast. That’s how much. I like you.

Chip Griffin: Well, I, I, I appreciate that very much and the, the feeling is mutual and, and, I’ll remember that, if, if I catch the flu the next time I’m on your show, I’ll power right through and not even hesitate.

So, but I, I think, you know, it, it is important to have the conversation we’re going to have today because we are both talking with a lot of, of solos and small agency owners who are concerned about the current environment. And there are all sorts of things to be worried about if you’re a business owner right now.

And, and it doesn’t even matter, you know, what your political views are, those kinds of things. There are a lot of economic issues. There are the political issues that, that certainly are getting a lot of headlines right now. There are societal issues. There’s just, there’s all sorts of stuff going on.

Karen Swim: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And so it is really a chaotic environment to be running your business in, and a lot of this is having a direct impact on public relations, communications, marketing, the specialties that we work with on a day to day basis. So I think it’ll be interesting to have a conversation about how do you cope with this chaos in the moment?

How do you, if not thrive as a business, at least survive as a business as you’re navigating your way through it? So, I’ll throw the floor open to you for thoughts that you may have.

Karen Swim: Yeah, it’s a really difficult time. And as you noted, especially for those in the communication professions, because so many of the pillars that are integral to the work that we do, we’re seeing such a chaotic landscape.

Social media platforms, there’s so much chaos. And there’s a lot of exiting from those platforms and people, you know, pushing back against them. And so if people are spreading out on more social media channels and not really being engaged anywhere, how do you use that tool now in 2025 to, to reach your, your audience, your publics?

We’re also seeing the media landscape just go through an incredible shifting. We’re seeing, you know, a lot of layoffs. We’re seeing local news go away. We’re seeing, you know, the quality of journalism change. And, you know, we are also seeing and, you know, history bears this out. This is where independent journalism rises. And they fight against what’s happening with, you know, integrity and with a mission to report the truth.

But those publications are all over the place. So how do communicators even find them? How do you find those newsletters by independent journalists? How do you pitch them? How do you use these tools with your clients? It’s, it’s a really uncertain time.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I, I think that’s a, that’s a great point. That, that even before we get to these larger environmental issues that are impacting business, we get to the issue of the places where we typically have gone to help clients communicate are, are disappearing and or changing substantially.

And so we need to learn to adapt to that as a business, right? We can’t, we can’t simply lament the fact that that there is less traditional media and so it’s harder to get stories placed. We need to come up with a solution for our clients because they don’t want to hear us say well, you know there’s just there’s so many fewer places.

It’s so hard. They’ve got fewer reporters. They don’t have time for pitches. So, you know, yeah, I know we didn’t produce anything the last three months, but you know, that’s just that’s just the way it is. You need to come up with something that you can explain to the client, this is what we’re doing and this is how it’s having a result.

So fundamentally, that means a lot of the folks that we work with who are traditional media relations folks, they need to be rethinking that pure media relations approach and thinking more about Gini Dietrich’s PESO model, for example, and how do we Integrate additional types of communication, but even then, to your point, the social media platforms are changing. And a lot of people originally started to migrate from one platform to another.

That was maybe more hospitable to their own personal views of the world. But then people just started throwing their hands up and say, well, I’m not going anywhere. So then how do you find people? How do you, you need to find your audience, your client’s audience, wherever they are.

Karen Swim: Yeah, and it’s funny because we have, how many years have we been saying, stop pushing the lever of media relationships, as your only tool in the toolbox.

We’ve been saying this forever. Public relations is so much more, media relations is a tactic. It is not a strategy. And so I think now is the time that communicators have to really be strategic. And they have to focus on quality, not quantity, and they have to look at other tactics that they can utilize to help clients achieve what’s most important to them.

That’s still possible. And so, you know, my advice is don’t get caught up in the distractions because it’s all noise. These things are happening. It’s not going to change, but what can you do? You have to be solution oriented. You’ve got to become more business minded. What’s really important to your client and how can you achieve those objectives?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it’s you can’t be an implementer who’s focused just on performing the tactics that you’ve always done. You need to be in a position where you’re saying to yourself Okay. You know, this is, this is the business goal my client is trying to achieve. How can I use all of the expertise, all of the knowledge that I have to help them achieve them?

And, and it’s something you should have been doing anyway, right? Even before these things change, right? You need to understand your clients and we always, you know, we’ll, we’ll talk about when you’re pitching new business, ask questions instead of just coming in there and talking about all the great things that you do. But it’s even more important now.

And so I guess, you know, if you are someone who is historically been a media relations specialist, either as an individual or an agency, how do you, realistically, how do you expand beyond that? Because that’s been your bread and butter. That’s what you’re, you know, and are comfortable with.

Karen Swim: Absolutely. But there’s, excuse me, so many other things that we can do.

There is, you know, I think people forget about internal communications. They forget about email marketing. Excuse me, that’s, that’s something that you own and you can control. Focus on getting people into your internal systems, into your owned channels.

Chip Griffin: Right. Yeah. I mean, if you’re able to start focusing on those things that, that you control, I think, I think owned and internal are two great places to get started because, I mean, owned is, I’m a huge fan of owned anyway, because with all of these changes taking place, having a place that you can call your own, that, that you can house your client’s content and it’s going to be there, you know, for posterity, for the future.

That’s helpful, but it’s also something that you control so much that, particularly in the early stages of a relationship where it’s hard to get, even if you’re really good at media relations and you’ve got great connections and all that, it’s hard. And, and you can get more traction sooner by producing owned content.

So I think that’s a great place to get started.

Karen Swim: And it doesn’t mean that media relations is dead. It means that you’ve got to focus on qualitative coverage, where can you achieve coverage that really aligns and it’s really going to reach your client’s audience, and more importantly, really move the needle in a way that’s meaningful.

Chip Griffin: So you know, obviously, you know, we focused so far on on some of the the structural changes and and and changing what you do for clients, but we can’t ignore the fact that this is just a, a tough environment overall. There, you know, even before the start of 2025, there were economic questions and, and we saw over the last 18 months or so that the clients became slower to respond to proposals, slower to spend money, more risk averse.

And so I, in the past, we’ve talked about, you know, the importance of de risking engagements with clients and that sort of thing. But you know, how do you, how do you approach, let’s start with the economic side of it. And then, then we’ll get into the political and societal stuff because I think we can’t overlook that, but, but how do you approach the economic environment, as a solo or an agency to, to try to do the best you can?

Karen Swim: I think it’s really tough, but there are industries that are growing. So, I think take a look at what’s growing, what’s in demand, and think about serving those industries because your skills are transferable. So many times we lock ourselves into this box without realizing that we really can branch out.

And it may take some work. It may take teaming up with someone who is in that industry and doing it as a collaborative project or a collaborative, you know, proposal. Or, you know, working together with somebody that has expertise in that space. But you’ve got to be scrappy in this environment because not every industry is dead.

There are so many industries that are really doing well. There are companies that have cash. They’re not laying off. They have healthy environments, and so you’ve just got to look. And I think the message is get out of your comfort zone. Don’t just sit there and go, Oh, woe is me. Like, nobody is, nobody is, you know, hiring outside contractors, and nobody’s spending money, and it’s so hard, and all the – Nope.

Then you gotta sit down and do the research and dig in and figure out, okay, where are the fish at? That’s where I’m gonna cast my line.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think, I think the other thing to consider is, you know, don’t necessarily throw out your existing specialty. You know, it’s really easy to get enamored with whatever the shiny new object is, whether that’s a service or an industry or whatever, and chase that because, you know, you’re just, you need the cash.

But I think even, even if you serve an industry that is struggling right now, there’s still opportunity there. You may need to adapt what services you’re pitching or who you’re pitching to. But as a solo or a small player, you have a lot more flexibility to do this. The people who have to abandon particular industries are the big players who need huge contracts in order to survive and thrive.

You don’t need that. So before you give up on whatever specialty you may have now, ask yourself if there’s a way you can adapt to the current reality.

Karen Swim: Yeah, they’ve got problems that need to be solved. So, you know, sit down and figure out, like, what’s their struggle right now, and how can public relations help them to hit their goals?

How can, what can I do, what solutions do I offer that really matter to them? You know, and I also think, you know, don’t lower your prices, but consider changing the way that you engage. So, maybe it’s not a monthly retainer. Maybe it’s a six month retainer. Maybe it’s a project. Maybe you’re doing more project work.

You know, again, get scrappy, start to think. Well, would people be more amenable to shorter engagements because they are feeling uncertain and don’t want to be locked in? And that doesn’t require you to lower your prices or take less or devalue your services. It’s just a different way of looking at the model.

Chip Griffin: And that’s a great warning. Do not lower your prices or cut your margins in order to, to win business because Too often I see that as the solution. And so someone will say, Well, I’ll just come in cheaper and I’ll be able to charge more later when things get better. Or I’ll take a loss on this early project, but then, you know, we’ll do follow on work and that’s where I’ll make it up.

You won’t. Once you are the cheap option, or cheaper option for somebody, you are never able to recover that, because that’s what they’ve come to expect to pay you.

Karen Swim: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And so you need to, to hold firm on that, but you do, I would encourage you to look at all of your other non negotiables and ask, are they still non negotiable?

Because if you have a requirement that I’ll only do this size minimum engagement or this, this amount of time, only annual contracts, if those are things that are truly non negotiable to you, fine. Understand that that increases the risk and so maybe harder to sell in the current environment. If you’re able to back down on some of those while still doing profitable work that makes sense.

That might be something to consider.

Karen Swim: Yeah, I, I also think that we have to amp up business development. You know, we get lazy. You’ve got a roster of clients and you do the work and you know, you do business development when you need to, which has always been a bad strategy. You should be doing business development consistently, no matter how many clients you have.

Full stop. Because you’ve got to have a pipeline. And when you have a pipeline, that means some people are going to be at, you know, the point where they’re ready to pull the trigger. I think what’s happening now is we’re seeing a lot of people do business development and they’re just at top of funnel.

Well, all those people are not going to go through the funnel immediately. So it may take time, which is if you do business development all the time and continue to manage and nurture those relationships, then you’re going to move people through the pipeline. So get smart about sales. And if you feel like you know, I don’t really know much about this.

There’s so many ways that you can learn more about how to sell.

Chip Griffin: And, and I would encourage you, don’t even think about it as selling. Just think about it as having meaningful conversations with as many people as possible. It’s amazing how many good things will happen if you’re just having meaningful conversations with people.

Who either can hire you or can refer business to you. And so if you’re doing that consistently, and I always say the, the most, and I’ve learned this lesson the hard way over the years. The most important time to be doing that is when you are the busiest. Yeah. So if you find yourself overwhelmed with client work, that should be a ringing alarm bell that you need to focus on business development and networking and having these conversations because otherwise at some point, even when things are going great.

Inevitably, a client just leaves for no good reason. They have a staffing change, something specific happens to that organization, they turn out to be the next Enron or something. You know, these are all things that can happen even in good times. So you need to be focused on this.

Karen Swim: I agree. I mean, and let’s look at what’s happened in the CMOs, which is typically our client contacts.

They are not here for the long term. CMOs are, are there and they’re gone. And a lot of companies are turning to fractional CMOs and it is just like a rolling roster of different people. So we all know that if your contact changes, sometimes the new CMO comes in with alliances with another agency. So you don’t want to be at anyone else’s mercy for your business.

Chip Griffin: No, but you should be building your own relationships with people who might be going on to their next opportunity. So, I was talking with a client recently who has, there are changes taking place with one of their big clients. I said, well, make sure you find out where all of those people go, because those are all opportunities.

Yes, there’s a risk to your existing business because, you know, anytime there’s change, it threatens your contract, but there’s also opportunity because all those people go somewhere else. And if you’ve got good relationships with them, you might be able to get your tentacles in somewhere new.

Karen Swim: Yeah. I would also encourage people to network with the people that can refer you business or that are your clients.

You know, too often we’ll go to all the, you know, conferences for public relations and marketing, but we don’t go to industry things. We miss that. Why wouldn’t you go and talk directly to your audience? And as you’ve said, you know, we’ve all had that experience where we’ve met someone who was so excited about their work.

And they started a conversation with us, which made us interested. Like you said, it’s not selling. You’re not forcing something on people. You’re talking about the work that you do. Hopefully it’s work that you love and you’re good at. Why wouldn’t you want to share that? Why would you want to keep that a secret?

Chip Griffin: And I think, frankly, if you think of agency business development as sales, you’re making a mistake anyway. Because It is not, and, and I always discourage folks from picking up sales books, right? You know, how, how to do effective sales. Because the reality is you’re not really selling. You’re trying to build a meaningful relationship with someone that you can genuinely help. That there’s a good match for.

Sales is about saying, I’ve got a widget. I need to sell this widget. I need to sell this widget as quickly as I can at as high a price as possible. If that’s what you’re doing, you’re going to destroy the reputation of your agency. You’re going to be miserable in the process. So don’t do that. Just focus on getting people to say yes at the right time for the right thing for both of you.

Karen Swim: Agree. I completely agree.

Chip Griffin: Let’s take just a moment to talk about the elephant in the room, which is political and societal chaos that is enveloping us. And, you know, there are a lot of agencies that are, I mean, I talk to agency owners who have employees who have high anxiety. The owners have anxiety, but now you’ve got employees as well who have anxiety and you’re trying to figure out how to, how to address that.

You’re dealing with clients who are uncertain or maybe they’re making big changes. And obviously, in the news, as we record this, there’s been a lot of discussion around DEI programs. And there are a lot of agencies that historically have done a lot of work in the DEI space. And I’ve had some of them, our clients, and they come to me and they say, what, what should we do?

You know, is this, is this just gone and, and, and now I need to be focusing on something else? And I’ll, I’ll be interested in your take, but, but my encouragement is if that’s your specialty and your passion, stay with it. Because there are still organizations who are going to want to be focused on DEI.

What you’re doing now is you’re getting rid of the tick boxers. You’re getting rid of the people who are doing it for performative reasons, to keep stockholders happier, to get, you know, a nice press release or something like that. And that impacts, frankly, more of the big players. If I’m one of the big PR agencies, I’m worried about a DEI practice that I have. Because that’s just, that’s just layered onto something existing.

But if I’m a small agency and this is core to my work, I think there’s still a lot of opportunity there. And I, and I’m singling out DEI just because it’s gotten so much attention, but there are a lot of other things like there are industries that are falling out of favor in Washington right now, but I still think there’s huge opportunity if you’re able to harness it and use your expertise in the right way.

Karen Swim: Yeah, I mean, I never, ever will count passion out. If it’s the work that you do, as you’ve said, we’re now just weeding out the people who really didn’t have a commitment to those policies. The companies that truly are committed still exist and there’s still opportunity. I also think that there’s such a great opportunity to change the conversation.

Right now it’s about that label and that label being misused and weaponized. Part of that might be on communicators. We need to look at ourselves. Did we over index on certain things? Were we as clear as we could be on what DEI programs really meant? Did we really talk about the social impact and how that impacts all of society?

So I think it’s a great time to look at our own messaging and think of new ways that you could communicate and communicate with clarity and how you can be more inclusive in your, your communications. But I don’t think it’s dead at all. It’s important work. It always has been. I mean, that would be like saying, okay, the United States is going towards, you know, I don’t know what it’s going towards, but.

You know, activists are dead. And they’re not, you know, there are still people that are very passionate about doing the work. And if you’re one of those people keep doing the work because it’s still needed and still valued.

Chip Griffin: And I mean, as business owners, you know, we’re also human. And so, you know, and, and just about every business owner I know has political and social views of their own. There is, you know, we talked about employees having stress, but the owners have stress too. How do you manage that as a business owner so that you can continue to be productive in your day to day for your business, for your clients, even if maybe you are, either celebrating or discomfited by the news that’s around you?

Karen Swim: Chocolate, therapy,

crying breaks. I mean, just have yourself a little cry. I mean, I’m kidding, but I’m not because we’ve all been there. You know, everything is being shaken to its core and we don’t really understand. You know, I have been impacted by tariffs with people in other countries worried about the prices of US expenditures.

And so cutting back. That’s really hard when a lot of us went global to protect against the vagaries of the U. S. economy. But again, I think this is where you have to tune out the noise. And even if that means ignoring, you know, all of the information that’s being thrown at you and focus in on your business and on your well being.

Protect yourself, protect your mind and realize that as a business owner, you’ve got to be good and you cannot allow yourself to get caught up. Because, make no mistake about it, there’s a strategy to chaos. It, it may seem like there’s no strategy. There is a strategy. And it will make you take your eye off the ball.

Let’s not do that. Let’s stay focused on what’s really important and not get caught up in all of this stuff. Because it’s gonna happen anyway. Whatever’s going on, it’s happening. So how do you deal with it?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look, I, I think that that’s important no matter what period of time we’re in. And this is similar advice that I would have given 25 years ago after 9/11 or during the financial crisis in 08-09 or five years ago with COVID.

You need to be able to compartmentalize to a significant degree your, everything that’s going on in the world from your business. And within the business, control what you can control. If you can’t control it, you should be aware of it. I mean, I’m not encouraging you to bury your head in the sand and don’t look at news coverage for the next decade, right?

You need to be aware because there are impacts on your business. But focus on the aspects of it that you can control. Then outside of the business, you know, after you’ve completed your work week. If you want to get wrapped up in this sort of thing, either because you’re a political junkie like me, and so you’re just, there’s sort of a perverse interest in just seeing what happens. Or because you’re an activist and you want to make a difference, or you just like to doom scroll, or whatever it is, that’s fine, but that needs to be a separate compartment, and can’t take away from running of the business, because otherwise your business will suffer big time.

Karen Swim: It really will, and, and I’m seeing people spin out. And get burned out and depressed and it’s natural. I mean, there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot coming fast and furious. And to mention, we have really had some real life tragedies this year. You know, the wildfires, the floods, the school shootings, plane crashes.

So there’s, there’s enough in the world to cause anxiety. And I think we have to, you know, as you said, acknowledge those things, feel those things. Put your hand in the places where you feel like, you know, you, you can make an impact, you can support, you can help, but you have to put on your business owner hat and you have to steer the ship and steer your people.

And I think, you know, one of the things that helps me is having mentors, coaches, and a community that is a safe place to go with those natural feelings and have people to sort of level set you like, okay. You know, and, and all of us on any given day can be the one who helps level set someone else. Because you may be having a great day where you’re like, okay.

I’m rising above it and here’s what I’m doing and here’s a strategy that worked on a day that someone else needs to hear that. So don’t go it alone. This is not the time to be the lone wolf. And invest in yourself, you know, invest in development. What skills could you be adding that are going to future proof your business? Invest in business coaches and workshops. Turn to people that are experts that can help you to navigate through these times.

I mean, that’s, that’s an investment that has a huge ROI. So, again, you’re not by yourself and it may seem like, Uh, should I really be investing in things when the economy is so bad? Yes, just like we tell companies when times are hard, don’t cut marketing. Same thing.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think, I really want to single out the engaging with your peers because I think that there is so much value there, but I see far too often agency owners and solos who are afraid to do that.

Because they don’t want to be vulnerable with, with those people. They view them as competitors in, in ways that frankly, I think is unhealthy because there’s plenty of business to go around. And, and the reality is that most of the people we think of as competitors don’t think of us as competitors. So, take a deep breath and, and, you know, try to find out how you can engage with them. Whether that’s informally, just because you pick up the phone or send an email and say, Hey, let’s just, let’s have coffee, let’s, let’s have a Zoom conversation, whatever, let’s catch up. Whether it’s joining a more formal community like Solo PR Pro, all of these things are really helpful to you.

And, and you want to take advantage of that because there’s, there’s a, I mean, there’s a lot that you can take from just everybody saying, yeah, we’re in the same boat. I mean, even, even if they don’t have the answer for you or the advice for you, just knowing that there are other people going through the same thing is therapeutic.

Karen Swim: That affinity is so important too, because friends and family can empathize. But unless they’re in this line of work, they don’t truly get it the way that your peers do. So why wouldn’t you utilize that resource? There’s something really powerful about sharing with people who get it, who understand the job, who understand the challenges, and can be supportive and help navigate.

I mean, even brainstorming. You know, I’ve seen this happen in Solo where people are like, okay, I, I need some ideas and you know, that groupthink produces things and inspires them, like, wow, I never thought of that. Because you can be staring at a problem and not see the solution right in front of you. So, yeah, tap into community.

Chip Griffin: And, and to that point, I will, I will harp on something that I like to rant about, which is, if someone asks to pick your brain, say yes. Yeah. I mean, You know, I see too much of this. Oh no, you know, I’m, I don’t have the time for that, or oh no, you have to pay me for my time. Look, you can’t let people take advantage of you.

And if they call up and ask to pick your brain every, every week or every month, okay, no, that’s a problem. But if someone calls up every two or three years and says, can I pick your brain, please try to say yes, because you’ll get just as much out of that as they will. And so it’s a great way to commiserate with people, to do some market research, to hear what’s going on, just take advantage of those opportunities because you know, you can get so much value out of it.

Karen Swim: Oh my gosh. I completely agree. And the person that’s asking you questions can reenergize you. You know, I had a bunch of those kinds of meetings this week in spite of being sick. That just really like lit me up and I learned things from each person and I got excited and it inspired me to think of something that I didn’t think of before.

So I agree with you. We’ve got to move away from that mindset. I think, you know, that kind of popped up with hustle culture, like… We’re not there. Let’s move past that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and, I mean, there’s all sorts of problems with true hustle culture, but I think that, yeah, I’m not going to go on that rant today, because I, I, we would go another half hour if I go down that rabbit hole, so.

But just

be helpful to your, your fellow communicators, whether they’re in house or solo or agency or whatever. And there will be value to come back to you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. And that’s how you grow your business. So, well, Karen, I really appreciate you powering through and taking the time to share your insights.

If, if someone has been living under a rock and has not heard you here or anywhere else. Where can they go to find out more about you and Solo PR Pro?

Karen Swim: Go to soloprpro.com and you’ll find us. And you can look for me everywhere. Karen Swim and ask me questions. Yes, you can pick my brain. Yes, you can send me a calendar link.

Yes, I’ll meet with you. I love talking to people. So I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Blue Sky, I am on, still on Facebook, Instagram. You know, you can find me. Reach out.

Chip Griffin: And I can attest to the fact that Karen is always very helpful and finds any way that she can be useful. So

I appreciate the time that you spent today and all that you’ve done with me and for me over the years.

So with that, that will draw to an end this episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, and I look forward to having you back here again very soon. Thanks Karen.

Karen Swim: Thank you.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Steve Guberman of Agency Outsight about coaching agency owners through problems that they universally face.

Steve shares insights into setting realistic expectations with clients, avoiding over-servicing, and adjusting scopes and pricing appropriately.

Key topics include continuous communication, team involvement in the sales process, and the value of postmortems to learn from both successes and failures.

Additionally, they discuss the benefits of asking questions, remaining curious, and leveraging referrals and testimonials for business growth.

Key takeaways* Steve Guberman: “I think most creative professionals are accidental business owners. They went to school for art or marketing or design or whatever. And now find themselves running a business and don’t have a clue how to do that.” * Chip Griffin: “Every single client I talk with worries about over servicing.” * Steve Guberman: “It starts with understanding what your client’s needs are and not selling them what you want them to have, but selling them on what the solutions to their challenges are.” * Chip Griffin: “When I’m asked, how do I improve retention of my clients, I say it starts even before they sign the contract. They have to be aligned on expectations.”

About Steve GubermanWith over 25 years in the creative, marketing, advertising, and public relations industry, including a decade spent running and eventually selling his own successful agency, Steve Guberman now channels his expertise into coaching agency owners. As the founder of Agency Outsight, Steve helps owners unearth their challenges, define their goals, and conquer them all, enabling them to build and run the agency of their dreams.

Resources* Connect with Steve on LinkedIn * Listen to the Agency Bytes podcast * Connect with Steve on Instagram * Check out the Agency Outsight YouTube channel

Related* The role of your team in selling agency services * The difference between over-delivering and over-servicing agency clients

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am delighted to have with me today, another expert in agency land, Steve Guberman of Agency Outsight. Welcome to the show, Steve.

Steve Guberman: Thanks Chip. Great to be here. Great to see you.

Chip Griffin: It is great to have you here. I’ve been a guest on your show, enjoyed it. And now we have a chance to flip the table around so I get to, to grill you and, and put you under the microscope. No, no, we’re just going to,

Steve Guberman: I haven’t been on this side of Riverside. So it’s pretty interesting.

Chip Griffin: Turns out it looks pretty much the same from, from both ends.

Steve Guberman: No surprises here.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. But, in any case, so Steve, why don’t you, before we jump into the conversation, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself and Agency Outsight?

Steve Guberman: Yeah, I launched Agency Outsight, right before COVID. Just timing was actually pretty darn good, but.

I’ve been in the agency space for 25 years. I owned my own agency, have been on both sides of, you know, an acquisition, grew my agency through an acquisition, exited through a sale, spent five years with the acquiring agency and so. Been through the rigmarole of all things agency life, more on the smaller side, I’ve never been part of the holding company, you know, life or anything like that.

And now I help agency owners try and figure out what their goals are, what their challenges are, and how they can make their agency work better for them, get more out of their agency. And I do that through one on one coaching and group coaching and some kind of curriculum based programs here and there.

So yeah, it’s, for me, it was born out of, I never want to have employees again, and, as much as I love the deliverable and the creative work and the process there, I just kind of felt like I needed a massive shift in what I was doing and how I can be more of service in my professional life, as I am in my personal life.

And full transparency, cause I’m a pretty open book. My family had kind of just gone through a really tragic experience right before COVID. I lost my daughter, unfortunately, very suddenly. And so came through, you know, the first part of that grief process, like I can’t be accountable for a job, but I know being of service is, is very cathartic.

And how can I help other people with whatever their challenges are? And so what I know so intimately and so well is running a business and running an agency and, you know, things like that. And so it kind of found my path back to revisiting life again, through that grief process in building a business.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, it, it is, and it’s certainly something that agency owners need, right? We know that from the conversations we have, they, they don’t have a lot of knowledge around running businesses. And, and so those of us who have been through the trenches before and, and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, you know, I always say that, that we can share.

The wisdom of, of our success and, and the, the lessons from our failures so that hopefully they don’t repeat the exact same ones in the exact same way that we did them.

Steve Guberman: Yeah, they can kind of sidestep some of those landmines, but maybe they’ll find their own along the way and build their own experiences to share with others.

And, and you’re right. I think most creative professionals are accidental business owners. You know, they went to school for art or marketing or design or whatever. And now I find myself running a business and I don’t have a clue how to do that. And that was my experience also. So,

Chip Griffin: yeah. And I think, I think, you know, what you brought to the table here and explaining how you came to start your current business, I think that’s applicable to a lot of other agency owners as well, because, you know, everybody’s got their story and why they got started.

And so it, it might be that they don’t want to have employees anymore. They don’t want to be an employee anymore. It might be, you know, because of a, a personal situation of some kind. But whatever it is, there’s usually a driving force. And I always find that it’s helpful to understand what the motivations of the owners are to help them make better decisions for them.

Because at the end of the day, it’s your business. And if it’s not giving you what you need, then what’s the point? There’s a lot of other ways to be stressed out in this world. Yeah. Apart from running a business that you don’t like.

Steve Guberman: Yeah. Why are you doing it? And what are you hoping to get out of it? And how do you, how do you personalize that vision?

I think so many owners kind of do these copycat goals where it’s like, Oh, I saw this video and if I’m not making 30 K MMR, you know, I’m, I’m a failure or whatever. And it’s like, yeah, you really don’t need that. And that’s not your goal. Your goal is I don’t want to work Fridays and I want to spend time with my child and my, my spouse or, you know, something like that.

Or. You know, I like playing pickleball at lunchtime. Like, how do you build a business around the life that you want? As opposed to, I saw this TikTok that said, I’ve got to make, you know, seven figures within the first year or I stink. And it’s no, get that toxic mindset, throw it away.

Chip Griffin: But just follow a simple formula, Steve.

You just watch the YouTube video and you can figure out how to get the same rollback that that guy has.

Steve Guberman: Here’s my cookie cutter format on how you can get what I’ve got. And no, that doesn’t work. No. Yeah, it doesn’t work at all. That’s a big part of what I try and lean into is throw away the copycat goals and lean into what matters for you.

And, you know, Simon Sinek talks about the why. What, why are you doing what you’re doing and what do you hope to achieve? And whether that’s like, I can only see six months down the road or I have the ability to vision that, you know, three years down the road, how do we reverse engineer that into building a business that can work for you?

You know?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I think, you know, one of the things that we were talking about, before we went on air was the, the, the idea of trying to figure out how you service your clients appropriately. And a lot of this comes back to, to that overall business mindset that you have. What kind of business are you building?

What are the goals for it? Typically part of that is, is generating a profit, right? Most of us are not doing this just to, to break even. Most of us run a business because we want to make a profit. And so I think one of the, the practical things that we might talk about today is how agency owners can better set themselves up for success with clients in, in how they’re staffing them and how they’re structuring them.

How do they avoid over servicing? I mean, I, I know that every single client I talk with, you know, worries about over servicing and, and inevitably they’ve got at least one client and probably many that they are currently over servicing. And so if, if you’ve got someone coming to you with this challenge, because I think it is universal.

Sure. How do you counsel them to get through that? What are the things that they need to be thinking about in order to make sure that they are not over servicing?

Steve Guberman: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a super common challenge. I can remember vividly when I had my agency, like, we would finish up a website, we’d do a post mortem, and be like, wow, we just lost a ton of money.

Why did we spend, you know, 30 hours building a nav system instead of using a plug in? Like, how do we optimize what we’re putting into a product or a service, still get really good results, but not spend too much time? I think it starts with like understanding what your client’s needs are and not selling them what you want them to have, but selling them on what their needs are, what the solutions to their challenges are. And then really being granular in what your, what your costs are and what your prices are.

So if I know it’s going to take me, you know, whatever, 300 hours to build this solution for them, how much is that going to cost me and how do I make sure that I’ve broken down every line item of, you know, account management, project management, web development, research, testing, et cetera. So I don’t, you know, have all these holes in the project where money’s just going out the window.

It’s, it’s a long process, I think, to be able to refine that and know where the holes are, where I’m losing money. There’s got to be a review process at the end. And then somebody has got to be tracking it throughout the course of the retainer or the project to say, hey, we’re at 50 percent of our budget. We need to put the brakes on and throttle it back.

I do think that there are, Hmm, this might be controversial, but there, there are certainly ways and reasons to over service the account, whether it’s on the account management side and bringing that kind of, over servicing feel to a client so that they feel super taken care of.

But I think in the execution or the deliverabilities or whatever you want to call the production side of it, that can certainly be reined in big time and, and costs need to be throttled back and, you know, building profit into what we’re selling is vital. And I don’t think a lot of people do that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great point that, I mean, there, you can strategically over service.

Right. And that’s fine. The vast majority of

Or give the appearance of strategically over servicing. Yeah.

Right. Exactly. Right. You, you, you can’t say, we’re intentionally over servicing you just to kind of wow you, you know? Right. But, but it, but it has to be part of your plan to do that and usually it means that you’re making up that margin somewhere else.

In the business or in the project or with the client or something, but it, it’s intentional. I think the, the problem is that most over servicing is very much unintentional. And that’s where you get into problems. And I, so I’d like to, to go back to the first building block that you talked about, which was selling the client what they actually need versus what you want to sell them.

And I think that this, getting the expectations aligned at the start of the agency client relationship is probably the most important thing. In fact, when I’m asked, how do I improve retention of my clients, I say it goes to even before they sign the contract. They have to be aligned on expectations. So how do you…

And clients are awful at this, in my experience, prospects, they will typically say, you know, I need a website or I need a PR campaign or, you know, and it’s very tactical oftentimes in what they come to you with. How do you tease out of them? How do you get to that root cause of the engagement that can help you to get those expectations better aligned?

Steve Guberman: I think just, we got to ask a lot more questions. Be super curious from the beginning. I, so I think that does two things. One is it really susses out what their true needs are, as opposed to them coming to the agency with, here’s my solution that I need, right? You don’t want, you, you wouldn’t go to the doctor and say, Well, maybe somebody would, but you wouldn’t want to go to the doctor and be like, here’s what’s wrong with me.

Prescribe me, you know, with this. Same scenario. So keep, keep asking questions to suss out really what their challenges are, not what their, and what their goals are, but not what the solutions that they think they need are. And so by being curious, you’re able to also talk about money, which so many creative professionals stink at, frankly.

And so, Oh, cool. I need a website. Yeah, we can do that. It’s gonna be $10,000. You have no idea what this website needs to do, what their goals are, what their – you know, is it ecommerce like a million things you need to understand before you can put a budget to it. And I think putting the cart before the horse with the budget and saying, yeah, we can do it for X amount and the client’s, Oh, but I also need it to do this and this and this. Now I can’t increase that budget cause I’ve already committed, you know, so a lot of that ties to not knowing how to manage scope, not knowing how to price scope.

Not knowing how to pull budgets out of clients. And there’s always that, you know, Oh, I don’t know what my budget is. Tell me what it’s going to cost. And so there’s the whole strategy behind how to handle that as well. But I just think being curious, continue to ask questions. I can remember going into prospect meetings and walking out and be like, Oh, we, we nailed that.

We a hundred percent have this, but we didn’t know what we had or how much it was going to cost or how long it was going to take or what we were actually selling, but the relationship was forming and it was just a really good feeling behind it. But it can’t be that one and done close. It’s got to be a lot of conversation, a lot of exploratory, how many other stakeholders need to come to the table to really talk about what does success look like and what does failure look like, frankly, and, you know, talking about all these aspects of the relationship and not just the scope work.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, I, I love asking questions. I mean, frankly, curiosity is one of the biggest assets you can have as an entrepreneur anyway, right? Yeah. So, so just having it generally, but certainly at the start of a client relationship, where you’re trying to figure out what they really need. You know, I, I mean, I think that agencies spend way too much time talking about themselves, what they know, what they can do, what they’ve done.

Yep. I mean, I, I think I’ve, you know, one of my controversial takes is that agencies should burn their creds decks. If, if there was never another cred deck ever handed out, I think that would be the best thing in the world. Because you typically end up going into, and I’ve been on both sides of agency pitches.

I’ve been in some large agency pitches where we’re sitting there, we bring in like 15, 20 people and we just talk for two hours. Like stop, ask questions, learn. And I think that does help you get to that, that better scope. But now, now that you’ve figured it out. That next step then is you have to memorialize that scope, you have to put it into something where you’re actually able to frame, you know, not boxing yourself in too much because you do want flexibility as you grow with the client to, to adapt, but, but how do you, how do you structure a scope that helps you win the business, but also puts the guardrails in place?

In such a way that you can hopefully manage that scope effectively going forward.

Steve Guberman: The win the business part I think is interesting because there shouldn’t be any surprises when I’m presenting. And I specifically say presenting as opposed to sending a proposal or scope or whatever. There shouldn’t be any surprises.

Hey client, as we talked about, this thing is going to be X dollars. It’s going to take us X amount of time to do it. The team that’s going to do it is Susan and Frank and Sherry and blah, blah, blah. And so there shouldn’t be any surprises. I think the other vital part of the winning part is don’t drag your feet on it.

Too many owners are responsible for their scopes and their, and their contracts. And when you talk to them, you’re like, Oh, I got to get this, this proposal out. It’s late. Or, you know, I’m down to the 11th hour. I’ve got to get this scope done. Get it done quicker because the longer you delay the quick, you know, that client has so many other things on their mind.

The last thing they’re doing is sitting there looking at their watch, waiting for, you know, John to deliver a proposal. So timeliness is essential in the winning factor.

Chip Griffin: Well, and the owners shouldn’t be taking on the whole scoping thing themselves anyway.

Steve Guberman: That’s another topic altogether, right?

Chip Griffin: Well, yeah, but, but, but actually I think it goes very directly to how you manage scope properly.

Yeah. Because part of the problem is that owners do a lot of the sales themselves. And I, I, I think owners fundamentally need to be involved in small agencies. They need to be involved in the sales process. So I think anyone who tells you you can pull yourself out of sales entirely as an owner. You’ve either got a really weird structure going on, which great kudos to you, or it’s just not going to work.

Right. But you need to have the people who are actually the account leads, the people who are doing the day to day work in those prospect meetings because they can, first of all, they’ll shoulder the burden of putting together the scope, but they’ll also be able to highlight where the scope is not realistic or where the pricing is not realistic.

And they’re, they’re then having ownership over it, which helps you to manage the scope later. So there’s so many benefits to having more of the team involved in the sales process.

Steve Guberman: I’ll do some of these, kind of all hands agency meetings to kind of suss out what’s going on. What are the challenges?

You know, why are, you know, why is the delivery team annoyed with the owner or the management? It’s like, well, they, they overpromised this and we got to get it done in it. And it’s like, all right, here’s a quick fix before you send something out, your team needs to be a part of that. Exactly like you’re saying, process.

Am I budgeting too little or too much for it? Am I scoping too little or too much, too much time for it? Where’s this going to fit in, in my resourcing and my production schedule? You know, we’re, we’re committing to this for Q1. Do we have the, the, the human power for it in Q1? All of that to your point is there shouldn’t be any surprises.

So if my production team is part of understanding, what is it going to take to deliver success? Can they actually get it done in the time that I’ve committed? And is the budget the right amount that we’ve committed to? So yeah, I think having, you know, whether it’s management or the actual production team, where somebody that’s part of the delivery, process in an agency part of it is essential. It, it avoids a lot of internal, I can’t believe they’re there, you know, we’ve got to get this done in five hours. We don’t have, there’s no way we can get this done in five hours. What were they thinking? You know, that kind of thought process.

And so you help avoid some disgruntled ness, but.

Chip Griffin: And if you’re going to get pushback from your team, get it before the deal is signed so you can hash it out. And maybe they’re being unreasonable. Sometimes team members are like, Oh yeah, I need 20 hours to do this. And you’re like, seriously, I mean, this is a simple thing.

Like, can we, can we re scope it ourselves so that we can get it done more timely. But, but solve that problem before it becomes a major issue with the client. So that the partner to putting together a good scope is obviously putting together the right price. Yeah. Because over servicing matters a whole lot less if you’ve got, you know, really comfortable margins.

But most agencies don’t have particularly comfortable margins because they’re not great at pricing. So how do you get better at pricing the scope of work that you’re actually giving to the client?

Steve Guberman: That’s a good one also. So I, I think a lot of it comes down to a few aspects. One is knowing your costs.

So many agency owners don’t know what it costs to deliver something, to get something done, to turn the lights on each day. Like, what are my recurring. What’s my software stack cost me? It’s an easy fix, like, Oh, cool. Pull up my credit card statement or get my bookkeeper to run, run me a report. What is it, what is each aspect of this project or scope of work going to cost me to do?

And then quite simply add 30, 40, whatever percentage is in that plan of what you want to profit. But knowing what things cost them and then using a system, I’m a big fan of time tracking. I’m a big fan of keeping reports. Looking back at historic data and saying, last time we did a project like this we said it was going to cost 10, but it really cost us 15 grand and we lost money on it.

How do we avoid that? Well, we can reuse some assets we built on previous projects. Cool, like that’ll save us some time. We can charge more because we obviously didn’t charge enough. So, historical data I think is vital and there are, there are more and more smarter systems like, you know, for years, you know, I use Harvest, in my agency.

I use it. I use it now. I’ve been using Harvest probably 15, 16 years and I absolutely love it. But I don’t, there are, there are other tools that are leveraging AI to be able to say, here’s what your historic data looks like and here’s how you can better scope things. And, you know, quote unquote, smart projects of scoping and budgeting of, you know, last time we did a project of this size and with these features, it cost us X.

So, owners need to know their numbers and it, it continues to surprise me slash not surprise me that so many don’t know their numbers. What does it cost to do a thing?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and, and the time tracking is absolutely essential to that. Yeah. And I, I know that it’s sort of the, the hip thing for people to say, well, you shouldn’t, you know, don’t do timesheets in your agent.

We don’t do timesheets. Well, I mean, that’s, that’s sort of like a restaurant not knowing what their food costs are.

Steve Guberman: Exactly.

Chip Griffin: It makes no sense. The largest cost in virtually any agency is your labor costs. If you don’t know what that labor cost is for executing a project, how on earth can you price it?

And by the way, the answer is not this value pricing thing that people love to talk about. I think value pricing is the biggest scam in the world because the vast majority of people do not understand value pricing correctly. And even those who do understand it probably can’t execute it all that effectively.

So, you know, it’s not, it’s not the solution. The solution is you need to know what your costs are. Because then you at least have a floor where you know where you can’t mess up.

Steve Guberman: Yeah. And then charge accordingly. But then also hold your team, your team’s feet to the fire, whether with, with a good project manager and or a good project management system and say, cool, we’re going to break this project down internally and say, we’ve got, you know, 5 percent time for project management, 10 percent time for writing, 20 percent time for design.

Like. Yeah. And then say, Hey, you said you were going to get it done this amount of time. What’s going on that we’re missing that mark and we’re going to go over budget. The other thing I think that most agencies miss is again, what I said before, going back to a client saying, Hey, you said that your budget was 10 K and here’s what we scoped, and now you want more features. That’s going to be more money, you know, it’s akin to building a house or going to the grocery store, anytime you want to add something to the, the shopping cart or the, whatever the budget’s going to go up.

Why do agency owners have such a hard time with that? It’s, it’s mind boggling. So,

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, I think a piece of it is the people are, they’re afraid to upset the client and afraid that they’re going to lose a revenue stream, right? I mean, I think that’s, that’s where fear is a huge driver of decision making, in any small business, but particularly in agencies where it is, you know, there’s a lot more gray area in what you’ve done, right?

It’s not, you know, we’re not delivering a specific widget. And so did I get the widget or not? And, and so there are, you know, there are some, there are qualitative aspects to it that do make it a little bit more challenging.

So let’s, let’s think about, you know, how we’re managing this scope. And, and, and I agree with pushing back on the clients, but one of the things, one of the challenges I think agencies have is figuring out what to push back on and what not to. Because, because there’s a fine line between feeling as a client, like you’re being nickeled and dimed because of every little thing. Well, that’s technically not in, but yeah, but it’s just, it’s swinging one hammer on one nail, that’s it.

But if you keep swinging hammers on nails, that adds up. So how do you, how do you as an owner and how do you talk with your team about managing this in such a way that you strike that right balance to keep you within scope, but not irritate the heck out of the client?

Steve Guberman: Yeah, I think some of it is like you’re saying, like, Hey, we’re just gonna, let’s just do it, do it quick and let’s get it done.

In some cases, I think it’s okay to tell the client, Hey, this thing ended up being more time. We’re not going to charge you out of scope for it, but I just want to let you know in the vein of a transparent relationship that we’re trying to build long term. We’re going to kind of just take one on the chin for you and we’re going to get this thing done for you.

And I think that this is an important thing for the sake of account management and relationship building. And in other cases where it is detrimental, where it’s going to really eat into that 30, 40 percent profit that you built into it. Now we’ve got to have a conversation with the client. Where when it’s on the agency’s onus that we misscoped something, we can take more of the, you know, on the chin of it. Where the client keeps asking and asking and asking.

At some point it’s got to be like, You’re really, you know, you’re, you’re asking for far more than what we scoped for. We can do this one, whatever photo edit, but you want 50 photo edits. That’s, that’s a lot of time that we just didn’t scope for. So, you know, understanding where you can kind of let things slip a little bit verse where it’s really going to eat into the overall loss of a project and balancing client satisfaction.

Do I just want to get this done? Cause this client is one and done and they’re a pain in the butt. I never want to work with them again. Or, this can lead to, you know, a billion dollar company, you know, infiltrating three departments in the same company. I’m gonna go over and above and if we take a loss, it’s, you know, a lost leader, frankly.

So, right, just knowing what the opportunities are versus charging for every little thing, because you’re right. You don’t want to nickel and dime a client. That’s a real quick way to lose a client.

Chip Griffin: Right. Well, and I think one of the things you’ve touched on there too is, is the importance of, you know, understanding whose responsibility it was that, that something was not in the scope, right?

If, if you didn’t include it and you should have, then yeah, I think you do have to shoulder more of the burden there because you can’t expect that the client is going to know. It’s, it’s sort of like, you know, if I told you what the cost of a surgery is and I forget to include the anesthesia, okay. I mean, I, I certainly can’t, you know, cut into you without putting you under, but you know, I didn’t tell you about it.

So, you know, we got to somehow solve this without just sticking you with an extra bill, because it was on me not to tell you. But I think one of the things you can do is learn from the, if you’ve got an, an engagement where you’re constantly being out of scope and you feel like you constantly need to either waive being out of scope or talk to the client about it, that probably means you didn’t scope it effectively to begin with.

And so I think the, the last piece of, of scope management is how do you review the work that you’ve done so that you can take lessons away from it? And whether that’s a project where you evaluate at the end. Or it’s an ongoing relationship and you periodically need to review it so that you don’t get so far down the, the path that it’s hard to correct.

So how do you counsel your clients to work through that evaluation process? To learn lessons from the past and try not to repeat them.

Steve Guberman: Postmortems are vital. You can only really learn from your own mistakes or mistakes of others and, or your successes, frankly. And so not, not every postmortem is a, man, we really screwed up on this one.

It’s like, Hey, we crushed it. And so building a true process for what a postmortem looks like internally and with your client partners is vital. And you’re right, whether it’s at the end of a project. Hey, we just launched your website. Love to, you know, grab a half an hour to talk to you about what worked and what didn’t work.

Clients are more than willing, unless you really burned it down, they’re more than willing to spend time with an agency to talk about how they, how they, made them look good, what went right for them, what they can improve later, you know, again, unless you really burned it down, they don’t ever want to speak to you again, then there’s bigger problems, but by and large, they’re more than willing to.

And if you build that in from the start of the relationship, here’s how we do account management. Here’s how we do check ins. Here’s how we communicate. Here’s, you know, how we

deliver, you know, work to review. And here’s how we want feedback. And by the way, at the end of the project, we’re at various milestones. We’re going to check in with you for some feedback. I’m going to ask you six questions that we’ve pre formulized. Formulated, whoever that word might be. So yeah, project work, vital. Retainer work, even more vital. And not just, Oh, we’re up for a contract renew.

We want to check in and see how we’re doing, but like quarterly, periodically have a launch, build that relationship. Don’t talk about work during launch. Like do the things that give them the opportunity to say. Hey, Susan on your team is really dropping the ball on her deliverables, just wanted to let you know.

Don’t want to raise a big stink about it, but I know you run the, the account team, or you run the copy team, or whatever. And like, by building those candid relationships, it gives a client the ability to say, you know, something that’s on their mind. You know, and so, building in those formal, internally it can be formal, from the client’s perspective, it’s just like, Oh, that was so nice, agency so and so brought me out for lunch just to talk about my kid’s t ball game.

No, we, we wanted more than that. And it was strategic, but I do think, you know, don’t send out a jot form and say, fill out these five questions. Like have a conversation ideally in person, but with so much of the world being remote, zoom is fine too, you know, and know what you want to ask and what you strategically need to get back from the client for future success for them and for other clients.

But then also do it internally, like, ask candidly, Hey, did we scope this wrong? What could we have done better differently? Did we need more time than we scoped for? Did we not have the resources, resources for it? As an owner, I was guilty of that a lot. Over promising. Over promising on timeline. Hey guys, there’s no reason you can’t get this done before lunch on Friday.

Boss, this is going to take a hundred hours or, you know, whatever it was, like not understanding what the true needs from my team were. And so having those internal conversations. Away from the computers, go sit at a coffee shop or sit in the conference room or whatever and have a candid conversation because if it keeps happening, it’s going to lead to poor client or poor client retention, poor team retention, like just the challenges will continue to pile up.

So yeah, postmortems are vital.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think, I think just like you started the process with asking questions, being curious, I think that’s how you need to end the process too. You need to, to ask those questions and be curious with the client. With your team, you need to, particularly with your team, you need to avoid coming in with judgment.

You need to, you need to really understand, well, why did it take us longer? Why did we have this particular challenge? What could we do better? As opposed to saying you went over budget by this. And so we didn’t hit our numbers and that’s going to be a problem. We need to do better the next time. No. I mean, that, that may be the net result that you end up getting to, but you need to start by asking the questions and listening, because what you think may be able to be done over lunch may really take five or 10 hours. Because particularly as we spend more time at higher levels in the business, we get disconnected from it.

We also remember how we did things and it may not be the same way that the team is able to do it. One of the reasons you become an owner is typically because you excelled. So you can do things often quicker or better than your team members, or at least that’s what you think. And so, you know, you need to be cautious of that.

So I love that we’re starting with curiosity, ending with curiosity. And it’s, it’s sort of, I mean, that’s the whole reason why I do these podcasts, right? It’s, I’m, I’m curious. I’m curious.

Steve Guberman: Yeah. I’ll throw in another, I think, tip that a lot of clients will ask, when’s the right time to ask for a referral or a testimonial?

And I think it’s on the tail end of that postmortem. So asking for a client feedback reinforces to, if, if you did a good job, preface it with that. Reinforces to them by hearing them say, you guys, your team really crushed it, your copywriter was super creative, the designs were really surprising. So it reinforces to them how good of a job you did because it’s been a six month process.

They might not spend the days thinking about how great you were at the kickoff or your initial designs and so it helps them kind of rehash the overall process. Hey, awesome. I’m so happy you, you were pleased. Hey, can you put that in a testimonial for us? Or, I saw on LinkedIn you’re connected with, you know, Joan Smith.

You think maybe you can introduce us, because now they’re, they just sang you praises. Right. Of course they’re going to introduce you to their whatever that they know. So it’s, it’s a really good time to build that into your process and workshop how do you ask for that testimonial or that referral in a positive postmortem.

Chip Griffin: And referrals are a whole other thread that we could follow. Totally. And so we’ll have to come back and have that conversation at some point because I, another one of the things that I say that’s controversial is that, People who complain about referrals as being a bad growth driver for it. I think they’re nuts.

I think referrals are your best way of growing and you just need to figure out how to do them effectively, how to get them effectively. So maybe we can talk about that another time. But I, unfortunately we are drawing to a close the amount of time that we have for today’s episode. Steve, if, if people want to learn more about you, want to get in touch, where could they go?

Steve Guberman: Look up, on LinkedIn, my whatever tag is agencycoach. I grabbed that. I was surprised you didn’t grab it before me, but, agencyoutsight.com also.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. And we will include that in the show notes as well. So, If you’re on the treadmill or in the car or something like that, and you didn’t have a chance to write it down, just click back on the show notes and you’ll be able to find that.

So Steve, it’s been great having this conversation with you. And I look forward to having you back again in the future, because I’m sure we have lots of, of things that we can discuss, lots of controversial things that we can say, and hopefully some practical tips that we can continue to dole out. So again, my guest has been Steve Guberman of Agency Outsight.

Thanks for joining us.

Steve Guberman: Thanks Chip.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Jody Sutter of The Sutter Company, a frequent contributor. They discuss strategies for small agencies, emphasizing the importance of clear positioning and targeted messaging for effective business development.

They highlight the necessity for agency owners to identify their strengths and leverage them, using methods like 12-week sprints to achieve incremental progress. They also address the challenges agencies face when looking for quick revenue boosts and the significance of tapping into existing networks.

Key takeaways* Jody Sutter: “I think business development is one of those things that the tools may change and yet the underlying philosophy and the underlying skillset rarely changes.” * Chip Griffin: “It is so much easier to sell what you’re doing if you’re clear about what it is that you do and who you do it for, because your prospects hear themselves in that. And I think that the whole notion of being a full service agency that can do this for everybody and their brother just doesn’t make sense.” * Jody Sutter: “Kind of simple, let’s get agency owners not using business development tactics that they don’t like, they don’t feel like they’re good at, and let’s get them doing the things that they do feel like they’re good at.” * Chip Griffin: “All too often agencies do look at new business in isolation. They come up with plans for growing the business from a revenue standpoint, but they don’t think about what it means operationally.”

About Jody SutterSpeaker, blogger, and owner of The Sutter Company, Jody Sutter ran business development teams at large agencies like R/GA, OMD and Havas, and spent over a decade in sales for a range of creative services firms, from branding design to digital advertising. She now provides the growth strategies and tools for agency owners to win new business.

Resources* Email Jody about the Agency New Business Accelerator (or anything else) * Jody Sutter’s LinkedIn

Related* Planning for 2023 Agency Biz Dev * Business development mistakes agencies make and how to solve them (featuring Jody Sutter) * Small Agency Talk – February 5, 2021 (featuring Jody Sutter and Lee McKnight Jr.) * Getting help for your agency business development efforts

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I’m delighted to have back with me today a very regular contributor to really all of the different platforms and podcasts and videos that I’ve done over the years, Jody Sutter of the Sutter Company.

Welcome, Jody.

Jody Sutter: Thank you, Chip. It’s always nice to be back.

Chip Griffin: It is. It is great to have you. I always know we’re going to have a great conversation. I often don’t know where we’re going to head with it. You know, we just kind of start and see where it takes us. But I, I think that makes it interesting for us and hopefully interesting and useful for the listeners.

Jody Sutter: Me, too. I love a good time.

Chip Griffin: For any listeners who, for whatever reason may have been under a rock and have never heard you on any of these platforms, why don’t you just give a brief introduction of yourself?

Jody Sutter: Yeah. So I am the, the owner of the Sutter Company. It’s a new business consulting, and coaching company.

Like you, I also focus on working with, small agencies, specifically the owners of small agencies. Those agencies that are, you know, Usually between say five and, and 35 people who, for whom business development is essential, but, but don’t have the ability to support productively a salesperson or a business development rep. And really need to, they need a system that is going to allow them to use their, their own internal personal strengths to do business development on their terms. And feel control of the revenue that they can potentially generate for their agency.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. As I said, for about 10 years, I’m a career business development professional. Before I worked for myself, I worked for other agencies, large and small running business development. And, so that’s really where I, where I focus. And like I said, I believe that every, I think any agency owner, deserves to feel like they are in control of where their revenue is coming from.

And I help to help them achieve that.

Chip Griffin: And look, owners want to feel in control of their revenue and probably a lot of other things, but the revenue is something that they can can focus on a bit more. Obviously, given your laser like focus on business development, I think it makes sense to start there. We are at the start of a new year, which means that a lot of owners have closed the books on the previous year.

They’ve looked at them, they’ve started making projections and wish lists for this year as far as what they would like to be making and how much they would like to bring in for new business. They had some time over the holidays and so maybe they’ve started cooking up some schemes in their heads, for, for how they’re going to find those prospects.

So as, as we head here into the start of 2025, let’s take a moment and just talk about where we see agency business development today. I think it’s fair to say the last couple of years have been tough for a lot of small agencies. Not all. I mean, there, there’s like anything else, there are exceptions to the rule, but, but by and large, they haven’t been gangbuster years for most small agencies.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the air. Economically, politically, socially, et cetera. So as you’re taking a look at this, as you’re talking with a lot of agency owners and focused on their business development activities, how are things looking for this year?

Jody Sutter: Well, I wish I had a, an awesome crystal ball to give you a direct, clear, and more accurate than not answer.

But I, so I don’t know. And I think again, it’s still, it’s still a new year. Where you are at the time of recording this, we are about to go into a new administration, here in the United States. And I think a lot of people are probably waiting to see what happens with that. AI has really been changing things and I think this is going to be the year where AI really starts to become normalized.

I, so it’s funny, I always get a little bit nervous when I ask these questions too because I think, oh, I really should, I should have my finger on the pulse of these trends. The bottom line, I think business development is one of those things that the, sort of the, the tools may change and yet the underlying philosophy or the underlying skillset rarely changes.

And so I will say what I’ve always said is the first thing I ask my clients to do is to be willing to look at who they serve best and the problems that they solve. And I think that that can… If you’re, if you’re really, if you’re willing to be clear about that, that does a lot for just, just, just sort of cutting through the clutter and the noise.

And then you can start using your AI tools or, your, your Apollo IO dot lists, building those lists, using technology to help to amplify that message. So, the amplification may be different. I think the idea behind the message is still the same, though. I don’t know if that, that may be a disappointing answer, but that’s what I go back to, is the basics.

Chip Griffin: No, I want to key off of a couple of things that you said there, but, you know, I think one of the key things in my mind, at least, is this notion of figuring out, you know, who you are. Who are you serving? What do you do? What are the results? I’m sure you see this. A lot of small agencies have not done a particularly good job at positioning and defining their ideal client.

And it’s a lot of just kind of, you know, fire everything at the wall and see what happens. And so I, I think that, you know, with the start of a new year, it’s always a good time to sit down and reflect and say, are we as clear as we can be? And so when you’re working with an agency owner and, and trying to help them through this process, you know, what steps do you encourage them to do in order to refine that positioning and define their ideal client, particularly if they’re one of the many small agency owners who say, well, we can really do this for anybody.

We just, you know, we know what we’re doing and we don’t want to, we don’t want to eliminate opportunities. So I really don’t want to get that granular.

Jody Sutter: I think that the first argument I would make if you were, if you were an agency owner telling me that, the first argument I would make would be to think a little critically about the time that you have and your team has to run a successful business development operation.

And if you’re saying to me that you don’t want to limit yourself, you don’t want to limit the opportunities, then you will have to work exponentially harder to reach that many more people, companies, businesses. Because, and I guess there’s two things. First, there’s the, there’s the, the scale, the quantity, if you’re, if you’re serving everyone like that tired phrase, if you’re serving everyone, you’re serving no one.

But yeah, so there’s literally everyone. How does a small agency, what kind of advertising budget or marketing budget do you need to reach everyone? Also, I find that the language that you’ve got to use in the marketplace is, is very unsticky. So the first thing that I tend to do in my process, and a lot of times I think people are a little bit surprised.

I think often the first, the first thing that people, that agencies tend to do or any business tends to do, and they start thinking about, what are we saying about ourselves? How are we positioning? Is that they look inward. And they ask us things, what are we saying about ourselves? Is this clear? What do we want to be?

Those are really important questions. I think it’s much more useful though, to start out by asking them, asking ourselves, who are we serving? What are the problems that we solve? What I’ve found often when I work with clients is that while the answer to the question of who are we, what do we do, how do we want to be perceived, while that can be a very frustrating exercise, often when I can turn the, turn the mirror onto a little reflection of the clients, of the clients that they serve, it becomes so much clearer.

It’s so much easier because there’s objectivity. And we tend to have a much more productive conversation around if it’s a, if it’s a financial services category around regulatory issues. Or if it’s a consumer product category, maybe it’s reaching Gen Z or whatever the issue is that they know their clients have, and we can start focusing on that and define the problems, then the solutions and how we, how we communicate those solutions becomes a lot easier.

It’s not foolproof. I often find that agencies still sometimes fall back on this idea of like, Ooh, but we want to serve everyone. But I have seen it work really successfully and a lot of sort of, you know, light bulbs at the top of the head that go off.

Chip Griffin: I mean, I think it is so much easier to, to sell what you’re doing if you’re clear about what it is that you do and who you, who you do it for, because your prospects hear themselves in that.

And, and ultimately, I, I mean, I think that the whole notion of being a full service agency that can do this for, you know, everybody and their brother just doesn’t make sense. Because most small agencies, most mid sized agencies only have 10, 15, 20 clients tops at any given time. And so you don’t need that many, you’re not, there’s no need to go out there and get thousands of prospects.

That’s just, it’s a waste of time and energy on your part and makes it so much more difficult to get the right fit client.

Jody Sutter: Yeah. That’s something else I’ll often ask when they talk about growing, or when they talk of – agencies, talk about, you know, building that list of hundreds of prospects. I will often try to rear at the conversation by asking, well, how many, in order to reach your growth goals for the year, how many clients do you need?

And often the answer is between 1 and 3. So why do you need a 2, 500 person or 2, 500 business, list of businesses? Let’s get a little more focus.

Chip Griffin: It just, it doesn’t, it’s, it, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s, it’s really costly and time consuming to try to, to do that. Not, not to mention just, you know, difficult on the brain power, to, to try to focus in that way.

So, yeah, I, I do think having that, that focus as a, as a starting point is good, but okay. So now, let me, let’s assume that we’ve got an agency that, that has figured that out and so they’re like, okay, well, you know, we’ve refined our positioning for 2025. We’re going to charge ahead. I mean, for an agency that’s used to just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring or the email to come in, which we know is a lot of agencies out there, what are the first incremental steps that they should be thinking about to get this year off to a good start?

Jody Sutter: So you’ve got the positioning, which allows you to send out a strong email or a message or have a productive conversation, initial conversation with a stranger. But that’s still pretty, you know, pretty close in. How do you amplify that? So the next thing I think that I advise people to do is to then think about, okay, now that we know, now that we’ve had some kind of positioning, now we’ve, we’ve sort of taken everything that we could do.

We’ve concentrated it into this thing that is going to be the most promising for us. Now I ask my clients to go back out and let’s amplify that into a series of organized messaging themes. So you have to sort of think again about how do we, how does this message start to manifest itself? How do we, how, what are the, the variations that we can use in the marketplace so that we can have a sustained conversation?

Because as we know, our, the buying cycle is really long for agency services. Rarely is it a matter of weeks, more often a matter of months. And I’m sure you’ve had conversations where people have talked about, you know, two, three years, then the prospect finally converted.

The other thing I think that where agency agencies can fall short and I try to help get them right up on the back, back on the right path is understanding how to use their own strengths.

I’ve often find that business development is an obstacle or a burden when the agency owner, who’s typically in my situation, probably yours too, they’re the ones who typically have to drive it. So when the agency owner feels like what they need to do is so foreign to their own capabilities and strengths.

And so I take a step back and say, well, what are those strengths? And so, and I, we’ve probably talked about this before, so I apologize if I’m, if I’m repeating myself, but it would be the kind of thing if you are a, you know, if you’re an introvert and the last thing that you want to do is get out onto a keynote stage to promote your agency, then maybe let’s think about things that are a little better for introverts.

I mean, it’s a bit of a long, you know, it’s a longterm tactic, but if you’re an introvert and you’ve got some big ideas, maybe we should think about getting you writing a book. And then putting a, as an engine behind that so that the book gets out there and generates leads. And how do we support that?

If you’re, but if you’re a speaker, maybe you’re, yeah, you’re, you’re really strong in the big ideas, big concepts. You love being in front of groups of people. You’re probably terrible at details, which is what I’ve found. Not universally true. So then let’s get you out on the keynote stages and maybe have someone else support you on those details.

And then there are other agency owners that are actually really good on the outreach who don’t mind walking into a room full of strangers or don’t mind sending emails to people they don’t know. But they probably, they may not be the best people to write a really insightful article, or blog post.

So kind of simple, let’s get them not doing the things that they don’t like. They don’t feel like they’re good at, and let’s get them doing the things that they do feel like they’re good at.

I also like working in 12 week sprints. So rather than thinking about business development as this big monumental goal, let’s break it down into steps that we can take today, this week, this quarter.

And I find that also it starts to generate and build new habits as well as feel like you are seeing some progress.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I love that you are talking about, leaning into what you’re already comfortable doing, what you feel like you’re good at, as opposed to saying, well, here’s the simple magic formula that you need to grow your agency, which there’s a lot of that out there.

Just follow my seven steps.

Jody Sutter: “You just have to call a hundred people a week.”

I do have, I do actually have nine steps, but so there are steps to follow, but yes, it’s, it’s, it’s gotta work for you.

Chip Griffin: Because if, if, if you hate doing it, you’re not going to do it. So you’re better off picking one or two things that, that you’re, you’re good at, you enjoy doing and you will do regularly because that’s going to work far better than something that in theory might work better, but in practice won’t because you just don’t do it.

Jody Sutter: That’s right. Yeah. And usually those, those agency leaders, they. Everyone intellectually understands why and how, contacting a hundred, a hundred people a week. Sorry if that just cut, that was like a little reminder. I thought I do not disturb on, but maybe that, I don’t know. Sorry about that, people. Yeah, if you’re, everyone intellectually gets that if, if you’re out, if you’re out there contacting making a hundred connections on LinkedIn a week, that that’s probably going to lead to, business development to a new business win in the end.

But if you hate doing that, then you can, you can intellectually understand it till the cows come home. You’re not going to do it. So it’s pretty useless.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I’d like to drill down on this, the 12 week sprint concept, because I think that is particularly helpful to, to folks who, you know, they sit there and they say, well, you know, I’m trying to grow revenue 25 percent over the next year or so.

And that’s, that’s a big daunting challenge. And so breaking it down into component parts that you can accomplish in shorter periods of time. I mean, I’ve overseen development teams and it works really well for them to have these short sprints where you can accomplish specific things as opposed to building a whole app and, you know, that may take, you know, a year or two or more.

And so breaking it down into those kinds of sprints. And I think the other thing that you referenced was, you know, basically focusing on the things that you can control within that, right? We can’t control whether we actually sign the new business. So, so is that a good goal in the end? Sure. But you need to have the incremental ones, which are the inputs, the steps that we’re taking.

So, so how do you, how do you think about these 12 week sprints? Do you sit down every, every 12 weeks and create a new one? Do you sit down and map out the next four sprints? How do you work with clients on these sprints?

Jody Sutter: The way that we typically do it is we do, yeah, I, I prefer the 12 weeks over the 12 months.

However, we often, we start with, well, we, we start with the positioning. Who do we, who are we serving and what are we saying about ourselves that is going to be like a magnet to that audience? Then we also look at what are our resources that we’re going to, that we can use? Like, do we have good writers? Do we have good speakers? Do we have good organizers? Do we have a great developer? What? Because that also is going to dictate what you can do. So again, don’t want to do something that you don’t have the resources to do or aren’t willing to hire for.

The 12 week, then after we have that, we then look at like, okay, what are our priorities for the year?

We want to double revenue, which is for most agencies, probably unrealistic. But. Great. We want to double revenue.

Chip Griffin: But a very popular goal. A very popular goal.

Jody Sutter: A very popular goal.

Chip Griffin: Just pulled out of the air. I just want to, I want to double. Yeah. In 12 months.

That’s, that’s great.

Jody Sutter: All right. Right. Well, let’s start.

We got to start January 6th, 6th-ish this year in 2025. So what are we, what do we do on day one? And that really helps agencies go, oh, wow, holy cow. Okay. I got to figure this out.

So for instance, I’m working with an agency right now and it’s, we’ve got, it’s, there’s a, they’re a slightly larger agency than a lot of agencies I work with.

They’re about 30 people. And so we’ve got three different teams working on three different sprints. Only one of them is around, outreach and building lists. And by the way, it’s probably the one that I’m seeing the least progress on. But the other two, one is, is on, redeveloping their case studies and launching them back on the website because it’s hard to sell an agency’s work without strong case studies, without the good story behind it.

And the other one is on, is a sprint around updating and improving their proposal template. So those are the things that I think an agency has to realize, like, well, how are we going to double our revenue if we don’t, if we don’t have those case studies to show. If we keep going out there with inferior tools or tools that just aren’t as productive as they could be, we got to figure that out, that stuff out first.

And so that can be frustrating because then the, you go back to like, well, but we need leads today. So I try to manage that a little bit and say, okay, well, let’s take this as a step by step process. And when you have something specific, like, well, we need 12 case studies rewritten in 12 weeks. Great. What are we doing week one?

Okay. Well, week one, maybe we need to do, we need to figure out what we need to identify those case studies. We need to hire a writer. And then by the end of week two, we will have critical feedback on each case. I’m making it up. But if you break it down into these smaller steps. Now, you know what you’re doing for the week.

And it’s also easier to check the box when you ask yourself, did I get it done? And I think, this gets beyond the business development thing, but I think it’s, it’s really motivating. I know it’s motivating for me and it’s been motivating for other people. If you can look back and say, I set out to do three things this week to further this sprint.

And what do you know, I’ve done them and now I feel like I’ve got the wind in my back going into the next week.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, because with long sales cycles, it may take a while before you see the actual outcomes that you’re looking for. So being able to see that incremental progress, you know, makes it so much easier to stick with it. Because I’m sure you see this as well.

I work with lots of folks who, they bounce from business development tactic to business development tactic every, forget every 12 weeks, probably every 12 days. Because, you know, they, they start something and it doesn’t immediately, you know, bear fruit. And so they’re like, well, onto the next thing. Or worse, what I see sometimes is they have a tactic that does well and they’re like, okay, well, what’s the next thing that we do that’s going to do well?

Jody Sutter: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: You lean into what’s already working.

Jody Sutter: That’s right. I will often, so I will often map out in a very broad way a sort of one to three year plan. So if we decided, one of the ways I’ve done that is that we’ve, if I’m working with an agency, and we’ve decided that the agency leader or the agency owner is a really good communicator.

They’re really good at taking complex ideas and turning them to turning them into concepts that are easy to understand. They’re great in front of a crowd. They love going to talk. Fantastic. Let’s first year one, let’s get that person out there. Let’s get the minimum amount of support to start to build the list of events. To start to get a couple of keynote speeches written, and to start pitching. As you see success, year two, you can start adding things like maybe you bring in a strategist or a writer that can help to ghostwrite some of the agency leaders content. Or you bring in a marketing coordinator to do some of that detailed, you know, logistical, organization.

Maybe by year three, you’re bringing in a PR person, a publicity person, because now they’re developing a better profile. So let’s amplify that with that other expert. So, again, rather than saying, , what, we’ve got this going, how do we, how do we make a right turn or a left turn and do something totally different?

It’s more about how do we make this even better?

Chip Griffin: So a lot of what we’ve been talking about so far have been sort of, you know, long term laying the foundation, building a system that will work over time. When you have an agency owner who comes to you and says, look, 2024 was kind of rough for me. I’ve got a big client.

They’re kind of teetering. I’m a little worried. I need to do something faster. What advice do you have for folks like that who are in a little bit more of a desperation mode if you will, for, for new business?

Jody Sutter: And, and again, I’m about to, the suggestion I’m about to make is so not new and innovative, but I think the first thing you need to do if you are in that mode of if, yeah, if, if some drastic measures need to be taken and taken quickly, I think the first thing you have to do is, again, double barreled, one, rely on your network.

And I think a lot of times agencies will say, ah, we’ve exhausted our network. I have heard that a lot, but I, I rarely see it as being true. So the, the other thing and the way to kind of revive that network is if you can go back to what we were talking about earlier, which is, okay, where do we want to focus this year?

And sometimes also that does require… so if that’s an agency that’s a generalist agency, and so they, they can, they can work with everyone, which means that’s, how are they going to find that one person who can hire them? And they’re about to lose that client. So maybe 50 percent of their billing is about to walk out the door.

What you probably want to do is say, okay, well, even for a short term, even for this one initiative, let’s narrow down to a, a thing or a set of services or a problem that we know is an issue. And maybe it’s only for the next 12 months that we’re really focused on that. I mean, I like long term stuff, but again, if you need to get out there, so getting out there with a pointed message to the people who know and like you best to say, and I think also sometimes honesty can work too.

Like here’s the deal. We’re not like, well, you don’t, well, you want to be careful with your words, but to say we are, you know, we, in so many words, we, we have big ambitions. We’re up against some headwinds. You’ve known us for a long time. We ask for your help. Here’s where we want to go. We want to serve these people of these problems.

Do you have any suggestions? Are there, is there anyone to refer us to? And I think when you can ask for the, when you can combine the request for a referral with that really pointed, “but here’s what we want to do. Here’s the impact that we want to make.” Then you’re supercharging that referral. That person receiving it is going to be much more likely and interested and willing to go to their network.

Rather than the sort of the, the desperate, please send us anyone. Do you know anyone? We’ll work with anyone.

Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, yeah. Refer me anyone. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why having such a, having strong focus positioning is so useful because it’s so much easier to get referrals. Because if I say to you, Hey Jody, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m looking for PR agencies between three and 30 people who are looking to grow, single owner, that kind of thing.

You can immediately start going through your mental Rolodex and think of some people that you might refer. Or if I say, Hey, you know, I just want to help people with their businesses. Boom. I mean, that’s, that’s really hard to come up with the right,

Jody Sutter: And by the way, just will, we’re really, really great. We’ve got a great team, we’re easy to work with and

Chip Griffin: Right.

Our team is our differentiator. Yes. Okay. You go. We treat our clients like partners. Okay. Yeah. Never heard that one before. So, you know, if you wanna differentiate, you have to differentiate in a useful way. But, but I think having that positioning and, and, and I think your other point, people have not exhausted their networks.

Yeah. ’cause I hear that all the time too. And the reality is they’ll sit there and tell me, well, but these people already know what I do. The answer is maybe, maybe not. They may not know it as specifically as you think they do.

Jody Sutter: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And you may not be top of mind. So you need to make sure that even, even people who are your best buddies, you still need to be in touch with them on a regular basis because you may not, I mean, I’ve had plenty of occasions over the course of my career where even really good friends and colleagues end up referring someone else for something that I could have done, not because they thought that was a better person, but because I wasn’t top of mind because we hadn’t talked in six months, or nine months, or a year. And so you need to, my advice anytime someone’s desperate is, just start going through your own Rolodex.

Yeah, and I’ve shown my age by saying Rolodex repeatedly here. But go through your LinkedIn profile, go through your contact list in email, and and talk to, find a reason to touch base with all of these folks. And you don’t have to come across as desperate. Look, if you say you’re looking for referrals, people know there’s at least a small level of desperation.

It may be desperation to grow, it may be desperation to fill a gap. But you don’t ask for business if you’re too busy to take on business.

Jody Sutter: Right. Right. And, you know, I will qualify a little bit about, because I think agencies do feel very comfortable showing a certain amount of vulnerability, but, and so I don’t want to, so yeah, I don’t think either of us are saying, go out there and say, ah, we really need the help.

But I remember having a conversation a long time ago with an agency search consultant. And one of the things he said was so useful is when agencies let him know that they were about to lose a client. Which meant, especially for larger agencies, when I worked with larger agencies, if, and this is in one particular case, we lost a big, cruise, cruise company.

And we were able to fill that. So that opened a space on our roster, which meant another cruise lines could come in without feeling like they’re competing with us or another, even another hotel chain. So by going out to the marketplace and saying, this cruise line is going, is hiring someone else. We have this, we have this knowledge, we’ve got a team, we could jump right in.

You should take advantage of it. Or do you have clients who can take advantage of this? If you can get over, if you can, if you can change your mindset to feel confident about the experience that you have and what you have to offer, it’s going to, you’ve got a great reason for going out to the marketplace to let them know that you can take on new business.

Chip Griffin: And as you say, it’s all about how you frame it. And in that particular case, you know, where you’re able to frame that we no longer have a client conflict issue, but we have all of this knowledge and experience that we’d like to put to work for the right new client. And that is dealing from a position of strength as opposed to I don’t know if we’re gonna make payroll next month. So anybody want to just throw me some cash for pretty much anything?

Jody Sutter: Now, by the way, I, you know, again, this is like, if we, this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel of tactics, but if you were really in, if you’re in truly, truly desperate straits, then probably what I would do is to go to that sort of that top 5 percent of you know, buddies, people you’d do anything for, and maybe those are the people that you can be vulnerable with and say, look, I like, here’s the deal.

I, I need a favor. And, and, so I think you also have to be willing to do that, but you have to be very careful about that too, of course.

Chip Griffin: I mean, we all have people in our networks like that, or most of us do at least with that, that you, you can be that vulnerable, I think it is just being choosy about it.

I mean, I, I occasionally see people post like to LinkedIn, you know, I’m so desperate kind of things. I don’t necessarily think that, that a broadcast message like that is productive because it, it can alienate some potential prospects who might still have been viable, if you hadn’t scared them off that way.

So it is, it’s a balancing act. You know, I, I think that, you know, the, the key thing is if you are in one of the best case scenarios, lay the foundation for the future, build systems and processes that are repeatable that can help you succeed over time. But if you have to do something quickly, then tap into your existing network first and foremost, because it’s a whole lot easier to deal with people who already know at least a little bit about you as opposed to making new connections, because those are always going to take much longer to bear fruit.

Jody Sutter: Yeah. It’s, I think also the quick wins. It’s, it’s really tough because as you were saying, business development in our category in the agency business is, it’s a, it’s a longer cycle. And this is sort of also going into the operations, agency operations, which is not necessarily my core area of expertise, but if you are looking for a longterm successful new business strategy, it potentially means, going through some months of discomfort in order to reap the benefit of that focused strategy.

And again, easy for me to say because I don’t have to worry about helping you, the Mrs. Agency owner with managing your account management team. So I want to acknowledge that, yeah, there are other, there are many, many other things that have to come into play there. But sometimes the, the fear of going through some short term discomfort for a long term gain is, can be just too hard for agency owners to deal with and I sometimes I wish that they were more willing to think about that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And that’s a great point because I think all too often agencies do look at new business in isolation. And so they come up with plans for growing the business from a revenue standpoint, but they don’t think about what it means operationally.

And so I often will sit with clients and they’ll say, okay, well, you know, I want to add, you know, 50 percent revenue this year. And so the first thing I do is say, okay, well, map out when that revenue comes in, because most of the time when they say that, they’re like, Oh, that’s just, you know, that’s just three more clients, but that’s assuming they all start on January 1, which of course we know doesn’t happen.

Jody Sutter: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And so, so I say, okay, well map out, you know, when these new clients are going to come in so we can see what the revenue impact is. And then after we do that, I say, okay. Well now talk to your operations teams and make sure that they can handle the onboarding of this.

Jody Sutter: Yes,

Chip Griffin: because I, I often see cases where someone is very good at, at business development.

I’ve seen agencies that really do keep signing people up on a regular basis.

Jody Sutter: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: But they also churn very quickly. Because they’re not onboarded well, they’re not getting a good experience because they’re, the team is being asked to produce too much, too fast. And so you really do need to make sure that there is a nice synergy between the business development and the operation side of the equation.

Jody Sutter: That’s right. Yeah. I think, I don’t know if I’ve got a sort of a magic ratio, but I think it’s, I think it’s pretty common knowledge that the more you can retain and grow existing clients, it’s much easier to do that than go out and looking for new clients. And of course you want that balance. You want an influx of new, of new clients keeping that pool rich, but, you also don’t want to neglect the fact that you’ve got people who have already put their trust in you. Try to deepen that trust and hopefully generate more revenue and more value for them.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. So if someone is interested in, in learning more about how they can build these effective systems and processes and work on sprints and those kinds of things, how can they learn more about you and how they might be able to work with you?

Jody Sutter: Sure. I would welcome anyone to email me at Jody, and that’s Jody with a Y jody@thesuttercompany.com. , you can also find me on LinkedIn, at Jody Sutter. I think whatever the URL is linkedin.com/jodysutter, I got to snag an easy url. And, I also want to let people know that right now I am in the process of evolving and launching a new program called the Agency New Business Accelerator.

And I am in the process of looking for five pilot clients. I am offering them 50 percent off the, what will be, I think the normal cost. So they get a great big discount if they’re willing to learn and experiment with me. And so just email me and I’m happy to tell you more about that. And once I cap it at five, that’s, you know, that’ll be it.

And hopefully we’ll learn over the first cohort and then move on to, to the next round.

Chip Griffin: We’ll include appropriate links and all of that in the show notes so that if you’re listening to this in your car or on the treadmill or something, you don’t need to stop and write it down. You can just click on the show notes and get access to all of that information there.

So Jody, as always, it has been a pleasure having you, on the show. I’m looking forward already to the next time we’ll get to have a conversation about something business development related, or maybe just agency, or maybe just for the fun of it. I mean, you just never know. Exactly. Again, my guest today has been Jody Sutter of the Sutter Company.

Thanks for joining me.

Jody Sutter: Thank you, Chip.

View Details

In this episode, Chip discusses agency business development with regular guest and seasoned expert Lee McKnight Jr., of RSW/US. The conversation covers the challenges agencies have been facing in 2024, such as prolonged sales cycles and client budget constraints.

They discuss survey findings indicating optimism among agencies. The dialogue also explores the role of AI in business development, emphasizing its current limitations but potential in the future.

They advocate for a consistent, omnichannel approach, stressing the importance of referrals and content creation like podcasts and videos to foster expertise and client relationships. The episode concludes by highlighting the need for persistence in business development efforts and the benefits of continuously providing valuable resources to prospects.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “The reality is that AI, like many things, can be very helpful. But it is not a replacement for anything.” * Lee McKnight, Jr: “Agencies are going to default to referrals as they always have. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a fantastic thing.” * Chip Griffin: “You need to find whatever tactic it is that you can do well, that you will keep with, and that will help you to build your business much more quickly.” * Lee McKnight, Jr: “Build it and they will not come just because you’ve done it. Now you’ve got to get it into your prospect’s lap.”

About Lee McKnight, Jr.Lee is the VP of Sales for RSW/US, and earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Kentucky and JD from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, AL.

After graduating law school, he worked for an internet healthcare start-up in Nashville, a grocery wholesaler brokerage in Cincinnati, and then to RSW/US in 2007, where he’s worked with marketing agencies of all types to help drive their new business efforts.

Resources* RSW/US website * RSW/US 2024 Mid Year Progress Report * Agency owner growth expectations and business development insights revealed in Q3 SAGA survey

Related* Smart use of content helps agency business development * What is business development like at other agencies in 2022? * Fresh research on agency new business

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am delighted to have with me one of my most regular guests and a very interesting one at that, Lee McKnight Jr. Otherwise known as Lima Nightmare.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Correct. How are you, sir?

It’s been too long.

Chip Griffin: It has been way too long.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: If people are watching. Oh, oh, oh.

Chip Griffin: Yes, if you are watching this on video,

Lee McKnight, Jr.: The best.

Chip Griffin: My condolences, first of all, for having to look at us for, at least at me, for the next 20 minutes or so. But Lee was holding up his Lima Nightmare t shirt because I guess there’s a number of years ago, the automated transcription for one of the shows that he was on with me, came out with his name being Lima Nightmare.

And so my wife and I call him Lima Nightmare from there on out.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: And were kind enough to send me the shirt.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, you have to, I mean, when it’s, when it’s a cool name like that, you just, you can’t help, but.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: I will tell you, and this is not why I’m here, but quickly, I, play in a cover band here in town and I wore this shirt.

I should send you pictures. Someone asked me at one of the breaks, like, like in Lima, Ohio, you’re like a nightmare. And I’m like, well, that’s not actually what it is, but I see where you’re okay. It’s fair. I should have gone with it. Yes, I’m a professional wrestler. I’m from Lima and that’s what they call me.

Chip Griffin: I mean, or, or, I mean, just wait if I told you the story of what happened in Lima that one night, you know, in any case, so that we can bring this a little bit back onto the rails, I suppose we should, because as much entertainment as it would be for us to go down this path for the next 20 minutes, it’s probably not what you’ve tuned in for, but we’re going to talk about a number of things from an agency business development front, because obviously that is Lee’s particular area of expertise.

And so, I mean, I, I thought I’d kick it off by just, you know, talking about what are you seeing and what are you hearing as far as the outlook for agencies in the next year?

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah. Yeah It’ll be interesting because I know we both had survey reports that we’ve released and this one we had last month was a little bit new for us because we put our new year outlook survey out in January agency new business survey, which we actually just I’m finishing as we speak, which will be out here in about two weeks, but we decided to drop one in the middle and follow up from where agencies were beginning of the year to now.

And generally speaking, there was a certain level of optimism around this back half of ’24, which are obviously already in, you know, but one of the things that we saw last, or I should say the beginning of ’24 coming out of ’23. Certain levels of frustration, I think, from a business development standpoint, the two things for sure, and it’s, it’s, They’ve not gone away, but it is sales cycles.

And I feel like we talked about this the last time, but you have no sales cycles that just were taking longer even signing contracts and well, we got to kick this can down the road. Sorry. And then budgets not being as robust as they have been. What we’re seeing is those two things still in play, unfortunately, but have gotten better.

You know, in terms of percentage, something for us, I think it was around in terms of just overall optimism for this back half, it’s interesting because we were just talking about these stats. I think ours was close to like 52, 48 percent of agencies in terms of what they’re, what they think is going to be happening in that back half, which feels like we’re leading there, but, pretty higher level than I would have expected.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And in our case, we looked at the next 12 months and this is research that, that concluded in early August. So, so that may account for some of the differences because you’re looking at the back half of the year, but our, our group was extremely optimistic that their revenue would grow over the following 12 months.

About 68 percent of the respondents anticipated that they were predicted that their revenue would grow. A similar number suggested that profits would grow. Unfortunately, only about a third thought that their head count would grow. So, that suggests one of two, either they are way overstaffed today, which I know a lot of agencies are because, agencies are typically very slow to downsize when their revenue goes down and they, they convince themselves that, that there’s hope around the corner.

And so, you know, it often puts them in a difficult situation, but the other possibility is that they’re like, well, I’ve had a tough couple of years. I’m going to make up for this by jacking my profits up by not hiring, which then means you’re probably going to have a morale problem in the next year or two.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, I would. Yes, I would tend to agree with that. And when you gave me that stat, I was, I was surprised. And I think, you know, agencies, the cyclical world we live in, you got to have that optimism to be, to be sure, because otherwise you’re just going to be kicking yourself. But I think that, you know, as far as what we have seen, that’s working.

You know, or just from business development standpoint, is that omnichannel approach. And it just so happens to be self serving. I mean, that’s what we do at RSW, but that’s not why I bring it up. And it is sincerely because, you know, what we’ve seen, especially post COVID, I don’t know how much longer we can say that until we’re, we can just stop talking about it, but I feel like it’s still warranted to talk about a bit because that those impacts are still what we’re dealing with in many ways.

I believe, to, it’s interesting, especially digital agencies, God bless them. But, and it’s understandable, but that will kind of fall prey to a lot of these tropes of, you know, in terms of what’s working. On the business development side. We’re like, no one’s picking up the phone anymore. No one’s going to answer emails.

It’s so cluttered and blah, blah, blah. I’m like, yeah, well, you’re just, now we’re having self serving prophecies where, you know, there was self fulfilling I should say, where, yeah, if you’re not trying these things, but I think ultimately. Things like AI, which are nowhere near, you know, and I’m throwing out a bunch of topics we can go back to here, but I think that’s one that everyone was super excited about what we’re seeing now is now, how is it literally helping our business?

So one thing it’s not doing yet. I’m sure you can attest to it. I get the same 30 emails a day that we all do. And so many of those now are AI driven and it is blatantly obvious that they are.

Chip Griffin: It’s awful.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah. And they’ve either scraped from LinkedIn and they’re like, hello, Lee, who went to university of Kentucky and is in Cincinnati.

And it’s so that’s not, you know, who knows? And it obviously is moving quickly, and I’m certainly not confessed to be an expert where we’re seeing that just to stick on AI guess for a second because I put us there on the list building side of things. You still cannot pull. You’re not gonna be able to pull a list using AI and have it be ready, set, go, in terms of prospecting lists.

We are seeing, and I’m not getting sponsored, but you know, things like Ocean AI and Seamless AI are two of the ones we’ve been experimenting with and using. And again, not, there’s, there’s a lot of them out there. It seems like every day they’re dropping a new one. It can help in finding companies, you know, that’s definitely where we’re seeing it being a helpful tool, but building a list out, not really. It’s not going to help you do that.

So I think that’s, I feel like it’s a ways away, but maybe it’s not. So that’ll be helpful for agencies. If you can get that piece nailed down, that’ll be huge. But I think for us, otherwise, it’s certainly helped me in forming content thoughts. And organizing, but when I tried to do any writing beyond that, it’s, again, so blatant, you know, and it’s just, it’s not there yet. But I think it’s something that as we’re writing the report, we asked that stuff that’s about to come out here in a couple of weeks.

A sneak peek, but last, last year was 38 % of agencies were using AI, for business development. And then we asked the second question, like, okay, well, how are you using it? Well, then there weren’t a lot of good answers because it was still fairly new. And today. Just from the last month of taking the survey, now it’s up to 57%.

And the answers were basically what I threw out to you. It’s yes, shaping and forming content. It’s even doing some competitive analysis. So I think agencies are finding ways on that end to, to help the effort. If nothing else, save some time and be able to get it out there a lot quicker.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, I think part of the challenge is that agencies, particularly small agencies, are always looking for the silver bullet.

And so when, and it’s, you know, just as you’ll find, there are lots of YouTube videos and articles and books out there that says, here’s your secret formula to build a seven figure agency overnight. You know, no, no sweat. Anybody can do it. And, and I think a lot of agencies look at AI in the same way or have looked at it in the same way, which is, Oh, this is going to make it so that, you know, I don’t have to pay writers or I don’t have to, I don’t have to do any, you know, real manual research for lists.

It’ll just all be served up on a silver platter to me. And the reality is that AI, like many things can be very helpful. But it is still just helpful. It is not a replacement for anything. And I, I still like to compare it to a good intern. Right. And, and you can, a good intern does a lot of stuff for you, but you still got to check it over.

You still have to do more work on it to take it across the goal line. It’s not immediately client ready, prospect, ready mail ready, whatever. And if you think about it that way, then there’s a lot of things that it can do for you and can help you to be much more effective, both in growing your business, but also serving your clients.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, no, no. Agreed. Agreed. And so I think why that’s, wow, that is interesting. I go back, if I may, to that kind of omnichannel approach. And I think agencies, of course, they’re going to default to referrals as they always have. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a fantastic thing.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. People who dump on referrals. I don’t get it. Like, you know, I have people because they watch these again, these videos that tell them, you know, you shouldn’t be relying on referrals. Well, why not? If you can actually figure out how to generate more and more of them, that’s the best way to grow. Oh yeah. The problem is eventually you, you probably have to do other things beyond that in order to keep growing, but maybe not, it depends on your business model.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: That’s it. That’s exactly it. And yeah, anyone that says that you shouldn’t do that is well, foolish is what I was going to say. It really is because it’s, it’s quite frankly, it’s not easy. None of this is easy, but it is versus building out a, you know, outsourced or excuse me, a business development strategy that is outbound.

But I agree with the second part of what you said, and that is, and we’ll say the same thing when we get new clients on board, it’s like, if you have referrals, you have a strategy in place and that’s working, do not stop that because that’s fantastic. And why would you? Same with organic growth. I mean, you’ve got to have a plan for that, but, but again, to your point, it’s those referrals typically aren’t sustainable, or I guess a better word is dependable in terms of when they’re coming in. And so to have some kind of outbound and inbound components, and it doesn’t have to be us, where the small to midsize firms, which is who we work with predominantly and obviously you as well, feel like we can’t sustain this something like RSW does. Like, well, you might not need to, quite frankly, because if you have these referrals in place and that’s making up a certain percentage of what you’re doing, it’s working to have a manageable process and outbound where you not going after a thousand companies because you’re not going to be able to sustain that and you’re going to give up and it’s going to get frustrating.

I’m going to pick my initial 20 or 30. I’m going to go after those of the course of the next X amount of weeks. And know that one hour a day or whatever it is, it might sound very simple, but that’s the way to do it. And that way you’ve got some of that backup where you’re not solely relying on any one of those channels, if you will.

And we’ve seen agencies that can do it and it pays dividends. I think where it gets problematic. Self serving on my part, but it’s that new business director when they try to get in and hire one of those in the small midsize firm side, it is hard because if they’re really good, they’re going to be expensive. And they’re really good they tend to jump around a lot. I mean, it’s seeing some resumes lately. It’s been crazy. Some of these people jump around as often as they do, especially when they’re getting into the big, as you well know, up into the larger agencies. It’s about 18 months, right? It’s what it’s that still hasn’t changed.

18 months is the average tenure of a new business director in an agency. It’s not ha ha ha funny, but it’s just like, it just hasn’t changed in years. That’s that.

Chip Griffin: Right. And I mean, that’s why the vast majority of small agencies need to think about how they can leverage some of these resources, but you can’t be dependent upon them.

It, again, it’s not the silver bullet. You know, I talked to plenty of owners who are like, well, you know, I just, I’ll just hire a new business person then I, I won’t have to worry about it anymore. That is. No, because to your point, even, well, one of two things will happen. They’ll either do a good job and they’ll move on because they did a good job or they’ll suck and they’ll move on because they sucked. So either way,what is the outcome? They move on. And so then you back to square one, you get to start over again. So, you know, the reality is a small agency owner’s got to be involved in business development, no matter whether you have a business development person on board, whether you’re working with someone like RSW/US, whether you’re, you know, just playing lottery, whatever, the owner’s got to have some involvement.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, for sure.

Chip Griffin: And I think the other thing, to me, and one of the things that I saw in some of the research that we did recently as well is some of the tactics that are more, serving of the prospect base tend to work better. So for example, two of the top five tactics were hosting a podcast and creating videos.

Okay. And, and both of those, and, and they’re not used by a significant number of agencies. No. But for those, those who are, they are ranked among the top five most effective things. Only slightly behind referrals. And those are because they are of a service mindset in my view. And so instead of coming in and saying, me, me, me.

You’re, you’ve got something that you can provide as a resource for your prospects. And even things like podcasts, I love podcasts as an outreach tool, which is not how most people think of it. But if you have a podcast and you do it interview style, you can reach out to prospective clients and invite them on the show.

That’s a much better way to start the relationship with them than say. Hey, I looked at your website. It sucks. Let me tell you how to fix it, which is the vast majority of the, the direct email that I see. It says, it says something to the effect of your video sucks. Your website sucks. Your PR sucks. We’ll solve it.

Yeah. Who starts a relationship that way? I mean, that’s like going to the bar and saying, you know, you’re ugly, but I could tell you how to dress better. And then maybe you’d be a worthy date. Like what?

Lee McKnight, Jr.: That’s interesting. I mean, that’s, yeah, I agree. That’s at least better than this rash of I’ll give you a hundred dollar Amazon gift card that I get every other email.

At least they’re trying to show that they have some level of expertise, but I 100 percent agree if that’s the initial outreach, it’s like, Oh yeah, you offended someone now. That’s awesome.

Chip Griffin: Right.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: But yeah, instead I, you know, it’s so funny. It, it, not many are doing, but the ones who are doing it, especially, and you’re right.

The interview, avenue is the way to go on the podcast. And I, I have, I can name five or six agencies. Right now that and I’ve had two of them in my interview series where they’ve kept it up and that expertise man. It is It’s to your point. It’s such a value and it you know, they’ve got it mastered now to where they’ll do something like the software using right now this platform that we’re on we use the same one You can nail that down and it’s not, it’s work, but it’s manageable and the dividends that can pay off.

I can’t stress it enough how right you are. And, and some folks, I do understand some of them don’t feel comfortable. They feel like they’re not good interviewers. You know, we have two series. I feel like my interview series is maybe not as good as when it’s just me. Giving my three takeaways, , but I’ve had folks say no, the interviews are good.

You’re pulling good information out. So, it’s not to make that about me, but it’s just, I think a lot of these folks in these agency principals who don’t probably think that they’re very good, give it a shot or bring someone in. There’s might be another partner or someone there who can drive that train. And it is such a valuable tool because you know, having and establishing that expertise, whether it’s one vertical or whatever it might be, you know, agencies are still getting frustrated today when they hear like from from me or from others, like you have to niche down, you have to specialize.

We’ve talked about this before, but I can’t say it enough, you know, that it doesn’t mean you only have to play in one vertical at all. Can mean that. But they, they, prospects want to see that there is some authority, expertise, leadership to do a podcast like that. And it could be other forms of content, but man, that’s one great way to do it.

And, and you get it down to, to a science.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I certainly agree that guests on podcasts are a real drag, but you know,

Lee McKnight, Jr.: geez, I walked into that one.

Chip Griffin: You did, you did. But look, and it doesn’t have to be a podcast, right? I mean, I understand that it is not a fit for everybody. I happen to be passionate about them because I’ve been creating podcasts since the 1990s before an iPod even came out before you even thought to call it this.

So it is a format that I really like and I think is really valuable. I think to me, the key takeaway was that, it’s providing things that benefit your audience and allow you to share your expertise as well. So you’re, it’s a, it’s a multi pronged win because you are building relationships and you are helping people to know more about you and what you know about.

I mean, I know for myself and in the work that I do today, almost every client that I get is someone who has listened to my podcast, watch my videos, and so they feel like they already know me. And they certainly understand what my perspective is. So they’re, they’re not coming in and then surprised when I rant and rave about something in their business because they’ve heard me do it before.

And, and so they know what to, and if you don’t like those things, if you don’t like me saying that you need to have a focus and you need to focus on project profitability and all the things that I go on about, you’re just not going to call me up. And so that’s great. I’m getting better fit clients.

Agencies can do the same thing. Good point. Again, it doesn’t have to be a podcast, but it’s got to be something that allows your expertise to shine. It could be webinars, it could be articles, it could be e books, it could be videos. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things that you can do, and you just need to find the one that you’re most comfortable with, and to your point, you need to stick with it.

Yeah, because too often I see agencies try these new business development tactics and they, they do it for a month or two and then, you know, they’re on to something else. I mean, I’ve worked with plenty of, of agency owners over the years who are like, well, you know, I did this great webinar on this topic, you know, what, what industry should I focus on next?

The same one, right? Right. Yeah. I mean, until you’re tired of it, you haven’t even begun to make an impression. Same thing with direct mail back when direct mail was a thing. And I think actually direct mail is something people should still consider today because there’s, there’s a lot less mail being received.

I’m not saying it’s a fit for everybody, but think about it, right? Sometimes, sometimes You know, going against the, the tide can be an interesting place to be.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: It’s another tool, right?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Another tool, but, but it’s not the kind of thing where you, you do one email or even email or direct mail or whatever, and you’re done and you say, okay, well, I didn’t get any results.

So I’m done. No, you’ve got to keep doing it. You got to keep at it. Yeah. And so you need to find whatever it is that you can do well, that you will keep with, and that will help you to build your business much more quickly.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: And they’re gonna see part of the passion, if you will. But two other pieces that add to what you just said, which I 100 percent agree with, but one is build it and they will not come, you know, just because you’ve done it.

Now you got to get it into your prospect’s lap or get it out there or both. And the other thing is, cause too many agencies don’t do that. Like, okay, we did it. Okay. Well then I, okay, that’s good. But now how, now how are you getting that in front of people? And to follow up on that, you know, I would get when we first did our video series, 3 Takeaways, and now we’re about to today film episode 107, which to some podcasters would be like, wow, it’s a lot.

Others it’s like, yeah, I passed that years ago, right? I’m sure you did. But, it was a thing where we’re seeing the views and still today, if you go and look on our YouTube channel. Anywhere from like two to 300 for the first like six months and that grew over time and I would be like, I got, as my daughter would point out that that’s not good dad.

But it’s like, well actually those are all, I mean, for the most part, agencies. Individuals that care and good amount. So if you have, you know, don’t get discouraged if you have numbers like that or even in the beginning like, not much at all because it takes time to build. I can point to literally at least 8 different clients, specifically that told me I am talking to you because I watched that episode that came on board.

And so what, what that translates to in terms of profit is, is fantastic in terms of like what we’re spending on those videos. Yeah. The equipment up front, which you can get nuts with it, of course.

Chip Griffin: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: But, beyond that, I was going to say Craig, who does our stuff still wants to talk to you about your entire setup.

Chip Griffin: I’ve only spent like 10 bucks on the whole thing.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Exactly, 10 dollars people. That’s it. But, and that’s something that, you know, that pays off as well. But you can, you know, it’s something that, again, just don’t get discouraged. It’s certainly that takeaway to your point, keep it going because it will pay off. But again, you have to get it in front of folks.

Chip Griffin: I’d say in most cases, just don’t look at the numbers. They, the vast majority of time. It really, honestly, it doesn’t matter because what you really are looking for is are people talking to you about what you’re providing. And, and so to me, if, you know, I, back when I did digital consulting and digital marketing for folks, you know, one of the questions I was asked in the early days of blogging was, you know, how many people need to read my blog in order for it to matter?

And I’m like, you know, I mean, it could be 3000. It could be three. I mean, if those three are, you know, Barack Obama, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and they all love what you have to say. Who the heck cares about anything else? This was, of course, you know, back in 2009. Yeah, and you know, it’s all about are you reaching the right people?

Are you having the impact? And the vast majority of agencies who are listening to us today don’t need more than 10 to 15 good clients at any one time.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, true.

Chip Griffin: The vast majority of agencies do not need tens or hundreds of clients.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Couldn’t do it.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, most couldn’t, right? I mean, it’s, you know, so

Lee McKnight, Jr.: wouldn’t want to do it.

Yeah.

Chip Griffin: So that means realistically, unless you have a huge retention problem, in which case solve that before you worry about bringing on new clients. You only need a handful of new clients every year. Yeah. So if you’ve got 25 people who are loyal listeners and they’re they’re part of your ICP there’s a good chance that that’s enough and you don’t need more than 25 people listening or reading or talking to you or whatever.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah agreed. Agreed I think that brings us full circle to in the beginning talking about just business development general and kind of some trends. I will say another one as i’m writing our new report and seeing, you know, the average time it takes to close a piece of business, has, once again, you know, it’s, it’s one to six months has always kind of been the, the yard stick, if you will.

But, that percentage is increasing even more, to really, it’s turning into like 6, 7, 8 months. And man, I’ve seen too many agencies who just, I don’t refuse to accept it as too strong a word, but just like, you know, build it and they won’t come, you, you, you have to keep doing it. You have to have that consistency.

It’s the same with business development. And that’s something that we, anyone would know that’s ever been a part of business development is that you have to keep at it, but we can say that all we want and any agency can say they get it. But when the rubber hits the road and they’re in like month three or month four, and you haven’t closed something yet, that’s most agencies. Like for us, we have 30 percent of clients that close in the first six months.

Can and does happen, but it’s especially now, hopefully that will change with these sales cycles. But it’s something that you got to dig your heels in and you got to keep it up. Whether it’s content, whether it’s your business development program, it’s one of the biggest things I see. And I get it. I’m an impatient person myself.

You want to see these results, and you will, but you’ve got to keep it consistent.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I’m sure you get asked as I do all the time, you know, how can I hurry those people along? How can I get them to close faster? And look, the reality is that once they’re in your pipeline, there’s not a whole lot that you can do to speed it up.

Because, because the problem is even if you are successful in, in, in hastening their decision, it may not be a good decision. And so, so you do need to give them the room to make the decision that, that actually works for them. Cause there’s, it’s no good to get them to close in two months versus six months.

And then they disappear after three because they, they rushed into a decision that they weren’t really ready for or that they didn’t really embrace. But to me, the way that you shorten those sales cycles is some of those things we talked about. Provide the resources in advance. Yes. So, so they’re coming to you primed.

I mean, I, I can tell you that in all the businesses where I’ve had podcasts, articles, eBooks, et cetera, the sales cycle for people who consume that is always shorter, always a hundred percent of the time shorter. It may not be as short as I’d like it to be shorter because they already know a lot about you and they’ve already crossed that threshold of accepting you as an expert and now they just need to figure out how it fits into their own plans and internal processes and all that kind of stuff. So once they’re in there, don’t worry about speeding them up. Instead, prime the pump and get them ready to buy before they even come in.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yeah, I think that’s very well put. The only thing I’d add to that though is that while speeding up is not something that maybe is going to happen. The beauty of priming the pump is when you, they are in that pipeline and let’s say it is X amount of weeks out or, or whatever that timeline might be. You can take all that content, whatever it is, They haven’t seen it all.

Most likely, even if they have, you can drop that into their world again. And I’ll, I just did it today. I just did around with some of my hotter prospects. I was not selling. I said, you know what? I haven’t, you know, I could see, you know, when we send out our newsletter and everything else, what they’d opened and what they hadn’t, they did, they never opened this.

So I dropped that into their world and say, Hey, really enjoyed talking with you. Look forward to catching up here in the next couple of weeks. Thought this might help you right now, though. This is something we created, whether it’s our report, whether it’s a video I did. What we’re doing right now, I will send out to people, right?

And say, Hey, this thing with Chip that, you know, I think you might find value in. And again, it kind of shows them this is the way that we think. And most agencies never do that, right? So you’re going to set yourself apart just by doing that. So you’re both priming the pump, then at the same time, able to use that content ongoing.

You’re not going to hit it too hard, to your point, because that won’t speed it up. It’ll just get annoying. But just dropping that in. can be a difference maker.

Chip Griffin: Right. Yeah. I mean, all those follow up emails you get from someone you talk to it like, you know, Oh, you know, are you ready to make this decision yet?

You know, how can we move this along faster? Who do I need to talk to? No, I mean, you do want to stay top of mind. You don’t want to just ignore them, right? Provide them with valuable resources that you’ve already accumulated. And that gives you the, the reason to stay in front of them. And so they see your name and they’re like, right, that’s right.

I owe Chip an answer on this. Yes. Or, you know, let me give them an update or whatever. And people are so much more comfortable with that than with that constant prodding of, well, you know, when, when are you going to, what do we need to do next? Can we schedule our next meeting or phone call or whatever?

That’s just, it’s so damn annoying. And agencies need to get past that and figure out that. Look, if a client isn’t saying yes, it’s because they’re not ready.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: It’s an answer in itself.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: It is. Right. I mean, I literally just had a prospect today and this is not just me making this up. I mean, I really did where he said, look, I’ve been following you for years and, and, and the content and you know what timing is now right.

And I want you to talk to our two partners. And that’s, that’s how it went down. So, you know, they have a proposal, but it’s not there yet, but I’ve had that happen many times. And it’s just part of that is the patience, but, but you’re exactly right. I mean, they, and a lot of them are reviewing where you don’t even know to your point.

It’s like, it’s hard not to worry about the numbers sometimes. Like I want to see those views. It’s like the human nature or what it’s become. But, but you are right, you can’t get hung up on it.

Chip Griffin: As long as you can contain your urge to change something dramatic because of what you see, right? Either saying, hey, I’m going to change the format entirely because I’m not getting listeners or I’m just going to stop.

You know, so if you want to, if you want to accumulate the data, that’s fine. But don’t overreact to it. That’s the problem I see looking at a lot of this data that’s so readily available to us today. It more often than not causes people to either give up too quickly or dramatically shift strategy too early.

And neither one of those is particularly helpful. But I agree. Unfortunately, we are at the end of our available time here today. So.

Lee McKnight, Jr.: I thought this is a six hour thing we were doing.

Chip Griffin: I mean, we could certainly, I know that we could go on for six hours. I think, I think we would have a precipitous drop in listenership.

Probably starting about now. So that’s if we haven’t lost you already. Thank you for continuing to listen. If you are still listening and you would like to learn more about Lee or RSW/US Lee, where should they go to find out more information?

Lee McKnight, Jr.: Sure. Rswus.com is where everything is and that resources tab is where all our content is.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. And you do have lots of excellent resources. You are a video maven yourself. And so there’s lots of good content to be consumed there. So I would encourage you to do that. And I would encourage you to come back here because I’m sure Lee will be a guest again. Absolutely. I love having Lee on. So with that, that will draw this episode of Chats with Chip.

I appreciate you listening and I will have you all back here on a future show.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with David C. Baker, who has been dubbed “the expert’s expert.” He leads the advisory firm Punctuation, and has worked with more than 1,000 agencies to help them get better positioned for success.

The discussion focuses on improving agency management and scalability by emphasizing the importance of understanding business fundamentals and integrating them alongside the creative and strategic solutions.

Key topics include the benefits of proper positioning, effective client communication, strategic pricing, and the importance of sharing expertise.

Key takeaways* David C. Baker: “If there’s one thing I could change by waving a magic wand over the industry, it’s to run their businesses better. The basic nuts and bolts of understanding people and processes and structure and pricing and financial performance.” * Chip Griffin: “Agencies in general need to listen more and talk less. Particularly when they’re with prospects.” * David C. Baker: “We’re so driven by the interest in variety and because we’re so desperate for new work, we’re terrified that a positioning decision will close off some opportunity.” * Chip Griffin: “My position is that sales is a dirty word for agencies and it’s not really sales anyway. You’re trying to find the best fit clients and you should be comfortable telling people that you’re not the right option and sending them along to someone else.”

About DavidDavid C. Baker is an author, speaker, and advisor to entrepreneurial creatives worldwide. He has written 6 books, advised 1,000+ firms, and keynoted conferences in 30+ countries. His work has been discussed in dozens of international publications. Recently, the NY Times referred to him as” the expert’s expert”. He co-hosts the most listened to podcast in the creative services field (2Bobs).

Resources* Punctuation * 2Bobs podcast * Get in touch with David by email * David’s books Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors and The Business of Expertise

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am delighted to have with me David C. Baker of Punctuation. He is perhaps the longest serving agency advisor out there and a guy who’s got lots of great content that he puts out on a regular basis, newsletter, podcast.

He’s got books to his name. He is going to provide some great information and insight for you today. I know that for sure. Welcome to the show, David.

David C. Baker: Thank you. Longest serving. That’s like code for old.

Chip Griffin: Hey, you know, as I always tell people, you know, the reason why I can give advice now is because I’m bald, right?

David C. Baker: Yeah, right. Yeah, no, thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. I’ve known of you for many, many years. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken on the phone, but we’ve exchanged emails, multiple times. So I appreciate the chance to be on your podcast.

Chip Griffin: I am glad to have you here. And all of that wisdom that you’ve accumulated over the years is not just from actually advising, but you also, are like I am a data nerd.

You’ve done a lot of research. You’ve accumulated a lot of data. And so I, I really like that. And I think that will be something that’s useful to the audience here. But is there anything that you’d like to add about yourself that might be useful to listeners before we jump in?

David C. Baker: Oh, I think, no, I think that covers it.

I write, I’m sort of an author who also does other things. People know me more probably by the podcast I do with Blair – 2Bobs or the writing the weekly emails. But I think of myself as sort of an author who also tries to step into other roles like consulting. But most people have heard of me. So.

Yeah, that’s all boring. I’m good.

Chip Griffin: Perfect. I mean, one of the things that I enjoy particularly about the newsletter is you’re sort of a provocateur. And so I’m going to ask you to be a provocateur today and suggest, you know, what is it that agencies in particular could be doing better today that would, that would make them a better positioned for 2025 and beyond?

What is the, what is the key thing that you’re seeing today that they just need to be thinking about?

David C. Baker: Yeah, I suspect that people listening to that question are thinking that I’m going to say AI and that AI to me is way down the list. I, and I actually think that their, the quality of their work is plenty good enough.

I, if there’s one thing I could change by waving a magic wand over the industry, it’s to run their businesses better. And that’s sort of how I’ve committed my business life. What I’ve committed to helping them with. It’s running their business better. You know, I, the focus seems to be on raising the quality of the work and so on, which I think is important.

It obviously we have to keep up with all of that stuff. But just the basic nuts and bolts of understanding people and processes and structure and pricing and financial performance. And because so many of these folks never received any training on that in school. They were trained on the craft, which they’re more than good enough at.

And then the rest of it, they either picked up because they grew up in an entrepreneurial family. May not have had anything to do with this industry, but an entrepreneurial family, or they work for somebody else and they absorb the good and the bad things that they saw and then emulated in the principle.

So just running businesses well. Now, having said that, I think we’re probably, I don’t know for sure if this is the case, but I’d say we’re better at running our businesses than we ever have been, but it also feels to me like it’s sort of the exception rather than the rule. And I’d like that to be better because we live in a, when I look at not just 2025, but 2024, we live in a very chaotic world with all kinds of pressures.

And it’s so easy just to be frozen. In fact, I was, I was programming an event we’re going to be doing. And I stepped back from it. I looked over at the topics that I’d chosen and asked people to speak on. And I was just kind of amazed at how many of them were about leadership and coaching and mentoring.

And then I realized, oh, like, yeah, we need a lot of that right now. We live in a world that’s pretty uncertain and it’s difficult to lead in that sort of a world. So I would focus not on the craft. I would focus on running their businesses well.

Chip Griffin: I think that’s great insight. I mean, I’m sure as I do, you often go into an agency and they don’t have even regularly reliable financial reporting that they’re doing. oftentimes I, I’ll ask for a P& L and either get none or get something that is not even close to accurate.

David C. Baker: Yeah. Or what is a P& L? The question.

Chip Griffin: What is a P& L? Right. Right. So, you know, if you’re an agency owner, apart from hiring someone like you or me to help them along, you know, what, what would you advise them to do in order to start to run their businesses better?

David C. Baker: Probably the best thing they could do would be to network with other principals. And be transparent with each other. And I think that’s something that we’re also pretty good at. We just don’t take enough advantage of that. So yeah, you could hire somebody like you or me, but you could get free stuff by just being very transparent, finding other people running firms and sharing with them.

And the more tightly positioned every agency is, the less they see those peers as competitors. And so they are freer, more free to be transparent with each other. That joining a group of peers, there are lots of those, you know, there’s two dozen of those and so on, just to learn from each other. Maybe even stepping outside of the industry and joining a group like an EO or, or something like Strategic Coach or something like that, where you’re just learning from other people.

And the first thing that, that strikes you, this struck me too, because that was my same path. The first thing that struck me is how different our expectations are for the performance of a business. And so you talk with say somebody in the consulting field or somebody in the accounting field, and you’re comparing notes about how much money you make, what your expected profit is and so on.

And you, and they just say to you like without batting an eye, this is what I make. This is my expected profit. You’re like, Whoa. Oh, okay. Maybe I need to change my expectations there. So I think there’s free ways to do that too. There’s also a lot of great books out there that… there’s a lot of bad books out there too, but there’s a lot of great books out there that you can get that are basically free, right?

Just to pick up stuff. Things on pricing, on financial management of your firm. Some are specific to this field and some aren’t. And most of it applies. I mean, we are a professional service at heart. And so I don’t think we ought to view the performance of this industry all that differently than other professional service firms.

So there’s lots to learn out there.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, that, I mean, that is a great point. And, you know, we, we think of ourselves as different from you know, lawyers, accountants and all that kind of stuff. But there are, there’s a lot of similarities in the fundamentals of the business. One of the things that you just mentioned, and I know is a particular area of passion for you, as it is for me, which is positioning. Because so many agencies, today are, you know, that they want to be full service.

They want, they feel, they tell me, and I’m sure they tell you they’re afraid of leaving, you know, opportunities on the table if they focus too narrowly. So, you know, how do you convince a firm that they really need to have clear positioning and what even is clear positioning in your mind?

David C. Baker: Well, so if we use you for an example, you’re, I mean, we could call you a broadcaster or an author or a consultant.

Let’s just stick with consultant. So if you were just Chip Griffin, a consultant in New Hampshire, It’s like, it’d be hard for the world to notice you, but you’ve decided that you’re going to focus on small agencies. It’s right in your name. So now all of a sudden, you know, exactly who your target is, how to reach them, what they care about, and so on.

And all of a sudden if you wanted to have a really robust marketing plan, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to do. So back to the question, how do I convince them? I usually am not very good at convincing them. I, they have to realize that on their own. They have to recognize the need for it and the door to that realization for them is almost always new business, that same thing.

So they say, okay, We’re five or six years into this thing. And that’s kind of, I picked that number because that’s usually when the early sort of noise dies down and the referrals and the word of mouth sort of isn’t there as much anymore and they have to earn their way and they say, okay, the business isn’t quite where we want, or we had this growth spurt.

Now we have a lot of people sitting around because some of that work died. It was usually on the back of a single large client that was occupying a lot of our attention. So how do we grow? And then they say, okay, we need a marketing plan. Duh. You know, that’s kind of what they do with their clients. Right.

But it hasn’t occurred to them yet. And they, that’s where they just stop dead in their tracks. How in the world do I create an efficient marketing plan for an unpositioned firm? It’s very, the only way to do that is to be really famous. And absent that since very few of us really are, then I got to have a tighter positioning and that’s where it comes from.

It’s usually a pressure from the marketplace. And then they come to me or you or somebody else and they say, Hey, can you help us think through this? But the, the desire that demand for that usually doesn’t come from the outside. Usually it comes from an internal frustration because they just can’t figure out how to get new business.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And a lot of agencies, frankly, have some sort of positioning, even when they don’t think they do, right? When I, they tell me that they are full service, they’ll service anybody. Then you start looking at their client list and you realize, well, they kind of have an inferred positioning anyway, that typically comes from their own expertise or perhaps who their early clients were or something like that.

So it shouldn’t be as big of a jump for them mentally as it usually ends up being to get them there. But can you also talk about the, you know, it obviously helps on the business development side. But good positioning also helps on running the business better, right?

David C. Baker: Yeah, it helps run the business better.

Obviously, you know, the new business thing is important because if you can’t solve that, then nothing else matters. But you also know what, how to, how to design your service offerings, because now all of a sudden there’s a little bit more commonality in what your clients need. And then that leads to, okay, now I know who to hire.

I know what sorts of skills to bring aboard. I know how to fashion the processes and so on. And then something that we haven’t even talked about yet. It’s like, and now I’m doing better work for my clients. Like that ought to be, that ought to be front and center.

Chip Griffin: Right.

David C. Baker: It’s just so, it’s so odd to me. Like you don’t, you don’t see doctors, like a brain surgeon saying at the Monday morning staff meeting like hey team.

I’ve got an announcement I know we pretty much only work on brains, but I, I have really been interested in experimenting in heart stuff. So next time somebody walks in here, don’t send them away down the hall. Just say, no, we’ll take care of it. It’s like, no, that stuff doesn’t happen in professional services, but it does in our side because we’re so driven. Two things.

We’re so driven by the interest in variety and because we’re so desperate for new work that we’re terrified that a positioning decision will close off some opportunity and we’re so desperate for opportunity. So it’s just a slow, long process of maturing. And like you said, just a minute ago, we’re not inventing expertise.

Like you’re, it’s going to emerge from something that you have already developed a particular favor in, some sort of focus. And so we’re, it’s just, It’s an exercise in exclusion, not inclusion. It’s like, what are we not going to be looking for moving forward? But whatever we are going to be looking for is something we’ve already been doing.

We’re, we’re not making up expertise. We’re just saying, let’s start focusing more on what one of the things that we’re really good at.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I love that you used a medical analogy because I often do as well, although that particular one I haven’t used, and I’m going to now borrow that one from you because I think it is very apt, but you know, the other, I think comparison to the medical field is that we have people come into us for new business and we let them tell us we want a website, we want a press campaign, we want whatever, and we just give it to them.

Because we think that’s the easiest way to generate revenue, to give them what they’re asking for. But that’s, that’s sort of like the patient who goes in and says to the doctor, you know, I need Ozempic or I need this surgery or that surgery. You know, they’re going to ask you questions to try to, to figure out if that’s what you really need or not. And that’s something I think a lot of agencies are reluctant to do because they think it might impede the sale.

David C. Baker: Yeah, right. And it’s not going to fly if you say to that doctor, well, like, I know you went to seven years of school, but I mean, I’ve just spent an hour on a WebMD. I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure this is what’s wrong. Yeah. And once you start, this doesn’t happen overnight, but once you start to taste expertise, you start to taste what it means.

When somebody looks to you with hunger in their eyes and they really want a solution that’s very important to them, it feels so great to be able to confidently say. I think this is what you need, right? You’re never 100 percent right and you have to be humble about it. But this stuff is important to people and they’re spending money that matters to them.

It’s like, we ought to be delivering really as much value as we can. I just, that’s sort of the unspoken problem around focus really, because we talk about, In fact, I’m guilty of this. I talk so much about how it’s easier to craft a marketing plan. It’s easier to make more money, but what about the client?

Like what does the client deserve? Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Well, and that’s it. That is something that we lose sight of at our own peril, right? Because you might win the business, but then you’ll churn them because you’re not producing the results that they were expecting, which I think that’s another area to look at is expectations.

How do you set expectations correctly with your prospects so that it can be a winning arrangement and one that that causes them to want to stay with you as opposed to being bitterly disappointed, you know, six months later?

David C. Baker: Hey, let me, let me turn that question around and ask you, what, what do you think, what do you think agencies ought to be considering around what the changes they need to make to be really relevant in the next few years?

What would you say to that?

Chip Griffin: So, I mean, I think that, that agencies in general need to, listen more and talk less. Particularly when they’re with prospects. Because you can learn so much from them. And I, you know, one of the things that, that I guess frustrates me is, is when I talk to an agency owner who says, you know, I, these people want to pick my brain, I, I just, I don’t have time for that.

They need to pay me for that. And I, I understand the time pressures that agency owners have, but I think that because things are changing even faster today than they were 20 or 30 years ago when I first got into the agency business. You have to be listening and understanding where things are going and where your clients and your prospects are headed.

What, what’s, what’s worrying them? And I, while I don’t love the, what keeps you up at night question, I do like with a prospect saying, you know, right off the bat, what brings us here today? And, and, and not the first answer will be because I need a website because I need, you know, a media campaign or whatever, but, but dig deeper. Find out what actually triggered it.

Because if you figure out what the triggering thing is, we had a meeting, the CEO is pounding his fist on the table. We’re not getting the financial results we need, or I saw a competitor in the Wall Street Journal and I’m ticked off about that, that I’m not there, whatever it is. It helps you to better understand.

And I, so to me, if you want to know where to go in the next two or three years, you need to be listening more and asking those probing questions.

David C. Baker: And train yourself to love finding the right solution for the client, even if it isn’t you. Like get used to that great feeling of, of saying, Oh, I really appreciate this conversation we’ve had, but I don’t think I’m the right person for you.

I think you should talk with such and such. And then graciously refer somebody to somebody else without expecting anything in return. That’s training yourself to love that too, is really fun.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and one of the easiest ways that I get to convince clients of that is have them look at what their worst client experience has been, client experiences have been in the past few years and, and trace that back to the prospect conversation. Typically, typically there was a red flag in the prospect conversation, but they drove right through it because they wanted the business.

David C. Baker: Yeah. Okay. So that I see how you’re tying that to listening very carefully, not just to what is going on in the client’s world, but also to whatever extent they might be a qualified client. Like it’s about money or expectations or how much an expert they think you are or so on. Yeah, great point.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, because, you know, if you’ve got someone who’s coming in and saying, you know, well, the reason why we’re hiring you is because we want to be in the Wall Street Journal.

And you know, that’s not going to happen, right? You know, based on your expertise, you understand that the stories that they have, that’s just not likely to happen. If you just tell them that and, and you pass them on to someone who maybe could do it or could give them something different, fine. But if you take that business on, it’s gonna be a miserable client.

That’s right. And, and it’s gonna be the one that you call me up about and say, God, this client’s such a pain. I don’t understand. Yeah. That’s not what you want.

So, one of the other things you talk about a lot, is the, that agencies should be planting a flag to share their expertise and taking a stand on things, right?

Something that obviously you and I don’t have any real difficulty doing. In fact, if anything, we probably need to be restrained from time to time. But it, it does amaze me often that so many agencies are not out there and saying things, right? Other than this is what we do. And, so talk a little bit about the, the value of that, both from a growth perspective, as well as the overall impact on the agency business.

David C. Baker: Yeah. So it probably wouldn’t be fair to not at least for 15 seconds, tie us back to the positioning, conversation because it’s hard to know what to say that hasn’t been said already unless you are tightly positioned. So that’s sort of a given, but there’s just so many reasons to develop a point of view.

I constantly think that the primary one is to figure out what you think. And there are different ways for us to do this like the way my mind works I have to write something to figure out not because i’ve already figured out what I want to say but the clarity comes in the articulation not before it. Other people need to talk through something before they kind of figure out exactly concisely what they think.

So that’s the primary purpose is just to figure out what you think about something. And for me, this really struck me many years ago, because I would be in a conversation with a client and it was clear that they had a certain expectation that I would have a point of view on whatever it was, and I would hesitate.

It’s like, Oh, I’m not sure, you know, excellent question, but not sure. And so I started writing those things down. And then decided to articulate each of those points into a particular point of view, which some of them have changed over the years for sure. So that’s the first reason is just to figure out what you think.

The second reason is just to give clients some perspective of what it’s going to be like to work with you. There should be very, very few surprises ideally. So even before they pull the trigger and work with you, they should have sampled how you think, how you approach problems, and so on. And what all they’re left to decide is not to decide what you think, to decide whether or not they want you to apply those thinking skills to their very specific situation.

Another reason is just from a an indexable question, right? I mean, we got to give Google, I guess we keep saying that for a few years until they’re surpassed, but we need to give Google something to work with. We need to give them some indexable content that will drive organic traffic to our sites I, I don’t think that will ever be the primary way you get business to me.

I think of that as sort of like a 20, 25 percent solution, but it’s still pretty significant. So those are the big reasons in my mind where you need to do it. And. I you know, I, this is coupled, I think, with the fact that we have, we’ve begun to tie together our thinking with our doing. And if we want to move upstream, we have to be known as thinkers with particular perspectives and So it just kind of boggles my mind.

In fact, if I, like if, if I was reaching back decades and my kids couldn’t go to school for some reason, then all I would really ask them to do is write a lot and read a lot, because that’s what sort of develops a mind. And I’m not sure we ever lose that sort of ability to do that over time. So it’s very important to me.

And I wish it was more important to other people too.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And I mean, to your point of, you know, helping clients to understand your perspective, I mean, it helps your prospects so that you can shorten the sales cycle, which I think every agency would like to do. I’m sure, as I do, you have people who are coming to you in your current role and they know how you think, they know how you speak, they can hear you.

And so, therefore, it is a much shorter sales cycle than it might have been in the past where there wasn’t any content for people to consume.

David C. Baker: Yeah, right.

Chip Griffin: And so, if you can do that, you’ll find those better clients faster and spend less time going through all the mundane stuff with your prospects. But I think, I think one other value of whether it’s written content, video, audio, whatever kind of content you want to put out and stake a position on is that it helps your team.

And because if your team is consuming your content, and that’s not a given, by the way, I’ve, I’ve had in the past plenty of times where I’ve had people working for me who didn’t listen to my podcast or read my posts and articles. but to the extent that they are, it helps them to understand your vision for things in a way that’s better than sitting in a team meeting, banging the table and saying, well, this is what we’re doing today.

They can see it and they can internalize it in a much easier fashion.

David C. Baker: Yeah, and decide if they want to hitch their wagon to this train, so to speak. And I would guess that’s probably true for prospects too, right? I like how these people think. I’d like to work for them. Yeah, it is a zero sum game isn’t it.

Like the better we do at marketing, the less we have to do in sales. And if we do very little in marketing, we have to be really good at sales. It’s very inefficient. We tend to get, attached to the prospect and we sunk, we sink all these costs in there. And then it’s hard to abandon a prospect because it’s so, this particular one is so important to us.

Our marketing needs to be really, really effective so that we can comfortably waste prospects. By waste I mean not feel like we have to land everyone.

Chip Griffin: Well, I think I, you know, one of my positions is that, you know, sales is a dirty word for agencies and it’s not really sales anyway. You’re trying to find the best fit clients and that’s very different than selling a car or a widget where your goal is you get the prospect in and your single minded focus is to close the deal.

That’s not what you should be doing. As you suggested earlier, you should be comfortable telling people that you’re not the right option and sending them along to someone else. Right. And, and that’s fundamentally different from sales. So I see agency owners pick up sales books and they read through them and they’re like, Oh, this is how I need to do it.

Well, no, because that is, it is a linear process, which is not the same process, I don’t think that agencies should be following.

David C. Baker: Good point.

Chip Griffin: So, you know, we we’ve talked about a lot of different things. Let’s talk about pricing right now, because this is always a popular topic. And I know something that your, your co host on 2Bobs, writes and speaks about a lot.

But I, I, I think that agencies have great difficulty in pricing in part from going back to the very start of this conversation today, because they are not particularly good at business management, so they don’t really understand their costs. But I think, I think honestly, some of us who. and I confess to this, I, I tell clients who ask me, you know, how is their pricing?

I, without even looking at it, I tell them they need to increase it.

David C. Baker: Before you’ve even seen it, right? Yeah. Right. It should be higher.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and, and I think that that is, that is risky because there are some agencies that are not underpriced, but I think fundamentally agencies don’t even understand their pricing at all.

And so how do you advise agencies today to be thinking about their pricing in a in a rational way that doesn’t leave money on the table, which I know they’re all worried about, but still gets them the business?

David C. Baker: Yeah. I think it’s a little bit dangerous to talk about pricing in isolation because I think it needs to be as one of multiple things that they talk about, like salary load and profit and how much the principal pays himself or herself and so on. But I also don’t like, pricing discussions that just don’t take into account where somebody happens to be on that maturity ladder. So in some cases, I think, well, in all cases, I think you ought to look at what’s the next step in pricing for you.

And so if somebody is earlier or lower on that ladder, The next step for them is to get paid for all their time. It’s like, that’s pretty basic. And in those cases, I have no objection to timekeeping at all. I think timekeeping is a fantastic temporary tool to figure out how to get paid for all your inventory.

Now, once you’ve done that, then. The next step is really to get paid for all your time at possibly a higher hourly rate. And then the next step is to just disconnect what you make from time entirely by productizing your services, maybe value pricing, whatever that is. But I don’t think most firms are ever going to get to that place.

And so I’d be very satisfied with those first two steps. Instead, what I see are people who feel abused or underappreciated, underpaid by their clients, and they just jump to value pricing, but they haven’t even climbed the basic ladder to get paid for their time. Like, let’s not talk about value pricing until you get paid for all your time.

And then they also don’t have some of the other components in place, like a tight positioning. The idea that you need to reinvent your, your agency one client at a time, you, it’s, it’s very difficult to reinvent your firm with your existing clients. You kind of have to swap them out one at a time. It’s a, it’s a long, slow, patient, arduous process.

And then, you know, the flip side of that is I just throw all that technique out. I just say, listen, kind of like you said, well, whatever it is needs to be higher. But also I think the best time to set your pricing is when you’re pissed off or tired. It’s like, I ain’t doing this again for that. my, I always adjust my pricing on the way back.

On the flight home. It’s like, I ain’t doing this again for that. You know, I just, Blair’s the pricing guy and he’s got lots of science behind it and so on. And he and I are in slightly different places about that stuff. Theoretically, and just from a pure advice standpoint, I think it’s brilliant, but I, I don’t, I think people listen to pricing at the wrong point in their development and, they’re just kind of getting it wrong.

So anyway, I’m, I’m a little mixed up on the whole pricing thing, honestly.

Chip Griffin: Well, I, I really like how you described it as a progression because so many agencies fail to get to that first rung on the ladder, which is making sure that they’re being paid fairly for their time. And, and so, you know, the, the, the risk of some of the things that are out there on value pricing and such as that, it sounds so enticing that, as you say, they jump right to that step without having done the intermediary work to, to be able to figure out what does it actually cost them to deliver.

And, and it doesn’t, at some point it doesn’t matter what the value is to the client if that’s still not enough to cover your actual costs. And so, you know, to go back to where we started, if you understand your numbers, if you know what it costs to deliver, then you can at least have your, your safety price, right?

You know, or as I call it, my price floor, that the number I’m not going to go below because I know below that I’m not going to make money. And so if you don’t understand that number, then any, any theory around pricing is worthless.

David C. Baker: I, I was struck by this yesterday. I was working with a new client and you know, where, where agencies seem to get stuck is in this fee billings per full time equivalent employee, they get stuck around 155, 160, something like that.

And, my target for them is, is 220. That’s, that’s where it kind of starts. And so if they’re at 155, 160, we try to get them to 220. The, the woman I was working with yesterday, she was at 460. And wasn’t satisfied with that. And I thought, well, that’s great. Let’s get you up to 900. It’s like, you know, my clients range anywhere from 150.

There’s a few little bit lower than that, up to a little over a million. And it doesn’t matter where you are. It was like, let’s just take it further while still delivering exceptional value to your clients. And if you’re still doing that the sky’s the limit. And so just understand where you are and, and be happy just doing a little bit better.

What, what are the levers you need to pull to do a little bit better and not beat yourself up about that. But there is room for growth every year that you stay in business if you’re doing the right things and it’s, it’s a great adventure really.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. Well, I think that’s a that’s a good note to to conclude our conversation.

We could probably go on for hours here and cover lots more room. So we’ll have to have you back again for a future conversation. But in the meantime, if someone is interested in getting your newsletter, subscribing to the podcast, learning more about you, where should they go?

David C. Baker: So, the business address would be punctuation.com and, you’ll learn there about, books, events, and so on. We’re doing an event in Atlanta, October 21 to 23, which you refused to speak at, by the way. And

Chip Griffin: That’s, that’s a slight mischaracterization. I had a schedule conflict.

David C. Baker: Yeah. so anyway, punctuation.com and, you can sign up for a weekly emails there too.

I appreciate the invitation to chat with you, Chip. I enjoyed it.

Chip Griffin: It’s been great having you. Again, my guest today has been David C. Baker. I encourage you all to sign up for his newsletter, buy his books, watch his, or I guess listen to his podcast, all those kinds of things. It is great, useful information and will help you to level up your agency.

So with that, thank you all for listening. I appreciate it. And I will have you all back here on another show.

View Details

Patrick Rogan of Ignition HR joins Chip to discuss the FTC’s new ruling on non-compete agreements and expected adjustments to overtime pay regulations.

They discuss strategies for managing overtime and compensation issues in small agencies, highlighting the importance of compliance, proactive planning, and seeking HR assistance when necessary.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “It’s important to plan in both cases as if these regulations will take effect because it’s a lot easier to back off on whatever plans you might have than it is to scramble at the last second to figure out what your solution might be.” * Patrick Rogan: “The strength of a good non-solicitation is it sets an expectation for future behaviors. When you make it clear that this is against the rules – you can’t take our clients, you can’t hire employees when you leave – it just prevents it from happening.” * Chip Griffin: “Ultimately, agencies need to treat their employees well, they need to treat them fairly, so that they’re not inclined to go out and try to screw them over by stealing clients or employees.” * Patrick Rogan: “Make sure you have consistency with salaries and if you make it consistent with the hardest regulation out there, that usually works out to be easier for everyone in the long run.”

Resources* Get in touch with Patrick at Ignition HR * The Dept. of Labor’s new overtime rules * The FTC’s non-compete rule

Related* How should agencies prepare for new overtime rules? * What new rules on overtime and non-competes mean for agencies * How the FTC’s ban on non-competes impacts PR and marketing agencies * CWC 25: Patrick Rogan on HR for small-to-midsize agencies * Focus on agency employee retention * How to think about HR risks in your agency

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I’m, I guess I would say I’m delighted to have with me Patrick Rogan of Ignition HR, a great mind when it comes to all things talent related to agencies. And it is a pleasure to have you here, Patrick.

I’m not sure it’s a pleasure to talk about regulatory issues, but that’s what we’re going to be doing today.

Patrick Rogan: Well, it’s kind of like going to the dentist. No one wants to go, but if you don’t, it’s just going to hurt a lot more later. So that’s, that’s why I’m here.

Chip Griffin: Yes, absolutely. So we’re going to try to make it hurt less and we’re going to talk about new federal regulations around non compete agreements with your employees as well as around overtime pay. And we’re going to start with non competes because I think that should be a little bit easier and Patrick and I have both been of like minds for many many years which is giving advice: don’t do non competes. Don’t, don’t have it as part of your arsenal, but we’ll elaborate on that and share what you need to do in light of this new, regulation for, or I guess ruling from the Federal Trade Commission.

Patrick Rogan: Yep. I’m looking forward to it.

Chip Griffin: So, so what has the Federal Trade Commission done to American businesses?

Patrick Rogan: Well, regarding non competes, they’ve outlined a process, 120 days after it’s filed, where it will effectively be illegal to have non competes with employees you’re going to hire, employees you have, contractors, independent consultants they basically are saying that, this will be wiped out.

No more non competes. and when we say non competes, let’s be really clear. What we’re saying is that we’re not allowing employees with a non compete to typically work for a competitor of ours – depends on how it’s working, but it’s more about going to one of our competitors. Which is different than other things that we’re going to be talking about in a little bit more that kind of get more to the meat of what’s important. But that that piece in particular assuming the courts don’t overrule this which You know, who knows what’s going to happen.

that’s the piece, that’s changed.

Chip Griffin: And I think that’s an important caveat. Both of these decisions and regulations are facing strong opposition, shall we say. Yes. And the courts and or Congress may step in. Public pressure may cause decisions to be changed. Who knows. But this is what appears to be taking effect and I think it’s important to plan in both cases as if these regulations will take effect because it’s a lot easier to back off on whatever plans you might have than it is to scramble at the last second to figure out what your solution might be.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, and also it’s a great time to take a look at what do you have in place right now. On the day this came out, I was talking to one of my agency clients who are like, Oh my gosh, we can’t do non competes anymore. And this is going to be a huge change for us. And, and my response to that was, well, you actually, you don’t do non competes. You do non solicitations. And they’re like, no, no, we, we, we do. And I’m like, no, you don’t. Let’s look at it. Right. And they’re like, I thought that was a non compete. No, you’re good. You have a non solicitation. That’s fine. Right now. Stick with that.

Chip Griffin: We’ll come back to that in a minute, but I think that I do want to underscore one of the things that you said, that I think has been glossed over in a lot of the media coverage, but it’s really relevant to agencies, which is that this applies to independent contractors as well as employees.

Yes. And so, so you need to look at those agreements as well, not just your employee handbook or employee agreements. It is absolutely applicable to independent contractors, which is a place where even agencies that have gotten it out of their employment agreements, I have typically seen often still keep it in their independent contractor arrangements.

No go. Can’t do that. The other thing is you need to understand that these are retroactive to previous employees. So it’s not just, it’s not just people who will work for you today or in the future. If you have this with someone who has already left your agency, unless it’s already the subject of, of court action,

then it’s gone, too, assuming these rules hold up.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah. The only exception, is there is a carve out for some highly paid senior level employees.

That’s a, that’s a small piece of it.

Chip Griffin: Yes. I mean, there are exceptions, you know, we always encourage you to talk with someone about your specific circumstances, whether that’s an HR advisor like Patrick or a lawyer, or somebody who can help you evaluate the specifics of your circumstances. But the vast majority of agencies don’t have individuals who are going to be exempt.

It also applies to partners within your agency in most cases. So just, just because someone’s a co owner doesn’t exempt them, from being able to be submitted to a non compete. The one place where non competes do appear to still be permitted will be in the case of you selling your agency, there can still be non compete covenants in the purchase and sale agreement, that takes, that takes effect there.

So that is, that is what, but the vast majority of you aren’t going to be selling your businesses anytime soon. So that’s, that’s not really a major consideration for you today. But so, so, so explain the difference between a non compete and a non solicitation agreement, because this is, you and I have advised going the non solicitation route, which appears that this new decision is silent on non solicitation, but the current legal analysis that I’ve seen, and I don’t know if you’ve seen anything different, seems to suggest that non solicitation probably will survive at least for the moment.

Patrick Rogan: That’s what I’m reading as well too, and I’m hearing as well. I think we should keep an eye on non solicitation. But when we say non solicitation, we’re primarily talking about something that comes in two flavors. The first flavor of non solicitation is if you leave our company, you’re not allowed to take any of our clients with you

for a period of time. And typically I recommend that be limited to clients that the employee worked on. that’s probably the norm. In some cases, it’ll be a little bit broader than that, any client that the company did business with a little bit harder to, enforce. But you know, but I’ve, but I’ve seen it both ways and usually it’s for a time period prior to the termination.

So probably 12 months is probably the typical one I would see. So if you leave our organization, if you leave our company, you can’t solicit work from any of our clients or any clients you worked on that were for a period of time, usually 12 months, that’s flavor A. Flavor B is, if you leave our company, you can’t hire any of our employees out.

And I think they’re both important, to have in place because it does kind of protect the company. I’ve seen it happen many times. And they need to be written in a, in a way, you know, I’m not a legal person. I’m an HR person, but, typically you want the document sort of buttoned up that they cannot hire anyone or calls anyone to be hired.

So they can’t call their headhunter friend and have their headhunter friend call their person and then, you know, and do a triangle thing. That doesn’t work either. So it’s important that it be worded correctly. But those, those are the two flavors that I tend to see with non solicitations.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I think both are important and valuable.

I think that they need to be carefully tailored, you know, narrowly tailored, you know, not, not any agency, any client the agency has ever had, whether you know about them or not, not, you know, for perpetuity. I mean, you do want to put some frameworks around it because that A, makes it more enforceable and B, frankly, it makes it more understandable, from the, the employee’s perspective.

I do believe that in both cases, Even though you have these provisions, I would generally try to avoid enforcing them directly and instead use them as leverage to negotiate some kind of an arrangement. So if you have an employee who leaves and a client wants to go with them, then fine, work out a deal where you get a referral fee or something like that.

Same thing. I mean, a little bit less so if they want to poach employees, I mean, that’s a little bit more challenging, particularly if they’re, if they’re just trying to strip you know, a lot of your talent away, but still, if you’re forcing someone to stay because of a legal document that you have, that’s going to backfire you in backfire on you in the end. Even if one employee leaves and they want to take three other folks with them to go start their own business.

You might be able to enforce that, but now you’ve got three disgruntled employees working for you who would rather not. You’ve got a past employee who has already left. They’re even unhappier about you and will badmouth you all around town. So, is it really what you want to do? But having those documents allows you to have an adult conversation that says, Hey, I could block this if I want.

I don’t want to. I want to try to come to an arrangement. And usually that will work out.

Patrick Rogan: The strength of a good non solicitation is it sets an expectation for future behaviors. And in essence, when you make it clear that this is against the rules, you can’t take our clients, you can’t hire employees when you leave. We make that clear before you even start working for us.

It just prevents it from happening. Like, you know, the, the strength of it isn’t what happens after it does happen. It’s still going to be messy. And to your point, you need to figure out a way to kind of gracefully get through that. But what I, what I’ve observed is it just tends to prevent that bad behavior from happening in the first place, which is kind of what you want, which is why you want it fair, which is why you want it concise.

You want it clear and set expectations and make sure people understand.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and look, ultimately, agencies need to treat their employees well, they need to treat them fairly, so that they’re not inclined to go out and try to screw them over by stealing clients or employees, right? So, so part of this comes down to, if this is something you’re really worried about, ask yourself, why?

Are you hiring untrustworthy people?

Patrick Rogan: Mm hmm.

Chip Griffin: Are you, are you not treating them well? So you think they’re going to want to run away at the first chance they get? I mean, think about why you really feel like you need something that strong in there and solve that problem rather than putting together a legal document that puts, you know, unfair handcuffs on people.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah. I would say if your employees are regularly leaving, whether it’s to go to your clients or to steal your clients or to hire your employees, maybe the first place to look is what are things you can do to give your employees incentive to stay in the first place? That way we, we don’t have to deal with so much of that.

Chip Griffin: Well, and your clients.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, for sure.

Chip Griffin: I mean, if you haven’t built a strong enough relationship with your clients that they want to go anytime an employee leaves, that’s a problem too. So in any case, I, you know, I think, I think the bottom line is stay away from non competes regardless of what happens with this FTC decision.

For sure.

Focus on non solicitation, focus on confidentiality and reminding departing employees of their obligations regarding trade secrets and returning information. Those things haven’t been gotten rid of. Those are all still there. So, rely on those kinds of protections rather than non competes anyway.

And then you won’t even have to worry about whether this gets struck down in the courts or not because you’re already on the side of the angels.

Patrick Rogan: The other thing I see is when I hear the complaint from clients in terms of the need for these types of agreements is well, you know i’ve invested in these employees if they leave and take that to one of my competitors then I lose that investment. And if that’s something that really bothers you, you can create clawback agreements so that if you provide specific training for employees and they leave with the next months of the training They would have to pay you back a percentage of that.

I mean, if that’s something that really bothers you, that’s one way you can address that, but a non compete isn’t really going to fix that.

Chip Griffin: No. And I would still advise against those kinds of provisions. You certainly can have them, but I mean, they’re just, again, it, it sends the message to your team that you don’t trust them, that you think they’re basically stealing from you and they’re going to leave as soon, I mean.

I shoud, you want to go into it assuming the best of your team. And if you can’t assume the best of your team, your hiring practices need some help. Right. For sure. You can talk with Patrick about that too. I’m sure you can help with that. But, but now let’s, let’s move on to the, the, the rule that I think is, has the potential to impact a lot more agencies in a lot more meaningful ways and something that you really need to give some thought to how you prepare.

And frankly, as you’re looking at both of these issues, I would say it’s a great time for you to be looking at all of your HR policies and procedures. I mean, I’m not trying to, you know, turn this into the full employment for HR consultants role show, but, but that really is something. The fact that these both came out in the same week is It’s a wake up call to a lot of agencies that probably haven’t looked at handbooks and policies and agreements in many, many years and they probably didn’t give it a lot of thought even when they first put it together.

So now is a good time, as you’re looking at non competes and overtime rules, just take a fresh look at everything. See if there’s anything else that needs to be tweaked because there are a lot more rules and regulations that have taken effect in recent years that are more employee friendly and they’re not just at the federal level, they’re at the state level and I expect we’ll be seeing even more of these In the months ahead.

Patrick Rogan: So I totally agree.

Yep.

Chip Griffin: So, over time.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: What is First of all, I think a lot of people are confused when you talk about exempt employees. They don’t understand like an exempt employee What does that mean? And that’s most of these regulations are written around fancy terms that that are, I don’t know if they’re intentionally confusing, but they’re more friendly to lawyers than they are to lay people, which is why instead of talking about exempt employees, I just talk about overtime rules because that’s the practical impact.

But explain how overtime works and what the change is.

Patrick Rogan: Sure. So the Department of Labor enforces a law called the Fair Labor Standards Act. And what that law does is it requires All employees to be paid overtime for hours over 40 per week unless they fit within several defined categories, at which case it’s okay to pay them a salary for all hours worked in a week.

By the way, if you’re paying someone a salary, And they work 20 hours a week. You still owe them their full salary. So you, there’s two sides to that, but, but it’s so that the, in the agency world, well, there’s a, there’s an executive exemption, there’s the administrative exemption, there’s a professional exemption, which cover, you know, more than 90 percent of employees who

are eligible for exemption, and it’s the professional exemption is the one that applies most to agencies. And, you know, currently, there’s a, you know, there’s a, minimum amount of salary that has to be paid. It’s very low. It hasn’t changed in a long time. Right now, it’s just a little over 35, 000 a year.

And what we’re, what will be changing, unless this goes back to the courts again, is, that’s going to bump up effective July 1st to 43, 000 and change, but most importantly, in January 1st, that’s going to bump up to, over 58, 000. So that’s something we’re going to probably need to talk about.

Chip Griffin: So there are, there are essentially three questions then that need to be asked, right? Did an employee work more than 40 hours a week, right? Correct. And it is, it is 40 hours. It’s not whatever, if you set a 37 and a half hour work week for your agency, you don’t have to pay for hour 38, you have to pay for hour 40, right?

So, so, That’s the first thing. If nobody works under 40 hours, yeah, you’re not going to have to pay overtime.

Patrick Rogan: Right.

Chip Griffin: If they work over 40 hours, that first test that you suggest is what kind of work are they doing? And the vast majority of particularly small agencies in 2024, the professional exemption is going to apply.

Still work. You know, working with your HR advisor just to make sure you don’t have anybody on your team, or you don’t have some kind of a business model where you have somebody who wouldn’t qualify. I don’t know very many small PR marketing agencies that have anyone on, on staff these days that wouldn’t qualify.

I mean, 20 years ago, you had secretarial support or things like that. You know, that would have qualified for overtime in most cases, but today that’s not the case. Everybody does all of their own clerical work. So we’re all professionals.

So then the real thing is this salary number. And as you say, the 35, 000 number hasn’t changed in a long time.

The vast majority of even small agencies are paying full time employees more than 35, 000 these days. So frankly, you know, It’s been a while since anybody has even given any thought to overtime. Probably the last time was eight years ago. If your agency was around eight years ago, hopefully you were thinking about how to deal with it then because this same attempt was made or a similar one was made in 2016.

And I remember working with you, Patrick, on this, for some agency clients trying to figure out how we can solve this problem.

Patrick Rogan: Right.

Chip Griffin: And at the last second, it went away. We cannot assume that this one is going to just go away at the last second. So we need to prepare So that’s my question. What do we do to prepare for the fact that it’s going up to assuming these hold 44 000 or so on July 1 which is less than two months or two months exactly Right very very close. But I think that’s an almost irrelevant number because that’s, to me that’s just for political purposes so the Department of Labor could say well, we’re doing it in you know in gradual steps. But the next step is January 1 which is seven months away.

And that’s a very substantial bump to 58, 656 a year as the minimum salary in order to not think about overtime for somebody, right? There are a lot of small agency employees for sure less than that. So what do we do today? What if you’re, if you’re sitting in the owner’s chair or an owner calls you up, what do you tell them they should be doing, here today in May of 2024?

Patrick Rogan: Well, there are multiple steps to this. and it’s a little bit tricky. So, I’m not aware of any agencies that are, that are paying employees, a salary of 35, 568, which is the official minimum salary right now, most are in the neighborhood, of the July 1st for entry level, let’s say for entry level employees.

43 888 is the number, getting that up to date by July 1st. I’m not really worried about that. That’s kind of, you know, for 99 percent of agencies out there, I think they’re probably pretty close to that anyway. That’s a rounding error. to your point though, January 1st, that’s significant. If this goes through, this is, you know, upwards of 59, 58,656.

That could be a significant increase, for exempt employees. And I think it’s going to be important for employers to be very careful about how they approach this. So, so there could be some employees that maybe they’re going to change them to non exempt status. So they are overtime eligible and maybe they will just work 40 hours a week.

in other cases, they’re going to need to, to increase to that salary level. And it’s not just the employee who’s getting, you know, eight or 10, 000 or more increase, there’s the downstream impact of that. So like, if you’re normally bringing in today. Let’s say you’re bringing employees in at 44, 000 and the July 1st means nothing to you.

So typically after a year, you would bump that up to what, maybe 48 or 50, 000. So you’ve got people who’ve got, you know, a year’s experience. Or even two years experience. They might still not be at the January 1 level of, of almost 59, 000. So, all right, so we, we’ve got our, our, all our entry level hires.

We’re going to bump them up to 58,656, January 1st. We can meet that, but wait a minute. What about all the, all the employees you have a year or two experience? Are you going to, are you going to pay all your employees the same, the same salary? Obviously. So that’s, that’s where it gets a little bit tricky and that’s where it’s going to take a significant amount of planning to make sure that we begin right now, figuring out how we’re going to approach this.

What do we need to do? Easy, I think, relative to your most for July 1. But for January 1, if that goes through, we need to be careful that we’re prepared that has approached that really impacts not just those employees who are below, but all the, even the ones who are above, is there going to be a differentiation in how you’re paying your employees?

And we also have to be careful. We’ve been down this road before, where we almost got to the 11th hour. And then they said, no, we’re not going to do that. In which case I did have clients who had actually already made changes. And they were like, okay, well, I guess we’re prepared for when it does come through.

So that’s we’re going to keep that in the background too. So this is tricky.

Chip Griffin: Because it was eight years later. So all those employees are being paid either a lot more or they’re not even there anymore. Right. Yeah. But, but yeah, so the, the absolute easiest is just to get somebody up above that number. Right. Because then you don’t have, you know, you can keep them as exempt and you don’t have to worry about it.

And so, as you say, for July 1, I think the vast majority of entry level employees, even at small agencies, are over 40 now. So if you’re within a couple of thousand, just move them up. Just go to 44 and call it a day and buy yourself the breathing room to look ahead to what to do on January 1st. So that way you don’t have to rush into anything in the next few weeks.

And in general, I think for, for either of the deadlines, if you’re, if to get someone clear of, non exempt status and, and, and avoid paying overtime, if it’s less than a 10 percent bump in their pay, that’s, that’s, that would, I would use that as the rule of thumb. It’s probably best if it’s, if it’s a single digit percentage increase, just give them that.

And it makes it easier for everybody involved. Because overtime is, you know, it, it takes some calculation to do. It takes paperwork to actually make it work regardless of whether or not you’re going to pay it right. Even if you say we’re not going to let you work over the 40 hours a week, it still requires a lot more process.

And we’ll talk about that in a minute, but, but I love that you pointed out that you need to think about what the downstream effects are, because you and I have talked a lot in previous forums. about the importance of having proper salary bands within your agency to make sure that you’re paying people equitably, that you have a path forward for them from a career progression standpoint, that you avoid, you know, any, any issues around equity problems because you are paying one class more than another.

And if you, if you have salary bands that define roles and appropriate salaries for that. You’re much more likely to be in the right place and paying everybody fairly and giving people those paths forward. So you need to think about that, particularly if you’re doing more than a 10 percent bump, right?

Cause anytime you’re giving a group of people more than 10%, now you probably do have a meaningful downstream effect. 5 percent you probably can wiggle it within your existing system. 10, 20, 30 percent now you’ve got a huge problem. And you don’t want to be taking someone from 42, 000 today to 60, 000 on January 1, just to avoid having to deal with overtime compliance.

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, either from a business perspective or from what it does to the rest of your organization.

Patrick Rogan: Yep, I totally agree. And salary bands, we’ve talked about this before, they’re coming whether we want it or not. You know, a number of states already require putting salary ranges for postings.

Maryland and D. C. will have passed effective this year, D. C. I think it’s July 1st, and Maryland I think is October 1st. Colorado was sort of the first one to jump in on the bandwagon, so it’s coming. We might as well get the salary bands done whether we want to or not because we’re gonna have to.

Chip Griffin: Well all of these things are coming and you know whether it’s non competes or new overtime thresholds because it’s not just the federal government that can get involved with these. State governments can and are. I mean California for a long time has had more stringent regulations around a lot of things including prohibiting non competes.

I mean that’s been in place for a long time Right. And we’re seeing more at the state legislative level where they are, they are following California’s example. And I think because both of these issues are getting attention, even if they are stopped at the federal level, you’re likely to see more state action.

And because many listeners have employees in multiple states now, because post 2020 hybrid remote agencies have become the norm. So you hire the best talent, wherever it is. You might as well comply with the most stringent standard you’re going to have to deal with rather than trying to figure out, well, Sally gets this set of rules and Joey gets that set of rules, because that’s confusing for you.

It’s bad for team morale. So just figure out what the toughest is you have to comply with and comply.

Patrick Rogan: That’s my total recommendation. I think Oregon jumped on the bandwagon too. But yeah, just, just make it fit the, the hardest one, and that way you’re done. You don’t have to go back and redo it again.

Otherwise you’re, you’re all over the board. And then, you know, you wanna make sure from an internal equity perspective, you have some rhyme and reason, you know, that isn’t, tied up to state litigation or federal litigation. You, you want to, you have a business you gotta run. So make sure you have consistency and and if you make it consistent with the hardest one out there, that usually works out to be easier for everyone in the long run.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And if you are making these bumps to avoid overtime, you also need to look at what, what’s the impact on your agency’s pricing. A lot of times we give employees raises and we don’t think, I mean, whether it’s for this or anything else, we don’t think about what does it mean for prices to existing clients or new business.

And so as you pay your team more, which everybody’s having to do regardless of these rules, right? I mean, everybody complains to me, Oh, gee, some entry level employees cost so much more today than they did 20 years ago. Well, yeah, there’s inflation and all that kind of stuff. So it happens whether we like it or not, but you need to be updating your pricing at the same time and making sure you understand that impact. But let’s, so let’s say, let’s say we come to January 1, Patrick, and, and we’ve got some employees.

We’re just not going to pay them 60, 000 just to, to avoid the headache. We have to have them at a more reasonable salary. That’s more appropriate to the work that they’re doing and how we can price it and all that. So what do I need to be thinking about if I, because I haven’t been thinking about overtime.

I haven’t been thinking about the record keeping around it or the policies for approvals and pay and all. So what do I have to be thinking? What are the key things that I need to be thinking about in preparation for that?

Patrick Rogan: So if we’re going to have employees. that on January 1st are going to be non exempt.

So we’re going to, they’re going to be overtime eligible. One of the things I see is, well, we’re just going to say there’ll be no overtime. And so, so there, and there are two flavors of that. So there’s, there will be no overtime and we don’t want you to work over 40 hours a week. So that’s one. The other one I see is.

There’s going to be no overtime pay and, and you’re not expected to work any hours over 40 wink, wink, nod, nod. That’s not good. That’s not good because the onus is on the employer. So if you say there’s going to be no overtime and you know, your employees are working overtime or if you say there’s no overtime and you’re not aware your employees are working overtime, you still owe them for overtime. And probably interest in penalties and all that kind of stuff on top of that there.

So it’s not like, we can say, you know, well, I wasn’t aware. We have to be aware and we need to have the systems, tools, and processes to make sure, we are aware. And it’s probably a pretty good idea to know how many hours your employees are working anyway. Like it might be you know, like if you want to determine profitability or things like that I mean probably would be a best more your area than mine, but You know, that probably is something that, that would be good to know.

Chip Griffin: I’m a staunch advocate of timesheets regardless of overtime, but with overtime, they start to take on a different level of significance, right? So it’s, it’s not just, you know, kind of, do your best to figure out some timesheets and give me something that I can kind of work with. And, and I I’ve shared the story previously that, that when I was a junior account executive, I lied on my timesheets all the time to give the employer what they wanted, not from an overtime avoidance perspective, but from the perspective of, you know, We’re only supposed to work so many hours on certain clients.

People will report what whoever is seeing that report wants to see. Right. I didn’t want to get yelled at by the client for not doing the work. And I didn’t want to get yelled at by my boss for, for working too many hours. So I just made the timesheets work so that they made everybody happy. You can’t have that.

And I think that you’ve done a good job of explaining that the burden of proof is on you, the employer, right? To make sure that there is compliance. Wink and a nod does not hold up in court. Never has, never will. And, and you can’t just stick your head in the sand and claim ignorance that you didn’t know, right?

You need to be taking proactive steps to be able to demonstrate that to the best of your knowledge and you put in your due diligence, nobody was working over 40 hours.

Patrick Rogan: And when push comes to shove and you get asked the question, how did you clarify that your employees, you made a change effective January 1st or right before then, how did you clarify that your employees were eligible for overtime pay?

How did you make that clear? Give us examples of that. And I want to see that documentation. It was like, well, we just had a conversation and you know, everyone pretty much… no, no, no, no, no. So that’s not going to work.

Chip Griffin: Right. So the first thing you can do is you can say, look, overtime is not authorized in any case, and we’ve got to document it.

So for that documentation, timesheets that you collect on a weekly basis and hold on to, as long as you believe that they are accurate and you’re not playing any games, that presumably is sufficient documentation. How long do you need to keep that documentation for? What’s the best practice there?

Patrick Rogan: In general five years, but ten if there’s going to be some type of litigation. So ten’s a good rule of thumb.

Chip Griffin: So basically it’s electronic. Just keep it.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah, just keep it. Yeah, just keep it

Chip Griffin: Just keep it, there’s no downside. Make sure that if you switch time tracking platforms, you download a copy of it so you’ve got it so that if someone comes to some disgruntled employee, ’cause all of these come about usually by disgruntled employees, right?

That’s how it normally works.

You have an employee who is unhappy with you, whether it’s current or former employee, they file a complaint and that’s how these things come to light. So, you know, it behooves you again, to treat your employees well so that they don’t want to do that to you. But okay, so we’re, so we’re, we’re documenting it.

We’re saying you can’t do it. So that’s, that’s policy A, policy B is. You can only work overtime, but you need prior authorization for it. And I would encourage you never allow employees just to work overtime on their own. Right? So to me, it’s either ban it and document it or it’s allow it, document it, but require pre approval so that at least you’re not just being surprised by someone saying, I worked 80 hours last week.

You got to pay me for it now, right? There needs to be a level of authorization that takes place in advance.

Patrick Rogan: And if you do the option your option, I guess we’ll call it B there with with prior approval for overtime You can manage that right? You can you are in charge of managing how much overtime there’s going to be and there may be enough profitability that that it it totally makes sense. And it does kind of fit a little bit more of the real world test. Like even if your employees just work a little bit of overtime and this goes to litigation and you’re keeping good records and you do some overtime in certain cases and other cases there’s no overtime versus you just made this blanket policy that said no one ever does overtime.

How realistic is that? Maybe it is, but you know, did it meet your business needs? Did it meet your employees’ needs? And is it going to pass a litmus test if this goes sideways?

Chip Griffin: So, so require that prior authorization, and, and it does, as you say, it allows you to manage it. The other thing that you need to think about then is how you calculate it, right?

Because I, and for most agencies, it’s, it’s relatively straightforward, but there are some potential gotchas, particularly if you have employees who, you know, who are doing some form of sales as part of their role, and they’re getting some commissions, because that needs to be factored into overtime pay calculations, correct?

Patrick Rogan: Right. It’s the total compensation divided by. You know, 2, 080 hours a year. That’s your, however you calculate that out. But it’s total comp at time and a half.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. So most agencies don’t run into that, but I, but I know there’s a not insignificant number of you out there who do have employees who get commission as a meaningful piece of what they’re doing.

And so you need to make sure that you’re factoring that in to frankly, not just overtime. There are other things, you know, retirement contributions and things like that, where it also comes into play. And so you need to be looking at it there as well. If you’re not already.

Patrick Rogan: And you could typically true that up at the end of the year too, they’ll usually allow that, like, if it gets kind of complicated in terms of how those payouts are usually truing it up at the year is how that’s handled.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and my general experience with, you know, government auditors and such on things is they’re willing to work with you as long as you’re showing good faith, right? They are not – the vast majority of them, despite all public reputation. They’re not there to get you. Right. If you are trying your best as a small business owner to comply and, and working things through, they’re not going to come in there and pop you in the face if they find out that you, you know, messed up and you, you missed by, you know, 1 percent the number that you were supposed to give somebody, you know, because of an honest mistake.

Right. You know, it doesn’t mean you’re not gonna have to pay for it and pay a fine probably for it, but they’re not, they’re not looking to, to jam you up unnecessarily.

Patrick Rogan: And the more you can prove that you’ve done your due diligence, to your point, it means a lot, you know, it’ll help you there. Maybe it’s a slap on the wrist or just do this differently going forward versus, Oh boy, you better lawyer up.

Chip Griffin: Right. And ultimately, you know, assuming that you go through this process, the actual paying of overtime these days is relatively straightforward. Whatever payroll processor you’re using likely has the ability to pretty easily add this to the next pay period. You do need to make sure that you are doing it in a timely fashion.

You don’t just, you know, Randomly pay overtime whenever you feel like it. There are standards as far as you know when those overtime payments need to be made.

Patrick Rogan: It should be in that check that covers that time period for sure.

Chip Griffin: So that means you also need to be collecting accurate time sheets in a timely fashion, right?

You can’t let someone just do a time sheet at the end of the month if you’re paying twice a month. You need to make sure that the time tracking is matching up with your pay period so that you can pay people properly. And I think this is as good a time as any to mention that the practice that that many owners think they can do where they just give comp time for overtime. That doesn’t fly.

You know, you can’t just say well you worked an extra half day this week I’ll give you a half day off next week and we’ll call it good. No, I mean, honestly, I don’t love that. I think that comp time should be permissible As long as it’s mutually agreed, but that’s not how the law works.

Patrick Rogan: It is not unfortunately Comp time should only be used … in general, I’m not in favor of it anyway, just because it gets, but only with exempt employees, salaried employees would, was the only time I would ever. But for non exempt, you just can’t do it.

Chip Griffin: And I would prefer not to, just don’t call it comp time. Yeah. It’s just, yeah. If you want to let someone take a little bit of extra time off because they’ve been working hard, fine.

Patrick Rogan: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: You know, let’s not call it an exchange of this for that.

Patrick Rogan: Right. Right. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Any time you’re connecting two pieces together, even if they are exempt, it just gets messier than it needs to be.

Because then, then you create an expectation. Well, every time I work an extra half day, I get an extra half day somewhere. You know, maybe that’s right. Maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But, you know, keep it a little bit more informal when it comes to those kinds of things. if you can. But I think that the most important message that we’re sending here, particularly as it relates to overtime, is you need to sit down and you need to figure out what is your, first of all, what’s your strategy for this?

What, what kind of problem do you have if these numbers do indeed take effect? Can we solve it just by increasing salary? Do we need to put in a proper process and a full overtime payment scheme? And if you do make sure that you’re setting it up in a way that both works for your business as well as complies with the relevant laws and regulations.

Patrick Rogan: And how does it impact your entire team, not just the few that are in, you know, if all of a sudden, you know, half your agency is making the same exact amount of money and, you know, some have eight years of experience and some just started, you know, that, that might be a problem.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, look, if you’re giving 30 percent raises to a bunch of people on your team, it’s going to cause you problems.

Right. I mean, I guarantee it. If you’ve got only one employee who needs to get a substantial bump, maybe you can find a way to work around that, you know, because if you’re willing to do that, to keep them and avoid overtime, you must feel pretty strongly about them, right? In that case, you know, you can probably find a way to promote them so that they are still being paid within an appropriate salary band.

And it becomes a more effective story to tell that employee as well as others. So, but bottom line, put your plan together, give it some thought. Don’t just go into this willy nilly. Don’t sit back and hope that the courts or Congress will save you because that is a fool’s errand, and, and ultimately will cause you problems down the road, even if it’s not in the next six months.

Patrick Rogan: Yes. Eyes wide open.

Chip Griffin: So Patrick, if someone has more questions, they’d like to talk to you. They’d like to call up in a panic and say, Patrick, I need you to take a look at things. You need to help bail me out. How can they get in touch with you?

Patrick Rogan: Real easy. You can find me at ignitionhr.com. On the lower right hand corner there’s a little box, click it and schedule a Zoom meeting for us.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. And, Patrick is, he’a great HR guy to work with. He can help solve your problems without feeling like he’s an HR guy, if, if you know what I mean. So, in any event, thanks for, for taking the time to help simplify these things, explain them in terms that I think most owners will understand.

It’s a very valuable service and, and obviously we’ll continue to keep an eye on this issue. And if there are major developments, we may do a fresh episode to take a look at whatever changes or adjustments might be in place or whatever that next regulation is, that’s going to be part of your full employment plan.

Patrick Rogan: Or the next two that happen at the same time.

Chip Griffin: Oh, there we go. There we go. I mean, it’s always nice when it happens twice at once. So we can, we can condense it into one episode instead of two red tape episodes. So anyway, thank you for your time, Patrick. Thank you everybody for listening. Again, I’m Chip Griffin of SAGA, and I look forward to having Patrick back on a future show and I look forward to having you as listeners come back for my next episode as well.

Thanks for joining me.

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Meetings have evolved over the last few decades, so shouldn’t the agency owner’s role have changed?

In this episode, Chip and Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors discuss the importance of effective leadership and meetings in agencies, emphasizing the owner’s unique role in providing vision and direction.

They explore the need for well-structured meetings with agendas, purpose, and active participation from all members.

The conversation touches on techniques for better meetings, the role of leaders in encouraging participation, and the value of appreciating contributions and creating positive meeting experiences.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “A meeting ought to try to involve people in discussion, and it should be involving everybody on the call, because there’s no point in being on the call if you’re not participating.” * Brad Farris: “The person that talks the most thinks more highly of the person who talks the least. So if you’re in a new business situation, the less you talk, the more that they’re going to think highly of you.” * Chip Griffin: “Leadership is about creating the conditions to make the good decisions.” * Brad Farris: “Fear means we’re doing something important. That fear is actually sharpening your senses, helping you to focus, helping you to be present.”

Resources* Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business * Sign up for Brad’s newsletter * Business Growth Phase Assessment

About Brad FarrisBrad Farris has helped hundreds of agency owners sharpen their focus, raise their prices, and hire better people so that their firms can scale and thrive. Brad has learned that success is driven less by what you do than by who you decide to be, and the biggest hurdle to your agency’s growth is between your ears.

Related* How to make agency team meetings more productive * Moving agency meetings from in-person to online * Being present as an agency owner

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am delighted to have with me a regular collaborator on all of my podcasts and other things, because he’s a smart guy. He’s a fun guy, Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors.

Welcome to the show again, Brad.

Brad Farris: Thanks, Chip. I’m glad to be here.

Chip Griffin: Always great to have you here today. And I think that we’ve got a good topic to get started with because I know you’ve been thinking a lot about leadership. And in particularly, in particular, leadership in meetings. And, you know, meetings.

There have been books literally written about meetings. In fact, I have one over here on my bookshelf. Lencioni, I can’t remember how to Yeah, Death by Meeting, a famous, famous, book on meetings. And I, I think that it’s a worthy topic because most agency owners spend a lot of time in meetings and a lot of time leading them.

Yeah. Pretending to at least.

Brad Farris: And I want to set this up by thinking about what is the only job in an agency that you, the owner that are uniquely able to do. Like no one else can do this job. And that is obviously the leadership role, the role of seeing the future. And saying, this is how we’re going to approach the future.

And this is how we’re going to be successful in the future. Come on everybody. This is how we’re doing this. Right. And so alignment and vision, that’s the job that only the owner can do. Right?

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, the, the owner, it’s their business. That’s right. So now, I mean, what I will say is that many owners abdicate that responsibility and allow inertia to carry them forward, but the, the business ought to be serving your needs as the owner, otherwise why take on all the risk and stress.

Brad Farris: I have also seen owners who try to have some sort of consensus or majority rule situation. And that tends to go horribly wrong in my experience because the, the person who is rewarded most for the longevity of the business is clearly you. And so the rest of the team, they have more of the immediate needs of the business in mind.

You have the longterm health of the business in mind. And so that’s the job that is yours and yours alone. Right.

Chip Griffin: You should be a benevolent dictator. That’s right. That’s I mean, it is fundamentally what it should be. I think trying to build consensus and get people to come along is okay up to a point, but at some point, you simply have to take responsibility and make that decision.

I remember when I was first hired to be CEO of a company back in the mid nineties and one of the early staff meetings, someone, we were discussing something and there was two different opinions. And so someone said, well, let’s have a vote on it. And I said, I said, you can have a vote, but mine’s the only one that counts.

And it was a little bit of a flip answer. I, you know, I, in, in the fullness of time, I’ve learned that there are better ways to handle that than being quite that direct that early on in the relationship. But. That’s how it is. That’s how it needs to be.

Brad Farris: That’s right. And the place where our team most often experiences that leadership from us is in meetings. You know, now one to one surely they’re experiencing our leadership one to one and there are a lot of leadership skills that we want to apply when we’re one to one with people. But by and large, the time that The rank and file of the majority of our organization experiences, our leadership is in meetings.

And my observation is that we’re running meetings, basically the way we ran them in the eighties, when I started work. And I have to believe that we’ve learned a few things about how to run a meeting since then, that would help us to project our leadership in a more positive and effective way than the way that we’re doing.

Is it, do you have that same observation?

Chip Griffin: I do, and I think even more so now, the nature of these meetings is very different than it was, because when you and I got started, these meetings all took place around a table. Yes. And, and so part of the whole meeting experience was, you know, coming in and the chit chat before and after, and it was just, it was a whole different dynamic from what you have today.

Brad Farris: Who sat where was important.

Chip Griffin: Exactly, exactly. You know, and, and now we’re, we’re all doing it like you and I are doing this right now where we’re doing it electronically. It is a very different environment. And so you need to adapt your style for the times and also for the technology.

Brad Farris: Yes. And I think that’s an important point because we’re running so many more meetings virtually.

I think one of the things that that requires of us is to think about how to do them in a way that we get things done as quickly as we can and that we stay on point. Like that we actually accomplished the things that we came there for. And so the first thing that that is my personal rule is if a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, I’m not coming.

And what does an agenda mean? An agenda means these are the things we’re here to discuss, and here’s how we’ll know whether we’ve done a good job or not. In other words, this is the outcome that we’re looking for from this meeting. And so, it, it’s, it’s my rule, and I, I am not afraid to cancel a meeting. If there’s not an agenda, I’m not there.

You guys can have a meeting about a meeting or whatever, but I’m not going to a meeting that doesn’t have an agenda.

Chip Griffin: Well, I would step back even one more step, which is it has to have a purpose. So before you have an agenda, there has to be, and too many meetings take place without a purpose. It takes place because, well, we always do this or it’s been a couple of weeks.

We should check in, but why? What are we actually trying to accomplish? And, and so I think that big picture purpose needs to come even before the agenda.

Brad Farris: And so the, the, the running joke there is this meeting could have been an email, right? And so that is an important thing that I’ve also started to think about is that one of the tests about whether this email, this meeting could be an email is once we have the agenda, I want someone to write down a point of view about each of the things that are on the agenda. So if there’s an appointment on the agenda that says, you know, we need to improve our lead generation. Great. I want you to show up with a one page description of what have we tried and what proposals do you have about things that we can do to improve our lead generation and what is your recommendation based on that, you know, analysis. And so that people come in advance, having thought about the thing before we show up so that we’re not doing, we’re not thinking in the meeting. We’re thinking before we came to the meeting. And this is something that, that, Quite honestly, I’m experimenting with, but doing it, I think helps a bunch of things.

Number one is it means that we know that there was a purpose for this meeting before we came. Because a lot of times, and this is honest to God, when I’ve asked people to do this, they’ll write that document up and they’ll say, Oh, actually, it’s very clear what we need to do. We need to do this thing. So we don’t have to have a meeting.

We can just send out the email, right? Great. Meeting eliminated. Fantastic. Second, if there is a reason for the meeting, we can allow the introverts to think about this thing before they show up. So we can send this document out, everyone can think about it and have some thoughts. And then we’re coming and moving from the place that the document started toward a destination that hopefully is getting us further along.

Is this something that you’ve…

Chip Griffin: I think that the introvert thing is so important. And I think even a lot of more junior employees today, and I think part of it is because of the medium and doing it not in person, you know, my experience has been that a lot of more junior employees are very reluctant to share their views off the top of their head, and they want that time to digest and think about it. And so giving them both the introverts as well as the juniors that opportunity to build their confidence in their own point of view, so that they can bring their own experience and expertise and all that to the table. Incredibly valuable. So I think there’s a balance to how much you share in advance, right?

Of course. You don’t want to overwhelm somebody, but you do need to provide them enough information that they can start thinking carefully about it. And you’re not wasting the first 30 minutes of the meeting, just describing the challenge.

Brad Farris: The other end of this spectrum is the Amazon six pager that they have this six page memo that they use before a meeting.

And then everyone comes to the meeting and spends the first 20 minutes reading it. Like that might be on the, on the far end of what I’m proposing here, but some amount of writing that is distributed ahead of time that describes why we’re talking and what the background is and what we already know and what we need to know that can really help bring the conversation a little bit.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I’ve talked to Amazon employees about the amount of work that goes into those and it is astonishing.

Yes, it’s no joke.

And I, to me, that is not a good use of time in my view.

Brad Farris: I mean, I think of the executive levels, it could be, but none of us are working with billion dollar companies. So let’s just cut that off at the pass.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, I, I don’t believe that the billion dollar companies are really all that different, but we can have that argument another day, I suppose. In any case, so yes, I mean, I, I think that by sharing this kind of information, you really are evoking a better discussion and conversation, because that’s why you should be having a meeting.

Meetings should not be briefings. That’s right. That is the one that could be an email. A meeting ought to be to try to involve people in discussion, and it should be involving everybody on the call, because there’s no point in being on the call if you’re not participating.

Brad Farris: So that was gonna be my next point, Chip.

Is that…

Chip Griffin: There you go. You’re welcome.

Brad Farris: Your transition is amazing. my next two rules are, okay, so we, we know what we’re there to meet about. We’ve done some thinking ahead of time. Now. The first part of the meeting is I want each person in the meeting to get some period of time to talk about what their perspective is on this thing.

And so start a timer. Go around the horn, get input from everybody. Because to your point, if they’re on the call, we need to hear from them. If we don’t need to hear from them, they don’t need to be on the call. Right? And so, if they’re on the call, we need to hear from them. So we, we want to give each person a chance to talk.

And in that time that they have to talk, you can’t interrupt them. People have uninterrupted time to tell you what they think. This has been a game changer in the meetings that I’ve done this, where people know that they have time to say what needs to be said and that they won’t be interrupted. Then they’re willing to wait their turn and we don’t have people getting cut off in the middle of their thoughts.

And this is really more for the extroverts in the group because for the extroverts, They can’t think about it unless they’re talking. And a lot of times their best ideas come at the end of their three minutes or whatever. And if you interrupt them, they never get to those good ideas that come at the end.

And so we need to give them the chance to work through the 10 crappy ideas to get to the three or four good ideas. They’re going to show up after they get a chance to talk.

Chip Griffin: Sorry. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t interrupt you there.

Brad Farris: Good job. I appreciate it.

Chip Griffin: Which I’ll admit I am terrible about particularly on these shows because I get so eager to, you know, and I think a lot of agency owners are similar, right?

You know, we’re all full of ideas and that kind of stuff. And we want to blurt them out for the most part ourselves. So, so having that patience to give people the time and space to have their opportunity to communicate is important. And I think part of this is a mindset shift for owners in that they need to realize that leadership is not always about talking.

Leadership is about creating the conditions to make the good decisions. And so what that fundamentally means in most meetings, you ought to be more of a moderator than a speaker, spread it around, make sure everybody has a chance to talk. The problem is in my experience, most times, whoever’s most senior in the meeting, as soon as they speak, it shuts down conversation.

Yes. Because nobody wants to contradict the leader, whether that’s the owner or a senior manager or whomever. So if you really, really want to get participation, you need to reserve your comments until the end, unless it’s really gone off the rails and you just need to say, well, look, that’s already been decided.

We’re not debating that, you know, and I think you should jump in on those. That is where you should interrupt. Don’t allow it to go off the rails because that’s not productive.

Brad Farris: Yeah. And and to your point, if we don’t want to hear everyone’s input, why are we doing this in a meeting? Why are they here?

Right? So the ground rules to me are the people in the meeting are the people we want to hear from. And so let’s give us a chance to hear from them. And then as the leader, I want to ask questions. I want to probe a little bit more deeply. I want to say as, you know, does anyone have anything to follow up on what Cheryl said?

I thought that was an interesting point, like highlighting things, but giving everybody a chance to, to have, some time on the floor.

Chip Griffin: And these things that you’re describing, we focus mostly on internal meetings, but these are just as effective in using these techniques with clients. And that’s another place where, again, we often feel we need to demonstrate how smart we are.

This particularly rears its ugly head during pitches where we just can’t shut up, but even once you’re working with the client, Shut up more, elicit feedback and ideas from the client. You’ll have a more successful relationship.

Brad Farris: So can I tell a story that might be a little bit of a diversion here, but I think it applies?

Chip Griffin: As long as you don’t go off the rails. If you go off the rails, I’m going to have to interrupt you.

Brad Farris: So the first time that I changed jobs, so I found a job right out of college and I was there for three or four years. And then a recruiter called me and was bringing me to a new job. And he said, okay, here’s the interview.

I’m setting you up on the interview. Here’s what I want you to do, Brad. When you walk into the guy’s office, you know, shake his hand. Before he’s even sat down, I want you to say, Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this role. And then the recruiter said, and then don’t say another word for the whole interview.

The guy will probably talk about that for 30 or 40 minutes. I did that. Exactly what he said happened. The guy talked for 30 or 40 minutes. He says, Oh my gosh, you’re the smartest guy I’ve ever talked to. This is fantastic. We’re offering you the job. I went back to the recruiter. I’m like, I can’t take this job.

I don’t even know what the job is. Right. But the point is, The person that talks the most thinks more highly of the person who talks the least. And so if you’re in a new business situation, the less you talk, the more that they’re going to think highly of you. And that’s a crazy idea, but once you get used to it and try it out, if you’re just asking questions and letting the client do the talking.

It works out better, like 99. 9 percent of the time.

Chip Griffin: When I think that that you’ve touched on the right thing there, which is asking the questions, right? It shouldn’t be total silence. No, you know, your example was the extreme one. If you sit through a meeting internal or external and you say nothing, that’s not great either.

But by learning to ask good, intelligent questions that actually invite the right kind of conversation. You will be in a much better position, right?

Brad Farris: And so if we’re in that leadership situation where we’re trying to gain consensus around an initiative, having everyone have a voice in that and you asking questions to guide the conversation in a certain direction, that’s a way that you can demonstrate leadership in a way that they will feel like this was their idea. This is something that came from them. They’re more bought into it. They’re more connected to it. And you got out of it what you needed to get out of it without being without talking a whole lot.

Chip Griffin: And by the way, you might find a new idea that you didn’t have before or a solution, right?

I mean, it, it, it might not be just that it actually makes people feel included. It might actually produce a better result.

Usually does. That’s right.

And one of the things I like too, is, you know, and I, this is one of the things that I’ve seen you do a lot over the years on the shows that we do. You really like to say, “say more” to people and, and, and, and really draw them out and I think that’s particularly effective as we’re thinking about the introverts on our teams, those people who may not be like you and I, where you kind of have to shut us up a little bit and say, okay, that’s time out, we’re say less.

I don’t need to hear more from you.

Where’s the mute button. But a lot of members of your team or clients. They’re going to say something and you know, you may even already have a sense as to what’s behind it, but eliciting more, following up, asking them to say more, or asking a follow up question, those kinds of things Incredibly valuable, particularly for those introverts or people more reluctant to speak.

Brad Farris: Then the last practice that I want to highlight here is in some ways the most difficult. and that is I want to end every meeting with appreciation. What went really well in this meeting? What was great about this meeting? What did I appreciate about you, Chip? Like, like, I really like the way you, called me out for, for saying that, you know, I asked people to tell me more, like to have specific things in specific ways in which we’re highlighting the things that went well in the meeting, doing that creates a sense of bonding and connection and Sometimes it’s the most worthwhile part of the meeting.

Chip Griffin: I think that’s particularly true if you’ve had a tough conversation. True. Because you don’t want to leave, even if you’ve sort of built a consensus and you’ve reached the decisions that you need to make, I think it’s important that people leave meetings on high notes. And so that can be appreciation. It can be recognition of things, even as you’re saying, okay, well, we need to, you know, we need to make these budget cuts or we need to, you know, to do these changes or whatever, mixing that in with what is working, what has gone well, whether it’s in the meeting or even outside of it, I think, I think finding some way to touch on those, frankly, throughout the meeting, but, but I would agree with you that particularly at the end, you want people who walking away on as high a note as possible, even in the toughest meetings that we may have.

Brad Farris: EOS has a has a habit of rating meetings on a scale of 1 to 10 at the end of every meeting. They give it a number grade and there’s no It’s not a discussion. They just say, you know, this was a six, this was a seven, this was an eight, whatever, and tracking that over time and seeing are the ratings we’re giving our meetings improving, which I thought was an interesting idea too.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, that, that presumes that everybody’s rating it quote unquote, the right way. I mean, my experience is a lot of employees would probably rate pretty highly if nothing was accomplished, but that’s true, but they managed to escape without getting yelled at. Or assigned more work or whatever. So I, I guess I would, I put me down as skeptical for that particular approach.

You need some kind of rubric, right?

Yeah. Cause people will naturally judge those through their own lens. And was, was this a good meeting for me? That may not mean it was actually a good meeting. I mean, I think we’ve all had those meetings where we’re just, we’re just happy to have escaped it without anything bad happening.

I know I’ve had many of those over the course of my career.

Brad Farris: So. Before we step away from this topic, I want to ask, like, what makes doing these things hard? Why don’t we, as leaders automatically do these things? What is it that keeps us stuck in those old meeting patterns or ways of talking?

Chip Griffin: I mean, I, you know, I think so much of what fails in small agencies comes down to inertia.

And it’s, it’s just, this is how we’ve always done it. We’ve seen, you know, we’ve observed at our past employers that this is sort of I mean, how meetings occur, right? And we feel like, well, this is how meetings happen. This is how we should do them. I think that’s a piece of it. I think another piece of it is that we’re not comfortable letting go.

And that’s particularly true again, in small, I mean, I know that the work that we were talking about this pre show, a lot of the work we do with owners is trying to get them to let go. Yes. And, and that exhibits itself in meetings because you can’t really invite everybody in because you want to control every little aspect of the business.

And if you’re a micromanager, meetings are going to be really rough for everybody.

Brad Farris: You mean I need to listen to what everybody has to say? I get bored. I’m tired of listening to what that person has to say.

Chip Griffin: And you need to accept that you don’t have all the answers. That’s right. And that’s a good thing.

Mm hmm. Because, because then you don’t become so integral to the business that you can’t take a day off, or a week off, or sell the business someday, or whatever. Mm hmm. You, you need to be able to do that. And I, I, so I, I think those are all, and the third I would just say is fear. I think fear holds back a lot of leaders because they’re afraid of what might happen if they don’t do all the talking, if they do let go, if this meeting doesn’t achieve exactly what I think it needs to achieve, and fear is an incredible detriment to success.

Brad Farris: But Chip, I’m an entrepreneur. I eat fear for breakfast. Like, I’m not afraid of anything. Bull. Bull. Say more. Say more.

Chip Griffin: Most entrepreneurs are lying.

I mean, you know, entrepreneurs love to claim to be risk takers and all that. I mean, I’ve done my share of that claim over the years as well. And look, I mean, I certainly think that most entrepreneurs do have higher risk tolerance than most people, but it’s not unlimited. And we all have fears of different things.

It may not be a fear of true failure, but it may be a fear of looking stupid to our subordinates or a fear of looking weak to our clients. Or, I mean, there’s all sorts of things we can be afraid of. And that doesn’t make us, you know, scaredy cats. It just means we have, I mean, if you have no fear about anything, that’s a problem too.

Brad Farris: My, when I was in high school, my speech and debate coach, she would say, if you’re not scared, I don’t want you up there. Fear means we’re doing something important. It’s something that is important to us. And so that fear is actually sharpening your senses, helping you to focus, helping you to be present.

And so fear isn’t a bad thing in every case, but when it keeps us from being genuine and being, and showing up and listening and being curious, When we’re afraid of looking bad or we’re afraid of a decision going a different way. If, if our program for happiness is that everyone is responding to situations the way we want them to.

Well, that’s, that’s going to be a problem. You’re not going to get your best outcomes. If that’s the mindset you’re going in.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I think part of it too, is that, that everybody, including owners hate meetings, which is just completely backwards and wrong. That I, you know, I always have owners come to me and say, well, you know, we’ve got too many meetings.

We’ve got to cut back on the meetings. Maybe, maybe not. You need to have better meetings, but no meetings is not the solution either. Well run meetings can be an incredibly valuable thing. I, I went through a period of time where I was working for a larger employer and I basically just did meetings from sunrise to sunset, but they were by and large productive meetings.

And so, you know, people say, I can’t believe you spent, you know, 12 hours in meetings every day. I’m like, yeah, but that, that was the best way to get my job, the role that I had at that time done. And if I’d been sitting in an office on my own sending emails, that would not have been the best way to achieve them.

So just get better meetings. Don’t, don’t try to randomly eliminate them. And if you go into every meeting saying, I hate meetings, I just want to get out of this meeting. Of course, it’s not going to be run well.

Brad Farris: That’s it. I mean, if you’re, if you’re successful at growing your agency, you’re going to get to a point where your job is to go to meetings.

That is your job. Yes. You need some time to think away from meetings, but, but your job is to coordinate the group of others and to build the clockworks that then delivers the work to the clients. And that is largely done through meetings. And to your point, Chip, if, if you’re, if you have a negative view of meetings, Then you’re probably not going to put the work in to get that meeting to be as productive as it needs to be.

And to make it more productive means everyone’s more engaged in the meeting, we’re getting more out of it, and then we’re going to have fewer of them, because we’re making more progress when we are in a meeting.

Chip Griffin: And to bring this back full circle to the whole concept of leadership, you do not lead by email.

I, I cannot think of a single example where I, I saw an email and said, well, that’s a real example of leadership. I mean, seriously, it’s not, I mean, it’s, it’s, you can be a keyboard warrior and that’s great, but that’s not leadership. Leadership is fundamentally interacting with people. If not in person, at least by video.

And by the way, that’s the other thing I would say about meetings, put people on camera. I know the people zoom fatigue, blah, blah, blah, forget it. Yeah. I mean, I spent decades as I’m sure you did on conference calls. And I can tell you that when you are not on camera, you are not paying attention. It was a fine art form.

Cause you’d be on, I was on conference calls with 20, 30 people at a time. And, you know, inevitably at some point, you know, someone would say, well, Chip, what do you think? And then you, you pause cause you pretend you’re on mute and you know, you, so someone says something, so it jogs your memory about what was being discussed.

And then you come on, you know, You come off of, sorry, I was on mute and you come up with all these wacky excuses for, to get back in. You kind of broke up there. Can you clarify that question? You know, I mean, there are all sorts of techniques, but it was because we were sitting there and we were on email or doing other things or watching the birds out the window or something.

Brad Farris: There’s a reason why there’s a reason why every operating system has solitaire on it.

Chip Griffin: I was just talking about that with someone the other day. Does it still, I mean, I’m sure…

Brad Farris: I don’t know. I haven’t had a windows machine in a long time.

Chip Griffin: I have a windows machine, but I have not, I brought up solitaire, I guess while we’re talking,

Brad Farris: I bet minesweeper is still there too.

Chip Griffin: Oh, solitaire is still, Oh no, I have to download them apparently. So that’s what my computer is telling me. Of course, I’m probably blowing up my connection now. So the rest of the show doesn’t air it’s because I tried to load solitaire. So for you, for you younguns, that was a big problem. We didn’t have Facebook.

We had solitaire.

Brad Farris: When, when I’m talking to a leader about improving their leadership skills. What I want them to be thinking about is how am I representing the company’s values in every exchange that I’m having with, within my organization? And if the way that people are primarily experiencing me is through meetings, then I need to be really thoughtful about how am I representing the company’s values in this meeting?

How can I be more curious? How can I be more helpful? How can we get further in the meeting? If we’re already here, like let’s go as far as we can before we go on to do something else. I absolutely do that. We need to be more thoughtful about the structures we’re using.

Chip Griffin: I think that is a perfect note to end on Brad.

It’s almost like we’ve done these before and you know how to bring it in for a gentle landing for us. So, so hopefully we’ve given you some, some good food for thought on both leadership and meetings and how they interact and you know, with any luck, you’ll go and implement some of those in your own agency today.

Don’t wait till tomorrow, do it today, because all of these changes will make a big difference into the outcomes that you’re seeing both internally and with your clients. So again, my guest today has been Brad Farris, Brad, why don’t you tell folks where they can find you if they are interested in learning more about you and sharing in all the wisdom that you share regularly by email and elsewhere.

Brad Farris: anchoradvisors.com is my, is my home base. If you go to anchoradvisors.com/conversations, you can join an email list that I have there. I just send out one email a week, but several people have told me it’s the one email a week that they look forward to. And then if you go to, on the homepage, there’s a button there for a growth phase assessment, and that helps you to see what stage of growth you’re in and what are the specific actions you need to take to get to the next phase.

Chip Griffin: And I will say I it is not the only email that I look forward to each week and I hope that You know, most of my clients enjoy my emails as well. So, but, but it is a very valuable email and, and you are very good at asking thought provoking questions in those emails, as well, which I think is useful because it’s not just you pontificating, it’s you, it’s you forcing people to think, and I think we have a lot of the answers ourselves.

We just need to take a minute to reflect and it’s true. So go ahead, reflect everybody, go check out, sign up for, for Brad’s list and be sure to come back for the next episode of Chats with Chip with whomever I have on. Cause I don’t know. So with that, I’m Chip Griffin, my guest has been Brad Farris and we are done.

See you next week.

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Author of Start with the Story: Brand-Building in a Narrative Economy, Kristian Alomá knows the value of brand storytelling for agencies and businesses.

In this episode, Kristian shares insights about his agency, Threadline, and the art of crafting a narrative that is relevant, meaningful, and inspiring to the audience. He and Chip cover the evolution of brand stories over time and the need for agencies to live their own brand stories.

Chip and Kristian also discuss the value of a helpfulness mindset for growing a thriving agency. The importance of building trust and evolving with customers is highlighted throughout the conversation.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “Any true entrepreneur is constantly trying to figure things out and hopefully learning, mostly from our mistakes.” * Kristian Alomá: “Probably at no point has owning an agency ever actually lived up to what I thought it would be, but at no point has it ever disappointed me.” * Chip Griffin: “I’ve always loved about the community of entrepreneurs that almost without exception, entrepreneurs are happy to help other entrepreneurs because they have a passion for what they do.” * Kristian Alomá: “Focus on three key elements when it comes to storytelling: is it relevant to your audience? Is it meaningful to your audience? And does it inspire your audience?”

Resources* Connect with Kristian on LinkedIn * Kristian’s book Start with the Story: Brand-Building in a Narrative Economy

About Kristian AlomáKristian A Alomá, PhD, is a seasoned storyteller and strategist who believes in harnessing the power of narrative psychology and social sciences to forge meaningful connections with audiences. Kristian has spent over 20 years enhancing major brands like Harley-Davidson and Coca-Cola and boosting nonprofit outreach with his marketing acumen.His brand strategy firm leverages his PhD in narrative psychology to develop impactful stories that engage stakeholders. A lecturer at the Kellogg SchoolCenter for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University and author of “Start with the Story,” Kristian champions storytelling’s role in brand building, especially for nonprofits. Committed to ethical communication, he contributes to the American Psychology Association and B Lab’s Marketer’s Network. Based in Chicago with his family, Kristian’s passion for global cultures informs his narrative branding expertise.

Related* How agencies can be helpful during the crisis * 5 questions to help determine how well your agency works for you

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I am delighted to have with me today someone who, like me, likes to be helpful, and we’ll actually be talking about helpfulness as one of the things on this episode, and that is Kristian Alomá, the founder and CEO of Threadline.

Welcome to the show, Kristian.

Kristian Alomá: Thank you for having me, Chip. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Chip Griffin: It is great to, to have you here. I think you’re going to offer some, interesting insights, but before we start getting into those insights, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself with the listeners?

Kristian Alomá: Would be happy to. So, I have been, working in the marketing industry for about 20 plus years or so. And, about halfway into that career, I decided to pursue a degree in psychology. So I have a PhD in psychology. with a focus on consumer identity and narrative. And so, those areas have really sort of informed, essentially, sort of, everything I do and think about in regards to marketing, to branding, to brand strategy, customer service, customer engagement.

and on those foundations, I’ve built an agency called Threadline, and also recently wrote a book called Start with the Story that focuses on how we can build, not just brands, but better relationships with our customers. through story, through narrative.

Chip Griffin: So that’s a good jumping off point. And, and, you know, the fact that you are bringing some proper education to this conversation is probably a good thing because my degree is in political science, or as I like to tell people, I have a BA in BS.

and so, you know, we’re, we’re going to hopefully learn something a little bit more than what I have to offer.

Kristian Alomá: I’ll try. They say the PhD stands for piled high and deep. So, well,

Chip Griffin: there you go. So. One way or the other, it’ll be an interesting conversation. so, so, so why don’t we just, you know, talk about your journey a little bit, and then, then we’ll talk, about a couple of other topics.

But so, you know, how did you decide I’m going to start my own agency? I’m going to, I’m going to take this leap and this is the right thing to do.

Kristian Alomá: Yeah. You know, it had always been, I guess, a desire of mine, even at the last company I had my, my hope, my focus, my development was in basically moving into leadership positions, and leading that organization.

but I come from a family of entrepreneurs, small business owners, medium sized agency owners, that sort of thing. And so this sort of idea of, of running an organization and building a company that is really sort of, you know, again, those were all family run businesses and your customers felt like friends of the family.

And you sort of served folks in these really kind of genuine and authentic ways. I knew I wanted to do something like that. And, and, you know, my just educational path took me to, obviously sort of beyond, the sort of home nest, if you will. And I got into areas that my family’s never worked in.

And so I had to figure out how to make that work in a marketing space, right? In an advertising space. And so, at about, seven years ago or so, you know, I’ve, I’ve had this really sort of deep conversation with my wife about these dreams and these ambitions and these aspirations. And, you know, we had the hard conversation of, can we afford to do something like this, right?

To take that leap and not have that guarantee of a paycheck every two weeks. And, and, you know, we felt really good about it. And we felt like, you know, I had built a personal brand in the industry. I had relationships with some really great clients that I knew I could perhaps rely on. and, and that brought me here.

And from there, it’s all been about, you know, how do I build an organization that is not just another agency, right? That’s not just, you know, the thing that I see as a cash cow or an ATM machine that I can just sort of turn on and off or bring in the right staff to sort of generate enough profit for me, but something that like, I see as a legacy for myself.

I see as part of my identity. I see as something that I want my kids to look at and think that’s, that’s the right way to run a business. I want the world to look at and think that’s the right way to run a business. And that’s sort of is where we are. And it’s a, it’s a learning process for sure. I doubt I’m getting it right every day, but I’m figuring it out as I go along.

Chip Griffin: You know, I, I think that’s a great way of describing entrepreneurship generally, right? Any true entrepreneur is constantly trying to figure things out and, and, and hopefully learning, mostly from our mistakes, right? I always say you learn more from failure than from success. success can be just some dumb luck, but failure, there’s probably a reason for it.

And, and if you understand that, then at least you can try to avoid making the exact same mistake again.

Kristian Alomá: Right, right. And you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, really sort of relied on when I became an entrepreneur in, in sort of right in full, how much the sort of entrepreneurial community reached out and, and wanted to share their experiences with me, right?

I think we do learn from our mistakes. We learn from everyone else’s mistakes as well, if they share them with us. And, and that’s what happened. And, and that was actually probably sort of more rewarding than even starting the business because, you know, starting the business is actually pretty kind of uneventful, right? Like all of a sudden you get an email from the government that says you’ve you’ve filed your articles of organization and all of a sudden you have a business. It was harder to buy a house than it was to start a business to be honest. And so, but when, when all these different folks sort of reaching out and having meetings and saying, Hey, this is what I struggled with.

Or if you’ve got questions, reach out that, sort of really kind of made me feel like I was in the right place. and, and inspired me to say, Hey, if there’s anyone else that’s doing the same thing. Cool. I’m here to pay that back as much as I can.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, that, that’s one thing I’ve always loved about the community of entrepreneurs is that almost without exception, entrepreneurs are happy to help other entrepreneurs because they have a passion for what they do.

And I’ve been fortunate to basically, that’s my business now. I just run around telling people all the things I failed at so that, so that they don’t, so that hopefully they don’t have to. you know, if you think back to the conversations that you had with your wife, when you were saying, okay, you know, we can take this leap and this risk.

How has owning an agency lived up to or fell short of the expectations that you have had, that you had at that time? In other words, is it what you thought it was going to be?

Kristian Alomá: I think it was, although I should say what I have discovered is what I want it to be constantly changes. You know, when, when we first had the conversation, I had that picture in my head of like, Oh, we’re going to be this 25 person agency with a cool office and pool tables and all this sort of stuff.

Right. And, you know, you start sort of going through it and you start living it and you start to realize. Maybe 25 isn’t what I want. Maybe I want 12. Maybe I want 10. Maybe I want 5. Right? And, and so I’m sort of constantly using the sort of experience that I’m having as feedback to say, yeah, that maybe wasn’t what I wanted, but it’s still everything I could ask for.

Right? Like it’s, it’s a weird sort of, dynamic that I experienced where I’ve, I’ve never, though at probably at no point has it ever actually lived up to what I thought it would be, at no point has it ever disappointed me. in, in sort of a core way, right? There are challenges, there are struggles, you know, we’ve, we’ve hired and we’ve had to let folks go and things like that, right?

Like all of that sort of comes with it and all of it’s difficult. And, and, you know, you learn a lot about what your skills are and what your weaknesses are. You know, I’ve, I very quickly learned, I don’t know like business finance very well. I’m a marketing guy, right? Like I had to figure out QuickBooks. I was watching YouTube videos for hours at a time trying to figure out how to send my first invoice sort of thing, you know, but, but it’s, it’s, it was still sort of worth it.

And, and it still is worth it to this day, you know, even figuring out now, like how do I develop my coworker in a way that’s meaningful to her and helpful to the business? and you know, so it’s, it’s constantly, it almost, I guess the sort of maybe the core principle of it all is like, it will never be what you thought it would be.

And it very rarely is what you don’t want, I guess. Right. Like you are shaping it, you are guiding it and you will find the path that fits you best in many cases, right? That’s some organizations fail. So that’s the part of sort of that maybe the excitement of entrepreneurship is that it could go wrong, but you’re constantly trying to find the path where it keeps going right for as long as possible.

Chip Griffin: I really appreciate that you framed that in terms of what you wanted from the business and the focus on getting that back from it. Because I think far too many, not just agency owners, but other entrepreneurs have the business driving them and, and they’re just saying, well, you know, what’s the next logical step for the business and not thinking about what it means for them as the owner.

And I always say, there’s no reason to take on all the stress and all the risk of being a business owner if you’re not getting what you want from it. And as you say, that may evolve over time.

Kristian Alomá: You’re, you’re absolutely right. And I think, I mean, I, I didn’t know that at the start for sure. I thought that a successful business was 25 plus people, right.

And, and I thought that, you know, when you had a really successful year, you’re supposed to hire some more folks that next year to help keep that growth going. And, and it’s, it’s through a lot of coaching and a lot of reflection and a lot of conversations with my wife and others that sort of helped me realize.

I don’t have to follow that path. And that’s what sort of really reinforced it, right? When I came in saying I didn’t want to run an agency that was like every other agency, and then I literally set a playbook that was what every other agency did. It was having that moment to say, that’s, that’s completely wrong, right?

Like I need to think about what I want to do, what kind of lifestyle I want to have. Like, I remember the first time I realized I was on the right track was when my wife and I looked at each other one day and we said, do you want to go to Ikea? And I said, sure. Right. Like in the middle of the day, I couldn’t do that.

If I didn’t run this business and if I didn’t run the business the way I wanted to run the business. Right. And so we went to Ikea and I had some meatballs and we walked around.

Chip Griffin: I was just going to ask you, was it for the meatballs or the furniture? Which was it?

Kristian Alomá: It’s almost always for the meatballs for me. So, but you know, but it was, you know, it’s the kind of thing where like you realize this is the path for me, because I remember.

If I had done that in my previous job, I would have been so anxious, even though they probably wouldn’t care, right? But I’ve been so anxious that they’re looking for me on Slack and, you know, they’re trying to wonder where I am and all this sort of stuff. Where here it was like, the projects were coasting, everyone was good.

I had time. I could have maybe, you know, maybe written a blog post or something, but we wanted to go to Ikea, so we went to Ikea, and that was, that was, that was probably more important than the financial performance at the end of the year.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we’re seeing more employees, frankly, insisting on those same kinds of flexibilities and freedom.

you know, as we’ve come out of the pandemic. You know, one of the things that we’ve talked here about is entrepreneurs being willing to help each other. And I know one of the things we’ve talked about in a previous conversation was the helpfulness mindset. And I think that’s, it is a driving force behind a lot of what I do.

you know, frankly, even shows like this, I don’t have sponsors. I don’t generate any revenue off of this directly, but I, you know, my feeling is if I’m out there being helpful, it’s likely to come back to me. So I’d, I’d like to talk to you a little bit about that and, and kind of get your take on it.

Kristian Alomá: Yeah.

I mean, I, I fully subscribe to the idea that if you put value into the world, value will come back. Right. And, I used to advise clients on this when it came to branding, right? Where it was, it was like, don’t worry about counting every penny with your loyal customers because if you’re generous to them, they’re going to reciprocate, right?

They’re going to pay that back in one way or another, whether it’s financially or it’s just because they’re loyal and they’ll stay with you forever. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s, I used to say it’s sort of the golden rule is golden. Because if you treat others the way you want to be treated, gold follows, right?

That’s what makes it so special, is that you will find success by just sort of being a person of value. And, and, and, and it’s interesting because it’s almost obvious, right? That like, if you are providing value to the world, they will at some point acknowledge and appreciate that value. Right. And that is sort of the way we approach like our marketing, our sales is, you know, I don’t go out there trying to convince you that whatever you’re doing now is wrong and that this is the right way to do it.

And everything is broken and we can fix it. I go out there and I tell a client, Hey, would you like this white paper? you know, can I, can I do a training for you on storytelling? Right. I try to provide them value as quickly as I can. Because that’s one, I think the best way to sort of build a relationship is that they recognize you as someone who provides more value than they probably expect.

And two, you know, to kind of bring it back to the beginning of our conversation. That was the way my family ran their businesses, right? Like, If they had a loyal customer that came in, my family used to run a, a sub, a sub shop, right? And, you know, the guy comes in every morning, you have his coffee and his donut ready.

And if he doesn’t have change that day, you ask him to bring it tomorrow, right? It’s, it’s, it’s those sorts of things that I think make a difference. Not only in the way you run the business, make a difference in people’s lives.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think that agency owners who subscribe to that mindset will end up performing better because it increases the number of opportunities that you have.

I mean, one of the things that always pains me is, and this seems to be a thing that comes around periodically on social media, where people say, well, you know, I got someone wanted to have coffee with me to pick my brain. Well, my time is valuable. I need to charge for that. Yeah. And, and I really just frankly don’t understand that because if, if having coffee with someone completely solves their entire problem, they were never going to hire you anyway.

So, so, you know, to me, I, I view those, you know, anytime someone reaches out and said, I’d like to pick your brain, I say yes, because it does two things. First of all, it builds that relationship and who knows where that might lead, but it also it’s market research. And, and as agency people, we should always be out there trying to figure out, you know, what the, what the audience is interested in, what the pain points are of our potential clients.

So to me, we ought to be doing as much of that as we possibly can. And I know our time is valuable, so we can’t just fill our day entirely with these things. But, but you need to be out there and taking advantage of those opportunities in order to grow.

Kristian Alomá: I totally agree. And I think it’s, it’s, you know, that is one of the ways I often sort of approach and frame a lot of these things that I’ll do either for nonprofits if I do them pro bono, or if it’s a smaller or startup organization that I know doesn’t have the budget for like the full package that we would provide. For me that’s an opportunity to sort of test something, to explore something, right? It’s it’s there is this sort of mutual agreement like I’m going to give them, you know, as much as I can offer them. And I’m also going to see if they can talk to me about what more we could do, right? Because because I could turn that into a service, right?

It might work really well and all and I’m and I’m less likely to just try that on a client who has specifically paid me for this one thing to just you know, All of a sudden go in a different direction. But if I have a sort of a little bit of a testing ground, then I can kind of reflect back and say, well, maybe this is something that is valuable to others, right?

That is something I can build into the way we run this project, or maybe it becomes a whole new service in and of itself. you know, we were just, I was just having a conversation with my coworker today and we were trying to define, you know, some of the principles of our business. Like, what do we stand by?

What, what do we believe in? All these sorts of things. And one of the things I said is I think we have to measure success in a couple of different ways when it comes to our engagements. One is did we have a successful delivery of the project? Right? Like we provided them deliverables specifically what they asked for the PDF and the report is in their hands, but then there’s also the success that’s, did they use that? Did that, was that valuable to them? Right. And so I often will tell my, my coworker. You know, if, if we’ve delivered a project and the client is like, Hey, can you hop on another phone call just to download the agency on the insights that you uncovered? I always say yes. Right?

Because if I’m on one more phone call telling them about what we learned, those insights have greater life. The work that we did is surviving within the organization. And the more that I can do that, I mean, again, within boundary, like if they’re asking me to run a full day workshop, then it turns into an actual project, but if it’s a one hour phone call to sort of help them understand what I did, I absolutely want to do that.

Cause that means it’s more valuable, right? That means it’s going to be used more. It’s going to impact their business in a greater way. And if I can make that happen, that’s real success, whether they got the deliverable or not, that’s table stakes, but do they actually use it or does it sit on a shelf because they don’t get it?

Chip Griffin: Right. And the more of those conversations you have, the more it gives you an opportunity to, to practice your storytelling, which is, which is where I think we’ll head next, because, because obviously, you know, a brand storytelling is something that is, near and dear to you. You’ve written a book about it, and I think it’s, it’s important for the work that agencies do for clients, but it’s also important for agencies themselves, because I can’t tell you how many agencies I talk to.

Who don’t have a compelling brand story of their own that they can easily tell. Now they often have it. It’s just buried so deep that because they’re, they’re so interested in coming out and saying, well, we’re a full service marketing agency. What does that mean? Right. That, that basically just means you are like everybody else under the sun.

And so, so you need to have a better way to tell your story because that doesn’t really explain who you are and what you do.

Kristian Alomá: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s true. And it’s, it’s, I think to your point, right? Those, those stories are out there and it’s actually a couple of different things is they probably have created a version of a story that is sitting on a website somewhere, but it’s not, it’s sort of like what they wanted to say, but isn’t what they’re doing, in some way.

And then there’s also, if they haven’t, the story still exists. It’s just the clients have made up the story and it may not be the story that they actually want clients to be telling about themselves. And so, so it is absolutely critical that they sort of really kind of thoughtfully craft what is their narrative and not just to your point where a full service agency does X, Y, and Z. But when you craft a narrative that actually sort of centers your customers’ problems at the heart of that story, then it’s how do you solve that problem?

That’s the story that you start telling that starts making it really relevant, really motivating to the audience that you’re trying to serve. And that’s, that’s sort of is one of the things I tell folks is, you know, you really want to focus on sort of three key elements when it comes to storytelling. Is it relevant to your audience?

Is it meaningful to your audience? And does it inspire your audience? Because you need all three of those things to get behavior. Right. So relevant is that, you know, if you’re just talking about being a full service agency and they don’t recognize themselves in what your story is, they’re just going to ignore the story, right?

It just slides right by. Meaningful, because you have to actually address some problem they have. So you might be talking to people like them, but if you’re not talking to the problems that they experience, then it’s, it’s also sort of irrelevant. And then you’ve really got to set up sort of an emotionality.

And what I mean by that is it’s not that it has to be like this emotional sort of deep, thoughtful sort of story. But does it create this sort of outcome that is greater than anything they have today, right? Do you promise this sort of glorious future to them? Because if you do, the emotional power of that inspires them to act.

They want to move from what is maybe now looking like a very gray drab world that they’re in today towards that sort of technicolor world you’ve painted for them, of being, you know, the hero of the brand, of creating a new market for their audience, for their business, you know, and all this sort of stuff.

You want to sort of paint that picture for them in that story so that they want to move towards that sort of vision you have.

Chip Griffin: And what you’ve just described puts the audience first, right? So it’s not, it’s not the story you want to tell exclusively. It’s the story that your audience is looking to hear, because if you’re not telling them, if you’re not speaking to them, what’s the point?

And I think we, and this is a mistake I’ve made a lot over the years where I, you know, whether it’s thought leadership content or brand content or whatever, I think about it in terms of what I, what resonates with me. And my peers. And you have to remember that your clients are not you or your peers.

They’re coming to you because you have some expertise or abilities that they do not. And so therefore you need to put that translation layer into your story.

Kristian Alomá: Yeah. And it’s interesting because, you know, What you said was, was I think important is that it’s not just what you tell, but what they hear. And, and actually I want to push that even further because it’s not just what you tell, it’s what, what you enable them to tell as a story, right?

They are trying to tell, this is what narrative psychology is all about, is that we’re all trying to create a story that makes sense of our lives or creates a hero out of our lives, right? And it makes us feel like we’re doing something smart or creative or generous or, or brave. And if you can sort of help them tell that story about themselves, they will love you that much more.

Right. And so, so I totally agree. I think, you know, and I, I mean, I fall into the same traps and I’m studying this day in day out where I’m telling stories I want to hear about myself. That I think my clients want to hear about me and not thinking, what does my client want to hear? And, and so, you know, one of the things I’ve really pushed for, sort of in this work is, you know, I grew up with the sort of positioning model as a marketer, right?

The seven questions you ask to sort of define your brand’s or your organization’s position. And, and I realized after years that positioning exercises is either really sort of broken, or it’s just sort of incomplete because almost all of the questions, except for like one – who is our audience? – are about the organization, right?

What are your benefits? What do you do? What marketplace are you in? All that sort of stuff. If we can sort of shift those questions to be about the audience and then where we fit into their world, that’s positioning, right? That’s what, you know, positioning was meant to be is how you fit into the mind of the audience, not how you fit into the world.

And so we have to sort of understand the mind of the audience. We have to understand their perspective, take their shoes. And it’s very difficult to do that from the perspective we have. And it’s a valuable perspective to be the outsider, right? That’s why outside agencies are hired. It’s why consultants are hired. Because we aren’t part of the organization.

And that gives us cred within the organization to sort of push them and to challenge them and to have them think in different ways. But we also then have to ask them or find ways to discover from them. What are they really looking for? What are they trying to accomplish so that we can build our brands to serve them, not to serve ourselves.

Chip Griffin: So one thing I wanted to pick up with before we, run out of time here is you, you mentioned the stories that your audience tells, that your clients tell, and, and that’s distinct from just that you’re telling it. And to me, I think the, the, the piece that that also requires is that whether it’s you or your, your client, if you’re advising them on their storytelling is that you actually have to to do what you say, right? In other words, if I tell a story, you know, that, that I have, you know, that I am a, a great physical specimen with lots of hair and, you know, all that kind of stuff that you’re going to take one look at me and be like, well, that’s kind of a weird story for you to be telling.

Kristian Alomá: Yeah. I mean, you just don’t have hair, but you’re a great physical specimen. I, I,

Chip Griffin: okay. Yeah. Maybe, maybe I need to work on the focus here a little bit, but anyway, it’s fine. The. But the point is, and in agency terms, if you say you’re a full service marketing agency, and yet you’re not good at doing paid, and you don’t know what SEO is, and you can’t do design work, so really you’re just a PR agency, and I don’t mean just because I love PR agencies, I ran one, you have to be consistent with what you’re actually doing and make sure that you’re living your story, not just telling it.

Kristian Alomá: Yeah, it’s completely true. And I think, you know, my, my old boss used to tell the story of RadioShack. And RadioShack used to have a tagline for those that maybe are that this dates me. I’m sure. Right. RadioShack used to be all of the electronics you could ever want. I think they eventually became the Shack, after a while, things like that.

But their tagline used to be…

Chip Griffin: I loved going and just browsing.

Kristian Alomá: Oh God, it was my favorite place on earth, right? their tagline used to be, you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. Right. And if anyone had has been or had been before they closed down to a Radio Shack, you realize that you had questions, but the staff very rarely had answers.

They just couldn’t train their staff, especially in the later days that were 18, 19, maybe younger in all the technology that they had in that store. So they were, they had the right story that people wanted to hear, but they couldn’t live up to that story and that really sort of broke the, their brand in many ways.

And so, you’ve really got to make sure, like you said, you, you can live that story. You can deliver on that story because that’s at the heart of then building a trusted relationships, right? These stories aren’t just for the sake of stories and communicating. These stories are for building relationships.

and these relationships have to be built on trust. And trust is about reliability, capability and accountability, right? So can you do the thing that you’re saying you’re going to do? That has to be step number one. And if you’re saying, and I learned this very early when I started the agency, I had like 10 services on my website about what I could do because I thought I don’t want to say no to anybody, right? I don’t want anyone to come and think I can’t help them. But then I realized I had so much that, one, they thought there’s no way I do all of these things, or two, they would ask me if I could do that, and I just really had to kind of like, kind of try to direct them to the thing I could do that I thought was going to be more successful.

So, so it really just sort of burnt me on both ends. When I started just saying, listen, I do these three things. I do them very well, right? I can give you advice on other things, but I do these three things. The audience knew what I did. I knew how to deliver on what I did. And the relationship was then just deepening and building because I had that capability.

And when you have that capability and you’re doing that work, you have that reliability that you can, you can repeatedly do it and you can deliver on it in the very same way in a very high caliber way. Right? and then you’ve got that accountability so that when they need you, if things go wrong, if things shift, you know how to react to that.

You know how to respond to that. You know how to put it back on course if you need to. And that’s what builds trust with folks because they don’t want to assess another agency. They don’t, as much as we might think it, clients don’t like going through the RFP process again, right? They don’t want to build a new or find a new agency of record.

They want to rely on the agency they have. Because they’ve built trust and trust is expensive as far as time is concerned, emotion is concerned, engagement is concerned. And they don’t want to go through that whole process again. So they want to keep that sort of shortcut. They want to keep that relationship as much as they can.

And you’ve got to, you’ve got to sort of fill your part in that as well as an agency owner.

Chip Griffin: You know, I think the other thing, your, your RadioShack example underscores is the importance of evolving your story over time, because I do believe that that used to be true of Radio Shack, that they used to have the answers.

I mean, when I went in there in the early 1980s, you know, the clerks in there, they absolutely knew their stuff. But then, as you say, as technology came along, as it became harder to, you know, to find those kinds of retail workers, it no longer was true, but they did not evolve their story. And so, just as your business is evolving, your story needs to evolve.

Kristian Alomá: Totally. I mean, that’s what Domino’s has done on the flip side of that, right? Domino’s quality business performance were all dropping because they were really focusing on, reducing cost and delivering as fast as possible. And, you know, they had the whole basically apology campaign that was there to like reframe everything.

And now their business is really picking up right. And, and it’s, it’s growing and it’s growing faster than I think anyone expected because they have evolved that story, and now they’re trying to deliver against that story, sorry for the pun, on, on delivering quality pizza, on better ingredients, better tasting pizza, making the, the customer experience more user friendly through the app, through the store, all that sort of stuff, and it’s, and it’s working for them, right?

And, and that’s what I think is important about stories. You know, we oftentimes think we have to brand on an emotion. Emotions are transient, right? Like I might feel great today and tomorrow I feel awful. If we brand ourselves around stories. Stories are chronological. Stories are alive, especially the kinds of stories we’re talking about.

So they can shift. They can adapt, right? So if you’re a brand that’s serving parents with infants, right? You also want to be able to shift when those infants become toddlers and those toddlers become, sort of, you know, tweens and teens and things like that for those parents. And so your story can shift with your customers as well, or shift with the industry, shift even with your own desires, right?

What do you, what kind of business do you want in the next five years? You can, you don’t have to drop everything you’ve done. Just look to see how that story can move in that direction.

Chip Griffin: Well, this has been a great conversation. We could continue this story for a long time, but unfortunately we’ve reached the end of today’s episode.

So before we go, though, if someone is interested in learning about you or Threadline or the book, where should they go?

Kristian Alomá: The best place to find me is on LinkedIn, or through the website threadline.co there’s no M at the end, just. co. and the book is available, basically everywhere books are sold online at this point, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those different places.

So, if you like it, reach out to me, let me know. I’d love to hear. otherwise if you don’t like it, I guess tell someone else. but.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. We’ll include all those links in the show notes as well for the convenience of listeners. So if you’re on the treadmill or something right now, you’re safe.

You don’t need to stop and try to write a note. It’ll be in the show notes and you can just click on it and find it. So, with that, Kristian, thank you for your time today. It’s been a great conversation. I think you’ve offered a lot of practical insights for agency owners. And, I would love to have you back again sometime in the future to, to continue this storytelling.

Kristian Alomá: Thank you, Chip. I appreciate it. And I enjoyed being on the show.

Chip Griffin: And thank you all for listening to the latest episode of Chats with Chip, and I look forward to having you all back to hear my next episode.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Nicholas Petroski, founder of Promethean Research.

Chip and Nick discuss digital agency salaries and the findings of a recent research report on the topic. They delve into the importance of balancing billable hours, the impact of pricing on agency profitability, and the role of benefits and stipends in attracting and retaining talent.

They also touch on the need for standardization of job titles in the agency industry.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “You need to be thinking about pricing and salaries hand in hand if you’re going to be running a healthy agency.” * Nicholas Petroski: “You’re not going to compete with the large tech companies on salary. The lifestyle that you offer for your employees, that’s what you’re competing with.” * Chip Griffin: “I encourage owners to think as early as possible in their evolution, even when they’re just hiring one or two employees, to start thinking about the hierarchy of titles and how you’re going to compensate them so you don’t create a problem down the road.” * Nicholas Petroski: “If you’re pushing that utilization rate to crazy high numbers, either A, they’re lying to you. Or B, you’re working them so hard that they’re not going to be doing quality work anymore.”

Resources* 2024 Digital Services Salary Guide (use discount code “SAGA” to purchase the guide for $100) * Connect with Nick on LinkedIn * Repeatable Revgen Guide for Digital Agencies * Digital Agencies & AI Report * Digital Agency Industry Report * Agency Revgen Review Service

About Nicholas PetroskiNicholas runs Promethean Research, a boutique consultancy that helps digital agencies grow more reliably with higher margins and simpler operations. Since 2015, he’s been helping digital firms better understand their industry and chart more effective paths to success. Prior to co-founding Promethean, he worked as an equity analyst at a Wall St. firm where he covered the enterprise software and semiconductor industries. Before that, he spent a bit of time in corporate finance. When he’s not in the office, you can find him backpacking around the Midwest or making fancy firewood in his woodshop.

Related* CWC 26: Nick Petroski of Promethean Research * The rising salary demands of agency employees * Be smart about titles at your agency

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I am delighted to have with me today, a repeat guest, Nick PetroskI of Promethean Research. Welcome to the show, Nick.

Nicholas Petroski: Thanks so much for having me again.

Chip Griffin: It is great to have you back in particularly because we’re going to talk today about agency salaries, something that I know I get asked about all the time. What’s the right amount to pay my account manager or my project director or whatever the, the role is. And you’ve led some great research on this, just recently. And we’re going to talk about some of your findings and, and, let people know what they would get if they actually were able to download the entire report.

So before we do that, though, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yours or tell listeners rather, I know lots about you, but tell listeners a bit about yourself and Promethean Research.

Nicholas Petroski: For sure. so I’m, I’m Nick, I run Promethean. we do, I try to do the best research in the world on this stuff.

I don’t know if I do, but I like to think that I do. The digital agency industry as a whole is, is really interesting to me. And so I, I’ve just been asking questions since, you know, 2015 and apparently that’s led to a bunch of people looking to me for answers. So it’s worked really well. I do consulting work for, for, digital agencies.

So I help with strategy and kind of guiding how you should position yourself, how you can build, you know, repeatable rev gens is like the big one that I’ve been doing recently. Kind of anything on the strategy side though. And it’s been very interesting. And I love digging into, you know, different shops and seeing what they’re doing.

And because weirdly, when I walked into this, everything I thought, Oh, they’re a digital agency is a digital agency and they’re all the same. Yeah. This can’t be too hard. And they’re not, it is the exact opposite of that. So each one is, is really different.

Chip Griffin: They’re all very different. And I would argue that they ought to be because they’re all reflections of their owners and, and, and ought to be, because as I always tell people, there’s no reason to be running your own agency, if you’re not getting what you want from it. And that means that you have to structure it differently than you or I might, because we’re looking for different things.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely. That’s perfect advice. I love it.

Chip Griffin: So, so you’ve done this research on salaries. Tell me a little bit about what the, the research entailed, and then we’ll start talking about some of the findings.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah. So we, we get this, this is the third time running this. and before I start, I want to say thank you for participating in this one.

Your community was awesome. You know, getting more people involved in this and it only increases that salary transparency. So I wanted to say thank you to you and your community first.

Chip Griffin: Well, thank you. They are a great community and always willing to step up and they’re hungry for information. So if, if it means they have to give some to get some, they’re open to doing that.

Nicholas Petroski: That’s how it works. We’re all sharing here, right? So the research, it’s the third time we’re doing it. And, we really came out of just wanting more transparency around this. You know, you, you have different instances of, of large, recruiting firms and large salary shops, or large shops that will provide some salary data, but it was always kind of hard to tell. Like when you’re looking at those salary ranges displayed, is that what agencies are really paying? Like, what are their costs associated with this? What are they, what are they really paying that developer? and so that’s really what this was born out of back in 2018, I believe.

And so this was our third episode of it. And, it really, it’s just increasing transparency. So we, we go out and we survey, a bunch of different firms and we ask them to just send over their salary data and their benefit data. And then we crunch all the numbers and it results in, in what I think is a, is a really transparent guide on not just what to pay different roles, but also kind of the, the overarching trends of what’s happening in how you compensate your team, which is arguably more important.

Chip Griffin: And you do take a look at all of the levers of compensation, whether that’s salary, whether that’s bonuses, benefits, time off all of those kinds of things, and I think it is important to take a look at the whole picture, because particularly today, employees, I think, are coming in and expecting not just the salary to be good, but also to have some of these other benefits.

I mean, you even look at things like the difference between hybrid and in-person, agencies and, and remote and, and all these different things. You look at, the number of hours billable versus non-billable. There’s just a wealth of data in there to go along with, you know, the expected thing you would see in a salary survey, which is a long list of titles and what the ranges are for those roles.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, absolutely. And it was super important to take that into consideration because when we did the first one, we did, but I got a lot of questions that were very detailed that I couldn’t answer. So I’m glad we’re on iteration number three now to be able to answer those a little more completely.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and like anything, you learn as you go, right?

Nicholas Petroski: Exactly. It gets better, hopefully, right?

Chip Griffin: So what were some of the big takeaways that you had from this edition of the survey?

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah. So, the biggest one is that the, the massive salary growth that we saw in the last survey, has cooled. So last time we did it was in 2022 and we looked at changes from 2019 to 2022 and obviously something big happened in that time period.

And so part of that was a massive pull forward in digital transformation spending and digital marketing spending. What that resulted in was a huge fight for talent and that was kicking salaries up. I believe the average was 25 percent salary increase from 2019 to 2022. Which is just insane. It’s very difficult for a digital agency owner to, to eat that kind of salary increase.

And so what we saw in this one, we specifically checked for this again, was that the, the average growth rate of salaries between 2022 and 2024, was only 7%. So that’s kind of like more in line with, with typical raises and inflation and, you know, cost of living upgrades, that kind of stuff. So it’s much more manageable, especially when you factor in, you know, some of the other work we do is around pricing and price increases.

And so when you factor in the price increases that agencies were able to get in that time period. It kind of offsets, or more than offsets, this increase in salary.

Chip Griffin: Well, and I think that it’s important to be thinking of, of pricing and salaries together because part of the reason why agencies feel so stressed when, when salaries go up is in part because many agencies, not all certainly, but many have traditionally underpaid their employees versus what they might be able to earn somewhere else, in part because they are not pricing high enough in order to generate a profit if they were to pay what are truly fair market salaries for the talent that they’re getting. And then now you’ve got a situation where you had large salary growth.

Now you still got pretty strong. I mean, 7 percent is still pretty strong in a two year window. It’s not nothing. Yet the prices the agencies are charging are not going up at anywhere near that kind of rate. And so, you know, you do need to be thinking about the two hand in hand if you’re going to be running a healthy agency.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the things that we were telling people, I’m sure you were telling them too, two years ago was don’t compete on, on salary. You know, you’re not going to compete with the large tech companies on what to pay a developer. You’re just, you can’t. So you, you have to build, and this is, this goes into like the benefits and the stuff you brought up earlier.

PTO, number of hours you’re expected to bill, all that kind of stuff, that lifestyle that you offer for your employees and for your team, that’s what you’re competing with. It’s not the salary. You can’t. It’s impossible.

Chip Griffin: Right. Well, I think it’s particularly acute for digital agencies when you’re talking about, you know, development talent, right?

Because that’s just, there is a lot more of the, the frothy tech sector spending that has been going on. It’s certainly been cooling. And we’ve seen layoffs from some of the the major players, but you know, it’s still, they’re always going to be able to offer more just because of the nature of, of what they do.

But I would say that it’s true across the agency community and not just in, in digital spaces that, you know, salary is only one piece of the puzzle. And, you know, if you’re a small agency and you’re competing against on the PR side, say an Edelman, they are likely going to be offering higher salaries, but you as a smaller agency have other things that you have to offer or should be able to offer. And so thinking about the entire package that you’re offering your potential employee or to retain your existing talent is important.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely.

Chip Griffin: So I want to talk about this since we started wading into pricing and all that kind of stuff.

You mentioned billable hours, and I was, I found the slide in the report on billable hours to be really interesting because if you listen to a lot of our fellow agency advisors out there, they will spew things like, you know, you’ve got to try to get to 85 percent billable or 90 percent billable for some of your junior employees.

And I always tell them that that’s just rubbish. That you’re, first of all, I, you shouldn’t be managing towards utilization rates. If that’s how you’re managing your team. you’ve completely lost the plot. And so, you know, I can show you plenty of agencies that have really high utilization rates are not profitable, don’t have happy customers, don’t have happy employees.

So you need to look at the bigger picture. But I was really fascinated because across the board in digital agencies, they’re only what, about three quarters billable? Something like that on average, I think it was about 30 hours a week and different roles were even less than that, but that’s the average across the board, counting everybody.

So, you know, you need to really be mindful of that when you’re thinking about utilization rates and not go overboard.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely. Right. It’s a, I think you, you captured it really well. It’s a, it’s gotta be a balance because if you’re, if you’re pushing them into that. 80 90 percent you know, utilized. there’s just not enough time for any kind of real thought work.

Like you, I heard it put well when AI kind of hit the scene last year. Like if you do push your kind of menial tasks off onto AI and you can kind of push those menial tasks off onto even, you know, more entry level employees. You’re the challenges that you’re working with that you’re thinking about every day and constantly throughout the day are more difficult.

And if you try to just think about hard things for eight hours a day, you’re gonna burn out. So you if you’re pushing that utilization rate to, you know, crazy high numbers, you’re either A, they’re lying to you. Like those aren’t real utilization, right? Or B, you’re working them so hard that they’re not going to be doing quality work anymore.

They’re not gonna be happy doing it and clients aren’t gonna be happy getting it.

Chip Griffin: Right. And I think more often it does come down to your employees will just lie to get you the number that you want to see, because, I mean, I was a junior account executive many, many moons ago, and I know that I had certain expectations from the owner of the agency that I worked for, and she laid out, you know, how much time we should be spending on certain clients and certain activities.

And so myself, along with all the other employees, I can guarantee you our time sheets always fell within those ranges. Absolutely. I can also guarantee you that in no way reflected what the actual reality was. Because if we didn’t put more time on certain clients, they would yell at us for not getting the job done.

They would complain to our bosses who would then tell us we needed to get the job done, but we also couldn’t spend more time on it. So we just told everybody what they wanted to hear and tried to get through each day as we could. And that is how employees function. It’s not because they’re evil. It’s because they’re human.

Nicholas Petroski: Exactly. The incentives don’t line up for them. They don’t. They don’t own a piece of the company. And even if they do, they don’t own a big enough piece for it to make a, you know, difference in their life.

Chip Griffin: Right. And so I was, I was encouraged by this part of the survey because it suggests that the, the people who were submitting the data to you were being completely honest.

Nicholas Petroski: I think so.

Chip Griffin: At least as best they could understand because otherwise they would be, you know, reporting all sorts of inflated numbers to you to feel good about themselves, right? So, I mean, that is encouraging that they seem to be going down that path.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, I thought it was really good. you know, looking at like some of the individual ones, like I think the highest one, where is it?

The highest one was a designer that, you know, on average, the designers were expected to bill 31 hours a week. you know, and then your lowest one was in biz dev and sales, which was only expected to bill 7. 8 hours per week . So you have this kind of really, like you said it earlier, you have this really wide, swath between, you know, what type of role they’re in and what type of billable they’re expected to do.

But nobody, even the, the designer at 31 hours a week, that’s not insane. Like that’s not breaking anybody.

Chip Griffin: No, no, that’s not, that’s not grinding them down. And, and it, and it seems to suggest that it accurately reflects that they do spend time in staff meetings and you know, doing other things and, and contrary to popular belief, all meetings are not bad.

And so, you know, when I talk to an agency owner and they say, we have too many meetings, I need to cut back on the meetings. No, you need to have better quality meetings. You don’t necessarily, it might be less, but it’s the quality of meetings that sucks. Not that the meetings themselves are occurring.

There you go. So, you know, obviously owners care about how much they make. So, you know, there was a, there’s a good section in the report where you address what the owners themselves are taking home. And I was incredibly encouraged by it because I mean, A, it backed up what I generally tell people, which is always good when, when my gut and experience and all that kind of match up with the reality of the data that you’re producing.

But it showed that the owners of small and medium sized agencies made more than owners of large agencies. And it, it isn’t… it, the important thing to take away from that in my mind is it’s not all about grabbing as much revenue as you can, because the more revenue does not necessarily mean the more money in your pocket, right?

Nicholas Petroski: That’s absolutely it. It’s all about what you said it right at the beginning. It’s like, what, what do you want to design your agency to do? What does this vehicle, where does this vehicle need to take you? And then what should that look like to take you there? And if, if it’s, you know, a really nice comp package, maybe stay in that medium or small agency size.

Like the challenges you’re going to deal with are, they only get bigger. Like they only have larger numbers that tie to them. So you might as well deal with less risk and enjoy it.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, and the thing is too, I mean, you know, small, small owners do still outpace. Super solos or studios or whatever you want to call the, the, just a couple of employee agencies.

So, you know, there is an advantage to getting at least a little bit bigger from that size. But, but you do hit a point of diminishing returns where, you know, you, you do just have larger scale problems to deal with. and I think it’s, it’s important not to be afraid of some growth, but it shouldn’t be only growth that you’re focused on.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, absolutely.

Chip Griffin: So as we, as we think about the actual salaries and the data that, you know, those, the tables in there. Some roles, there was a really wide spread between high and low. I mean, dramatically. Sometimes it was a two X difference between lowest paid and highest paid in it, and some, some, they’re a little bit tighter.

Do you have any observations about those or, you know, things that, that you take away from it?

Nicholas Petroski: One thing that, that really stuck out was how creative, creative agencies are with job titles.

Chip Griffin: There were certainly a lot of them.

Nicholas Petroski: There were so many and so many of them were different variations of guaranteed the same job description.

Absolutely. So I, in looking through it, that was my big takeaway was, maybe some standardization here could be helpful. I see this a lot when you go out to hire, when agencies go out to hire and they say, we’re looking for a business, developer or someone in business development and to the, the outside world and other industries that is communicated as someone who’s going to deal with primarily partnerships. In the agency world they mean that they want a salesperson. And so you have this, that’s a, the most common example, but you have this kind of thing where they’re asking for certain job titles, and what they mean is different than what’s being communicated out there into the larger world. And then they say, well, I’m having a little trouble hiring.

I’m having trouble filling these roles. and if there’s some standardization there with the, you know, broader industries or other industries, I think it could help out pretty significantly.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and, I mean, you’ve got to start with standardizing within your agency. I mean, one of the things that I observe a lot of times is that even within an agency, they don’t have good standardization and they don’t have, you know, consistent salary bands based on title.

And you just, it’s natural. You start small and you just kind of start throwing around titles. And you’re like, Oh, this sounds good. That sounds good. This is what I need to bring in this person. And it’s all of a sudden you look at an org chart and you’re like, this just doesn’t make any sense. Right. And so I always encourage owners to think as early as possible in their evolution, even when they’re just hiring one or two employees to start thinking about the hierarchy of titles and, and how you’re going to compensate them. So you don’t create a problem down the road. Cause I’ve seen too many mid sized agencies really struggling to try to correct this many years down the road.

And it’s really hard when you’ve got a lot of existing people, because nobody wants to take a salary cut. Nobody wants to have their, their title diminished, but if you don’t do some of those things, then you’re going to be in a position where you have, great distortion within your ranks.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely.

That’s a great point. I think it’s pretty synonymous with tech debt. So if you have, you know, HR debt is essentially what it is. I don’t know if there’s any firms out there fixing this. If there are, please shoot me an email because I have a lot of challenges, a lot of clients with challenges in this area.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, essentially what you have to do is you just set it right going forward and then hopefully through attrition you can get to a rational place. I mean, that’s, that’s usually the safest way of, of dealing with it. There isn’t some great magic wand that you can use. but I, I think that, you know, the other thing that that tells you, because you have that kind of lack of standardization across the agency industry is you need to be a little bit careful.

Even when you’re consuming this data, there’s a lot of good data in here, but you also need to think about it in context and understand that your junior designer may not be the same as someone else’s junior designer. For titles like account manager, I mean, that’s all over the map, right? You know, an account manager in one place is like junior on the totem pole, but I’ve seen agencies where the account manager is like the boss of things.

You just don’t know. And a lot of it comes from what the owner’s background was, you know, what, how they had hierarchy of titles in some other agency. And so that’s what they inherit. There’s so many things that go into it. So be careful about saying, well, this data says specifically that, you know, my senior designer should be between X and Y and mine.

It may still be okay.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely. And you still, you have. You have individual aspects of that too. Like it’s not just the company, it’s the, you know, how many years of experience do they have? Are they designing in the right world that you’re in? Like, do they have experience doing stuff for product design?

If you do product design, you know, it’s very, it’s very individualized, which just further complicates it. I guess there’s, I guess the big takeaway is there’s no, there’s no easy way to just go about solving the salary challenge.

Chip Griffin: No, but I mean, it does. I think it is helpful when you sit down and you look at it and you’ll say, okay, well.

Are my folks at least in the ballpark here? And, and if they’re not in the ballpark, then, then you start asking, well, why are they not? Are my employees markedly higher or markedly lower than the data that, that you’re sharing? And if you can explain it, then that’s fine. If you can’t, then that’s where you need to keep digging until you can find the explanation for why you have deviated so much from the norm.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Chip Griffin: And then ultimately you need to take your own data and figure out, are you actually profitable? Right. You know, if you, if you’re paying your designer $90,000 a year, and so that comes out to whatever it is from an hourly cost basis for you, are you pricing their work high enough that you’re still turning a profit on it?

And if so, it kind of doesn’t matter whether they’re within the market guidelines or not. Because you’re making money.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah. You said it right at the beginning. You cannot, you know, distance this from the pricing conversation. Right. If you’re up at the higher end on all of your salaries, well, that’s fine if you’re pricing appropriately for that higher quality, like theoretically higher quality work.

You know, you, you should make your margin there. If you’re, if your pricing’s horrible though, and you’re 10 percent higher. And your standard, you know, cost of goods sold is, is 55%. Well, all of a sudden you’re losing 5 percent on your bottom line. Right. And that’s, that’s a hit. That’s a third of your average margins.

Chip Griffin: Right. And geography isn’t as important as it used to be, but it used to be, I mean, if you had an employee at a New York agency, they were naturally going to be paid higher than someone here in New Hampshire. I mean, that just, the cost of living is so much higher. You’re just not, even a junior employee, you’re not going to get to be able to work for you in Manhattan for the same that you could get them to work for in New Hampshire.

Now, obviously with a lot of folks working remotely and, and all of that, it’s a little bit less of a factor, but it still matters.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we back in, you know, 2019 when we first did this, I think those differences were pretty stark. I did. We didn’t get enough data from people in like the direct high cost of living cities to really do like a blanket kind of, you know, this do this in the report for, for every instance.

But what I did find was that if you’re, if you do live in a high cost of living area, or if you’re hiring from a high cost of living area, add 10 to 20 percent to whatever the base, like the average salary line is, and that’ll get you, that’ll, convert or roughly convert this.

Chip Griffin: Before we’re completely out of time here, I do want to touch base on, you know, one of the other sections of this report, and that’s the benefits. We’ve alluded to a little bit before, but in the benefits section, were there things that jumped out to you? Any key observations that you’d like to share with listeners about the benefits section of the data.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah. It overall, the benefits, so this was very much a US based report. so we can talk about things like healthcare and, and, things along those lines, stuff they don’t have to worry about in other areas. benefits, they remained largely stable. There weren’t any kind of major deviations from prior years.

So it, it makes me, it’s encouraging to see that, you know, even though 2023 was maybe a very rough year for a lot of agencies, they maintained providing, you know, a good kind of well rounded compensation package for their teams. They didn’t deviate largely from, from the norm. So it is, it’s nice to see that, you know, you, it’s very easy to start saying, okay, well we’re going to cut a bunch of benefits or stipends or, or whatever.

And if you do that, you’re setting yourself up for longer term challenges.

Chip Griffin: And I think that’s another area of the report that’s very beneficial is it talks about, you know, what some typical stipends are, which is not, You know, a lot of agencies are like, well, you know, should I give some kind of a conference stipend or home office stipend or these kinds of things?

And you walk through in the report what some typical numbers are for agencies, at least you have a starting point to think about. On those things.

Nicholas Petroski: Well, you like, you want to be competitive, right? You, ultimately you’re providing a certain lifestyle and a certain amount of compensation. And part of that is those, you know, do they get to go to various conferences?

That can, that can be a sizable perk for certain people.

Chip Griffin: Right. And generally not a huge hit to the agency’s budget. Right. Right. I like agencies offering them because it’s not a huge amount of money. And if you do it with very few strings attached, you can’t just give it, you know, willy nilly, but at the same time, you should really empower the employee to make their own decisions about how that gets spent.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, like if I look at the different stipends available, you know, education stipend on average is right around 900 bucks. you can go and get some decent training for that. Like you’re not going to get all your certifications paid for, obviously, but right. That’s a good start. Same thing with the conference stuff.

Conferences did take a little bit of a hit since last time, but, it’s still a few hundred dollars. that’s enough to usually go to a conference a year. and it, it obviously varies by role. So. Dig into the data, but right.

Chip Griffin: And even if you don’t look at the numbers, at least it gives you some ideas of the kinds of things that you might be thinking about as an agency, particularly if you don’t offer any kind of stipends to your team right now, it helps you think about, Oh, is that something that I should offer?

And you know, it’s not even the dollar amount. It’s should you have it? How would you use it? How would your team respond to it? And so it hopefully will open your mind as you read through this report for some of those things.

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Chip Griffin: So if someone is interested in getting a copy of the full report, where should they go?

Nicholas Petroski: Yeah, it’s, I think there’s gonna be a link in the show notes, but check out, prometheanresearch.com. all of our research is, is pretty prominently displayed on our, on our homepage and under our Insights tab. I, you know, you can get obviously this full report there, and then there’s a bunch of others that we, we’ve published over the years as well.

Chip Griffin: And as you say, there will be a link in the show notes along with the discount code. So I would encourage all of you to check that out and, pick up a copy for yourself and, and, you know, supplement all of the spouting that I do on my various shows and in my articles, with some actual hard data from Nick and his team.

So, again, my guest today has been Nick PetroskI from Promethean Research. I appreciate your time. I appreciate the research that you’ve done here, and I look forward to having you back again to talk about some more data in the future.

Nicholas Petroski: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

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Xaña Winans of Golden Proportions Marketing says that resiliency may be her superpower, and that’s a characteristic many agency owners needed to tap into as the pandemic upset existing business structures.

Like many owners, Xaña has kept her team remote. She shares some of her experience about how she made that transition and manages a team that is no longer full-time in the office. She talks about some of the challenges, as well as opportunities that creates.

In this conversation, Xaña also talks about how she started with a clear focus with the agency — which she has maintained — but also some of the evolution she has made along the way.

Key takeaways* Chip Griffin: “Accidental agency owners are still the owners of the business and they should be designing something that actually works for them and gives them the financial satisfaction, the psychological satisfaction, and the happiness of being their own boss.” * Xaña Winans: “A big part of it is for us to both find a voice in how to run this agency. Because I can’t do it without them, but they can’t do it without me either. * Chip Griffin: “Don’t hire that diamond in the rough if you really need the diamond today, because diamonds take a long time to create. * Xaña Winans: “I’ve had to remind myself that as an agency owner, vacations are not an indulgence. They’re actually a necessity.”

Resources* Golden Proportions Marketing * Connect with Xaña on LinkedIn

About Xaña WinansXaña Winans is the founder and CEO of Golden Proportions Marketing, the first strategy based, full-service marketing company exclusively for dentists. Xaña founded and built Golden Proportions Marketing on the belief that dentists deserved a goal-driven, strategic approach to marketing. Transparency, results, and return on investment are the driving forces behind the work her agency provides.

Xaña teaches her audiences the foundational principles of marketing, as well as the actionable strategies necessary to turn brand awareness into actual new patients. She believes that doctors should understand the patient journey in order to attract, capture, and keep new patients in the practice. Audiences will learn valuable internal marketing strategies and leave empowered to better manage and maximize their marketing relationships.

Xaña has been an invited speaker to numerous national dental meetings including GNYDM, Yankee, and the AACD as well as numerous state meetings and study clubs. She has been guest faculty for both Pankey and LVI, teaching marketing to thousands of dentists over her 30 year career. She and her husband Dr. Larry Winans are parents to Ryder and Savannah. Outside of dentistry, they have founded, manage, and market a regional craft brewery.

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I’m delighted to have with me an agency owner who I think will be able to share a lot from her experience that will relate to a lot of you who are listening. My guest today is Xaña Winans, the founder of Golden Proportions Marketing. Welcome to the show.

Xaña Winans: Thanks for having me, Chip.

Chip Griffin: And hopefully I didn’t butcher your name too badly because I was thinking about it the whole time. In any case so before we dive into talking about your experiences as an agency founder and some of the evolutions that you’ve had over the years, why don’t you just share a little bit briefly about yourself and the agency to set the table for listeners.

Xaña Winans: Sure. So I founded my agency coming up on 23 years ago by accident, which I think most agency owners are. My husband is a dentist, or actually a former dentist. He now brews beer for a living. But when he was a dentist, I did marketing for his practice and it started getting noticed. And all of a sudden other dentists were calling me.

And so that is literally all we do is marketing for dental practices around the country. So we’re a full service agency, lots of digital these days, but just one thing that we speak solid is teeth.

Chip Griffin: I, I’m still trying to wrap my mind around going from being a dentist to brewing beer, but…

Xaña Winans: It makes him really, really happy.

And that’s all that matters.

Chip Griffin: You know, and that’s, that’s actually a good thing to touch on here because I think that 1 of the things a lot of agency owners forget is that they may have been an accidental agency owner, but they still, they are the owner of the business and they should be designing something that actually works for them and it gives them the financial satisfaction, the psychological satisfaction, and the happiness of, you know, being their own boss. And if you’re not getting that, change something, right? You can be miserable working for someone else.

Xaña Winans: Absolutely. I mean, I don’t know any agency owner that hasn’t been through that cycle.

Any business owner that hasn’t been through that cycle. I’ve hit it a couple of times and still standing so far.

Chip Griffin: Right. So you know, let’s, let’s talk about, I mean, you mentioned being an accidental owner, you know, did there come a point where you sort of said, you know, I really want to grow this into a real business as opposed to just, you know, Hey, we, I picked up some business along the way that most accidental owners are just sort of, you take a contract here or there.

And at some point you have that moment where you’re like, aha, this is a real business. What, what was it for you that, that made you make that decision?

Xaña Winans: Honestly, I think it was like that from the beginning. I, I was very fortunate in that I fell into healthcare marketing right at the time where it was losing its stigma because, you know, back in the day, if, if you had to advertise a healthcare practice there was something wrong with you. So I just managed to catch that perfect moment in time where there was a lot of demand for it. And I honestly really just rode the wave. There wasn’t a point in time where I ever imagined, you know, that this was kind of a temporary thing. It was just full steam ahead from day one.

Chip Griffin: So as, as you evolved through the business you know, we came across the pandemic. And I know you made a big decision coming out of the pandemic as to how you would run the business. So why don’t you share a little bit about that decision? Because I know it’s, it’s something that a lot of owners have, have confronted when they had you know, that event in front of them and an opportunity to change things.

Xaña Winans: So before COVID hit I had this beautiful 1890s farmhouse that we completely renovated. We’re in central Pennsylvania. All of my team was local. They come in every day. We’d have this, you know, great dynamic, but at the same time, all the struggles that happen when you’ve got a bunch of people in each other’s faces all day long. COVID comes along.

Our governor says, if you can work from home, you must work from home. And literally it went from like one day, everyone was in the office to the next day they were never ever there again. So the governor told us we had three months that we were all required to work from home.

And along the way, it was kind of at that point in time where the employees started to have a lot more control about what was going on in a business because they were realizing from COVID, they needed to take control of their lives and was this the thing that made them happy? And I heard a lot of feedback from my team how important it was for them to continue to work from home. It wasn’t my first decision but I agreed that we would try it and we ended up Really benefiting from being a fully remote agency, partially because I live in central Pennsylvania.

I am like four hours from Pittsburgh and three hours from Philly and three hours from New York. So you can imagine the talent around me is we have cows and Amish buggies. So I’ve got a limit to the talent that’s available. And moving remote meant I could recruit people from all across the country. And to be honest, about a third of my team is local now, and the other two thirds are California to Michigan to Florida to Alabama, you name it.

So, it turned out to be a really good thing for us.

Chip Griffin: Well, and access to that talent, I think, is a huge benefit, and it’s a reason why a lot of agencies may have even originated as a virtual agency in the past, right? Because, you know, like you, I’m in a relatively rural area. It is not the kind of place where you tend to have a lot of talent, particularly more junior talent, right?

Because there’s, there’s not a lot of social life in the part of New Hampshire that I’m in, unless you’re, you know, older and married and that kind of stuff. It’s not a singles place. And so, you know, it’s hard to attract what a lot of agencies need in order to thrive and you know, so finding the specialties that you need that certainly benefits from being virtual. But I guess you know, I think there are challenges to being virtual too and so that’s You know not to be the debbie downer but i’d like to drill into that a little bit and how you’ve managed to to continue to hold together a culture for your agency, how you manage to to continue that team effects.

I know a lot of owners are struggling with how they do that in the virtual world, particularly if they were used to doing it in person and you’re used to you know having those water cooler moments or the opportunity to go out to lunch together things that you may not be able to do on a regular basis in a virtual environment.

Xaña Winans: So we definitely have had our challenges. I would say a big one is just zoom fatigue because you’re literally every conversation is on camera. And in the beginning I also got a lot of resistance from my team. Why do I have to have my camera on? Well because i’m not face to face with you. I can’t Read your body language any other way.

They’ve gotten used to it now, but it’s more mentally exhausting to always be on camera. I think it’s because we, it’s harder to make perfect eye contact when you got four or five different faces on the screen and it, it just takes more brain power. The other big challenge was staying connected to them.

You know, early in the pandemic, there were updates every single week and we’re having team meetings and here’s what’s happening and here’s what you can expect. And then it kind of slowed down and just became day to day agency life. And I missed my guys. I missed them a lot. Like I genuinely, that was one of my favorite parts of having an agency was the team that I built.

And now I was interacting with the three people who happened to have a meeting with me in a given day. As opposed to all of them. So we had to learn to be really intentional about how to bring our team together for interaction. So we do a retreat twice a year now, which that took a little while to kind of get off the ground, but now it’s pretty consistent, they expect it.

And every Wednesday and alternating Fridays, there’s some sort of like half hour break in the day. Where anybody who wants to can jump on a link and there might be trivia or a scavenger hunt, or it could just be happy hour. And so that’s helped with some of that connection. It’s still not the same.

I know a lot of agencies are going back into the office, doing a hybrid model. But given where I’ve now found my talent, I don’t really have that as much of an option. So we’ve had to be flexible.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and it certainly is a challenge and there’s no one right answer, right? I mean it, you know, if you’re an agency in New York City, it may be a different answer than for an agency in the middle of Pennsylvania, right?

There’s there really are different things and the kind of agency and the, the talent pool that you’ve built up and all that, that also affects it as well. But I think one of the things that, that struck me that you said, and I think this is also something that’s a shared experience with a lot of other owners is how much more, not necessarily control, but leverage, let’s say that employees have or at least the perception of it.

I mean, I would argue that that it’s just a little bit more obvious. Owners have realized this a little bit more. Employees have realized it a little bit more than they did in the past. But it certainly is a factor. And it’s not just about being virtual. It’s about all sorts of things, whether that’s flexibility of schedule or the kinds of work that they do or titles.

I mean, there’s so many things that go into this. And so I’m curious, you know, what your experience has been with that with the virtual, but also any other aspect where you’ve seen in the last couple of years, employees taking a, a different view towards things that you’ve had to, to deal with.

Xaña Winans: It was kind of weird being in that position where all of a sudden, even though you’re the boss, you don’t have as much control over your own agency and what you’re asking people to do.

I mean, the world had been moving towards a lot more flexibility. We used to have like you could take two days a month to work from home or we would give them a little bit more of a flexible schedule. First, I mean, I grew up in the era of like, 8 to 5 was the required minimum. Right. And if you wanted to get ahead, you came in early and you stayed late.

And that was not this generation’s culture. They were not willing to give up their family life. So them taking more of that control I will admit it was a bit of a struggle as an owner, cause you almost start feeling held hostage to people that you feel like you’ve given your heart and soul to. I think we finally hit a, a middle ground by kind of just really zeroing in and listening to everything that was important to them.

We, we do a lot of one on one conversations to find out what’s making them happy, where would they like to see changes. We do a quarterly happiness survey, which, you know, everything from, do you have enough connection with me personally? If you want access to me to, are you getting enough continuing education?

Do you have the tools you need to do your job? And so it’s, I think, become a little more of a meet in the middle that I’m hearing more of what’s important to them. And thus I’m able to give it. When I’m ready to give it. I’ve always equated employee benefits as like the upgrades that are planned for cars.

Like we’ve all come to take cupholders for granted, right? But that was a novel, crazy new thing a long time ago. Backup cameras were wild and crazy way back when, and now they’re in every single car from the cheapest car that you can buy. And so I knew I had to kind of stage out these additional benefits over time.

If it was all in one fell swoop, they would have had way too much power and I wouldn’t have been able to keep giving them things to show them how much they, they meant to me. So I think that was, that was a big part of it is for us to both find a voice in how to run this agency. Cause I can’t do it without them, but they can’t do it without me either.

Chip Griffin: Right. And it is a challenge, but you know, I think that a lot of agency owners will have over the years paid lip service to the, you know, the, how important the team is, right? The team is our differentiator. That’s, that’s why we do our best work. And yet there was always this expectation. I know when I was starting in the agency world, just like you were, you know, it was a minimum number of hours, not a maximum.

And, and you just kind of, you kept going and the owners expected that. And that’s, that’s how they made the financial model work. And I think, you know, now we’re in a situation where a lot of owners are realizing that, you know, they were probably either underpriced or over promising on what they could provide because they were relying on employees working more than 40 hours a week in order to balance those books.

And so now it’s causing a fresh look. And I think what you’re talking about in terms of one on ones to understand what the employees are actually looking for is incredibly good advice because, frankly, it’s not even one size fits all from one employee to the next within your own agency. Some, some will value certain things more than others.

Some may value flexibility more. Others may value time off. Others may value their salary for their perceived stature amongst their friend group or whatever. I mean, there’s all sorts of things that can matter and knowing what those are allows you to, yes, it requires more work, but it allows you to customize your solution to them.

Xaña Winans: Yeah, very much so because you’re right. I mean, I have people on my team who I, I would have to drag them kicking and screaming into a week’s vacation out of a year. And then there’s those that use up every single minute before the end of September. And then they’re struggling come Christmas time.

So one of our moves was moving to unlimited PTO obviously within reason. But we were able by giving more, we actually gave them the flexibility that they needed. And so they didn’t feel like they had to take advantage of the benefits that weren’t really important to them. So some, you’re right, needed, you know, flexible PTO whenever they needed it or a flexible working schedule for their kids or whatever it was, the more I gave them, the more we met in the middle. It was kind of odd, actually, to give more and, and for both sides to get what they needed.

Chip Griffin: Well, it really just comes down to that open and honest conversation. And it’s where I also think that it’s important for owners to share with their employees how the model works, right?

So that they understand, you know. I want to work with you. I want to give you what you need. But you also need to understand how it works from, you know, a client delivery standpoint, a financial model standpoint. And I think owners have historically in the agency world in particular, tried to be very opaque about a lot of that, right?

Afraid to let employees know, what’s the scope of this agreement? You know, what is the price of this agreement to the client? And I think, frankly, the more of that you share, the more you can put it in perspective, because employees always think that the owners are doing far better than they actually are.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case where I asked an employee to guess what the owner was making, and then the owner told me what they were making, and the employees didn’t guess much, much higher. So, you know, trying to – you don’t need to you tell them everything, but I think it’s, I think it’s important to share more in order to have that meeting in the middle moment.

Xaña Winans: Yeah, we actually moved to profit sharing just about two years ago. We had previously done performance incentives for kind of custom tailored to each person and what we wanted them to get stronger in, but when we moved to profit sharing in January of 2022, lots of resistance to it in the beginning, but it meant that we were much more transparent with our numbers because I wanted them to see how they influenced the amount of profit that they were going to get a share in.

So not just how much the sales team did, but the quality of the work we turned out. Became client retention, which is how we grew the business because we have a lot of recurring revenue retainers, SEO, paid search, social so like we measure all of that stuff and they get to see the nitty gritty of if we lost this many clients this year, here’s how much money the whole company lost.

Here’s how much money you lost in profit sharing, but if we fix these problems, here’s what the gain is. And I get a lot more investment and buy in from them because they see all the nitty gritty details. They still don’t know my personal salary, my take home at the end of the year, but I honestly don’t think most of them would begrudge me what I get because they are getting a healthy share.

Chip Griffin: And I think that’s something that owners need to remember as well that you know that they I think employees expect the owners to do be doing well. But I think the key is that they need to be doing well as well. And so, you know, if you’re going to try to, you know, get away with below market pricing, because you’re underpaying your team or making them work extra hours, it may work short term. It generally doesn’t work out long term, because you have higher turnover, you have more staff issues to deal with and And so I think it’s, it’s a really important area for owners to focus on to make sure that they’re getting that right balance of productivity versus satisfaction from their team.

Xaña Winans: Yeah, kind of on that note, I will tell you one lesson that I learned, and I wish I had learned it a long time ago. It is, you get what you pay for. In terms of your employees. And it takes a while to get to a point where you can pay what feels like an outrageous amount for the talent that you bring on, but boy, when they could hit the ground running when they bring in new ideas, they are worth it times 10. I had too many junior people that I wanted to try and grow in the past, and I wasn’t getting the results and I was getting frustrated. I saved money there, but I lost a lot of money in terms of the growth of the company versus the higher quality talent that I’ve been able to get now being remote.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And you just have to understand what it is that you need and go out and actually hire for that. Don’t, don’t hire that diamond in the rough if you really need the diamond today, because diamonds take a long time to create. And I think that’s important for folks to remember. You know, obviously we’ve talked a lot about employee satisfaction, but you know, let’s talk about your satisfaction as an agency owner.

What, what have you had to do over the years in order to structure the business so it gave you what you were looking for? And were there changes that you had to make along the way in order to accommodate you and those goals?

Xaña Winans: Oh, gosh, there’s more changes than I could count. I think like most business owners, I’ve hit burnout at a couple of different levels. First time I hit burnout was five years into it, where I was just working until seven o’clock at night and managing every client myself and doing way too many things that I didn’t need to.

And what’s really funny is I actually was nominated for in one, One of the top 50 women in business in the state of Pennsylvania. And yet I was more miserable my agency in that moment than I’d ever been. So, you know, huge burnout happened to connect with a coach, teaches me the importance of building systems and then things get better and then you kind of hit the next level of burnout.

And, and so I think burnout actually goes through a couple of different levels of where the agency is growing. It’s almost inevitable. The, the big difference is being a resilient person. If somebody ever asked what’s my superpower, I would genuinely tell you it’s resiliency. I can just put my head down and keep working through stuff till I get to the other side because I know it will be better if I put the work in.

It’s tempting to want to give up when you’re feeling that level of burnout though.

Chip Griffin: And burnout is something that I’m sure every owner experiences at some point. I know every owner I’ve ever talked to has. Frankly, that’s a lot of times when they come to me as an advisor to try to help them sort that through.

But I, I think, you know, one of the things that you touch on there where you talk about, you know, having to, to work till seven o’clock at night and, and just kind of, you know, Feeling like you’re just grinding through it. I think it’s important that we all remember that as owners, we are also employees.

And so we need to look at ourselves just as we’re having conversations with employees about, you know, how can we make their lives better, structure things better so that it works for them. And one of the things they always talk about is hours and workload and that kind of stuff. We need to look at that ourselves as well.

And, and if we can’t, if we feel like we’re in that situation where we just can’t do it any different, then we need to look at what else needs to change. Is it the pricing? Is it the kind of client? Is it the kind of, you know, what, what can we change so that our own personal situation changes as an employee of our own business?

Xaña Winans: Yeah, it reminds me of when I had my son 26 years ago, good lord. I remember kind of just that like constant demand on your time of having a newborn. And it was at one of his checkup visits that the doctor said how important it was for me to take time to take care of me. And I’m like, but I don’t have that time.

I have to load the dishwasher and make dinner. And I’m also running a business and and, and, and, and, and. And it seemed so unreasonable to not do the other things in order to make time for myself. But once I did it, I had more energy for the other things. So it was very similar. And I’ve had to remind myself that of that as an agency owner, like vacations are, are not an indulgence.

They’re actually a necessity. If I don’t take time away, I can’t refresh my thinking to come back and be more valuable for the people who need me. There’s, it’s hard to have, I think that objectivity in yourself. It helps a lot to have some advisors around you who can let you know when you’re kind of hitting the point that you need to take a step back and, and take a breather.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I think, you know, the first thing is obviously recognizing that. And I think most owners recognize it a little on the later side, but they do ultimately recognize it. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to change everything all at once. And so what I always tell owners who are experiencing burnout is, is try to find the one or two little things that you can change that will make you have the most relief, right?

You know, is, is it just being able to, you know, knock off at, at, you know, six o’clock instead of seven o’clock? So now, now you’re only trying to figure out, okay, how do I, how do I carve out five hours of my week that I either just don’t do something, I can pay someone else to do it, something, right? And, and so trying to break it down into the little chunks.

Once you start feeling the relief, it starts to give you a lot more clarity and ability to make good decisions as opposed to those frustrated, panic borne decisions that usually don’t end up working out.

Xaña Winans: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Completely. It’s just when you’re making decisions under stress, they’re never good.

Chip Griffin: So, you know, as you, as you look to the future, you know, how do you see your business continuing to evolve? What changes do you see? I mean, you know, AI obviously comes up a lot. So, you know, it could be that, you know, do you see you know, the workforce changing in a way that’s impacting you, marketing services.

I’m just, I’m curious, sort of, as you look on that horizon over the next couple of years, you know, what are you starting to plan for or at least think about?

Xaña Winans: Great question. What am I planning for? I’m, I’m a constant and never ending improvement kind of person. So often I’m, I’m diving into the things that we have and how to make them better.

But we’re so full service. It’s not like there’s a thing that we’re missing. It’s probably more a matter of changing the way that we do the work. So bringing in more AI, using more subscription tools, even though, dear God, the cost of subscriptions anymore, like it, it’s a huge chunk of my budget for all these tools that we use, but it’s saving us a lot of time and money.

I don’t know that I have like a great vision for where I’m going. You and I should probably talk.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, it and so much of it ends up being, you know, very specific to the industries that you serve. And one of the great things that you’ve got going for you is you started out with a very clear niche.

And you’re still in that niche, right? I mean, it’s a lot of agencies that I talk to are still trying to figure out today, you know, maybe 10 or 20 years into their business, you know, who is their ideal client? And I think that You know, by virtue of the evolution that you’ve had in your business and how you started, it’s pretty clear.

And so I think that certainly helps a lot. But a lot of it, looking to the future, is trying to understand how your client base is going to change. What are their needs going to be 2, 3, 4 years down the road? And I always tell owners they’re the best experts in that, right? It’s, you know, you can’t go get that from somebody else.

You’re talking to those clients on a daily basis. And so part of it is just spending time listening. And so I always encourage owners to to just have those open ended conversations with clients, you know, what’s what’s on your mind? What’s what’s going on with you? Just sort of like I asked you here.

It’s a great way to garner that intelligence and help you figure out where that that puck is heading to use a hockey analogy.

Xaña Winans: So one of the things that we have done for 23 years is every client that’s got any kind of ongoing contract has a review call every month or every quarter, depending on the plan that they’re in.

And most of that call isn’t sitting there and reviewing, you know, you got this many phone calls and this many new patients and you generated this much revenue. It’s more of a consulting kind of conversation. That is that tell me what’s going on. Are you having employee stress? Are you, you know, are you having problems with the retention of patients; diving into that entire funnel of their, their business structure.

Because at least for us. Dentists are rarely, they are accidental business owners also. They don’t know how to run a business and they really rely on consultants. And even though I’m a marketing consultant, I know enough about business that we can give them that much greater guidance in those conversations.

And that’s probably why we have the longevity with clients that we do is because they’ve known they can trust us with literally any question out there. We’ve probably got a pretty good answer or someone to refer them to.

Chip Griffin: Right. And it’s one of the real benefits of being a specialist agency you know, who, who understands a particular space because you can veer off into those areas where, you know, if you were serving, you know, dentists and lawyers and restaurants and tech companies and all of that, it becomes a lot more challenging, you can have general business discussions, but not in the same kind of meaningful way where you can say, yeah, we’re seeing a lot of people have that same problem with their, their teams or with their patients or those kinds of things.

And it helps you to identify you know, challenges as, as well as opportunities much more easily you know, than others who may be more generalist.

Xaña Winans: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I do get to see the trends often before they do, because we’ve got hundreds of clients across the country. Like, before the Great Recession hit, I could literally see that it kind of hit from the outside edges of the U.S., from like the West Coast and East Coast, and gradually rolled its way into the middle of the country. Based on the clients I was talking to and when they were starting to feel the stress. So like, I get to see things on a much broader scale. We also have this great advantage because we are so niched that, you know, in a conversation a client might throw out a great idea of something they’re doing.

And then I can broadcast that to hundreds of other clients who get to benefit. So it gives us a lot of layers that does make us, I think, a little more valuable than just working with a local freelancer.

Chip Griffin: Well, you’ve offered some great insight. If, if people are listening and they’d like to learn more about you or get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Xaña Winans: Easiest way is probably to go to our website, which is goldenproportions.com. I’m welcome to take any emails. I’ve got frankly, a couple of other agency owners who have met me at events and said, Hey, can I pick your, your brain about something? So happy to drop me an email. It’s just xana@goldenproportions.com. Somebody helped me get to where I am years ago. I love sharing any knowledge that I’ve got, if it’s helpful.

Chip Griffin: And I always encourage owners to be talking to each other because there’s so much to learn from each other, the shared experiences that, that you all have. And, and so I think it’s incredibly valuable and, and highly encouraged.

So thank you for, for sharing your insights today and being open to connections. My guest today has been Xaña Winans, the founder of Golden Proportions Marketing.

Xaña Winans: Thanks for having me, Chip.

View Details

In this episode, Chip talks with Jason Swenk of Agency Mastery 360 about the intricate dynamics of agency growth, operations, and sales. The discussion touches upon multiple challenges that agency owners grapple with daily, offering a number of actionable insights.

• The Accidental Agency Owner: Jason himself began as an accidental agency owner at 22 when he designed a website poking fun at the pop band, NSYNC. From there, he scaled to an eight-figure agency with over 100 employees before selling. The “accidental” trajectory resonates with many in the agency world, leading to unique challenges and growth patterns.
• The Importance of Clarity: Jason emphasizes that clarity is paramount for agency success. Many agencies fall into the trap of accepting any client that comes their way, diluting their niche and expertise. By clearly understanding the direction they want to take, agencies can build a robust framework and delegate more efficiently.
• The Agency CEO Role: The transition from owner to CEO is vital for growth. A CEO needs to set the vision, coach the leadership team, be the organization’s face, build strategic relationships, and understand essential financial metrics.
• To Sell or Not to Sell: When contemplating selling their agency, owners need to assess the motivation behind this decision. Whether it’s discontentment, wanting a change, or a genuine need for cash, understanding the core reason can make the process more seamless. Jason sheds light on valuation nuances, stressing the importance of EBITDA and the pitfalls of earnouts.
• Enhancing Sales and Lead Generation: One of the primary pain points for agency owners is sales. Jason recommends a multi-channel approach, which includes inbound and outbound strategies.

Chip and Jason highlight the importance of evolving with the agency. Whether it’s adjusting the business model, understanding financial metrics, or pivoting strategies, staying proactive ensures sustained growth and success.

Key takeawaysJason Swenk: “We’re accidental. We knew how to do something cool. Someone offered us money and then the next thing we knew, we created this great prison around ourselves because we were doing everything.”

Chip Griffin: “If an agency owner is able to define their role effectively, they’re going to be more successful because they’re going to actually enjoy it.”

Jason Swenk: “If you come up with a plan, I don’t care if the plan works or not, you’re going to have so much more certainty in order to make the right decision. Then you’re inspiring your team rather than demotivating them.”

Chip Griffin: “I think that the expectations amongst a lot of agency owners are inflated as far as how easy it is for them to sell, what the sale looks like, how much money they’re going to get from it.”

Resources* Agency Mastery 360 * Sign up for Jason’s weekly newsletter

About Jason SwenkJason Swenk is the agency advisor & coach that guides marketing agencies through a proven framework for growing their agency faster.

Jason has literally written the book for growing an agency from nothing to two 8 figure agencies. He is one of the most sought out advisors to agencies in the World, by showing them an 8 system framework that worked for growing his agency, working with brands like AT&T, Hitachi, Lotus Cars, and eventually lead to selling his agency.

Jason currently hosts the Smart Agency Master Class Podcast, the #1 Digital Marketing Agency Owner podcast for sharing the strategies and stories from real agency owners of what is working today in the agency world, and how they got to where they are now.

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I am delighted to have with me a real expert on agencies, someone who can help guide you in some of the decisions you may have ahead, Jason Swenk. Welcome to the show, Jason.

Jason Swenk: Hey, thanks for having me on.

Chip Griffin: It is great to have you. And before we dive into having our conversation, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself with listeners who may not already be familiar with you?

Jason Swenk: Yeah. So I started at an early age of you know, 22 of starting my agency. I was an accidental agency owner, like a lot of us and knew how to design a website.

And made fun of my first website I created was called NSHIT. It made fun of NSYNC and one of my friends looked like Justin Timberlake. So it was an easy transition and kind of got started by accident. And then the next thing I knew I was accidental agency owner had over a hundred employees and grew over eight figures and we sold it and then transitioned into doing absolutely nothing for a long time.

And I was completely bored like a lot of us that do that. And I just kept helping my old competitors. And they were like, Hey, how’d you, how’d you sell? How’d you do this? And started a podcast called the Smart Agency Masterclass nine years ago. And been running Agency Owner Masterminds ever since.

Chip Griffin: And I would certainly encourage folks who are not regular listeners to your podcast to become listeners because you have a great array of guests on, particularly agency owners who have been there and done that and experienced some of the pains that I know listeners have as well as some of the opportunities.

So it is definitely worth a listen. And I think that I know I learn the most from just talking with other agency owners. I’m sure you do as well. And so I think one of the common themes that we do see is exactly what you mentioned, which is that many are accidental owners. I know I was, you were, it’s, it’s how you often get started in the business.

And so I guess, you know, as, as you talk to accidental owners, what do you, what do you hear as the common pain points that, you know, maybe most of them are experiencing that they need help with?

Jason Swenk: Well, I mean, the, the one that I think is the most is around clarity and it’s actually the most boring. Like, you know, I have an eight system framework.

I always walk people through, but the first system is really the most boring. It’s around clarity. We’re accidental. We knew how to do something cool. Someone offered us money and we started designing or, you know, started taking on clients. And then what we realized was it, we kept getting the same or similar clients.

Because we were based on referrals. We didn’t have any intention of where we’re going. We didn’t know what we needed to do. We just kept adding services, adding new clients. And then the next thing we knew we were, we created this great prison around ourselves because we were doing everything. We couldn’t delegate anything to our team if we actually hired people, because we never knew where the boat was actually going.

So now everyone’s coming to us for everything, and I, I almost took a job to kind of sum all this up. I almost took a job with NASCAR to be their CMO. And they asked me two questions, they said, what do you love doing every day? What don’t you hate, you know, you never want to do. And I couldn’t think of it in the interview, but I went home that night because I got to a point where we were a couple million in revenue.

And my wife said, just shut the agency down. You’re so miserable. You’re so miserable to be around. I think a lot of us have gotten there. Right. And so I took this interview, I came home and I basically wrote, started writing down everything I hated in the agency that I never wanted to do again. And then I started writing down everything I loved in the agency.

And what I realized was I can actually do this. And when I did this, that’s when the agency started taking off. So the exercise for all of you to do really quick, or, well, spend about a half hour, 45 minutes, take a sheet of paper, put your fist on the sheet of paper, draw a circle around it, spend 30 minutes or 45 minutes of writing everything you do not like doing or never want to do in the agency ever again.

And then after you’re done with that, write down everything in the side of the circle of everything you love doing. And then now this should tell you what your role needs to do. So you can build the business around yourself and then you can start delegating, saying no, using automation, AI, whatever you want.

And then you can get that, you know, that sense of peace and freedom back. Right. That we all wanted.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it is, it is amazing to me how you can talk with an agency owner and, and they’re, you know, on paper, it’s a very successful agency, you know, doing great business, having strong profits, but the, the owner is miserable because they’ve allowed inertia to carry them forward to where they are and they haven’t taken the time to get that clarity to make intentional decisions about what the business is going to do for them.

Because ultimately, why take on all the risk and stress of having your own agency if it’s not meeting your needs, giving you the money you want, the kind of work you want, the amount of work you want, the flexibility, all those kinds of things. And so I, I love that exercise that you’ve suggested. And, and I think that if, if an agency owner is able to define their role effectively, they’re going to be more successful because they’re going to actually enjoy it.

Jason Swenk: Yeah. And you got to think about too, like. What types of clients do we want to work with? You know, what types of services are we the most profitable at? You know, if you think about if you’re only going to be paid on performance only after you deliver, which services would you, you offer? Who would you offer that to?

And that’s very specific, right? And then you can turn the agency around. And then you can start bringing people on that believe in the same values that you have, right? In order to really kind of catapult. Because at the growing and scaling, an agency is all about who, not how, and I’m not talking about just who you need to hire, but who do you need to become because your agency is only as, you know, it only scales as fast.

And up to the level that you’re at. So if it actually is at a plateau, you’re at a plateau. So how do you ups, you know, kind of upgrade yourself and get to the next level.

Chip Griffin: And, you know, as, as you work with agency owners and, and they’re trying to overcome this and try to figure out, okay, how do I go to that next level?

I mean, sometimes I find an owner who, who does have an idea of what’s outside that circle, what they don’t want to do, but they don’t really, they can’t figure out how to take that next step. So how do you counsel them to just think about, you know, making that incremental next step forward?

Jason Swenk: Well, they, they first need to know where, what’s that, like, where’s the destination, right?

I mean, that’s everything. Of like, do I want to build, and there’s no right or wrong answer. Do I want to build a lifestyle agency? Do I want to build an incubator agency? Kind of like Gary Vaynerchuk started, you know, VaynerMedia where it just kept building other brands. Do I want to build, you know, a business that I can sell one day.

There’s different ways that we need to go about doing this. And then that will tell you which different types of people do we need to bring in, in order to, you know, help us get there because we can’t do it all ourselves. So if you’re growing your agency right now and you’re like, Oh man, I’m doing all the sales.

I’m doing all marketing, I’m doing all, I’m doing most delivery, right? I’m doing, you know, all these other things. There’s only really kind of five roles as an agency CEO that you need to be. And I always tell people, it’s like, you got to transform from this, from an owner to a CEO, right? So first one, set the vision of where you’re actually going and communicate it to the team often. Like often.

Number two is all about coaching and mentoring your leadership team so you can build them up. And if you have more than five direct reports, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Like you’ve managed teams before I’m like, because you have to coach them to where they want to be. And where are they, you’re helping them.

Number three, you should be the face of the organization. I know a lot of people, and that’s a whole nother conversation. People be like, Oh, then everybody’s going to want to work with me. Bullshit. Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example. He doesn’t work on any clients for his agency, but he’s the brand. So they need to have a face to the brand.

The next is building strategic relationships. Only owners can, you know, really kind of do that, get it to the next level. And then it really understanding kind of the KPIs or the financials. What is the most important metrics that I need to know if I was on a deserted island to make sure my agency was going.

So when you get those five roles, I’m going to tell you, you’re going to be completely and utterly depressed because you’re going to go into a meeting, right? Like you’re like, you’re laughing too, because I know this has happened to you. Right? Like, you’re like, Hey guys, you needed my help? No, I’m good. Hey, you need my help? No, I’m good. You go to another one. No, I’m good. And, and then you go home to your significant other and you’re like, Oh, it doesn’t, doesn’t need me anymore. The business doesn’t need you for the old stuff. It needs you for the new stuff, which I just explained.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And it is, I mean, it is as someone who went through that evolution, with a couple of my own businesses, it is a challenge to shift that role because it is not just shifting your role. It’s shifting the mindset, right? And making sure that you’re not getting, you know, too deep into the weeds on some of the things that you had to be involved with in years one and two of the business, but now you need to be focused on something different.

So it does take some real concerted intention on the part of the owner to make that transition.

Exactly.

You know, I, one of the things that you mentioned was, you know, thinking about, you know, what’s your, what you want from the business lifestyle versus selling it versus other options as well. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of people who, you know, hear some of this advice, you know, you shouldn’t be building a lifestyle business, which I think is rubbish.

If that’s what you want, by all means, build it. And the reality is, frankly, most agencies. are more likely to be lifestyle businesses than businesses that you sell. They can sell, you sold yours, I’ve sold a business as well. You know, we, we, it certainly can happen, but I think that the expectations amongst a lot of agency owners are inflated as far as how easy it is for them to sell, what the sale looks like, how much money they’re going to get from it.

And so I spend a lot of time working with agency owners to give them a little bit of a reality check. So, you know, as someone who’s been there, done that. You know, what, what do you say to an agency owner who comes to you and says, look, I’m trying to, I got to get this in shape to sell it. Cause you know, this is, this is my retirement, right?

This is, this is my nest egg.

Jason Swenk: Well, you know, there you, it’s all about figuring out the right systems in, in the right order. Right. In order to get your agency to a point where you can sell. I’ll give you kind of how you can do really quick evaluations of where your agency’s at. So if you do want to sell.

For a significant amount, like there’s people that sell all day long and you see these ads from these people, I sold my agency and I’ll show you how to do the same, but they’re not telling you how much they sold it for or they just kind of transition. Right? So if you’re under a million in EBITDA, which is basically net profit, your agency’s worth anywhere from one to two X.

I’m just giving you a basic formula. So most agencies out there that are maybe a million dollars in top line, right? They think they’re gonna get a multiple on the top line revenue, the gross revenue. And this is the reality check for a lot of people. And if you look at their profitability, then it’s around a hundred thousand, maybe 20 or or a hundred thousand or 200,000.

So meaning they’re worth 200 to 400,000 in valuation. And a lot of times that’s kind of a kick in the gut, honestly. But if you can get over the million in EBITDA, then you can get five to eight X sometimes. And then the next level up is three million in EBITDA. Then you can start kind of calling it out.

Right? Like, so the other agency that I’m a part owner in, we’re a little over 10 million in EBITDA. So, you know, we can start seeing multiples in the 10 X, sometimes even a lot higher. And we bought, and you know, within that agencies, we bought nine different agencies in the past two years, I think… could have been 10, I’ve been losing track, but we’re looking at the net profit. But we’re also looking at how dependent is the business on the actual owners. So if they go away, what goes away with that? And so if you understand kind of the valuation formula, a lot of people look at, then you can go, okay, what do we need to do? And what do we need to set up? And in order to have an opportunity to sell, because Chip, you probably get these, I get these all the time too.

I’m like, Hey, I want to buy your agency. Okay. Oh, but we’re going to do owner’s financing, which means you’re going to pay yourself to give away your company, which is total bullshit.

Chip Griffin: Right. And I mean, the vast majority of deals that people hear about in the agency space are, you know, the, the, the terms are not great.

The total valuations. I mean, and even some of the ones that you see in the trade press, you know, you’ll see such and such an agency sold. And you know, you and I get to see the terms of some of these deals behind the scenes and we know they ain’t all that cool. You know, the the valuation isn’t great.

They tend to come with very heavy earnouts So, you know, it’s it’s not a guaranteed sure thing and also oh by the way, you have to become an employee of the acquirer for two, three, five years after the fact, which a lot of owners simply aren’t prepared to do. And so you need to understand what’s involved.

If that’s what you want, not to say it’s wrong or bad. There’s certainly good reasons to sell, but you need to understand what it actually looks like to get there.

Jason Swenk: My business partners get pissed at me all the time within the agency. Cause I talk out a lot of owners from selling. I’m like, okay, you’ve built this amazing agency.

You don’t work that much anymore, which tells me that the business doesn’t need you for all the old stuff. Kind of like what I was telling you, you’re making millions of dollars in profit that you can personally take away and, you know, figure out ways to not pay the tax man, why do you want to sell? What am I missing?

So I came up with like, and I tell people this, unless you need the money, unless there’s some kind of medical thing, or you just hate it. That’s the only reason you should sell. And then also too if you hate it I want you to have a plan and a very concrete plan of what you want to do next. Because if you just sell going I want the money Like you can create a business now.

Like people think I have to get to the 10 million mark to sell. That’s not the case. And they want to get to the 10 million mark because they think in their heads that, well, then I can go do X, Y, and Z and it gives me more freedom, but that’s not necessarily the case. So if you have that in mind and you mentioned the earn out, I’m going to tell you, like it costs me millions.

I, I did well, but I left millions on the table because I had bad advice from the business broker that we used that we hired after all these companies were coming after us. And like, we never saw that. Like earnouts are made to, designed to make you fail. So be happy with the cash and be happy with all that.

And then also too like, you mentioned it, you got to be an employee of this company, right? So make sure like you like the culture, make sure you believe in this. It’s hard because a lot of us have been doing this for a decade or whatever, however long, if you’re younger and you’ve been doing it for two years and three years.

Or at least three years, it might be a little easier for you, but, you know, for some of the old farts like us, you know, working for someone is going to be a complete nightmare.

Chip Griffin: Right. Yeah. Very, very difficult for sure. You know, I, you mentioned people wanting to sell because they hate their business or hate being in that business or whatever.

And I, you know, I, and I see that a lot as a motivator to sell. And I think that one of the key things that they need to do at that point is figure out what do they hate? Right. You know, use that exercise that, that you suggested earlier in this episode about, you know, writing down what it is that you don’t want to do and what you do want to do.

And, and is there, can you change the business? Can you evolve the business so that you don’t hate it? Because I will tell you that taking a successful business and evolving it Is a whole lot easier than starting over in most cases, unless you’re going in a completely different direction, you know, hey, you know, I want to be a fly fisherman now or something like that, you know, you want to just go hog wild in a different direction.

Then, you know, maybe starting from scratch is better, but more often than not, if it’s anything like the current business, you’re going to be better off taking the success that you’ve had and moving in that direction from that place of success.

Jason Swenk: Yeah. What, what I’ve found is agency owners, their risk tolerance changes over time. Like in the very beginning, we’re not risking very much because we’re nothing, and then we, we, we start building it up a little bit more, you know, it, it actually like we have more to risk. And then, you know, as life progresses to like, we start acquiring more assets, you know, a family, all this kind of stuff.

So it puts more pressure on us. And then when the business kind of starts plateauing because we plateaued, right? It only grows up to the level that you’re leveled up at. They don’t have a strategy for scaling themselves, scaling the business or any of the other things. So then they get worried and they think.

It’s kind of like Tommy Boy, right? Like when he’s doing like the, he’s crashing the car. It’s like, Oh, let’s look at the person with the other brakes and like starts ramming them. And, and that’s what we feel our business is like. We’re on fire and it’s going to burn down tomorrow. And there’s a lot of uncertainty there.

So we’re like, we need to get out. We need to find a new business. We need to go do software. Like I can tell you after I sold my agency, I went to go build an iPhone app. I hated it. The grass is only greener on the side you water. So just remember that, but you, like, if you come up with, you really think where you want to go, how do I level up?

What are the strategies I need to put in place or what’s the plan? If you come up with a plan, I don’t care if the plan works or not, you’re going to have so much more certainty and take away that uncertainty in order to make the right decision. So then you’re inspiring your team rather than demotivating them because you suck.

Like, because your mentally attitude just sucks. And it just brings down the rest of the team. Like we’ve all gone through that. Like all the business is going to shitter and like, we’re blaming all the people and they can, and your whole team senses it. And that’s just a collision disaster. You know, going down to the bottom.

Chip Griffin: Well, I like what you’re talking about in terms of a plan too, because I think that, you know, having a plan is reassuring in and of itself, but more importantly, it’s the process that you go through to create the plan. Yeah. That is what makes the difference. You know, I, I often have a business owner will say to me, you know, do I need to put together a business plan?

Not really, because as soon as you put it together, it’s going to go on a shelf and you’re never ever going to look at it again. But the process that you go through to think through what does the business look like, what direction is it going, all of those things, that process is really important and does help lead to your success.

So, have the plan because of what it takes to do it.

Jason Swenk: I’m glad you mentioned, yeah, because I hate business plans too. Like if you’re just doing a business plan to do a business plan, they’re dumb.

Chip Griffin: They’re stupid, but the process does make you think about things. But just don’t think that this is something that you need to, you know, pull out as your guidebook every week and say, well, you know, in paragraph seven of page three, we said we were going to do this, let’s do this.

Jason Swenk: I mean, you know, it’s like what we’re talking about. Everyone is like, if your business was based on referrals, which just isn’t scalable and it’s just kind of leveled off. We’ll, we’ll come up with a plan of like, how can we generate leads? How can we generate more awareness? Oh, I need to create a content.

Oh, I need to create a podcast. Cool. Like that’s the plan. That’s going to give you the confidence you need to get that momentum, to get that ball rolling up a hill. So then you get to the top and then, then it’s easy sailing. You’re just, you know, you’re pushing it downhill. So.

Chip Griffin: Right. Well, now that you’ve mentioned leads and we’ve talked about people, you know, wanting to get out of the business because they hate it.

A lot of agency owners want to get out of it because they hate having to sell. And, and so they say, you know, I just, I need to wash my hands of this. And, and so, you know, I know that you have agency owners coming to you and saying, Hey, you know, I, I, how do I get it to the next level? How do I, you know, increase that sales engine?

Or worse, you know, Hey, I just lost a whale client. You know, I, I need to replace them tomorrow. How do I do that? So when, when, when an agency owner is coming to you with these challenges, you know, how do you counsel them?

Jason Swenk: Yeah, I look at it as a healthy agency or the perfect agency has a multi channel approach for generating business, right?

They have an inbound strategy for putting out helpful content that’s making people aware and then bringing them and then making them trust. So then when they chat with you there’s no selling. I never sell anything. I’m never trying to convince anybody of anything and neither is any of my team. But they’re coming to us because they’ve seen some of our content talking about how to get the budget 99 percent of the time.

So then they don’t waste time with the wrong prospect. Or, you know, we’re putting out case stories of people that had success from X, Y, and Z. Marty’s a great example. He’s in our mastermind. And we basically told him, I said, and he goes after big brands. We said, let’s do some remarketing ads of just the success stories you had from your brands.

About months went by, a large airline called him, brought him in and he goes into the pitch. And they literally don’t really ask questions which is a bad sign, right, when you’re pitching. You’re like, oh crap, I didn’t get this thing. And they go, when can you start? And he’s like, oh, really?

This was horrible. Like there was no back and forth. And he asked them about like three months later, after like they signed the deal and everything, cause you don’t want to jinx it. Right? Like, why are you going with me? And he goes Hey man, I watched all your videos. We’ve watched all your videos. We know you can do it.

So creating an inbound strategy, putting out the content. Second one is an outbound strategy and please do not hire those companies that promise you 10 appointments guaranteed. I’ve never seen one of them work in past 25 years. I think you could probably agree too, Chip, right? It’s just that’s a whole nother story. But what you can do…

so like, for example, I’ll give you guys a strategy. If you’re a B2C agency and you’re trying, let’s say you’re selling say you want to work with brands in the beauty industry, makeup. Well, what I would do is let’s say this was lipstick. Let me get a pen. Let’s just say this was lipstick. So I would make a list of all the brands that I want to work with that I can help.

That can pay the price that I need. I don’t care how big they are. I want you to buy their lipstick, buy their product. Then what I want you to do is identify the decision makers. Then I want you to create a video, create a note, create whatever it is saying, Hey, Chip, I just bought your lipstick. I love it.

And you’re holding it up. So they know your customer, you might put it on or whatever you want and saying, you know, I love your product, but I felt like something felt short on whatever stage it was. I would love to kind of just tell you about it. Let me know if you have five minutes to jump on a call.

I can promise you, we did this left and right. I interviewed people from international hotel group, IHG, the CMO. I said, how do people get your attention? They’re like, call me up with something unique. So come up with an outbound strategy for that. And then the third is strategic partnerships. Look at the people going after your audience.

It doesn’t, it could be your competition. It could be technology companies, publications, associations, whatever it is. See how you can actually help them. And two plus two equals 80 versus four, right? Mm-hmm. And that’s how we landed LegalZoom, because we were one of the best partners in the world for Sitefinity.

We landed Hitachi because we’re one of the best partners in the world for Microsoft, because we built these relationships that goes back to becoming the agency CEO. So those are the three channels to really create a pipeline for your agency where you can pick and choose your clients.

Chip Griffin: Well, I think we’ve covered a tremendous amount of ground here in just 25 minutes.

We’ve talked about everything about why you want to have the agency to exiting it, to operations and processes, to sales. So if someone though is interested in, in learning more and accessing some of the resources that you have available, how can they learn more about you?

Jason Swenk: Yep. Two, two places you go, you can go to agencymastery360.Com. We have tons of resources out there. And then if you want to make sure that we’re sending you that information, go to swenk.it. So S W E N K dot it. So you got to swenk it.

Chip Griffin: And as you always sign off your videos, have a swenk day. So Jason, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your, your insights and wisdom with the audience here.

I’m sure that many of them will be checking you out and, and I hope that they’re all subscribing to your podcast and your lists and all that, because there are lots of great. Resources available there. Again, my guest today has been Jason Swenk and my name or sorry, and this has been Chats with Chip.

Thanks for joining us.

View Details

Few people in the agency world know more about the effective use of Wikipedia than Bill Beutler. As the founder of Beutler Ink, he and his team don’t just advise people about this popular platform, they also help clients communicate more effectively with infographics and other formats.

In this episode, Chip talks with Bill about the evolution of Wikipedia in recent years and how agencies can help their clients navigate the sometimes confusing editing ecosystem without getting themselves into trouble.

The pair also discuss how artificial intelligence impacts Wikipedia and communicators.

Key takeaways* Bill Beutler: “The volunteer editors based at Wikipedia don’t think of themselves as providing a marketing service. So they do not roll out the red carpet for PR and marketing people.” * Chip Griffin: “We all come to the table with biases, whether conscious or not. And they will show through if we look closely enough at anyone’s writing.” * Bill Beutler: “AI could be useful in the near future, but it really has a long way to go before it’s ever going to replace writers or, frankly, even going to be a useful tool for doing research and compiling it.” * Chip Griffin: “Agencies need to help educate their clients on what are the important changes that you would like to see to your Wikipedia article versus the ones where it’s just kind of annoying.”

Resources* Beutler Ink * WikiWatch * Can you use ChatGPT to write Wikipedia articles?

About Bill BeutlerWilliam Beutler is the founder and president of Beutler Ink, an award-winning strategic creative agency that helps emerging brands and industry trailblazers tell their stories through engaging content, dynamic social media strategies, and an honest approach to reputation. Founded in 2010 and counting two dozen employees, Beutler Ink is especially known for its pioneering work in public relations for Wikipedia. Outside of agency leadership, William Beutler has also been a blogger, podcaster, and film producer. He began his career as a political journalist in Washington, DC.

Related* CWC 4: William Beutler of Beutler Ink * Spotlight on William Beutler of Beutler Ink

View TranscriptThe following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host Chip Griffin and I am delighted to have with me a regular guest on some of my shows a good friend a really smart guy And I think we’re gonna have a great conversation Bill Beutler of Beutler Ink. Welcome to the show Bill.

Bill Beutler: Chip Thank you so much for having me.

It’s been it’s been a moment. I’m glad you think of me as a regular.

Chip Griffin: But I do because I’ve had you on at least twice on different shows, so you know, it’s, it’s, it’s always great to have you and, and you do have a lot of insight and today we’ll be talking about Wikipedia. Which is, you know, for those of us who are seasoned, shall we say, in the business have, have seen it evolve a bit over the years, but it’s, it remains a mainstay, but I think a lot of people with all the developments that are taking place out there with, with AI and the, you know, the, the birth of different kinds of sites and all that kind of stuff, you know, how relevant is it?

Is it a threat? Is it an opportunity? How should they be thinking about it? So we’ll get into that in a minute, but before we start talking about Wikipedia why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself first?

Bill Beutler: Sure thing. So as you said, I have my own agency. It’s called Beutler Ink.

We’re a strategic creative firm where Wikipedia is our primary service, although not our only. We also do content development and social media, and we have a really strong emphasis on visual design. We’ve been in business for about 13 years at this point, and we have a team of about two dozen spread across the contiguous 48.

We’ve never had an office in all the years we’ve been in business. The first person I wanted to work with was in a different state, and then we just kept hiring people where they were and never bothered to have an office. And you know, we’ve going strong and it’s been a blast.

Chip Griffin: Well, it’s great that you talked about how you go beyond Wikipedia.

Cause obviously that’s, that’s how you and I first met many years ago. And, and I always think of you as my go to Wikipedia expert whenever anybody asks, but you guys also do put out a tremendous amount of stuff that, you know, particularly the visual stuff that you guys put out. I really enjoy and think you guys do a bang up job of being able to you know, I, I hate calling them infographics because infographics is one of, it’s one of those terms that I think has been totally distorted over the years and I see these infographics that are really like, you know, 10 page reports that have just been converted into a giant long image. And, and so, you know, you guys do a much better job, I think, of, of turning them into what they, they, Could have or should have been and so I would encourage folks to, to check out the work that you guys are doing in that area as well, because it really is something that even if they don’t work with you, they can learn a lot from.

As far as how to do it the right way.

Bill Beutler: Absolutely. And our, our blog on our website at beutlerink.com there are plenty of posts about data visualization, different approaches. You know, at one point in time, we did think of the creative side of the business as being an infographic shop. And this was roughly 2013, 2014, back when that was the infographics were all the rage.

And they kind of got overdone. I actually met the great data visualization speaker Edward Tufte, and I asked him what agencies should know about infographics and his answer was stop. He just was over it. And this is the guy who is the go to on data biz. And I’m sorry, my cat has just knocked over a table. I thought that everything would be chill, but these cats are not so.

Chip Griffin: Well You know, you it’s what makes these, you know live to tape shows interesting because you never know what pets or children… You know, my, my regular podcast I do with Gini Dietrich her daughter makes an appearance quite frequently in the background on those.

So, you know, it just, it, it adds to the, the, the reality that this is. And, and so I appreciate that. For sure. So, so let’s, let’s let’s weave into Wikipedia a little bit here, though, because, you know, Wikipedia is one of those things, I, you know, I, I think a lot of people aren’t quite sure what to make of it, and so they, you know, some, some people you know, think of Wikipedia as this place where, you know, their, their organization, their business gets trashed, right?

You know, and, and, and particularly, you know I’ve done a lot of work in crisis comms over the years, and, You know, needless to say, any, any business that is involved in a crisis is probably going to have stuff on Wikipedia that they don’t enjoy seeing. It may be factual, right? Because that is the goal of Wikipedia, but they still don’t like it.

And they maybe think it doesn’t have appropriate context or something like that. And so, you know, so you’ve got that camp that just. you know, sees it as, as a fear. You’ve got another camp that sees it as an opportunity. Hey, you know, we want to promote our business. We want to make sure we’ve got a good, robust Wikipedia listing so it can, you know, if someone’s Googling for us, they can find all this good information and it’s from a credible third party source.

So therefore you know, it must be good. And so, you know, those are sort of the two extremes, if you will. And in, in both there’s opportunity, but in both there’s also some risk.

Bill Beutler: I mean, it really does run the gamut just as you say. We will speak to I would say the broad majority of the perspective clients that we talked to and clients we work with, there is already an article. And it just has been kind of neglected. It’s not usually overly negative, although you better believe we talk to people who have been the focus of a campaign to make the page worse. And we also work with a lot of companies who would like to have an article, but do not have one yet.

And that can be a whole challenge of its own, because there are far more companies and individuals and organizations. Who would like to have a page than actually qualify for one. So we really see people with all kinds of different challenges relating to Wikipedia. But it all comes down to the same the same core value proposition/ risk situation that here we are, what, more than 20 years following the establishment of Wikipedia and more than, more than 15 years it’s been, you know, really globally famous that had, to this day, people run a search on something, they want to learn information, and Wikipedia is very often one of the first things that comes up. Even if another website does come up ahead of Wikipedia, on the rare occasions where that happens, well people know what Wikipedia is. They know that it has this authoritative voice.

These days they know that actually Wikipedia is pretty good. The, the, citations have been built out over time. Again, Wikipedia was founded in 2001. So here we are. What is it? It’s now 2023. So it’s about 22 years old at this point. It’s really quite a mature product, if you can speak of it in those terms.

As an encyclopedia, it’s really well developed. It’s a, it’s a place to be seen. And well, if you’re not there, you want to be, and if what people read there is wrong there’s definitely the perception that it matters and this really, really often is the case where we’ll speak to somebody from the communications department at a, at a company where they’re hearing from their CEO that the they happen to read the page or maybe their nephew, like, you know, pulled them aside at Thanksgiving and said, have you seen what the Wikipedia says about the company?

And that’ll start this conversation where they’re looking for somebody to help. And I’m grateful when they find us. We love doing this kind of work. One of the other challenges about Wikipedia, even here 20 years into its existence and long after it’s reached you know, ubiquity, there’s still still really a very small number of consultants or agencies who do this work well. Who do this work in a way that will keep themselves and keep clients out of trouble.

I think because Wikipedia, the editor, the volunteer editor based at Wikipedia, you know, they don’t think of themselves as providing a marketing service. And so they really, you know do not roll out the red carpet for PR and marketing people.

Chip Griffin: In some cases, exactly the opposite. They, they, they view professional communicators is the enemy almost. And so I think that that can be a challenge. I, you know, I, I, I like the fact that you mentioned the maturity of Wikipedia because I think that’s certainly true as far as the you know, the volume, the comprehensiveness of the information itself. The area where I think it’s a little bit less mature, at least in, in technological terms is it’s, it’s user friendliness for those who are interested in editing it.

And, and it, and it remains perhaps intentionally so, a place where you, you, you kind of have to, to really know the system in order to even mechanically go about the edits. It is, you know, if you go to the edit page on a normal page in Wikipedia, I think the average person would look at that and just be absolutely befuddled by it. You know, the, you know, the list of revisions and the way it does it in previous and next and you sit there and you’re like, What the heck does any of this even mean? And so I think that you know that does for agencies who are trying to help clients I think that is an obstacle as well because they, you know you can’t even for many of them get past the technological hurdle of how to do it before you can start stepping into the weeds and making making trouble by doing something you shouldn’t.

Bill Beutler: This is really true actually, this is we we believe it or not, we actually developed a software that we use and that we also offer to to agencies and to clients to, to, to take those confusing lists of edits and turn them into something that is a little more usable. So the software is called WikiWatch.

You can learn more about it at wikiwatch.net. It’s available by subscription. Because truly, Wikipedia is designed for the insiders who have taken the time to learn what it is. And if you are a professional communicator who has other things that you’re doing, it can just take too long to learn how it all works.

So obviously hiring an agency like myself or one of the few others out there who are similarly, you know, qualified and again, ethical in their approach, just because it’s so common for scams. We, we have talked to people a lot who, who have tried to hire a consultant off of Fiverr or someone who’s cold pitched them and they’ve lost thousands of dollars trying to get something that they can’t get. Anyway, if you do want to kind of develop some knowledge yourself. WikiWatch is a great way to start. I will give Wikipedia credit for having done a lot of work over the years to try to make editing easier. But as you say. It doesn’t make it actually easy.

Chip Griffin: Right and and and honestly I’m not sure that the site really has an incentive to make it too easy because then there’s a lot more policing that has to be done, right?

So there there there is a certain advantage to having a barrier to entry on the editing so that you know, the you know those core editors who are involved in trying to help don’t have as much to review. And I think to me, that’s another key point here. You know, part of part of the thing that I hear from agencies is the experience can be very different from one client’s page to another because it really depends on which editors have taken an interest in that particular entry and what their own outlook is, right?

Because there are certain general standards within Wikipedia, but a lot of it comes down to personal interpretation of the editors who are actually participating in that particular page.

Bill Beutler: This is a really excellent point. So Wikipedia has a complex set of policies and guidelines, a whole manual of style for how things should be written, what kinds of sources you should use, how you should write from, et cetera, and learning them is very important.

But, just as you say, ultimately, there is no real editor, you know, editorial structure. There’s no editor in chief, there are not, there are no managing editors, and it doesn’t work like that. It’s purely a volunteer community. And so, there is a bit of the luck of the draw with the editor who, if you are, you know, if you are a PR professional, and you want to interact on the page of a client, you know you may well have heard it’s best not to go in and make direct edits, very strongly discouraged.

However you are welcome to come to the discussion page for that topic and, you know, raise an issue. Even present an argument, present a new draft. And so the idea is that volunteers should help. Well, how helpful will they be? It certainly helps a lot if you can speak their language, you know, cite the right policies and guidelines, and, you know, and come with the right answer the first time.

This is the sort of thing that an agency such as mine can take the guesswork out of. But even so, even for us we still talk to editors we’ve never met before just because myself and and my strategy team have a lot of experience, you know, helping clients solve problems on Wikipedia where a lot of Wikipedia editors we know very well and have a good working relationship with.

And yet there are also folks that have never heard of us before. And so we have to, you know demonstrate good faith every time. And some, some editors are more skeptical of PR than others.

Chip Griffin: That’s a, that’s a very polite way of putting it, Bill.

Bill Beutler: Well, I have to do business there, you know, I’m very pro Wikipedia.

And I think that’s one reason why we are successful. Like, I think that Wikipedia is a great thing.

Chip Griffin: It is a tremendously valuable resource. You know, I, I use Wikipedia on a regular basis when I’m looking for information on things, as I’m sure most of our listeners here today do as well. And and so, you know, it is filling a useful place you know in the market. At the same time, you know It is incredibly frustrating at times when you read things in there and and either you know whether it’s a client or not Sometimes you’ll read things and be like they really shouldn’t say that that way or you know. Because, you know, we also have to remember that all editors are people, right?

And so, you know, yes, you stick to the facts, but, but at some point, someone has to be the arbiter of which facts to include, right? Because particularly on, on, you know, major companies, major topics. You know, you can’t include everything in them. And so ultimately part of an editor’s role is decide what’s in and what’s out.

And that does inevitably reflect the biases of the particular editor, one way or the other. Just, you know, I’ve always argued this with the media, right? You know, it’s, it’s silly for them, the news media to prevent, pretend that they’re impartial. They are not. We all come to the table with biases, whether conscious or not.

And, and they will show through if we look closely enough at anyone’s writing. So, you know, you have to be reasonable in your expectations, I think, of the editors and what you can actually achieve from that perspective.

Bill Beutler: Yes, and, and remember that these editors they really all are volunteers. And if they, if, if you pose a request and somebody comes and answers you, they’re taking time out of another project of theirs to, to help you out.

And so I’ll tell you, we oftentimes will see consultants who try on their own. And they do a good job getting started. They create a user account and you know, they choose the right name. They choose a usable name. They provide the proper disclosures of who their client is and then they go to post a request on the talk page And it’s 2000 words long and they’re asking for every single change in that first edit. Volunteer editors are just going to Ignore that probably for the most part.

You’ll be lucky if somebody says Whoa, can you break this up into something usable? They – I find it’s very common where a company who has tried before comes to us – this also happens with creating a new article. They may have written their own draft, found the articles for creation process, which is how you’re supposed to submit an article if you have a financial connection to the topic, and then they wait three months time, and they just get back a reply from editor that’s like, no. They don’t provide any useful information.

That’s frustrating. It would be great if Wikipedia editors provided more guidance on how to do it right the next time. But you know, they’re not going to do your work for you. There’s there’s a huge, you know, huge, a lot of concern about that, but you know, you’re paid. We’re not, we’re not going to do your work for you.

Chip Griffin: Right. And in my experience, you know targeted edits are much more effective than wholesale rewrites, right? I mean, most, most of the time, at least from what I’ve seen, wholesale rewrites are, are not readily accepted. Whereas if you focus in on particular you know, points that need to be added or, or context provided to, or something like that, and you can make a strong case, you’re much more likely to do that.

And then you can build momentum, right? So if you, if you focus on the things that are the easiest to get changed or update or fixed, focus on those, then you build momentum with the editors that you’re being there as an honest broker. And so therefore much more likely to to evolve in the direction that you’re looking as opposed to a total rewrite, you know Throw out all this garbage that you’ve worked on previously.

It’s no good.

Bill Beutler: I love this. We’re talking strategy actually, I have a slightly different view. I think that you are right a lot of the time but it also depends. I’ll give you an example of where we get sometimes we’ll get like the executive you know, the biography where they have, like, taken a pen and they have marked up all the changes they want to make. And they have so many different things they want to do. If they have, like, like, 20, 25 little changes, at that point, actually, it might be better to just present a clean, you know, fresh version of a section.

That way we can address, like, the five different points in that update in that in that, you know that proposed update rather than asking for five different things But it can take a while. Like we we certainly do completely rewrite articles that should say the volunteers approve rewrites. But it can take a while.

We oftentimes will say that a project, a substantial project should, should be probably about a six month starting we’ll start there and see maybe we finish early, but maybe we take a little bit longer. And there are some where we’ve worked with, you know, like Fortune 500 companies with very long entries, and it can take up to a year.

To do a complete overhaul as we work through section by section.

Chip Griffin: You know, I think the other thing that agencies need to think about here is, particularly PR agencies, how can they be helpful to the editing process beyond the direct edits? Right because one of Wikipedia’s standards is to cite you know third party sources as opposed to so if the company posts something on their website no matter how true it may be Wikipedia frowns upon that typically as a source and would prefer to see it in print somewhere or in digital print as it is today And so, you know agencies who are thinking about this can work to try to get you know, reporters to write about the things that they would like to see covered in Wikipedia, but maybe there’s not an existing story that they can point back to.

And I’ve seen this even with individuals with things that are in their biography, right? You know, because Wikipedia, if you, if you share a link to their official bio from the company, a lot of Wikipedia editors will say, nah, not good enough. And, but if you get a reporter to write a profile piece that mentions it, well, now you’ve got it in a place, even though effectively it’s coming from the same place, right?

Because we all know most reporters don’t verify, you know, the CEO went to, you know, Cornell or whatever. I mean, the, the CEO told just like they told the writer who did their bio, they went to Cornell, but all of a sudden it’s more impactful because it was in a, we can debate the logic of that some other day, but, but it’s the reality.

And so if you think about that as an agency and how you can leverage some of your tools outside of Wikipedia to influence what’s in Wikipedia that can also be valuable.

Bill Beutler: Yes, the, the ontology of Wikipedia and how it knows what is true or that something is true you pull back that, you know, there’s like, you know, creepy crawlers underneath there.

But you are really onto something with when you say profiles because Wikipedia is very careful about which kinds of sources it wants to use, even from a reputable publication. You could have a, let’s say like the Hollywood Reporter is a, you know, reputable publication covering the entertainment industry.

If there is an article about your client and it is a you know, fully, you know, editorial product of the, of the writer and of the editors where, you know, it’s, it’s prose and, you know, quotes are interpolated throughout, you know, that kind of a properly written profile can be quite useful. Now, it’s also, it’s also very common for a major publication like that to also simply write it as a Q&A.

Now, here’s the thing. Wikipedia will not accept Q and A’s, even if it comes from a major publication because the thinking is that it’s just, it’s almost the same thing as a, in terms of the information integrity, it’s the same thing as a press release. It’s just coming right out of the mouth of the executive, and it has not been filtered through fact checking or the editor, editorial process.

And as you say, you and I know that fact checking is not what it used to be, and it may not be any more accurate than just a Q& A. However you know, Wikipedia is trying to plant a flag and say we want there to be some evidence that the publication has considered it and, you know, put their own, you know, their own you know, judgment behind it or, you know, the claim, the publication claims it’s true, not just the interviewee.

And so, like for a lot of you know, a lot of clients of, of. PR you know, professionals and publicists having a Q and A could be a great hit. It could be great sometimes just to be mentioned in a column on the subject of your expertise. However, that is not really useful for Wikipedia’s purpose.

Wikipedia wants to see that article say something about your career. If you’re just quoted about something that you are an expert on, like maybe that could be something that could be added to that other article about that subject, but it doesn’t provide you with anything to add to Wikipedia about it. So the work of PR and Wikipedia, they really are intertwined in some interesting ways but it’s a challenge too.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think part of it is, you know agencies need to help educate their clients on you know, what are the important changes that you would like to see to your Wikipedia article versus the ones where it’s just It’s kind of annoying, but it doesn’t really have a difference. Because I’ve talked to a lot of people who you know are concerned about something in a wikipedia article, but it’s more for vanity or Just because they don’t like a certain way something’s described but but at the end of the day It doesn’t really impact reputation.

It doesn’t impact you know the reader’s behavior or something like that. And so I think you also need to to be careful that you don’t let some of those little things get too deep under your skin and you focus on those meaty things that really go to facts, that really go to the heart of the article. Because those are the areas where it’s worth fighting the fight over not the little things that are just like god, you know I wish it didn’t say it that way.

Bill Beutler: Yeah, you have to learn to kind of know where to pick your battles and what to let go. We find that on Wikipedia it’s really rather easy to get a change made if it is a matter of fact. If there’s a fact that is wrong or a fact that is missing that is the sort of thing and of course if we have a reliable source to verify that information that’s relatively easy. If however, it is a matter of perspective and it kind of involves the the judgment of the editor who wrote it If you chose to, you know, like include this detail or that detail if there’s something in there that you just don’t want to be there, but it’s true, then your chances of getting it out are pretty minimal. You’d be better off focused on trying to add other things that you do want that you can verify and not, you know, yeah, obsessing over, well, I don’t want that, you know, particular job to be mentioned because I didn’t have a good time at that job, you know, or, or there’s some scandal that, you know, someone could in the future add to it.

You know what? If it’s factual and it’s relevant to your career, it’s probably going to stay.

Chip Griffin: So we only have a couple of minutes left here, but I would be remiss if I didn’t raise the topic of AI and what that means for Wikipedia, both as a source and, and how AI ends up being potentially a source for Wikipedia stuff.

I mean, so I mean, how are you thinking about how AI and Wikipedia intersect in 2023?

Bill Beutler: You know, it’s interesting. As far back as early last year, we had been asked by prospective clients actually in, in the crypto space was somebody who asked us. Like, they were surprised to learn that we were not using AI to write Wikipedia articles at that time.

Frankly, we were surprised that they thought that that was even feasible. Now, this was pre ChatGPT4, and post ChatGPT, opening up to the public, all of a sudden, you can play around with it and start to see, it’s very good at adopting the style of Wikipedia. But here’s the thing. It’s still nowhere near being able to examine sources, pull out useful information.

Frankly, you’re probably familiar with AI’s tendency to quote unquote hallucinate, or it’ll make up information regardless of it. It just abhors a vacuum. It thinks you want a source, so it’ll give you a source and it’ll make up a source. So we actually did an experiment. And if you go to the Beutler Ink blog we have a post from a couple months ago.

Where we pitted one of our Wikipedia strategists against ChatGPT in writing about a topic that did not yet have a Wikipedia article. And so, you know, if you’re following AI, you probably have a guess what happened that Wikipedia or ChatGPT finished in seconds, and it wrote something that was read quite plausibly.

But it also missed a lot of information and it was and then didn’t have any sources or the sources that made it made up a couple sources are strategists. It took him, you know, three hours or longer, but came back with something that is really, you know, high quality and accurate. And we then uploaded that to Wikipedia and we wrote a blog post about the experience.

I think that there are possible applications of AI within, you know, developing drafts. That could be useful in the near future, but it really has a long way to go before it’s ever going to replace or frankly, before it’s even going to really be a useful tool for doing research and compiling it. I would think that’s something that…

I don’t know. I should not make predictions about AI. It’s surprised me before. But it’s just it’s just not there. It’s intriguing. I’m not worried about AI taking away jobs from most writers. I think AI is very good at mimicking style. It’s not good at actually being interesting or You know, or at all strategic.

Chip Griffin: Well, it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.

And I know that it’s something that you’ll be doing on your blog. And so I would encourage people to become regular followers of your blog for the insights that it provides. If someone is interested in learning more about you and Beutler Ink, Bill, where should they go?

Bill Beutler: Yeah, so certainly beutlerink.com, our website is the place to go.

You know, we have launched a couple of initiatives here in late summer that I think would be really interesting. If you look up you know, our website and ask a wiki expert, we have a series of videos that we are answering questions that we hear frequently, such as, is it true that there are some facts that can’t be added to Wikipedia?

One of my colleagues kind of talks through that and just a short, short form about, you know, no longer than a minute and a half. So we’ll keep doing that through the fall and maybe come back for a season two later. And we’re also we’ve launched a monthly newsletter It’s called WikiWise, so also search Beutler Ink and WikiWise and you will find a place to sign up and receive once a month, we will send out a short, you know, snappy newsletter that we’ll talk about Wikipedia in the context of business and public relations and what’s important about Wikipedia.

So it’s really if you are somebody who’s casually interested in just keeping up on what, you know, what is happening in business and Wikipedia. WikiWise would be the place to go.

Chip Griffin: And if you’ve stuck with us this long, you definitely are interested in Wikipedia, so you should be subscribing right now.

So before you go listen to that next podcast in your playlist, go ahead and subscribe. So Bill, I really appreciate your time today. You’ve provided lots of thought and insight for our listeners. Again, my guest today has been Bill Beutler of Beutler Ink.

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Listen to Jason Booms for a definition of terms related to primary research, information about how online polls can be useful, and how to combine media analysis with primary research to make data-driven decisions.

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Ann McCain discusses the differences between Millennials and previous generations, tactics to implement Millennial talent, and tips on hiring these younger professionals.

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Patrick Rogan, founder of IgnitionHR, discusses talent acquisition and retention in the PR industry.

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Chip and Joe discuss the business side of communications, as well as how the changing landscape of digital transformation and workplace trends affects the communications industry.

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Chip and Scott have a conversation about consultancy and collaborative work to manage digital transformation

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Chip has a conversation about internal communications and measurement with Ryan Williams, a partner with Tekara Effectiveness.

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Terry Flannery, Vice President for Communication at American University, joined Chip to discuss communication and marketing departments in higher education.

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Doug Haslam of Stone Temple Consulting discusses his firsthand experience with social identity theft.

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Neville Hobson talks about the role artificial intelligence and machine learning will have in the public relations industry.

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Chip is joined by Gini Dietrich of Arment Dietrich and the Spin Sucks blog to talk about the business of public relations.

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Karen Swim, President of SoloPR Pro and Words For Hire, joined Chip in discussing a wide range of issues related to independent public relations practitioners.

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Shonali discusses her Social PR Launchpad event, where she promises to help “unleash your inner superhero.”

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Chip and Gini explore everything from the business of PR to writing books, building an online community and more.

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In this episode, Kami discussed how she came to head her own agency and the path she took to being one of the leading voices for effective public relations in social media.

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In this episode, William Beutler discusses how he came to be involved with Wikipedia and ultimately launch an agency that, in part, focuses on helping clients engage with the site (and its editors) more effectively.

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In this episode, Matt discusses founding his own public relations firm and the work he does in the high-tech and education spaces.

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In this episode, Kevin joins to talk about founding a PR firm focused on helping academics and educators communicate more effectively.

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In this episode of Chats with Chip, Jonathan talks about the journey that has allowed him to become one of the foremost experts in crisis communications.