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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Carl Saygus. When I first joined the agency world, Carl had the first books that I read in order to understand what I was getting myself into. So I was very excited to get him on the show to talk about the future of agencies and how He sees things changing. Carl has a wealth of knowledge in all things agency. And I mean, he's got some great insights packed in this episode for you. In this episode, we discuss agency structures that are gaining in popularity, how to build a strong support network to help you grow and succeed, how to delegate tasks and automate processes to free up time for more impactful work, and more. Today's episode is brought to you by Zen pilot, there are a lot of tools out there for agencies to manage projects. But a project issues aren't usually caused by the tool that from your own processes. Zen pilot helps agencies implement their project management tools, while streamlining operations, so your team can move from chaos to clarity, can see for yourself at Zen pilot.com want to level up your agency. So we have the email course for you explore some of the five biggest mistakes that agency founders make trying to create a profitable and efficient business. We're talking about the mistakes that lead to no one wanting what you offer, recreating mediocre assets becoming completely replaceable. So yeah, it's worth reading five emails, five mistakes, five strategies to fix them all. You can get it at Dynamic agency course.com. And now ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Carl Saygus. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. What's your I guess, overall outlook on the future of agencies?
Speaker 1 2:01
It's mixed agencies will be around forever. I mean, they've been around for over 100 years and various forums. But of course, they keep evolving, right? You know, initially, it was all about newspaper advertising and PR and things like that. And then of course, things have evolved. Now now, there's the idea of a digital agency versus other but every agency is digital, of course, what will that be called in the future? I don't know. I mean, we'll we'll figure it out. But the mixed piece there is that, you know, the current challenges if we're looking at today, you know, the current challenging market for a lot of agencies is making agencies figure out what to do. And, you know, some agencies are going to struggle, and I mean, are struggling right now, not all will make it. I think the ones that emerge will sort out how to navigate those those uncertain times, finding ways to be flexible or more flexible, so that they're ready for the future. You know, I mean, from a trend perspective, whatever happens in marketing and design and technology, you still need to get the fundamentals of running your agency, right, building your cash reserves, focusing on running a profitable business, building a team of the right people, including having the right team structure as you grow. What worked a few years ago, probably isn't working today. It definitely won't work a few years from now. So you know, with all of the trends, it's important to be aware of what's going on. But you still need to run profitably in the meantime. Right?
Chris DuBois 3:32
Yeah, I think the the curse of the Red Queen is ever present, right? What worked yesterday will not work tomorrow. And it was it's gonna be painful for some people who don't realize that right now. But I wanted to get into really, I mean, what all of your conversations are kind of around right now, which is working less than earning more. Yeah, I think in past generations, right? There was this, this pride that came with working more. So it was like, No, I'm doing my job. I'm here I'm showing up and putting in the effort. And now as time goes on, that's kind of fading less. And so I'm wondering one, is it a generational thing? Right, where it's just, you know, the next generation is, has different priorities? Or is it more that hey, we have evidence now that, yeah, that that isn't what, what you have to do in order to be able to earn more like you can actually work less and still find this great work life balance.
Speaker 1 4:29
Some of its generational, some of it also is the age of the individual. And you know, in particular, when I started doing freelance web design in high school back in the days of dial up, I was also doing computer framing and troubleshooting. And many of my clients in that work since I was a teenager, were 4050, as many as 70 years older than I was, and so I was getting a lot of perspective on what the future might be like 50 6070 years in the future. And you know, one of the things I noticed is that people's priorities have changed, you know, as a teenager, and then heading into college, and it was very, it was all about ambition and growth. And this now, and you know, to generalize, as you're getting older, your priorities change. And it's more about building a life that you're happy with, you're satisfied with, and things like that. And also health issues can come up and things like that. So, you know, some of it is generational, I imagine. But there's also a piece around, you know, as people get older, in general, they start reflecting on what they want. And if what they have now isn't getting them what they want, they're going to make changes.
Chris DuBois 5:41
Right, once a year, what was the saying you can't change what you tolerate? And I think yeah, once, once an agency owner kind of realizes like, this isn't what I should be doing, or how I should be doing it. It opens the door for the changes to actually, you know, yes,
Speaker 1 5:58
for the owner, and for their employees, or contractors or team members. You know, if you're running an agency, you're in a unique spot compared to society in general, as a business owner, you have a lot of control over your day to day schedule, and where you spend your time, the people you work with the decisions, you make things like that. Yeah, there's still, you know, ups and downs with specific clients. But, you know, I was talking with an agency owner who sold her agency we had worked together, she followed some, you know, follow the advice, and a few years later exited. And I'd asked, you know, checking in after that, what, what was different, one of the things you mentioned was she has a lot more meetings, a lot more meetings as an employee of the agency, and as part of staying, the did the acquisition. So a lot more meetings, but there's also this weight off her shoulders, that she is not in charge of everything, and making sure everything happens at all. So I mean, some people may decide if you're running an agency that you don't want that responsibility, but you do have a ton of flexibility compared to being an employee somewhere else. So really, it's about figuring out what do you want? What do you like most, if you like the craft of your work? As an owner, you don't have necessarily a ton of time to do that craft, you can make yourself more optional on day to day operations. But you're not going to be in Photoshop all day long, or something like that, if that's what you'd rather do. So really, it's about what do you want? And then is your agency the best way to accomplish those goals for you and your family? Right?
Chris DuBois 7:34
And how do you when working with agencies, right? How do you kind of help them figure out where they want to go? Like with it,
Speaker 1 7:40
one of the tools I use is something I call an advanced retrospective, where you write about your ideal future day as if it's already happened. And you can pick any day you want, I'll usually recommend starting with something five years out, you can also look one year out, you could look even further out. But five years is a good balance, right? It's not too far away, but it's also not immediate. And the idea is, you know, you put into it Today's December 31. And you pick the year, and it's my ideal day. Here's, you know, because here's what happened, you write about your day, that gives people an opportunity to visualize what their ideal is to try to step out of their current situation and think about what could what could be different, what would be better. Sometimes people do that. And they're like, you know, what, actually, I'm not running my agency anymore. Or they're like, I'm running the agency, and actually, I'm more energized than ever. But I've made these major changes that I've been putting off and I realized, Okay, I'm gonna have to figure that out. Once they know where they want to go, I can help them get there and have some other tools, things about looking at where they've been, where they are now and where they want to go and things like that. But it all starts with you know, Stephen Covey said, begin with the end in mind. And you need to take that time to reflect and decide where do you want to go? And then I could help you get there.
Chris DuBois 8:57
Right? Yeah, without knowing where you are now. And where do you want to go? Right, making that bridge is kind of impossible. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really valuable exercise. Let's talk actually, like within agencies and in the teams. I think the article I read from you before it's about this the six types of roles or the six roles within an agency, right. I'm probably gonna slaughter so help me if I need to, but account manager, project manager, subject matter expert. Let's see support. strategist and bizdev. Yep, that is exactly. All right. Yeah. I do read things like that. Yeah. How do you foresee any of that changing for like, what what agencies actually need as we go into the future when you know, technology is now advanced, and maybe some of these things can be minimized or reduced or just irrelevant.
Speaker 1 9:53
So the nature of each role is likely going to change in different ways, but the need For the role is still going to be true. So you know am is keep the clients happy sell them more work Pm is get the work done smoothly, efficiently profitably your subject matter experts depend on your agency's focus, but that's designed development, copywriting analysis, things like that. The client strategist role is sort of a super SME, their job is to take whatever the client's budget is, how do you maximize or optimize their budget? If you have 10,000 a month? What do you do they have 100,000 a month? What do you do things like that, and, you know, they tend to be more client facing and then some of the other SMU roles. Biz Dev is really three things marketing, sales and partnerships, partnerships. I mean, I know you're a fan of partnerships is one of often the most neglected areas of agency bizdev, then, you know, we've got support, which is operations and leadership operations, keep things running smoothly, shorter term, leadership, keep things running smoothly, and heading toward your long term direction, you know, over the the longer time horizon. So those are going to be true regardless. But for instance, think about, you know, what you may have outsourced to a staff designer, versus what you might outsource to a freelancer versus what once you have the template set up, you might just do yourself in Canva. You know, I mean, thinking back to my web designer days, 20 plus years ago, I mean, Canva would have been amazing. For instance, versus using Photoshop, or, you know, hit can coating everything, things like that. So, you know, what a designer does is going to be different. And, you know, as an agency owner, one of the things you're thinking about is, okay, well, what is the skill level of, of what I need? On the other hand, you know, for instance, I hired a book designer in London to create my work cluster and more book cover. And, you know, I guess I could have hired, you know, could have done some sort of AI cover, or could have gone to Fiverr, or something like that. But I knew that wouldn't give me the production values I wanted. And so, you know, that was just a case where, you know, hiring Matt Curtis, who was the designer, gave me I think, a better experience, right? He's designing covers for like, the New York Times Magazine and things like that. And just, he you know, as he walked me through the creative process, as he was doing, you know, the brief and we're doing concepts and things like that, one of his concepts, which we didn't go with, you know, there's a piece of art that is a banana duct taped to a wall. And so one of the things that he came up with was a mouse duct taped to the wall. And then finally, one with a laptop taped to the wall, and apparently his wife walked in is like, why why is there a laptop taped to the wall? Kind of thing? No, with AI, figure that out. I mean, maybe eventually, but you know, the nature is going to change, you still need the subject matter experts. Some of it may be humans, some of it may be AI or other technology. But you still need all six roles that need to happen. Part of your job as an agency owner is deciding and working with your leadership team. How are you going to staff it? And that also gets into team structure as well.
Chris DuBois 13:24
Right? Yeah, I think one of the critical pieces there is the you will at some point be replaced if you're all you're doing are tactical deliverables. Yeah, we as humans have this ability to kind of connect dots through, you know, synthetic and creative imagination, and pair things up with and be strategic experts, because we see these patterns that no one else is noticing. But just being there and seeing it so many times. So I think AI will probably catch up to that at some point. But for now, that's that's in the moat, you need to dig. Yeah, so I guess even let's get into team structures. And so yes, there's a lot of different structures, you know, pods verse, you know, just a complete spread, everybody's working on every client. Are there what are some of the considerations that, I guess youth agency owners should be taking into account as we look at the future of, of how the market is shifting?
Speaker 1 14:25
So in my work, you know, I've worked with this point and over 600 agencies directly on every inhabited continent, agency structures tend to fit into five different areas. So there's the flat structure that sort of like everyone is in one big room where they're virtually you're not just about everyone reports to the owner, maybe there's one other manager in there. There's the matrix structure, which is sort of like what you would see from you know, madmen. There tend to be account managers who are client facing and maybe PMS. And then their departments there's, you know, maybe a designer Creative Department, there's a development department that might be a PR social media department, you could do different things like that. But that's the matrix structure where people will tend to have if they're doing client delivery, they'll have a people manager, maybe the creative director, but they might have a day to day manager, maybe a project manager or an account manager, who is assigning things so that they have two managers in a sense, there's the pod structure, which you mentioned, which is agencies within an agency. Pods are definitely a rising topic in my work. There are pros and cons to pods, they don't fix everything. And they also introduced some new problems, but definitely worth exploring as a way to scale your agency without some of the typical problems. But with the older models, there's the on demand structure where there's a core team of the owner or owners and some employees. But most of the work is done by freelancers where you could potentially outsourced to other agencies, but I would call the front end agency model where you're doing client facing work brand, building, so on, and then you're outsourcing fulfillment. And then the final structure is sort of a catch all that I would call the eclectic structure, that's sort of a homegrown solution, you figured something out over the years, it doesn't fit into the other models. And it couldn't be working. But it's not very sustainable. Because usually with the eclectic model, if one key person leaves, the whole thing falls apart. So those are the general structure ideas. Yeah.
Chris DuBois 16:29
And so I guess you mentioned that pods are becoming more kind of popular and conversation is, which of those do you think more agencies are kind of shifting towards right now, in
Speaker 1 16:39
the hot structure, you know, and some of that comes down to headcount up to when an agency is 1012 people, the flat model is fine. You know, and sometimes people try to expand that further. They're running, say, a collective, where it's sort of no one's exactly in charge, and this and that, that can work. The usual problem with the collective approach, which is more closer to the On Demand agency, is no one's really in charge. And clients aren't paying for the overhead of coordinating all of that. And so the coordinators underpaid for for doing that. But, you know, pawns are popular, because you're building those agencies within an agency, you'll have a team lead, you might have subject matter experts, that'll depend on what your agency does. We also have some roles that work across pods, say for instance, you do video production, but it's not a constant thing that every client needs all the time, instead of having a full time videographer on every pod, you might have a video team that helps out the pods as needed. On the other hand, if you're a video focused agency, then yeah, you'll have full video teams and every pod. Alright, so it's popular because it's like, well, you want to grow, just add another pod, you know, and it also could be a case where you have a pod that is dedicated eventually to a specific client. And, you know, worst case, if you lose the client, you could try to replace it. But if you can, you would probably lay off everyone on the pod. I mean, that's how some traditional ad agencies will do. You know, it's like, we just landed the blah, blah, you know, National Insurance account, then they hire 20 people. And then a few years later, they lose the account, and they lay everyone off. Um, so it does create some compartmentalization to give you some flexibility. But ideally, you have more than one client per pod, unless it's a huge client. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 18:34
so in some of those cases, it's almost like the whoever's leading the pod has a book of business that they're, they're maintaining in order to keep the peace. Right?
Speaker 1 18:43
Usually, the pod lead will be an account manager, slash strategist mean that the title might be a range of things, but they're the client facing person, keep the client happy sophomore, and they're also thinking about the strategy as well, they'll usually have a project manager or project coordinator supporting them, and then some combo of subject matter experts as well. That makes sense.
Chris DuBois 19:07
Okay, so you get to see, you know, the internal workings of tons of agencies, which also means you get to be kind of privy to the conversations they're having for sales and like how, what they're seeing within the market. What are some of the trends I guess you're seeing in in agency purchases, or like service purchases that other agencies can probably benefit from?
Speaker 1 19:31
Well, first, you know, if you're, as you're for listeners, if you've noticed what seems like a slowdown, it is not just you. I spoke with a client late last year, so December of 2023. And he was doing his projections and it looked like revenue was going to be flat for the year, maybe up a few percentage points. And he was concerned about that because his goals have been higher. And I said, you know, 2023 really has been a terrible year maybe the worst year for agencies in over decade, because, you know, clients have been cutting back and they're cutting back on agency spend. And so you know, some agencies, although he was expecting to grow a few percentage points, I knew that some agencies have done layoffs, he hadn't had any layoffs, and others have potentially closed entirely. In the end, he ended up growing almost 20%. It's sort of a surge toward the end of the year. But you know, if last year was flat or down, you're not alone on that. And even if you're in 2024, things are slower than you thought. It's not just you, right? It's not necessarily something you're doing wrong. I would say, of course, take a look at what you're doing for bizdev around marketing and sales and partnerships. What are the gaps? I'll share more about this in an upcoming workshop on diversify your lead gen. July 2024, in partnership with Gabrielle Margulies to a client who runs next to the marketing, and we're looking at a range of things people can do, you know, it's not do 100 different marketing techniques, you know, it's better to do five really well. And you'll need to decide what for your client base and your agency's going to work, right. But a lot of it comes down to focus, you know, Pete Kukuda, databox, has talked about this about, you know, consistency and just keep going rather than jumping around to a million things, right.
Chris DuBois 21:23
They actually, I think Pete and I discussed that very topic on our previous episode. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's also something that, like, I've worked with agencies on where it's, let's look at your team's competencies, figure out what you're really good at what we can tailor the offers around to make sure you're delivering the highest value result, not just, hey, my client needs something, let me see if I can do it. Because you're just you're gonna have to bring someone in, write to help. At some point, it's not actually going to drive a ton of revenue, you're just doing it to keep the client happy, maybe like, there's so many problems with it.
Speaker 1 21:57
Yeah. You know, as you're doing that, can you think of any recent examples where maybe the client was surprised? Where like, the answer was right in front of them, but they needed your help to find it?
Chris DuBois 22:08
I think for a lot of them, it's also I frame it as like, what could you be the best in the world that? And just that, okay, if we got this like, right, let's, let's have if you're, if you can't say yes, that you are the best at this, let's cut it, like, let's slice that high and come up with like, what can you be the best? And we keep kind of refining it? And then it's like, yeah, their eyes open. And they're just like, I know this better than anyone else. Like, okay, so let's build a team around that, and get your offers tailored around that. Because no one's going to be able to like to deliver the level of value that you could, if we can get this right. And, yeah, once we do that, it's like, I mean, we're in business, right? Like the leads just start flowing. So the messaging tightens up, you know, their deliveries get better, which means they get better testimonials, which means they're getting more clients through that. Yeah, it's just the I think that's the approach to making that piece happen.
Speaker 1 23:01
I think it's a reminder that just as agencies are that outside expert, helping clients, agencies need the outside expert. We all do. I mean, I've been a coach for over a decade, but I've worked with my own coach for at this point coming up on nine years like it, we all benefit from that outside perspective. It's
Chris DuBois 23:22
a Solomon's paradox, right? Like King Solomon, super wise king. He was, like, very well respected by everybody else. But he had his own problems that he wasn't able to deal with. Someone else? Yes, yeah. Yeah. You could help them out perfectly fine. Can't see your own problems often. Yeah, I have a coach, I have a therapist, I have, like, I've had a fitness coach before because like, those things are only going to help you get better faster by having that outside perspective. And so part
Speaker 1 23:53
of my intake process is to ask what each client's support number looks like. And I mentioned, for instance, I work with a therapist, I have a coach, financial planners CPA, sort of who's your support network. And if someone doesn't have a broader support network, I know it's going to be harder to help them get results. You know, of course, it's up to them. I did have a client where I was like, hmm, I think he probably benefit from working with a therapist, and I mentioned it but didn't press and then like a year later, we were together for bed. And then a year later, he reached out. And he had recently started seeing a therapist. He was like, well, he included other profanity, but he was like, Why? Why were you hiding that from me about how amazing it was? We're therapists. And you know, I said, I mean, he was joking, but I was like, it didn't sound like you were ready. You know, I mentioned it that you have to be ready.
Chris DuBois 24:44
Right? Yeah, like looking at it to where you get like a NBA All Star, right. And I'm not the craziest big sports guy but they do something right and that's these players have their Our own support network, within like, you have a coach, you have someone who's going to massage you after the game and make sure your muscles are good to go for training the next week or right like you have your regular coaches, you have doctors that are men, physicians, physical therapists, all these people saying about you have a waterboy, right, like you have a team around you, so that you can operate at the highest level possible. And it's like,
Speaker 1 25:24
and that applies to your personal life, too. As an agency owner, for instance, a client recently mentioned the challenge around getting, you know, pick up from school, you know, pick up and drop off and so on. I said, you know, a client a few years ago mentioned that before their kids had to have their licenses, they would pay someone at the time $20 an hour to do the school drop off in the school pickup with someone they trusted, right? You know, that that kind of thing. Because then the owner could focus on doing the $250 an hour or more work. And obviously, they were seeing their kids other times and you know, it wasn't like they fully delegated that, you know, or abdicated it. But that was a case of like, you know, if there are things that you're dealing with at home, like, do you need to clean the house yourself? Or can you hire a cleaning service? Can you hire someone to get your kids to school? Do you need to be cooking every meal yourself? Or, you know, does it make sense to look at some sort of a service, something else? I mean, that's part of the thing of being an agency owner, you tend to have if the agency is running smoothly? And if it's not, they should, I guess they should talk to us, but you have likely more disposable income than someone else in a similar position. Think about the work you do delegating at your agency that can apply as your personal life as well, at least to a point.
Chris DuBois 26:52
Right? Yeah, I think delegation is definitely a skill that I've seen more agency owners need to spend some time with. But but that's a perforate, it's not just within the agency, it's like you can delegate a lot of stuff within your life to make sure that you're actually doing the things you want to be doing and that you can deliver the most value with.
Speaker 1 27:11
Yes, although, you know, one caveat, you know, I believe that part of being a strong agency leader is having a strong number two, and usually having some sort of executive assistant or other administrative support. You know, if you're married, I do recommend you talk to your spouse directly rather than having your EA
Chris DuBois 27:32
right. Yeah, that's, I think, probably preferred. So we talked AI, a little bit earlier, I guess, what are you seeing technologically? within agencies, it's going to start changing the changing the game.
Speaker 1 27:47
Certainly, there are dedicated tools in design and development, and otherwise, they're more generalist tools. I've started doing, doing like a head to head race between chat GPT, the latest paid version, and Google Gemini to see okay, I'll give them the same prompt. Who answers faster? Right now Gemini is much faster, and also has a less clunky interface? And then who has the better answer right now, they both have good answers kind of in their in their own ways. You know, also using it for intergeneration, for blog posts, things like that, you know that that's helpful. Now, there is a question around, could you replace a coach with AI? Well, parts of it? Yes. But there are there are some some pieces around getting the data in to the system. For instance, in research study I did with data box around what our top performing agencies doing differently. In addition to the initial questions for the survey, we're also setting up a benchmark group so people can see on the fly, various stats, one of the things is that the way that QuickBooks versus zero chain share info about profit margins, they do it in an incompatible way. So you would have to manually calculate or build in some sort of middleware to translate the QuickBooks version of profit margins to the zero version or profit margins. So I mean, I think there's probably a a business need, I don't know if it's a business opportunity, will people pay for it? But around that, that translation kind of thing. But, you know, if you're expecting someone to magically advise, but they don't have important, relevant data, it's going to be hard to make recommendation or it's going to be a recommendation that sounds really authoritative, but it's not informed by you know, I call it clients values, goals and resources. VGR. My advice is unique to their values, how they want to operate their goals, where they want to go and the resources time, people money, software, and so on. So, you know, it's dangerous to Follow confidently delivered advice that is not based on your specific situation. Right?
Chris DuBois 30:07
The best the best example how that played out in my life, I had hurt my calf, before I'm just working out. And I called my I don't know where to start is my sister in law's husband, physical therapist we talked through, stretch it out, I said, like, you should be good to go. You got worse. And so my gym happened to be at a physical therapists office. And so I just walked in, and I hate you guys might just want to do this real quick. Like you've learned the muscle stretching, it was actually the wrong advice. And so not bad advice. It's just he didn't have all the context of being able to see it. And so it's like, oh, that's why context is so important. Let's make sure we have that. Right. Yes. But the Yeah, I wanted to go back to one of the things you said for like, Can AI replace coaching? Yes. So there was a tool. I mean, it's still out now. wave.ai. It was very interesting. It's, it's like 20 bucks a month. And you can get coaching you tell it what you want to get coach on, and it'll work through to help you create a plan. That will do it. But I wasn't using it, even though I was paying for it. Because I realized, there's something with the accountability that another human brings that, like, I need that I need to know that I'm letting someone down if I don't hit this goal, because the robot doesn't care, right. It's gonna chastise me maybe, but like, okay, like, it's like, my vacuum cleaner, chastise me, right? It doesn't matter. Like,
Speaker 1 31:34
you know, I see that too, as a coach. And in my own coaching, where I know that I'm meeting with my coach, I want to complete the things we talked about in the previous session. And I see that with my clients, for instance, a past client number of years ago, had spoken a podcast about the experience of my coaching her. And she said that the moment she misses one of her goals, I'm like, what happened? Where is it? Where do you, you know, what are you going to do? And I was thinking to myself, I don't track each client's goals that closely, but I was glad she thought I did. Right?
Chris DuBois 32:11
It works goes a long way, just human. The touch that we have, like we're, the more we can embrace humanity. These days, I think the better off we are. And so that's a
Speaker 1 32:24
while also finding ways to automate or otherwise get AI system, the things that maybe aren't as meaningful or aren't as impactful. So we can either do what is more impactful or not do anything for a bit, you know, just just being Yeah,
Chris DuBois 32:46
I'm going to be doing actually a, there's a roundtable next week hosted by Zen pilot. So the 25th, if this mod this, this won't be out before then. So sorry, running, go watch the recording, check out the recording. But uh, but the topics all in just AI and agency operations. And one of the things I'm going to be talking about is kind of the order of of automating with AI. And so because, yeah, there should be an order to it, where let's actually take the tasks that are less creative Bayes less they require less human thinking. And let's automate those first, right, so that we're now we're just removing human error. Because there's, it's just like, checking a box type task. Yeah, frees up more time now to be innovative, to be creative and do those things later. And so yeah, definitely think that's the approach, how do we bring in technology in a way that facilitates us being able to do the things that only we can do?
Speaker 1 33:47
That makes sense. And Zen pilot has great content. I've been on their podcast, I believe four times at this point. So if you're not following them, check out San pilot, right.
Chris DuBois 33:57
And we're gonna shout out to gray in the team. So I guess one of the last questions operationally, I guess, like the internal workings of agencies right now, are you seeing things that maybe going back to the curse of the Red Queen, like things that they were doing before that you should probably start, like making some changes here because it's not going to, like keep you sustain for probably the growth rate you want?
Speaker 1 34:24
The biggest theme I see. And this applies to for agencies that are working with their clients, their team, and the business partners that they have is around stop letting things fester. This has come up a couple times in my agency leadership intensive, which is a virtual leadership development program for agency owners and executives. And the idea of, you know, letting things fester. I think when finances become tight, or you're realizing that you have really big growth goals and you need to make some changes to get there. Don't let things fester. Right. If you You've got the employee who maybe is good at the work, but they're a poor culture fit. You know, why are you tolerating that you've got a client who is toxic, or maybe maybe not to that point, but as a problem otherwise, you know, work to replace them, things like that. And if things aren't going well, with your business partner, you need to talk, you know, us talks about the same page meeting. You know, if you have a business partner, they are your most important business relationship, your sort of business married to them, you know, are you investing enough time and energy to sustain and nurture that relationship? I spoke with an agency owner or two owners. This point, he was, you know, pre COVID, who was maybe six or seven years ago, and the owner has worked in person. But the call that we had, like the exploratory sales call was the first time they had seen each other, even other offices were next to each other in like three or four weeks. Because one was always traveling, and the other was doing this and that, I'm thinking, this is not a good sign, that you're not investing that time. And of course, if you find that you don't enjoy working with your business partner, and things are at the point of like, you know, it's not a match anymore, you do want to consider maybe it's time to part ways one of you buys out the other or something like that, if the relationship has run its course. So that's the key thing, whatever you are letting fester, I would strongly encourage you to take action. It'll be somewhat painful now, but it'll be so much better later. And, and you'll be glad you took action. Right?
Chris DuBois 36:47
I can fully on that one. So Carl, there's been a great conversation. I want to hit you with two more questions with the first being what book do you recommend? Everyone should read? Hmm.
Speaker 1 37:00
Well, you know, the the bias the answer is to read the the work larger and more book. You can learn more about that and get a free chapter or free workbook and get all the the Amazon links worldwide at work less earn more book.com. But beyond that, I'd recommend the book turn the ship around by David Marquet. He was a US Navy submarine captain who took his sub from worst to first, I use that book as the core curriculum in leading a marketing trade association. As presidents we had 700 members, 100 volunteers 15 people on the executive team, by the way, if you're listening and your executive team has 15 people, that is too many people. But you know, Sophia, and I had everyone read it. And that was a key thing there. And one of the things he talks about is creating a leader leader relationship rather than leader follower, so that your team rather than saying What should I do, they pre process things. And they come to you saying I intend to, I intend to do such and such so that you as the manager and all of your managers can say either proceed. Or you can ask some clarifying questions. Or if there's a significant concern, you can talk through it and do something else. But imagine what life would be like if your team came to you most of the time with I intend to, and you can either just approve it, or you know, ask a few questions, and then it's not your problem anymore. So turn the ship around by David Marquet. Strongly recommended. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 38:30
awesome. Last question. Where can people find you,
Speaker 1 38:34
you can learn more of my website, take us and company.com as AKs A and D word company.com. There are hundreds of articles and other free resources, along with my newsletter that more than one agency owner has called the only email they read every time so you can get free tickets and company.com. Click the free resources and you can get all that
Chris DuBois 38:58
awesome, right? Hey, thanks for joining. Great.
Unknown Speaker 39:01
Great to be here. Thanks.
Chris DuBois 39:05
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