I wanted to wait until after the holidays to talk about this topic because it’s a bit heavier than what we usually talk about on the show. But it’s something that Danyel and I have noticed weighing heavily on a lot of you since COVID, and that is agency owner grief. 

It’s true that many of you have experienced quite a lot of loss and change these past few years  — with the way we work, how well our business is doing, AI, our overall productivity, and so much more. It’s a lot of change to handle, and for many of us, we haven’t taken the proper time to actually acknowledge our grief and begin to let it go. 

But without taking those first steps, that grief will continue to take hold of us and affect us in all aspects of our business — and even our personal lives. Many of you report being restless, unable to focus, depressed, uninspired, feeling heavy, and burnt out. And it’s all because we’re burning the candle at both ends without taking the time to acknowledge just how much change we’ve gone through in the past 5 years as agency owners. 

So I hope you’ll join me and take some time to take stock of everything that’s happened from 2020 to now — the good and the bad — and start to recognize just how much we’ve gone through so we can collectively learn to grieve and begin to let go of the bad to make more room for some good. 

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• Why agency owners are struggling mentally and emotionally more than ever

• Understanding agency owner grief and what’s caused it to increase in the past 5 years

• Addressing agency owner grief

• The 5 stages of grief and how it manifests for agency owners

• The trickle effect of grief on agencies

• How we can begin to identify our grief 

• Starting the healing process after we identify the source of our grief

• Seeing post-COVID as an agency renaissance

Many agency owners feel like their clients are putting them in a box of specific skills they’re able to perform for them. And for many of us, that’s not a good feeling. We’re wired to think creatively and break free from that metaphorical box, but it can be hard to communicate that to our clients in a sea of competition.

So, it’s time to break out of that box in 2025. 

That means we need fresh ideas, innovative thought leadership, and non-obvious thinking. And there’s nobody better to talk to us about this than Rohit Bhargava, from Non-Obvious Company. He knows exactly what it’s like to be put in a box creatively, but he’s even better at breaking out of it. 

For years, he’s taken a hold of the status quo to challenge it, question it, and ask more of it so that he can stay ahead of the conversation and shape it to better serve his clients — and his agency. 

So join us to get inspired to do some fresh, non-obvious thinking in this week’s episode.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• What should be on every agency owner’s mind in 2025
• How to get a seat at the table and show clients you’re capable of more
• The importance of thought leadership to make sales come to you
• The difference between content creation and thought leadership
• How to apply non-obvious thinking to our agency work
• Getting our clients to be more open-minded, creative thinkers with us
• The role of AI in the future of agencies
• The importance of demonstrating real connection and chemistry to both potential and current clients
• Trends agency owners should be paying attention to in 2025

Almost no agency owner got into the agency world for their passion for bookkeeping. And if you did — great! You’re several steps ahead of most of us. But the reality is, most of us are just happy to keep cash in the bank for payroll and probably aren’t looking at the finances as much as we should be. 

Sandy Catour joined me this week to share why we should rewire this habit. Agency owners should be just as involved with the agency finances as their finance and accounting teams, and they should be in frequent communication with one another. 

Without a good understanding of your cash forecast, how your money is being spent, and where you’re losing the most profit, it’s impossible to run the agency by the numbers and keep a good handle on where all your money is going. 

So join us to get a realistic look at what agency owners should care about the most in the agency financial reports and what they can talk to their finance teams more openly and honestly about in 2025.  

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• How an agency owner should approach agency finances

• How agency finance conversations differ between small and medium agencies

• What financial reports you should be looking at as an agency owner

• Knowing how to price and how to find profit black holes in the numbers

• How agency owners should think about the financial roles in their company and how they serve the agency

• How to communicate well with your financial team

• What monthly financial meetings should look like with your accountants, bookkeepers, or other finance team members

• Getting an accounting person to put together a cash forecast and what that should look like

Agency growth and biz dev can feel like an uphill battle when we’re already so tired, overworked, and burnt out. But it doesn’t have to be hard or add anything extra on our already full to-do lists. In fact, it shouldn’t be difficult at all. 

Tori Boats joined me this week to help close out the year on a high note and show us that setting our agencies up for exponential growth in 2025 doesn’t have to be tough — and it can even be fun. 

If you’re feeling that end of the year slump, this episode should inspire you to rediscover that creative spark that motivated you to start an agency in the first place. No worrying about what’s profitable or competitive — just pure creative and visionary ideations that will give you the fresh thinking you need to start off 2025 on the right foot. 

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• What gets in the way of the spark of agency ownership

• Getting into an innovative and creative headspace

• Translating a creative spark into sustainable agency growth

• Centering your clients’ needs instead of yourself or the agency

• Challenge yourself to come up with silly, unrealistic ideas

• Infusing energy, excitement, excitement, and visionary ideas to agency employees

• Having a vision is the key to getting unstuck

• The 5 mistakes agency owners make that keep us stuck

Agency ownership can leave us stressed, burnt out, and sometimes, thinking the grass is greener somewhere else. But when you really sit back and think about it, we have it pretty good — we just lose sight of it sometimes. 

So this week, I’m finishing off the year with another solo episode to really sit down and take stock of what it is about agency ownership that makes it so special compared to other jobs. Because no matter how hard things get or how many bad days we have, our jobs are still pretty special and unique. 

While you listen to this episode, I want you to reflect on all the things that you could take a little more time to appreciate. Whether that’s your employees, your work-life balance, your clients, or even just the type of work you get to do, there’s always something we can be grateful for in this industry. 

In 2025, let’s find a little more joy in our work and give ourselves more credit for all the hard work we already do and will continue to do — because we love it that much.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• We’re wired to constantly want to do better
• Agency owners can lose sight of how much joy is in the industry
• Agency ownership brings us balance in our personal and professional lives
• You can still make a decent living as an agency owner even if you have a bad year
• Getting to work for and with whomever you want
• Doing the type of creative work you want to do (for the most part)
• Why you should take some time to reflect on all the joys that come with agency ownership
• Agencies have more impact than we give ourselves credit for

As we round the bend into the new year, I’m reflecting on the lessons learned from my time as an agency owner and the insights I've gained from working with hundreds of agencies. 

While there are too many to count, I’m going to try to boil down my experiences into a few points that I hope you can take into 2025 as you start to think about what you want the next year to look like for your agency. This episode is packed with actionable advice on things like niche selection, service offerings, operational efficiencies, and how to foster a culture of continuous growth and dedication among your staff. 

As you go into the new year, ask yourself, How do you want your agency to look different? How do you want your team to look different? How do you want to look different to the world? And how do you want the clients you serve to be different?

With those questions in mind, join me as I walk through what my dream agency would look like today and how you can implement these strategies to align your agency for success in 2025.  

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• The most profitable size of an agency
• Dividing in-office work and at-home work for a hybrid agency
• The importance of having in-house accounts service people who are dedicated to growing the agency
• Using freelancers and contractors to support a smaller team of in-house creatives
• The continued importance of running the agency by the numbers for maximum profitability
• Having one-on-ones to check in with agency employees and clients
• Narrowing down your niche to get to that 20% profitability
• Building a recession-proof agency
• Getting more thoughtful about what the agency owner role looks like and hiring roles to support it
• Getting smart about paying yourself 
• Team off-sites and investing in professional development

To grow the agency, agency owners need to be working on the business, not working in it. That means we have to accept that it’s time to get out of the day-to-day and embrace agency entrepreneurship as business leaders. 

Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth and renowned business guru, joined us today to share some profound lessons for agency owners to uplevel their businesses and stop getting stuck just being technicians of the business. 

Too many of us get stuck in the day-to-day operations, doing work we should hire other experts to do. And while those experts do what they do best — so should we. By focusing on biz dev and enhancing the mission, vision, and values of the agency, we’re making room for the agency to grow while achieving our dreams. 

If you’ve been looking for a push to get inspired to finally run the agency as the visionary you are, this is your episode. Michael is a great inspiration to show agency owners that following our dreams and visions is possible if we set ourselves up for the right kind of success.  

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• How agency owners get in their own way of their success
• Many agency owners are technicians suffering from entrepreneurial tendencies
• How to use systems and processes when you’re an agency doing custom work
• The 8 distinct personalities for a great entrepreneur
• Running an agency vs. doing the work of an agency
• Create systems and processes, and then make your agency the product
• Great entrepreneurs are great creators

Account executives are critical for agency profitability and success. Without them, we wouldn’t have anybody responsible for building deeper trust with clients and growing their accounts.

That’s why we’ve brought Lori Highby on the show this week to share everything she knows about the account executive role. Some of you might recognize her from the AE Bootcamps she teaches at, and she’s here to bring that wisdom to the greater AMI community so we can better understand just how important our AEs are for agency success.

As someone who has an inside look at how AEs think and the questions and concerns that are always in their heads, Lori is the perfect person to share them so we can learn how to better support our AEs.  

We cover everything from the expectations in an AE role, how agency owners can better communicate their goals and expectations to AEs, recognizing their hard work, and supporting their goals and aspirations within their role so they can also grow with the agency. 

This episode is packed with incredible insights, so we hope you can take some of these topics and use them to better understand and support the AEs in your agency. 

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• Recurring struggles that account executives face and are looking for guidance about
• The importance of standardized communication on the team and with clients
• Helping AEs level up their soft communication skills
• Supporting your account executives’ eagerness to learn and level up
• The importance of AEs knowing agency math and using it to determine profitability
• What AEs really want from agency leadership 
• Take more time to recognize and appreciate your account executives’ hard work
• How to find more moments for recognition on your team
• What AEs love about their jobs
• How to support and encourage your team in leveling up their skills
• How agency owners can amplify AE success in the agency

This one is going to be hard for most agency owners to hear, but you need to take a sabbatical — or a vacation or any amount of time off where you completely unplug from the agency. No Slack, no email, no phone calls. Nothing.

Most of you just got really uncomfortable reading that statement, but it’s absolutely necessary if you want your agency to grow. In fact, not taking time off could be stifling agency growth more than you realize.

Every time you jump into a meeting with a client that your project manager or AE could be taking, or you need to sign off on a minor thing that your leadership team could handle, you’re making it harder for your team — and your agency — to grow.

Louise Oliver is going to share her story of how she was exactly like many of you, stressing over her maternity leave and avoiding deleting work apps off of her devices. And then she did it. She realized how much that time off helped her and her agency grow exponentially.

So, tune in and take the sabbatical.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• Don’t be an agency owner who can’t imagine being involved in everything
• Taking time off completely unplugged shows your team they trust you
• The importance of having a strong leadership team to back you up
• The stages of grief of unplugging during a sabbatical
• The day and night difference Louise experienced after returning to work
• Taking a sabbatical will give you the freedom to finally do the work you want to be doing
• Letting your leadership put out fires while you’re away is the key to their growth
• How stepping aside can help your team find weak spots in systems and processes
• If a sabbatical or vacation feels impossible, that’s a good sign to look at how your team is structured
• How taking time off can help you on a personal level outside of the agency

The future of work is becoming more fractional. Instead of full-time, in-house teams doing all the work — how many of us grew up in the agency world — fractional employees like contractors and freelancers can take on more and more complex roles for us.

With remote and hybrid work still on the rise, we can leverage fractional employees to bring a more diverse portfolio of skills to the agency without breaking our bottom line.

Sara Daw joined me this week to share her knowledge about fractional employees and how they fit into what she calls “the access economy” where we can access a larger pool of talent at our fingertips without actually having to make a full-time hire.

We dig into what it means to build psychological ownership in fractional relationships, how fractional employees can make themselves more known within the agency culture, and how the future of work will evolve as the whole concept of employment shifts and changes.

This episode comes with a lot of deep thinking homework that will challenge you to look at the workforce you want to build for your agency’s future and the infrastructure you need to start building in order to support that. There’s a lot of good stuff here to share with your leadership team, so get ready to take some notes on this one.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• What is the access economy?
• Why does the access economy work so well?
• How psychological ownership plays into fractional work and the access economy
• The importance of psychological ownership in our relationships with fractional employees
• Getting a breadth and depth of skillsets in a fractional C-Suite and fractional employees
• How employment will evolve as we lean into fractional employment and hybrid work
• Creating culture and creativity in fractional work environments
• How to be more connected and intentional with relationships as a fractional employee
• Having the right skillset at the right level

Many agency owners reported in 2024 that one of the best things about their agencies are their employees. Despite continued biz dev struggles and slow sales cycles, agency owners have had a hard time shrinking their teams because they just love them that much.

So, this week, let’s talk about some of the ways we can think about agency employee compensation more holistically to show them our gratitude and continued support.

Agencies continue to be really competitive environments, and many of our best employees will inevitably be approached by recruiters and other agencies at some point in their careers. And the best way to keep them around is through their compensation packages.

But these shouldn’t just be about high salaries and bonuses. While important, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in showing our gratitude and support to our employees. In fact, the most impactful forms of compensation come from deeply knowing and respecting your team, and showing your personalized gratitude for their efforts and commitment to your agency.

Join me on this week’s solocast to dig a little deeper in how we can really get thoughtful about how we compensate our employees, not just with more money, but investing in their continued growth and your personal relationship with them.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

• Looking at agency employee compensation not as an obligation, but something you do out of gratitude
• Using raises as a reward for employees adding more value to the agency
• Giving bonuses or profit sharing to celebrate hitting monthly or quarterly goals as a team
• How a good benefits package gives you a competitive advantage against other agencies
• Personalized perks and thank-yous to reward individuals go a long way
• How to know when one of your employees has gone above and beyond
• Spending time getting to know your employees and caring for those personal relationships
• Develop your compensation philosophy based on your goals and values