The PESO Model has been guiding smart communications strategies for over a decade, but the tactical landscape underneath it keeps shifting. In the latest evolution, Gini and her team have completely revamped the PESO Model Certification to address how AI and large language models are fundamentally changing visibility in 2026.

In this episode, Chip interviews Gini about the newly updated certification and what’s changed in how organizations should think about paid, earned, shared, and owned media. The conversation centers on “visibility engineering”—the intersection of owned and earned media where LLMs are scraping information and making decisions about who appears in AI-generated answers.

Gini explains why owned media remains the foundation (without content on your own properties, there’s nothing to demonstrate to journalists, creators, or LLMs what you’re about), but the recommended path has shifted from owned-then-earned-or-shared to a more deliberate owned-then-earned-then-shared-then-paid sequence. This evolution reflects how AI systems verify information by comparing what’s on your website against what credible third parties say about you.

They also tackle the persistent “X is dead” headlines that plague the industry—whether it’s websites, PR, or press releases. Chip and Gini push back hard on the notion that websites are becoming irrelevant, pointing out that your owned content hub becomes more valuable in an AI-driven world, not less. It’s your source of truth, the fuel for custom AI assistants, and the foundation that persists even as social platforms come and go.

The conversation covers practical questions about implementing PESO in smaller agencies, whether you need to be full-service to deliver on all four pillars, and how the certification meets communicators at different experience levels—from college students to seasoned professionals.

If you’ve been treating PESO as just four columns of tactics rather than an operating system for communications, this episode clarifies what you’re missing.

Audit where your owned content actually lives. Open a spreadsheet and list every place you’ve published content over the past two years—your website, Medium, Substack, LinkedIn articles, guest posts, anywhere. Mark which platforms you own versus rent. This awareness exercise reveals how vulnerable your content strategy is to platform changes and algorithm shifts.

Map one content piece through all four PESO pillars. Take your next webinar, speaking engagement, or major thought leadership piece and plan the full PESO path before you execute: owned content on your site summarizing key insights, pitching earned media opportunities based on those insights, creating social distribution that doesn’t just promote but educates, and identifying where paid amplification makes strategic sense. This forces you to think about PESO as an integrated operating system rather than disconnected tactics.

Dive deeper into the PESO Model. Visit spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification to learn more about the newly updated certification program. Whether you’re looking to formalize your team’s approach to integrated communications or simply understand how the model has evolved for the AI era, the certification provides a structured path from foundational concepts through practical implementation.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I, I’ve heard that you might be involved with this thing, I think it’s called the PESO Model.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, maybe.

Chip Griffin: You may you use that, right? That’s, yeah. Just you found it and you said this should, this is something we should use.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Something I just found and thought we should use it. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Yeah, no, in all fairness, you are in fact the inventor of the PESO model, which is widely used throughout the PR and communications world, and it has been evolving with the times as we all should be. And so I, I think we have some, some new news that you’ve been sharing around the PESO model.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, well, according to a couple of people on the internet, it has not evolved at all because they are not able to use Google or AI to say, has the PESO model evolved since 2014? Perhaps.

It has. And you know, all of last year I spent a good amount of time, especially on the blog and the Spin Sucks podcast, talking about visibility engineering, which is where owned and earned media meet because that’s where the LLMs are getting their information, right.

We’re finding more and more that they’re scrubbing websites and then they’re comparing that to earned media, to the things that media not, and not just traditional media, newsletters, podcasts, things like that, that they’re saying about the brand and looking to see if they match. And if they do, then they’re appearing.

You’re, you start to appear in AI answers. So I spent a good amount of time last year exploring that and understanding that and, you know, using the blog and the podcast as my sandbox to learn more about it and teach the industry about it and understand what was happening. As part of that, I said, okay, it’s time to do a big refresh of the certification.

Because we did the certification in 2020 and then we did a small update to it in 2024. And this one is a completely revamped certification that shows you how exactly AI is… how exactly you’re showing up in AI answers and doing that via the PESO model. So we start with owned, we go to earned, then we use shared and paid.

There’s integration and measurement and it brings it all together. So I’m actually, I said to my team, not to brag, but this is really good. It’s a really, really good course. And we hired, last March I hired a chief learning officer who has helped me build it into something that’s more effective for an adult learner.

So it’s really specific to, you know, you can get the work done while you’re also a working professional. So she has done a really nice job of bringing that element into it. It has AI prompts so that you can use the PESO AI that we built to help you do the work. And it’s, it’s pretty good.

I’m, I’m really proud of it. I’m really proud of the work we did.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, it really is something that, that fuels most communication thinking in smart organizations today, whether that’s agency side, client side, that sort of thing. Now it’s not always as well understood it should be. Some people just throw the term around.

A little bit willy-nilly. Yes. You know, without really thinking it through. Of course there are other people who claim that it’s also their invention, which is, you know, but we’re not gonna go down that path ’cause we’re staying positive today, Gini.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes. We’re gonna stay positive. Positive, yes.

Chip Griffin: But I think to, you know, to me, one of the things that, when I look at the PESO model, I think is, you know, it’s great because it is an overall set of principles and framework that is effectively timeless when it comes to communications. And then it’s the implementation side of it. The tactical side of it. That’s the piece that needs to evolve. The, I mean, the four letters are still the same. It’s not like you, right? Yes. The evolution has not been to change PESO to something else.

Gini Dietrich: Nope.

Chip Griffin: It, it’s really just saying. Okay. All of these different components, the paid, earned, shared, and owned have evolved over the last 10 or 15 years. Yeah. And so how we implement it needs to adapt to that.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. It’s very much, I mean, when we did it in 2020, it was very much like how, how you’re using content marketing really to inform your contributed content through earned and then sharing that link through, through social and then putting some money behind it to boost it. And that was, you know, that was six years ago, and it worked back then, right? It’s still, social still worked from the perspective that you could post a link and people would follow that path back to your website. Well, people don’t do that anymore. You know, we are in a zero click world. And so how do, how does that affect the work that we’re doing? So, you’re right, the paid, earned, shared, and owned doesn’t change. That model stays the same. It’s the pieces on top that, that have evolved.

And so now it’s really how are we helping to inform humans, search engines, and LLMs so that we’re showing up. No matter if it’s a human looking, if it’s Google surfacing information or if it’s an AI surfacing information, we show up no matter what. And it’s really, that’s what it’s really about is how do you engineer that visibility?

How do you make sure that you’re showing up in the right places at the right time to the right people?

Chip Griffin: And so if you’re, if you’re thinking about leaning into the PESO model for your communications needs. You know, where should you be starting today? Is it owned? Is it social? Is it, you know, how, has it changed?

If at all from that standpoint over the last decade?

Gini Dietrich: Owned is still the foundation because without anything, without your own thought leadership, your subject matter experts, your content, all of that, there’s nothing to demonstrate to a journalist, a creator, a newsletter author, a podcast host, what you’re about and how you’re different.

So that’s the foundation. There’s nothing do than to just create that distribution layer through shared, and there’s certainly nothing to amplify through paid. So that’s always been the foundation.

There are of course exceptions if you’re selling widgets or your, you have an Amazon store or something like that, then I would probably start with paid, but that’s the exception to the rule. For the most part, most organizations need to start with owned. And we used to say that then you could go to earned or shared. Depending on your goals. Now we’re saying actually the best path for engineering that visibility is owned, then earned because you need that credibility, so the LLMs can cite that information.

Then you build your distribution layer, and then you amplify your work.

Chip Griffin: So I, think what I’m hearing you say is that websites are not dead despite all of these, you know, headlines that you like to see people’s,

Gini Dietrich: No, they are not.

Chip Griffin: The, the rise of LLM, websites are dead. You’re not even gonna need a website in five years.

Gini Dietrich: No, we still need a website because otherwise the LLMs don’t have anywhere to get the information about you. Humans don’t have any, I mean, we still go to websites. We might not go, you know, a direct click like we used to, but we still go to websites to get information. So yeah, you still need a website. I hate the, such and such is dead.

The PR, there’s one that PR is dead right now. Like PR is not dead. Come on. You can’t do, you’re not going to show up in AI answers if without PR. So PR is not dead.

Chip Griffin: No, the X is dead has always been one of my pet peeves when it comes to, I mean, that, that really is something that, that took off during the start of the social media era.

Yeah. Whether it was the press release is dead. This is dead, whatever. I mean, and, you know. Just, it’s not true. I mean, we, you know, I always used to say back 20 years ago, you know, people used to say that radio was dead. Radio is still very much around, and radio is still around in certain forms.

I mean, when I’m driving around, I listen to radio. Yes. Is it terrestrial radio? No, it’s satellite radio.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: But guess what? It’s still radio.

Gini Dietrich: It’s still radio. Yep.

Chip Griffin: Right. Podcasts are effectively radio. Transmitted in a different fashion. Yep. And so, you know, I think that the people need to understand that the underlying technology may evolve, some of the tools will evolve, but

Gini Dietrich: absolutely

Chip Griffin: the, principles and concepts will largely remain the same.

Doesn’t mean that everything stays. Yeah, certainly some things, you know, do go away, or become so small that they’re irrelevant, but you know, I think we need to be careful about those things. And, to me, with a website, to me, the other value is it still is a great place to be the central repository of all your information as all of these things change around you. I mean, if, for the last 10 or 15 years you’ve been using your website as your content hub and housing at least your most important, most valuable stuff there, it doesn’t matter whether medium or substack comes or goes. It doesn’t matter whether people move from X to LinkedIn to whatever.

Yep. You still have a source of truth for your own information, which becomes even more valuable in the world of AI and LLMs.

Gini Dietrich: That’s exactly right. I mean, we, have preached for years, we’ve all preached for years that you should not build an audience or content on rented land because to exactly your point, the rented land goes away.

X has become something that nobody wants to hang out on. We’ve moved to LinkedIn. Lots of people have moved to Substack. So, those pieces will change. So don’t, I think that theory, philosophy stays the same. Because you have, you are building something that you own, that you control, and allows you to control that narrative and be, tell the story the way you want to, and then you rent that out to other places versus building on rented land where it will go away.

Chip Griffin: Well, and I think that there are a lot of avenues that are opening up to organizations with, you know, particularly those that have more content already, but also by building it up. And I think in particular of the AI assistant I built on the SAGA website. Mm-hmm. Yep. That would not be possible without a thousand plus articles and videos and that kind of stuff because that is the fuel for that tool. Yep. And, and if I was trying to do it based off of, see what you can find that I’ve posted on LinkedIn or Twitter or things over the years, and it’s just not gonna work. And so having that in a world where you’re able to start customizing your own versions of LLMs for your internal or external audiences, huge value exists there.

So having that central repository, I think is actually of increasing value today, not decreasing.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, that’s actually a really good point. I was talking to a client last week and she said that one of the goals for 2026 is they have 17 different brands. So each brand has its own chief executive. And what she has, what she wants, the comms team for each of those brands to do is build an AI agent that helps them with that CEO’s voice.

And they can’t do that without content. They can’t do it without the executives’ speeches, webinars, podcasts, appearances, media relations, like they have to have all of that content, blog posts that they’ve written or articles that they’ve written for the website. They have to have that to be able to feed that and train the AI.

So without it, they don’t have any, to your point, fuel that will allow them to do that. So 100% that is accurate.

Chip Griffin: So as, we’re thinking about implementing PESO properly, so not just, I heard the term, it sounds cool. I made a list of four columns of each, and I just started just chucking stuff in there.

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: I mean, how do I go about learning it the right way? And I’m, you know, we’re not turning this into a QVC

Gini Dietrich: Are you throwing me a softball?

Chip Griffin: you know, show here. But at the same time, I, think it is valuable for people to understand what is out there in a more formal sense, to understand and, adopt the process for their own organization.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, obviously the PESO model certification is the place to get the information because one of the, one of the things we see is exactly what you said, that people create their four columns and they say, okay, well we’ve got some content and we’re doing some media relations, and we’re throwing that on social.

And all right, we’ll put some, budget behind some of our organic social, and we’ve got the PESO model. And that’s, not the PESO model, that’s a list of tactics. So what the certification does is it walks you through exactly. There’s this, a scientific layer to it. It walks you through that scientific layer that allows you to embed an operating system, that let that foundation of your work so that as things evolve and the industry changes and your business goals change, you’re able to change the tactics on top of it.

We also hear, well, gosh, my, you know, my clients can’t afford to do a full PESO program, so what should I do? And in fact, they can afford it. You’re just thinking about it as this huge, overwhelming thing. And so the certification walks you through if you’re a solopreneur or a small agency, that walks you through if you’re a midsize, and it walks you through if you’re a large corporation or an enterprise organization.

And I will say for small organizations, which are most of our listeners. It’s really about how do you take one piece of content and repurpose it. So let’s say that you do a webinar. How do you take that webinar and create some content around it that, from what the webinar was, not promoting it, not trying to get registrations, but saying, okay, here’s what we learned in the webinar.

So we’re gonna create some how-to or thoughtful content for that. And then we’re gonna take pieces of the webinar and we’re gonna break it down for social posts. And then yeah, we’re gonna put some money behind some of it. And we’re also gonna go to some of our trade media and we’re gonna say, Hey, listen, our subject matter expert or our chief executive just did this webinar and here’s what they talked about.

Are you interested in some contributed content? So it allows you to do that in a really interesting, effective way without you having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or have a large team. You can do it without a lot of resources. I mean I built the PESO model framework for my agency and we were not, at the time, a big agency.

Mm-hmm. So that’s what it was built for, is to make it so that we could do more with less and do more with less resources and, less time and less people and less budget and all the things. So it is definitely, definitely feasible. So that’s what it teaches you how to do.

Chip Griffin: So I, you know, I think one of the other concerns that, some particularly smaller agencies have when it comes to PESO is not just the, clients and their budget, but, their own capabilities and, you know, so is it realistic for a small agency to be able to, you know, deliver?

We, we talk all the time about being careful about being a full service agency. Yep. But to, implement PESO, do you have to be a full service agency?

Gini Dietrich: You do not. That’s the other thing that the certification walks you through is if you have the capability yourself in house. Or you yourself can do it.

Then here’s how you do it. If you are building it for an external team or an external agency, here’s how you do it. If the client has a team that can do it, here’s what you’re going to do to build the strategy and the creative brief, and then you’ll hand it off. But here’s what is expected for. Here’s, what’s expected of you to deliver, and here’s what the expectation is for the output from the client team or the agency team, whatever happens to be.

So it has those three paths depending on where you are. So yeah, that’s a really good point. It doesn’t the, certification expects you to, build the plan and the strategy, and then based on where you are, it meets you where you are. So if, you have a team that you can execute or that you can delegate it to, great.

If your client has a team you can delegate it to great. But it meets you where you are so that you don’t have to be the expert, you don’t have to be the strategist, you don’t have to be the influencer, but you do have to build the plan and the strategic path to be able to help the team get there.

Chip Griffin: Mm-hmm. Um, and I mean, let’s talk through some of the logistics around the certification. I mean, how long does it take to get certified? Is this, you know, I, do a weekend course and I’m done. Is it an ongoing process? Is it, you know, is it the equivalent of a master’s degree? I gonna spend two years with, you know, countless hours?

What exactly does it look like?

Gini Dietrich: It’s built to be done in eight weeks, but I will tell you that most working professionals do not do it that fast. I would say most working professionals do it between 10 and 12. Each module is, so you have the intro earned or owned, earned, shared, paid, integration, measurement, and then the operating system and how to embed that.

So it’s eight modules and each module has between 6 and 12 lessons, and each lesson is like 8 to 10 minutes. So, you know, you’re looking at an hour to an hour and a half of learning of content and then you have the exercises for each lesson. So I would venture to guess it’s, you know, if you use the AI prompts effectively, that are in there, it’s between two to five hours a week probably.

Chip Griffin: And, who is the certification best for? Is it someone who’s got, you know, prior experience, is this, Hey, I’m fresh outta college and I want to have this so I can use it to, you know, improve my, my job prospects. You know, what, kind of experience are they expected to have, or knowledge are they expected to have coming in?

Gini Dietrich: It’s, we built it for any level of expertise. The interesting thing about it, of course, if you have more experience, it’s easier for you to grasp the concepts and implement it quickly. But we also use the certification in a hundred plus universities and the kids, the students go through it. So we find that they…

It’s different for them because they have to use a fake business where you can use your own business or you can use your client’s business, right? They have to kind of create the business as they go. But it’s really fun to see what kinds of things come out of that. So it’s built for every level of expertise.

It’s a different way of thinking about communications. So it’s not like you have to have 20 years of experience or only a year of experience. It’s because it’s teaching you something new.

Chip Griffin: Gotcha. And is the, are the certifications only at the individual level? Are there agency certification programs?

What exists in that frame?

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, we’ve, that, that’s a great question that we evolved too. So it used to be, it was individual based and now we’ve built it so that you can put a team through it, you can put the whole agency through it. The certification itself goes with the individual because it comes through Syracuse University.

So it is, so if you have a team member that you wanna put through it, if they leave the certification goes with them. So you cannot say that you do the PESO model anymore if they leave. So we always recommend, I mean, you know, I’m an agency owner, so I’d love to see the agency owner themselves go through it, but I also know that that’s not always doable.

So, but if you want the certification to stay with your agency, that’s the way to do it.

Chip Griffin: Mm-hmm. And it, you know, I guess as, we’re winding up here, you know, where do you see the, PESO model headed in, the years, you know, in front of us? I would assume it will continue to evolve. Does your crystal ball tell you anything about, you know, what that evolution will look like?

Gini Dietrich: It will continue to evolve. I have not looked into my crystal ball yet because I’ve been so heads down deep into developing the content for this that I haven’t been able to forward think yet, but I’m very much looking forward to being able to go back to my regular job and, start to think about the future, but I’m not there yet.

Chip Griffin: I, I, guess that’s fair. I guess asking you for the, next version before this version is even fully out in the wild may,

Gini Dietrich: I’ve literally been like blinders on, heads down, creating all of this content.

Chip Griffin: I had to try at least, you know, see if I could get the inside a scoop on where the industry is headed so that I can…

Gini Dietrich: Ask me in a month.

Chip Griffin:  I can get there before everybody else, or at least before everybody else accept you.

Alright. If someone, wants to learn more about the PESO model or the certification or any of that kind of stuff, where’s, the best place for them to go for that?

Gini Dietrich: I feel like we just did an interview.

Chip Griffin: Well, that, that was not the intent going, but it made the most sense to me. And I, you know, me, I, follow the thread wherever it feels like it goes.

That’s fair. Some of these were questions I actually didn’t know the answer to, so I thought I would ask them.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Alright. spinsucks.com. There’s a PESO model certification page. I think it’s actually PESO-model-certification.

Chip Griffin: You love your hyphens on that website.

Gini Dietrich: I don’t know why it’s that way.

That’s just what they do.

Chip Griffin: Oh, well.

Gini Dietrich: Ask our web firm.

Chip Griffin: I’m, sure people can end up finding it.

Gini Dietrich: PESO model certification. Spin sucks.com.

Chip Griffin: There you go. Excellent. Well, I, think this was good information and I think we, you know, we do talk a lot about the importance of, you know, agencies continuing to adapt.

Particularly in, in this age of AI. And, if we are standing still, you know, we are gonna lose our jobs to AI and the other enhancements and improvements that are out there. I think this is one of many ways that you can, make sure that you are not getting left behind and, so, certainly something that most agencies should be at the very least learning more about, if not actually directly implementing within their businesses.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yeah, and, like I said, it has AI baked in, so if you’re still on the fence about AI, it’s a good way to dip your toes in the water.

Chip Griffin: And if you’re still on the fence on AI, why?

Gini Dietrich: It’s so much fun!

Chip Griffin: It really is. It can be a time suck at times, but it’s, yeah. It’s also fun and, frankly useful. I mean, I think that’s the… But anyway, that when this is not an AI show, this is a PESO show.

Gini Dietrich: Right. So, right, right.

Chip Griffin: We, will come back and bash you on AI again in the future.

Not, you, but you the listener. You the listener.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Alright. With that we’ll wrap up this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.

David C. Baker recently published a fascinating thought experiment about what he’d do if starting an agency from scratch today—and it’s packed with provocative ideas worth serious consideration. His article offers a comprehensive blueprint covering everything from organizational structure to compensation philosophy, and much of it aligns with how Chip and Gini think about building sustainable agencies.

But the most interesting conversations happen when smart people disagree, which is why this episode focuses on the handful of points where Chip and Gini see things differently. Not because Baker’s ideas are bad, but because they expose the tension between aspirational agency management and the messy realities of running a business with real budgets, real people, and real client demands.

In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle mandatory one-month sabbaticals for every employee, open-book finances published on your website, 360-degree reviews, and incentive compensation structures. They dig into why ideas that sound compelling in theory often create unintended consequences in practice—like how retention-based bonuses can fuel scope creep, or why forced sabbaticals don’t actually solve the single-point-of-failure problem they’re designed to address.

The conversation reveals thoughtful nuance on both sides. Gini shares her brutal experience with anonymous feedback that backfired when presented poorly. Chip explains why he sees most performance measurement systems as “performance theater” while still advocating for more financial transparency with teams. They discuss the logistical nightmares of scheduling multiple month-long absences and why backup systems for unexpected departures matter more than planned time off.

Throughout, they return to a central theme: what works brilliantly at one stage of growth can be completely wrong at another. The goal isn’t to declare Baker’s ideas right or wrong, but to test assumptions and recognize that even the most well-intentioned frameworks deserve scrutiny before implementation.

Read Baker’s full article and identify your three favorites. Don’t just focus on the disagreements—pull out the ideas that resonate most with your vision for your agency and commit to implementing one of them this quarter. The value in thought experiments like this isn’t picking sides, but using them to clarify what you actually want to build. Spend 30 minutes reading, then schedule time to test one concept that genuinely excites you.

Identify your true single points of failure. List every critical role in your agency, then honestly assess what would happen if that person disappeared tomorrow without warning. Focus on unexpected absences—not planned sabbaticals—because those expose the real vulnerabilities. For each critical role, document who could cover the basics for 1-2 weeks while you figure out a longer-term solution. This takes less than an hour and protects you better than mandatory vacation policies.

Replace annual reviews with ongoing feedback. If you currently do annual or 360-degree reviews, shift to giving immediate feedback when you observe something—positive or negative. Make it a two-sentence conversation: “That client presentation was excellent because you anticipated their objections” or “When you miss that deadline without communication, it creates problems for the team.” Save annual conversations for compensation changes and goal-setting, not for dumping a year’s worth of stored-up feedback all at once.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, we’re going back to a place that we’ve used for inspiration before. And no, I’m not talking about Reddit this time. Oh, I’m, I’m sorry. Dear listeners, this is not one of our Reddit episodes.

Gini Dietrich: I, I’m always scared of the Reddit episodes.

Chip Griffin: The Reddit episodes are always, they’re interesting. We’ll leave it at that.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I saw one the other day that I was like, oh boy, okay. In the real world…

Chip Griffin: Sometimes I just, I read those posts in the, in the agency subreddit, and I just, I wonder if, if they’re actual, real people posting about real stuff, because some of it just seems so insane that it just couldn’t be real.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. And some of it is very junior level entitled frustrations who don’t understand how a business operates. And so some of it you’re just like, Ugh. Okay.

Chip Griffin: Yep. But I mean, we were all once those people sort of a little bit

Gini Dietrich: Fair, true.

Chip Griffin: At one point in time.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. So absolutely.

Chip Griffin: But that is not what this episode is.

We are going to use another source of inspiration for us that we’ve used in the past, and that is David C. Baker. And, in this case, he had a post in his newsletter recently about what he would do if he was starting his own agency today. And it’s a lengthy article that walks through all of the different choices, that he would make strategically and tactically for the business.

And there’s a lot of good food for thought in there. It’s, mm-hmm. It’s probably gonna inspire a few additional episodes, down the road as we dig deeper into some of the specific topics there. But, one of the things that I did on LinkedIn was I broke out into four buckets, my perspective on it, and broke it into things that I agree with, things that I agreed to disagree with.

It depends because, hey, that’s our motto here, so why not?

It does depend. Yes. Yep.

And then of course, food for thought. So, there are far too many points for us to cover in a reasonably length podcast episode. So. I figured why not be controversial? Let’s deal with the disagrees that I had on my list and, use that as our jumping off point.

And we’ll of course include a link to the article in the show notes that you can go read the full article as well as additional context around what we’re gonna talk about today because there is a lot to, to explore here.

Gini Dietrich: And I think the buckets that you, you broke it into are really good. And for the most part I agree with how you’ve compartmentalized them all.

But there are some interesting ones on the agree to disagree bucket. So let’s, let’s do that. Let’s start there.

Chip Griffin: Alright. Do you have, do you have one that you would like to start with or do you want me to just start calling ones out?

Gini Dietrich: Let’s see. Yeah, there’s, well, yes I do. That we require one month annual sabbatical to eliminate single points of failure.

Sounds lovely. I would also like a one month sabbatical every year.

Chip Griffin: It’s as, as I understood the article, and it is possible, I misunderstood the intent in the article, but as I understood it, he was suggesting that every year, every employee.

Gini Dietrich: Everyone. Yes.

Chip Griffin: Had to take a full one month sabbatical.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. That’s how I read it as well.

Chip Griffin: That is, I mean, it’s a nice idea. I think it is highly impractical for most organizations. And look, I think the, stated intent here is truly a good one, which is to avoid those single points of failure, over reliance on any individual team member. Yeah. ’cause this is a giant problem for agencies, honestly, of most sizes until you get to be giant.

But it is something that, that you need to be conscious of. I don’t know that you need a full one month sabbatical for every employee every year in order to get there.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I mean, truth be told, like if you’re designing in the agency of the future and you’re starting from scratch today, I don’t know how you do that.

I mean, to your point, even in a large organization, I don’t know that how, you do that because it costs a lot of money. Not just resources and time, but it costs money to have people out. And so, you know, if you’re a, you’re an agency of three people or you’re an agency of 50 people, or you’re an agency of hundreds of people, it still costs money.

And so requiring that I think is a bit too much. And also, I will say that as somebody who has an extraordinary flexible and generous paid time off plan. There are people who take advantage of those things and you have to adjust to that, unfortunately. And I just don’t think it’s realistic. I don’t think it’s something that you could actually do.

I don’t think it’s something you could enforce. I think it would be extraordinarily stressful for the person and for their team, even though it might be nice in writing. I don’t think it’s, realistic in practice.

Chip Griffin: Well, I, think you, I mean, you, have a number of logistical issues that come into play here in addition to everything else.

And particularly because one of the other, tenants in there that I, disagreed with was, that you would require all employees to take four one week vacations. Over the course of the year. So now you’ve, essentially got all employees out for two out of 12 months.

Gini Dietrich: Two outta 12 months.

Yes.

Chip Griffin: And, that is logistically challenging because how do you do this and make sure that you don’t have too much overlap because inevitably there are certain times where people are going to prefer to do this. I mean, absolutely. If you want to take a one month sabbatical, most people are probably gonna want to do that over the summer months.

Yes. When perhaps, you know, family members have access to vacation or those sorts of things.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Or they may want it end of year around the holidays and those kinds of things. So you, have collisions between people wanting the same time. If, they, can’t get what they want now, they may be frustrated that I gotta, you know, I have to take off a month in February.

What good is that gonna do me? I mean, it’s cold, it’s snowy outside. My family can’t take the time off. My significant other won’t go. Like,

Gini Dietrich: yeah,

Chip Griffin: so what am I just gonna sit around in my house all day for the month. so I think there are some logistical challenges. So I guess what I, this is one of those ones where I’d say the ideal is nice.

I’m not sure that it is practical to implement in the vast majority of firms. I would encourage instead that owners look and try to identify single points of failure and make sure that you have backups. Yes, yes. And frankly, those are important, whether you have someone taking a month off or a week off. And my view is that every employee should have a backup who can at least do the, minimum required for that role while they’re out.

Particularly if they’re out suddenly, right? Because being able to plan for it. You’ve got a sabbatical, it’s on the calendar, six months ahead of time. You can get some stuff done early, you can push off some deadlines. There’s a lot of things you can do, but really to deal with single points of failure, you need to be able to handle those unexpected absences, right?

Someone has a family emergency, someone has a health issue.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Someone gets an opportunity to go on a game show, I don’t know, whatever it is, that takes them away suddenly. Those are the kinds of things that you wanna make sure you’ve, handled, with single points of failure. So. Nice idea. I just, I, don’t think it’s practical for most firms.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And the other thing I’ll say on the single point of failure piece is one of the things that I experience as an agency owner quite often is that my certain members of my team will take time off, but they can’t… They can’t allow themselves to take time off. So they’re constantly checking in and they’re constantly asking for updates and they’re constantly, and so one of the things I do with them is.

You know, ensure A, that you have some backup, and B, that when you’re asking for updates or you’re constantly slacking or texting or calling, that we don’t, we don’t give you a response. And, it makes people angry. But what I’m trying to do is A, give you the time off because you deserve it and, I want you to come back refreshed and ready to work.

And B, well, I’ll say C. Actually there’s three, three things, B there, nothing’s going to burn down while one person is out because we have backup and we do have places where there is not a single point of entry. And lastly, it’s really demeaning to your team, like it’s demeaning. And even me as the owner sometimes I’m like, well, don’t you trust me to fall to take care of your clients while you’re gone?

Like, come on, seriously. Right. That’s how it makes you feel. So I would say that it’s important from a single point of entry perspective as well to ensure that on the opposite side, that the team feels comfortable taking time off, that they don’t feel angst about taking the time off, that they can take the time off, and that the team behind them is, feels empowered and ready and trusted to do the work.

Chip Griffin: Spot on. Alright, well there’s, there’s a lot on this list. So let’s move on to, to something different. How about we talk about open book finances, because this is, one that, I, will say that I disagree with an asterisk. So I, what he’s advocating in his piece is open book finances, including public disclosure of finances on the agency’s website.

Gini Dietrich: Nope.

Chip Griffin: So, and in general, I am not a fan of full open book either internal or external.

Gini Dietrich: Nope.

Chip Griffin: However, I do believe that most agency owners would be better off being more transparent than they currently are with their teams. That doesn’t mean being complete open book, but it does mean at a minimum, sharing with them more specifically the trends that are going on with the agency.

You know, Even if you take actual numbers out, I like to show charts that show the directionality of revenue, the directionality of expenses. You know, so that you can kind of see those mapped up against each other so that as an employee, you start to understand more about the fundamentals of the business.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And it starts to make you less surprised when you’re seeing growth and less surprised when you’re seeing, you know, a narrowing of the gap, say, between revenue and expenses. So therefore, profit is shrinking. I, think that there does need to be more communication about that with, as I always say, education.

You can never provide numbers, whether that’s percentages or charts or actual numbers to your team without helping them to understand the economics of the business. Because otherwise you’re just giving them numbers that they will interpret however they want. But I do think the smarter you make your team about these things, the better they can help to manage project budgets, the better and more realistic they can be about compensation and bonuses.

All of these things, information helps, but not in my view all the way to full open books, either internal and certainly not external. No, definitely not. I don’t see enough upside doing it external.

Gini Dietrich: Definitely. I, can’t imagine doing it externally because all that does is open up the, an invitation for your clients to say, well, you don’t really need to be that profitable, so let’s, take some, let’s take a percentage off like the No, no, no, no, no.

And I also think, if I read it correct, his article correctly, he was advocating for open book on everyone’s salaries too. And no, I mean, we do salary bands, but you, do not know exactly how much every person makes. That’s not, that does not contribute to any sort of morale building inside a culture.

Absolutely not.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, the only thing I will say to that is that, I, agree with you. However, the reality is that most people have a pretty good idea of what everybody else in the business except the owner is making anyway. And perhaps other select senior level people depending on, how your organization is structured.

But pretty much all the juniors know what all every other junior makes. They all talk.

Gini Dietrich: Well, and that’s why we have salary bands ’cause everybody pretty much makes the same

Chip Griffin: right

Gini Dietrich: amount. Right? Like they all make the same, but I’m still not publishing it.

Chip Griffin: Exactly. And salary bands, you know, protect you. On that.

And so, I mean, you could make the, case as long as you have tight salary bans.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Disclosure actually isn’t a problem. But you know, I don’t, I think as long as you have salary bands, you don’t need that. Obviously a lot of states are in here in the US are now requiring more disclosure around salary bands and that kind of stuff.

So, you know, we’re headed there as an industry one way or the other. but I do think that salary bands are probably sufficient and, we don’t need to share actual salaries with team members.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I totally agree with that.

Chip Griffin: You know, that said, I will say that all of your employees think you make far more than you do.

We’ve talked about this before, so there may actually be an upside for, most owners to share what their actual take home is because

Gini Dietrich: that like 10 people actually make more than I do.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of agencies where the owner is making less than team members.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: Which is wild to me, but.

Gini Dietrich: There’s also the upside on that though, if, you’re profitable and you make enough money at the end of the year, you get, you get that. But yes, from a salary perspective.

Chip Griffin: Right, right. Alright, how about, 360s? My, one of my pet peeves. I consider it performance theater. I think most KPIs and OKRs and all these things, I think it’s all performance theater.

I think it has very little to do with what actual performance outcomes you get from your team. But, 360s, you know, they’ve been popular for a couple of decades now. I don’t understand them. You know, I’ve been in organizations that, have done them. I will confess that, that, you know, at various points in time, my own businesses have experimented with them, and most of the feedback that you get from them is borderline worthless.

Because most of it falls into the category of nobody wants to say anything really bad about anything else, it’s, you know, at worst it’s lukewarm. But then of course, you always get the random ones who just, they have an ax to grind

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And they’re gonna use the 360 Yep. As their way to grind an ax against a colleague. Yep. Or, or another department.

Yep. Or whatever.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And I, I’ve yet to see any, that actually helps to provide good feedback from the employees to the owner themselves. That’s just, I mean, you can tell people it’s anonymous. You can use an outside advisor to organize it, but people are not gonna put in writing. Even if they think it’s anonymous, any perspective about the owner, it just, it doesn’t happen in, the real world.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I agree with you. The only time I’ve, and it this happened to me, the only time I’ve seen it be effective is I, early in my agency life, business life, I hired somebody externally to do interviews. It was all anonymous, it was all verbal, nothing was recorded, and people were absolutely brutal.

And the way he presented it to me made me so defensive that I couldn’t take even the kernels of feedback that I needed to hear. And there was some in there, but it was so brutal. And he, the way, and he presented it, I, in retrospect, I think he embellished some of it to make me, I, to make it like more jarring and alarming. Because he thought that that would make me wake up and pay attention.

And in fact, it had the opposite effect. It was not, not good at all. And then I didn’t feel good about the people I had hired. Because it was, it was brutal. So I agree that, they’re not great. I subscribe to the give feedback, ongoing feedback. And so I don’t do annual reviews, I don’t do 360 reviews.

You get feedback consistently. And when we’re in a meeting and I see something that you did really great or I see something that could use some work, I tell you that immediately. When I’m trying, when I want to coach you on something, I do that immediately and I ask my team to do the same with their team.

So there’s, we have the ongoing feedback and then the annual review, quote unquote, is, Hey. We met our goals, we did really, really well. Here’s a raise, or you know what? This year was shitty and it sucked. You did your part in trying to make it better. I’m gonna give you a cost of living raise or whatever it happens to be, right?

But it’s not a, here’s all the shitty things that your clients say, and here’s all the shitty things that your colleagues say and more about, I, you already know that you’re doing a great job in these areas. You already know that these are areas that need to be worked on, and we just continue to move forward.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I’ll say from, an owner trying to get, you know, feedback and perspective from the team there. You know, you, I wouldn’t do it through a, you know, a normal 360 review process, but you know, what, you’ve described part of it, I think the, whoever you hired got it right in having, you know, very anonymous conversations with team members.

And I think that bringing an outside advisor who has those kinds of conversations, nothing in writing, it’s just it, you know, it’s dialogue back and forth. I do those for my clients from time to time. I’ll be honest, I, you know, I would say it’s maybe 50/50 whether I feel like I’m truly getting candid feedback.

Gini Dietrich: Sure.

Chip Griffin: from the team members, because usually I don’t have any prior relationship with them, so they don’t know whether they truly can trust me or not. But you know, it’s, I mean, even 50% in most cases is enough to start, you know, pulling some common threads. But the whole, the way you use that information as an outside advisor, the way you present that.

Matters a lot. And so you need to really understand how is it gonna land best with the owner that has hired you. And is that by being blunt, is that by sort of internalizing the knowledge and sometimes I’ll just use it in my ongoing conversations to try to steer things. Yes. To address some of that feedback.

Sure. Without even explicitly saying, well,

Gini Dietrich: yes,

Chip Griffin: you know, the whole team said you’re very bad at X, Y, and Z.

Gini Dietrich: Brutal.

Chip Griffin: But instead, try to find other ways Yes. To, achieve the same outcome, because then the team starts to feel like it was useful to talk with me, and the owner then starts to feel good about the way the team starts to pull together and all that kind of stuff.

But it, is, delicate and, I would say that, you know, the, typical 360 process where it tends to be, you know, written survey feedback form type things, I, just, I think that’s, it’s very difficult to see that working in most cases and in my own experience, it has rarely worked out, the way people would like it to.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, totally agree.

Chip Griffin: All right. let’s see. We have time probably for at least one more, or maybe just one more here from the list. I don’t know if there’s something that, that jumps out at you that you would like to have, covered.

Gini Dietrich: Let me look, let me look. Uh, maybe we can mush board of advisors and direct access to CEO together.

Chip Griffin: Sure. Although they’re, well no, because the direct access to CEO is the CEO of the client.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, oh, got it, got it, got it.

Chip Griffin: So they, they are, they are separate issues. Got it. But I, mean, I think either, either board of advisors, the other one I would throw out there is a possible one is the, tying all, employee comp to have an incentive component.

Oh, yeah. I, think either one of those would be good. So I’ll let you pick between board of advisors or employee comp.

Gini Dietrich: Employee comp.

Chip Griffin: So, this is, this is one of my pet peeves. And I’m sure that David doesn’t know this, and, if he did that…

Gini Dietrich: Ha! He wrote it just because he knew it was your pet peeve.

Chip Griffin: But, but his argument was that every employee should have at least some of their compensation effectively at risk as part of a, an incentive compensation plan. And I hate this idea. I hate formulaic, incentive-based compensation for virtually all employees. And I’ll be controversial here, it doesn’t really apply to most agencies, but I don’t think it should apply to most sales reps either. Because I think that when you have incentive compensation, whether that is commissions or for hitting profit targets or you know, other things, the problem that you run into is people tend to the extent that they pay attention to it at all.

Right? So. You’ve got a couple of risks here. One is that you’re paying people for things they don’t even care about. Right? Right. You know, I mean, I’ve had sales reps they were gonna sell or not sell, and it had nothing to do with the commission they were getting.

Gini Dietrich: Fair.

Chip Griffin: Now that’s rare. Most sales reps are incented by their commission and, so they will try harder to get it, but what are they doing?

They’re, focused on the thing that gets them the commission, which is the actual signature on the contract and the revenue. It doesn’t mean that it’s good revenue. It doesn’t mean that it’s profitable. It doesn’t mean that it’s a good client. It doesn’t mean you can get results for them. It doesn’t mean any of those things.

And you’re now creating tension because if you have more than one sales rep, nobody wants to help each other because then they gotta split the commission. And so, but this goes beyond, you know, sales and other ways of doing incentive compensation. You still have, it’s very difficult to craft a plan.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: That doesn’t have unintended consequences. Yeah. And particularly when you’re outside of the sales realm, my experience is that most employees are not truly motivated to hit specific targets for their incentive comp. They’re either gonna do a good job or they’re not. And it has nothing to do with you saying if you hit this target, you’ll get a little bit extra.

But to the extent that it is, it does have those unintended consequences because now they’re fixated on, I mean, let’s say it’s client retention. So now what if, if you’ve got a client retention target and if you have a client retention over 85%, you get a bonus. Sounds great. Right? Because we’re, retaining clients. Except that what are we doing to retain those clients?

Right? Oftentimes that means we’re going to go way down the, rabbit hole of scope creep. Yep. And, we’re just gonna be giving them all sorts of freebies to keep them around. And so those are the things we need to think about. And it’s, why in general, I’m opposed to all forms of incentive comp.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, one of the things that we do do is we say you can earn up to a certain percentage of your salary in bonus. It’s the end of year bonus. And here are the, gates, like revenue, profitability, all the things. But most of it is not reliant on the individual. Most of it’s reliant on the company as a whole.

And so we all have to work together to achieve those goals. And then they sort of know like, okay, well this, this is where we are, so I’m gonna make 90% of that percentage or whatever it happens to be. So they are they are clear about those kinds of things and they tend, because of that, they tend to ask…

They tend to be more engaged and ask more strategic questions about work, and they’re more thoughtful about it. But to your point, we don’t reward scope creep. We don’t reward, you know, keeping a client longer than we should. Those kinds of things. Those, like, we take those pieces out. So we, do it based on, we don’t do it commission or incentive based, but we do do it based on a certain percentage of your salary if we meet certain objectives as an organization.

Chip Griffin: I mean, that’s better, but I’ll be honest, I still don’t like it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. It works for us. It’s highly motivating for us.

Chip Griffin: And that’s, the thing. I mean, the, as we say at the end of every, episode, it depends. So even these things where

Gini Dietrich: mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: You know, we may disagree, you know, where David has different ideas than we do, that doesn’t mean that, that none of them can work in your agency.

Right. and I think that it’s, that’s a point that, that he made in a LinkedIn conversation that, that we had, recently as well. You know, some of these may be good ideas, some of them may be bad ideas. Some of them may be good ideas, but you know, wrong place, wrong time or wrong agency, wrong time. And, some of these ideas are good at different stages of the lifecycle of even your own agency.

So something that works when you have two employees may not work when you have 20 or 200. Right. And so, you know, I just, I, love articles like this though, because it gives you that food for thought. It makes you think, it makes you, you know, to test your assumptions. You know that I’m a huge, advocate of curiosity generally.

And so, you know, making you think about things is helpful. And so hopefully we’ve made you think just as David made us think. And, so we, appreciate that and, we hope that we’ve given you those insights here that may help you think through decisions for your own agency. And of course, you know, check out the full article for many, many more ideas beyond what we were able to cover today.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. It was a really good, really good article.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. So thank you all for joining us. That will conclude this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich,

Chip Griffin: and it depends.

No more excuses. No more waiting to see how things play out. AI has moved past the experimental phase, and if you’re still treating it like a nice-to-have rather than a fundamental shift in how your agency operates, you’re already falling behind.

In this episode, Chip comes out swinging with a wake-up call for the agency community: the ground is shifting faster than most are willing to admit, and the window for meaningful adaptation is closing. Gini backs him up with examples of how AI has progressed from an intern-level tool to something that can genuinely replace mid-level work—if agencies don’t evolve what they’re selling.

They dig into the practical reality of training AI tools to work like team members, not just one-off prompt machines. Chip explains how he uses different platforms for different strengths—Claude for writing, Gemini for competitive intelligence, Perplexity for research, and ChatGPT as his strategic baseline. Gini shares how her 12-year-old daughter creates entire anime worlds through conversation with AI, demonstrating the power of treating these tools as collaborators rather than search engines.

The conversation covers what clients actually want to pay for in 2026 (hint: it’s not social posts and press releases), how to build AI agents trained on your specific expertise, and why the process of training AI forces valuable clarity about your business. They emphasize that this isn’t about slapping the “AI-powered” label on your services—it’s about fundamentally rethinking what value you deliver and how you deliver it.

If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the AI dust to settle, this episode is your warning: there is no settling. There’s only evolution or extinction.

Train one AI tool this week like you’d train an employee. Pick the platform you use most (ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini) and spend 30 minutes having an actual conversation with it about your preferences—tone, structure, what you hate (like emojis), and what outcomes you need. Feed it examples of your best work and tell it explicitly when outputs miss the mark and why. The tool won’t improve with one-shot prompts; it needs training just like a new hire.

Map what clients will actually pay for in 2026. Block one hour to list every service you currently bill for, then honestly assess which ones AI can now handle at a competent level. Don’t lie to yourself—if ChatGPT can draft solid social posts or press releases after reviewing past examples, that’s table stakes now. Identify what remains valuable: strategy, teaching clients to use these tools, implementing new processes, or solving problems AI can’t touch. This clarity will drive every business decision you make this year.

Test AI on something personal before rolling it to client work. If you or your team are intimidated by AI, start with meal planning, fitness routines, managing schedules, or drafting birthday card messages. Use it for something low-stakes where you can experiment with conversation-style prompting without pressure. Once you see how it responds to feedback and training in a personal context, you’ll understand how to apply the same approach to agency work.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, you know, we started the new year off on a note where we weren’t gonna yell at our audience, but I feel like it, it’s time to yell at our audience again. I’ve taken too much time off from being Mr. Nice guy.

Gini Dietrich: Okay, well this shall be interesting. I can’t wait.

Chip Griffin: I, and this is, it’s partly for our audience, but it’s really for the overall agency community, particularly PR and marketing, PR and communications generally, even outside the agency world. I’m just, I’ve become kind of wound up lately because I think that the industry as a whole, and perhaps even some of our listeners are not acting swiftly enough to understand just how much the ground is shifting beneath them.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And how much serious evolution needs to take place. Really over the next year. I mean, I don’t think, I don’t think we’re on a long-term horizon here. I think that too many have waited to change too long in many ways, and AI is now becoming sort of the, the real trigger point for it, but it’s bigger than that.

I think a lot of the, the PR space in general has lagged behind a lot of what’s going on in the business community, and AI is just the fist to the face that’s, that’s gonna separate out the people who are gonna survive.

Gini Dietrich: The fist to the face. Wow. All right, then.

Chip Griffin: I told you I was a little wound up on this one, so,

Gini Dietrich: okay.

So everybody’s gonna be punched in the face. Got it. Okay.

Chip Griffin: If that’s what it takes to wake up and pay attention.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, no, I, yeah, I totally agree with you. And, you know, I have been gungho on AI for going on four years now. And it’s, it’s my second love for sure. But it is time to pay attention to how it is changing things and what it’s going to do to your business, to your teams, to how you deliver work, all those things.

Chip Griffin: I mean, look, a lot of the PR world has been focused in recent years on figuring out how to keep their head above water and survive, and hang on to the old ways of doing things. And this predates the explosion of AI in recent years.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: But, what the explosion of AI has done is really, it has drawn the attention of particularly clients to the issue.

It has drawn the attention of employees. It, and it is still being ignored. And I think we’ve hit that point where we can no longer ignore it. I think we’re at the point with a lot of these AI tools where they are now both accessible and reliable enough that there’s no reason not to accelerate your pace of change using AI as a tool to get there.

And we’ve talked about this before, and I, and I’m not changing my point of view, AI is not the end in itself. The AI is just a way to get there. So don’t mistake what I’m saying here for saying that, you know, you just need to adopt AI for the sake of AI. You still need to find problems to solve first and AI will help you on a lot of them, but you need to be finding those problems.

You need to be thinking ahead to what do clients really want from you? What is going to help them to get the results they’re looking for? It can’t be about how do I use AI to make myself a little bit more efficient in what I’m currently doing. Because everything is changing. And we need to be on top of that.

Gini Dietrich: I read an article on LinkedIn probably in November, and I’ll see if I can find the link to include in show notes. But it, it was from a chief marketing officer at a Fortune 10 company, and what he said was this: if I were an agency wanting to work with clients in 2026, here are five things I would do. And I can’t remember all of them, but one of them was teach organizations, teach marketing and comms teams how to use AI to be more effective. Implement your process, whatever it happens to be. Because we are no longer relying on our agencies to do the work. We are relying on agencies to teach us what’s coming ’cause we don’t have the time. And that has stuck in my head because I think that’s right.

I think that. Yeah, sure, agencies will always, or big companies, will always need arm extra arms and legs to do the work, but that’s not the work that most of us want to be doing. Right?

We don’t wanna be writing the social posts and the news releases. We wanna be part of the strategic conversation. We wanna be part of the of helping to move an organization forward. And if we can do that by teaching our clients how to use AI to be more effective, to be more productive, to accelerate their work, and I know everybody’s worried it’s going to replace me, it’s going to, it’s going to reduce our number, our billable hours, whatever happens to be.

I think there’s a huge opportunity here for you to reframe how you’re helping clients and using AI to be able to do that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, but I would be very direct with listeners. If you do not change, it will replace you. It will take away.

Gini Dietrich: That’s fair. That’s totally fair.

Chip Griffin: Your revenue.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, it will. I totally agree with you.

Yeah.

Chip Griffin: So, you know when we say that you know that AI is not gonna destroy your agency, that’s only if you evolve.

Gini Dietrich: That’s fair.

Chip Griffin: If you keep doing the same thing that you’re doing today, it absolutely will destroy you. I don’t care whether you’re an employee or a business or whatever, if you are an employee and you think that AI isn’t gonna take your job in a year, it is If you don’t evolve, that’s and figure out how to use it for yourself.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. That’s totally fair.

Chip Griffin: And we need, everybody who’s listening needs to wake up to that fact.

It requires a huge mindset shift.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Because AI can write your news releases, it can write your social posts. It can do all of that stuff that

Chip Griffin: not only can,

Gini Dietrich: we don’t wanna do anyway,

Chip Griffin: It should. Yeah.

Because it has evolved enough in the last year that the quality is there now. I used to describe AI as an intern. It is moved beyond the intern stage. Yep. It is at a minimum a junior employee, and if you train it well for your organization, it can be even a mid-level employee or perhaps even in some cases more than that.

But this training piece is important too, because part of the problem that a lot of people run into in my experience is they, they hop onto the AI tool and they just say, Hey, write this press release on this subject. And I look at it, oh, this is rubbish. It still requires a lot of work. You know what? It absolutely does.

The same thing would happen if you hired an employee off the street who knew nothing about you and your clients, and you said, write me a press release. The result would probably be pretty similar to what the AI came up with.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: But once that employee starts writing more press releases and you start telling ’em, this is the tone of voice we use, this is the style we use, these are the facts we use.

You feed more information into it. You explain your preferences. When you’re using these AI tools, you need to just be direct with it. Don’t accept the first response. Explain as you would with an employee what you want done differently. If you do that, it will tailor the outcomes. Even simple stuff. Like I’ve told them, stop showing me damn emojis.

I don’t wanna see an emoji in any response because I think it’s wildly unprofessional and I hate them.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: So guess what? I don’t see them anymore.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: I’ve asked it to tighten up the spacing on it so that I can see more on a screen. It does that. And that’s even before you start telling it, you know, this is the structure of a paragraph that I like.

You start feeding in information. I’ve fed in a thousand articles and transcripts and that sort of stuff into the platforms. It now can speak like me reliably to the point where I don’t know if what it’s giving me is a quote from something I’ve written before or original text that it’s come up with that just speaks so clearly in my voice.

Gini Dietrich: I love that it will say, it will give, usually gives me three options. One is like strategic leadership, like C-level blurbs. That with Gini-isms or like smart, funny, witty blurbs. And then I can decide, and usually what I do is I take a combination of the three, but it has gotten to the point where if it actually calls it Gini-isms, that like it knows how I talk, it knows how I write, it knows how I coach, it does it knows all of those things.

And it has created an opportunity for me to say, yeah, this probably, we probably shouldn’t have some Gini-isms in this ’cause it’s really professional. Or, we can include more because it’s more me talking to a screen or whatever happens to be. So it’s gotten to that point. It’s, when you train it, it’s very, very good.

Chip Griffin: Well, and you can even tailor those recommendations. So one of the things that, that I’ve told it is it’s fine to give me multiple options, but give me your recommendation.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And when you do that, don’t give me a whole lot of backup on the alternative. So spend your time explaining why you’re making the recommendation.

That’s fine. But then, you know, if it’s, let’s say it’s a title or something like that, you know, give me three or four other options, but it, by default, it tends to explain those three or other four other options. And so now you’re dealing with like a 10 page response,

Gini Dietrich: right?

Chip Griffin: For what should be something pretty simple.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: So. I, part of my instructions to my tools are, don’t do that. Give me the alternatives, but just, you know, bullet point them. If I want more information, I’ll ask for it, but it allows it to work more the way that I want it to. And so we all need to do that. We also need to be looking at these tools and understanding that there’s no one size fits all solution.

I have people say, well, should I, you know, should I use Claude or Chat GPT or Gemini? The answer is yes.

Gini Dietrich: Yes to all of them.

Chip Griffin: But they all serve different purposes. Yep. Just like you have different employees who serve different roles, these tools excel in different areas. I mean, Claude is fantastic at writing.

I mean, to me, Claude is my head of writing because it can just absolutely nail it, but there’s a lot of things that it doesn’t do quite as well.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right. Yep.

Chip Griffin: And then I look at something like Gemini, and I love what Gemini does in terms of inferring things from research. So it’s more willing to go out on a limb, and kind of read between the lines of things that it finds to come back with, particularly for competitive intelligence or things like that. You know, deep research.

Whereas Perplexity is very good for research where you really wanna make sure it’s accurate and you really wanna be able to cite all the sources, but it will not go out on a limb. So understanding what the strengths of each platform are is useful. And then there’s Chat GPT, which is sort of my, you know, my default choice for just basic stuff, strategy, et cetera.

But I’ve also told it, tell me when I should go somewhere else. And so it’s good. It’ll say You should hand this off to Claude now.

Gini Dietrich: I love that.

Chip Griffin: Because we’ve, I’ve had an actual conversation with Chat GPT about my stack and, and what I think of it and I bounced things around and, you know, refined it.

So now it knows how I want to handle certain things. And so it will stop at a certain point and say, now it’s time for you to go here. And that’s really helpful.

Gini Dietrich: I love that. I do not do that. I usually move between, but I haven’t had it recommend when to move it. That’s…

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, but it could, because it won’t generally by default tell you to do that.

But if you, if you explain what you have access to and what you want to use it for, it will tell you when is the right time, and sometimes I’ll pause and say, are you really the right one for this? Or should I be using one or the others? And they’ll say, no. Good point. You know, you should use this one instead for this particular task.

Gini Dietrich: I love that.

Chip Griffin: And it’s great. I mean, and I’ll, I’ll bring things back and forth like, so when I’m creating a piece of content, I’ll often, you know, ask more of the strategy piece from Chat GPT, because I’ve put more of the strategy stuff into there. Then I’ll go over to Claude to write it, but then I’ll bring it back for feedback.

Now the next level is then to automate this with agents with n8n and those kinds of things. And, and so, you know, I’ll play with those things too. But for now, even doing it manually is a huge time saver,

Gini Dietrich: huge time saver,

Chip Griffin: and still ends up with really high quality content. It’s not, people talk about how AI is helping put out rubbish.

And that’s because people are doing it without training.

Gini Dietrich: Correct.

Chip Griffin: You need to think through how you use these tools to get the results that your clients are looking for and the results that you need as a business. And this is where people are falling down, and this is where a lot more effort needs to go into it.

If you want to not just survive but thrive.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And you know, it’s funny ’cause when somebody says to me, oh, I just can’t get it to output what I need, and I’m like, user error. I usually say that because that’s exactly what it is, is you haven’t taken the time to train it. I, and you have to, I, you said earlier, you talk to it like it’s an employee.

I do the same thing. Talk to it through like, okay, this isn’t quite right and here’s why. Think about this, this, this, and this. We also need to consider these things. And then it goes. Oh, okay. Goes into thinking mode and then it, it outputs pretty close to, but you have to have a conversation with it. I use this example all the time, but my 12-year-old is obsessed. Obsessed with anime, and she like, no, nothing else exists in her world right now other than anime. And she has created an entirely new ecosystem of anime worlds from her favorite shows using chat GPT. I mean, it’s so good that I’ve actually considered. Finding a, a publisher to have it published as fanfiction because it’s that good.

And she doesn’t type into it. She literally has a conversation with Chat. She calls it Gee. And she will say, Gee, I’m thinking about this. I want the guy to do this, and I want the girl to do this. And like she has a whole conversation and it creates this world with her that… it’s fascinating to sit and listen to how she’s using it.

So it’s the same kind of thing. Have a conversation with it. You can do it via voice, you can do it, you know, by typing whatever is easiest for you. But have a conversation with it and teach it just like you would an employee. It’s gonna learn faster. It doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t need to eat. It doesn’t need to work out.

It doesn’t need to take a break. It doesn’t, it’s not going to pause for meetings. You can have stuff running in the background while you’re doing something else. I mean, it’s the more time you spend training it, just like with a human being, the better it is.

Chip Griffin: Yep. And I’m gonna be honest, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be more work and stress in the short term for you.

Gini Dietrich: Sure.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, this is not,

Gini Dietrich: mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: You know, this is not a quick fix. It is not. It is not something where there’s some magic formula. You’re gonna have to try to figure out what works for you and for your team. What works for your clients. And the client piece is really where you need to start with this.

You need to spend some time thinking about what are your clients really hiring you for? What are they going to need you for 12, 18, 24 months down the road? Then start figuring out how these tools can help you to get there. Because there’s just, there is too much of this “Well, you know, I need to, I need to protect my billing model, and so I need to do value pricing because of AI.”

That is not the answer. Although if it were, what you would discover is that, that people are valuing less what you are doing today. So if you’re truly going to follow value pricing, that doesn’t mean that you get more. It means you probably get less for a lot of these things because they realize, you know, that drafting of a press release, I actually can get that out of Claude pretty well.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Particularly if you feed it in your last three or four years worth of press releases.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: It’ll be pretty darn good at coming up with them on their own.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Probably candidly, in less time that it takes to communicate to your team that they want it.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. 100%. Yes.

Chip Griffin: Now there will still be companies that are happy to outsource it generally.

Gini Dietrich: Sure.

Chip Griffin: Right. That’s, that is always going to exist. But the way that they value it from a price standpoint and the other things that they want alongside of it will absolutely change. And you need to be thinking about that. Because AI is not just changing how your business operates, it’s changing how other businesses operate.

It’s changing how the media operates. And so it is truly a disruptive force that we need to be thinking about as communicators and as agency folks because it, it upends a lot of what we have done, tactically at least, in recent years and over the decades. It does not upset the outcomes that are being sought after.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: From the work that we’re doing.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: And, and we lose sight of that for the tactics too often.

Gini Dietrich: One of the things that I did is I built an agent, and I call it my co CEO. And as I was building it, I was going through a really rough HR time and so I used it mostly, honestly, just to vent.

But it got to know me, and what’s important to me, and my voice, and what things I wanted to be human forward on, and what things I needed to stay professional on. And so I, as I was building it, it was, I was going through that process. Now I can say to it, okay, we’re thinking about doing this. So for instance, a client came to me probably midyear last year and said, Hey, we really want your team to do an audit of all of our brands and where they sit on the PESO model maturity level.

And I kind of laughed and said, well, I can tell you right now, they’re all at level zero. And he was like, great, that’s good to know. What’s what takes us from zero to one, one to two, and so on up. And I thought about that for a little bit and I was like, hmm. I don’t have an answer for that. And so I went into my CO CEO and I had a conversation with it.

Like, if we were gonna build a maturity model for the PESO model for an enterprise customer, what does that look like? And it probably took two weeks for me to get something that I could go back to him with and feel comfortable and confident with it. But it would’ve taken me two months to do that on my own.

So, you know, it helps you think, it helps poke through holes in things. You have an AI that you’re building and I hope it’s okay for me to mention this ’cause I don’t know if it’s available yet, but I got to beta test it and it’s, I put in there that I was looking for. I said, okay, this is where, this is where the business is at the end of 2025.

These are our goals for 2026. Here’s what I’d like to do in the next three to five years. Here’s like, I put in all of that information, where are the holes? And it started poking holes into things that I had never even considered. And I was like. Chip, this is really good. It’s just, it’s really, really good.

So when you, when you train it, when you teach it what you’re wanting, what your voice is, what you’re trying to achieve, it is going to help you in more ways than one. It’s gonna help you think through problems. It’s gonna help you come up with solutions you didn’t consider. And like I said, it doesn’t need to sleep.

So it can work in the background while you’re doing other things.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And there are a lot of these ways that we can innovate for our businesses and that particular example, it is live on the SAGA website now. It’s an AI agent called Sage.

Gini Dietrich: It’s awesome and everyone should check it out.

Chip Griffin: It’s trained on a huge volume of my both public and private materials that I’ve created over the last eight or nine years, and it does a remarkably good job of mimicking the advice I would give. Is it a hundred percent? One-to-one? No. Yeah, but it’s, it’s pretty darn close to the point where I’ve had a couple of clients now who have tried it and then asked me the same question they asked of Sage, and they got almost exactly the same answer.

And, and so that’s how, you know, it’s, it’s working pretty well because I think, as any listener knows, I have some views that are not necessarily exactly in line with every other advisor in the agency space. And so, and in some of those cases, they were pieces of advice that you wouldn’t get if you went somewhere else.

So, you know, you can tell that it’s actually using the training materials. And not simply doing a general knowledge search. But these are all things, it does take time. You’ve gotta have the material to provide to it. You need to spend the time with it, as you did in conversing and going back and forth.

But the more you go back and forth, the smarter it gets.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: And the better it can help you the next time something comes along.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: And I think the other thing is that the more you use these tools, the more it forces you to think about some of these things. Because in order to get the most from them, you really have to be very clear about who is your ideal client?

What are the services you provide? What is the value you deliver? And so, it’s just like a business plan. I always say that the business plan itself doesn’t really matter, but the process you go through to create it does.

The process you go through to train your AI itself is beneficial and helps to get clarity. Because the clearer you are with the AI, the clearer you are with yourself by necessity. And so you need to be thinking about these things.

You need to be really thinking about making much more radical change to your business over the next year or two than you probably have previously thought. You really need to be thinking about how not just technology, but client needs will force this change, otherwise you are gonna get left behind.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I totally agree. And to your point earlier, if you evolve and if you use it, and you’re better, you’re doing a better job of understanding what it is that your clients are willing to pay for, and they’re still willing to do it. They just don’t wanna pay for social posts and news releases.

Chip Griffin: That’s right. I mean, there’s a huge opportunity here. There’s a giant threat,

Gini Dietrich: huge opportunity,

Chip Griffin: and I don’t wanna minimize that, but there’s a huge opportunity.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: But the key is you actually have to evolve and change. You can’t just play buzzword bingo.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, please.

Chip Griffin: Just slapping AI on top of something that you deliver that’s not gonna help you.

Gini Dietrich: And it’s fun. It’s fun to test it. It’s fun to try it out. So do it.

Chip Griffin: Yeah,

Gini Dietrich: Do it, do it, do it.

Chip Griffin: I mean, but we can’t minimize. It is scary for a lot of people too. I mean,

Gini Dietrich: sure, absolutely. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: But you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta embrace that fear if you wanna succeed.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I always say when I have somebody new join the team that’s scared of it, I say, all right, let’s do it.

Let’s use it for something personal. So I will say that to you as well. Meal planning, fitness, hobbies. Managing your kids’ meltdowns, whatever it happens to be, just try it for something. Write a poem in a birthday card. Try it for something personal, and I guarantee you, you’ll be hooked.

Chip Griffin: I had no idea we’d be getting to poems and birthday cards here today.

So I think that’s the note that we’re gonna wrap up this episode on. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.

You built an agency you’re proud of. So why does your website still feature that glowing tribute to someone you wouldn’t recommend today, or explain services you stopped offering three years ago?

In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the unsexy but critical task of auditing your agency’s website content. They share practical approaches for identifying what needs updating, what deserves deletion, and how to prioritize your efforts when you’re staring down hundreds (or thousands) of outdated pages.

The conversation covers everything from quick wins—like updating your homepage and key pages—to strategic decisions about high-traffic content that no longer serves your business. Gini shares her process for using tools like Screaming Frog to audit content systematically, while Chip emphasizes the importance of focusing on human users rather than chasing every algorithm change.

They also dive into the balance between refreshing old content and creating new material, with specific guidance on when each approach makes sense. The episode wraps with a reminder that consistency matters more than perfection—especially when AI is increasingly using your bio and content to determine whether to recommend you.

If your website is starting to feel like a liability rather than an asset, this episode offers a manageable roadmap to get it back on track without turning it into a year-long project.

Audit your homepage today. Open your website and read your homepage copy with fresh eyes—does it accurately reflect who you serve, what you do, and where your agency stands today? If not, block two hours this week to rewrite it. This is your most important page and the fastest way to stop misrepresenting your business.

Check Google Analytics for your top 20 pages. Identify which pages drive the most traffic, then ask yourself if each one still serves your business or if you’re just attracting irrelevant visitors. Kill off pages that generate traffic but don’t support your current positioning—inflated vanity metrics aren’t worth the confusion.

Ensure bio consistency across platforms. Compare your bio on your website, LinkedIn, and other platforms where you appear. Make them consistent (accounting for character limits) so AI can confidently present you as an option when people search for expertise in your area.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m old.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, you are.

Chip Griffin: But you know what else is old?

Gini Dietrich: What else?

Chip Griffin: Some of the content on my website.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, sure. Mine too. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: It’s, it’s one of the perils of having been around for a while.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, indeed.

Chip Griffin: Both as a human, as a business.

And so we have a lot of content out there on the website that maybe isn’t as current as we’d like it to be. Some of it I haven’t looked at in many years, so I don’t even know if it’s up to date or not.

Gini Dietrich: Sure.

Chip Griffin: I’m sure that many of our listeners have content on their website or maybe entire websites that are old and out of date.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: So my question to you is, how should we be thinking about this kind of, how do we deal with this problem? Or we, we can’t just spend, I mean, I, I don’t know about you, but my website’s got over a thousand different pieces of content on it. Oh yeah. Now I think most of our listeners probably don’t have websites with quite that much content on it, but some do, and even if you’ve only got a couple hundred, you know, that’s still a substantial body of content that you need to audit in some fashion. So what, what do you do about that?

Gini Dietrich: You know, it’s funny, this conversation is happening right now because about a week ago, right after the holidays, I got an email from a friend that said, Hey, uh, I don’t know if you know this or not, but you have a blog post from, from 13 years ago, literally 13 years ago, praising Elon Musk. And I was like, well, let’s delete that!

But like, I don’t know how she found that. She must have been searching on the site for something and found it. Right. So I think it’s important to do an audit and I did delete it. I moved it to the trash. But, I think it is important to do an audit.

We have a client that said to us, we don’t think we need new content. We have plenty. And we went in and we’re like, okay, great. Let’s do an audit and see. And we audited it and they do have plenty of content, but the most recent is two and a half years old. So one of the things that we’re working on with them right now, well, twofold.

One is going through the audit that we did to see what needs to stay with an update, a refresh, and what should be deleted. There are lots of, there’s lot, there’s lots of content on their site. And actually this will appeal to many of you listeners too. There’s content on their website that has some great SEO value.

You know, showing up first in Google results and things like that. So you don’t wanna get rid of that content, but it probably needs a good update. It probably needs to be refreshed. It probably needs new quotes, new experts, new expertise, new statistics, whatever it happens to be. So that’s what I would do.

It’s pretty easy. We use, Screaming Frog to do the audit, so it’ll, it will look at your entire website and then give you an Excel list of all of your links, and then you can go and you can tell it I want dates and topic and all that kind of stuff.

And you can go through that fairly easily to say, this is old, we don’t need that. Move that to a different tab. This is good stuff. We don’t wanna lose it. And then I would compare that to what you’re keep, I would compare what you’re keeping to do a Google search. Are you show, are those links showing up in Google? And I would also ask AI. Are you showing, is AI showing that content in its answers.

So you probably, I would venture to guess, like you and me, we, it would be a really big undertaking ’cause we have years and years of content. But for most agency owners, I would guess it’s probably a, I dunno… And you can use AI to help you, but it’s probably a two or three hour thing that you can split up over several weeks, right?

To get it done. But 100% you should be, you should have an up update up to date website overall, and you should be updating content so that it’s refreshed, not necessarily the URL, but updating the content inside the article or the blog post or the page or whatever it happens to be.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, I think the advice to sort of just kind of, you know, go through a list of it is a really good starting point. Whether you use some third party tool, or frankly, if your website isn’t too huge, if you just go into WordPress and start scrolling back through the pages and posts. Mm-hmm. And just looking at the headlines, it at least, you know, things that are obviously in need of help will jump out at you. Yeah. Or you know, that you praise somebody that doesn’t make sense or whatever. And, and we have to keep in mind that, that sometimes that old content might be a year old, it might be 10 years old, right?

It might still need some sort of an updating. The other thing that’s, that’s often helpful is just to go into, you know, something simple like your Google Analytics and just look at, you know, the top 20, 30, 40 pages in terms of traffic and just ask, are all of these pages the way I still want to present myself in whatever the current year is that you’re listening to us?

Because, you know, that can be a really helpful way of prioritizing what you wanna address, what you wanna update. And particularly if you’re getting a lot of traffic to a page that either is not as relevant as it should be or not as accurate as it should be given the, the way the world has changed.

You know, those are ones that you want to address. I, to me, one of the interesting cases is, you know what, and I’ve seen this a lot, and I, some of the organizations I’ve worked with have had this issue where you’ve got a page that gets a ton of traffic, but it’s frankly totally irrelevant to what they do today.

Right. It’s still, it’s still an accurate bit of content, which is why it keeps getting traffic, you know, because it’s answering whatever question the searcher may have had, but it doesn’t really benefit the organization other than it does produce a fair amount of inbound traffic. So, to me, those are interesting cases.

Trying to figure out what you do with those. And, if you talk to different SEO experts, you sometimes hear different bits of advice on this, right? Because some are like, well, you know, you, you’re still getting people clicking over to your site, and that’s a good signal for the search engines, so that’s good.

The problem is if the signal is that you’re relevant for something that you really aren’t relevant for. Right. So, doesn’t really help you. My general inclination is if it’s completely irrelevant to what you do today, I would kill it off and sacrifice the traffic. But that’s, that’s my perspective on that.

No, I totally agree with that.

Either way you should make a conscious decision about it.

Gini Dietrich: I totally agree with that because I think you’re right. If it’s not some, if it’s irrelevant, if you’re bringing irrelevant traffic to your website, your numbers are inflated. So I would rather have accurate numbers so I know exactly what my pipeline looks like, my lead generation looks like, what my lead nurturing looks like, and be able to work it backwards.

Right. So I completely agree with you and like I said, I killed that article from 13 years ago. Because that’s not how I feel about that man anymore. So, yeah. At all.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Well, for, for many years on my personal blog, the highest trafficked post was one, was sort of a throwaway post I did on a camera backpack, that I got like 20 years ago.

And it just, it scored, it turned out it was a popular model of the backpack, and so it got a ton of traffic from people who were considering buying it. Obviously that didn’t help me at all.

Gini Dietrich: Not at all. Right.

Chip Griffin: Because that, I mean, you know, I didn’t pitch camera backpacks or anything like that, you know, I didn’t sell ’em, I didn’t even have an affiliate link in or anything like that.

So what, you know, what was the value of it? Pretty much nothing. You know, it felt nice to see all the spikes in traffic that it generated. Sure. Of course. But yeah. But it wasn’t particularly useful, so, and those are the kinds of things that, that many of us may, you know, maybe we just had a comment on our blog about some story of the day. And it just took off and for whatever reason still sticks around. But it’s not really what our agency is about, so doesn’t really help.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I would really look at, I mean, some of your ideas, especially if you don’t have a ton of content like we do going, just going through WordPress and looking to see. I would start with the content on your website specifically, what’s on your homepage?

Does it represent who you are and what you stand for today? Does it accurately reflect where you are today? I would venture to guess the answer for most of us is no. I would start there at least with the homepage and your top three or four pages, so probably your services page, probably your about us page.

Maybe a resources page, depending on, again, look at your Google Analytics. Then once you’ve done that, then I would definitely go through WordPress and go through any content that you have, podcasts, recordings, videos, blog posts, whatever it happens to be. Go through all of those and then divide and conquer and say, yeah, we’re gonna have to update these.

It may take me all year, but I’m gonna do one a week and I’m gonna update one a week. And it suddenly, you’re taking small bites of the elephant and you can get it done by year’s end.

Chip Griffin: I love your advice to look at the homepage and other key pages before worrying about, you know, old blog posts and that kind of thing, because many, many agencies neglect their websites.

Until they decide all of a sudden, this is how I’m gonna get new business. And so then they over invest in time and money Yes. In their websites. Yes. So it, it, it does seem to be a story of extremes most of the time, but, but looking at that homepage of your website and making sure that it accurately reflects the business that you are: who you serve, what you do, and that it is very crystal clear about those things on your homepage.

Very first step. Do not pass go. Do not do anything else. Just get that done first.

Then I would say, look at the about page and make sure that it accurately reflects who you and your team are. Make sure that the right people are there. Make sure that your bio is accurate and up to date. Make sure that your photo is up to date and have a photo, by the way, because people like to deal with other people.

Yep. And as someone who does professional headshots for people on the side, I gotta tell you, you gotta have something that’s within the last five years at least. I mean, if I put up a photo on the website of me with hair, that’s just, that’s not, that doesn’t make any sense. And yet I see plenty of people,

Gini Dietrich: no,

Chip Griffin: who have photos on their websites.

And then I meet them and I’m like, this is not even in the ballpark.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, you’re right. The other thing I will say to that, and this is incredibly important, is that AI notices inconsistencies. So if you are inconsistent across different, the websites, social media, all the places that you are online, you are not going to show up in AI answers no matter how good your content is. So when you’re doing that audit, I would also audit your bio. Your bio that’s on the website compared to what it’s on LinkedIn compared to what it is on all the other social media platforms. If you have YouTube or a podcast platform, compare it to there. If you have a newsletter, compare it to there. Like ensure that it is the exact same bio, not, not, little changes based on the platform. I mean, you’ll have to make it smaller for Twitter than you would for LinkedIn, right?

But it has to be consistent because if it’s not, AI gets confused and doesn’t know what to do, and so it just doesn’t present you as an option. So as you’re doing that audit, I would ensure that the bio, your own bio and then the bios of your key leadership or key team members are consistent across every platform on the internet, because that’s incredibly important with AI today.

Chip Griffin: Yes. At the same time, what I would say to you is AI and SEO are very important. More important are the humans who actually visit your website.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And so there’s lots of advice out there, including what we’re talking about here that will help you from an AI and SEO standpoint. However, it should never, ever, ever be at the expense of the actual user’s experience.

Gini Dietrich: No, never. Right.

Chip Griffin: And increasingly, I’m seeing websites that are being tailored for how they think that AI will be reading and indexing their sites. And so, for example, they shift almost entirely to a Q&A format because AI, generally speaking, loves the Q&A format in order to stock the answers that it gives to people.

However, that’s not always the best user experience. Sometimes you need to present things in more of a compelling story like way. And trust me, the AI will figure it out. It may not be as great at it today. It may prefer the Q, but it’s going to improve over time.

And it’s the same thing as for years, people would chase the latest algorithm change at Google. And that’s fantastic until they change it in three months or six months. Right. And so what are you gonna do? Just keep updating your website? Well, if you’re an SEO agency, you love that, right? Because. You know, you can just tell the clients, well, you know the latest version, now you gotta do this.

So you remember all that work we did in January? It’s June now. I’ll do it again. We’re gonna redo all of that for you, right? I mean, it’s a great full employment act for SEO experts. However, it is not generally a good user experience, nor frankly, a particularly good use of resources. So first and foremost, focus on the end user’s experience.

And only after that, think about, okay. Are there tweaks or additions I could make in order to help the search engines or the AI spiders or that kind of thing?

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think the point you make about how Google updated updates it algorithm like real often and that you are trying to keep up is, is ludicrous, but it’s something that we’ve always been aware of and I think the strategy has not changed.

If you always write, produce, not just write, but create content that’s compelling to a human. The algorithms and the AI are going to love it so that doesn’t matter. Are there things you can do to help it and AI find you? Sure you can do Q&A’s, you can do the, but that we do that stuff and this is gonna get techy, but we do that stuff on no follow sites, so it doesn’t show up in Google.

It doesn’t show up in our navigation. It’s only there for the AI bots, right? So there are things that you could do for sure. But if you always put the human beings first, it’s going to work no matter what happens with AI, and no matter what happens with the algorithms.

Google came out, gosh, several years ago now, and said, if you’re focused on expertise, experience, authority, and trust, those are the, those are how we’re using, that’s how we’re floating stuff to the top. So I think that’s really good advice because that is always going to A, make your content different, and B, make it valuable to humans. So if you’re always demonstrating your expertise that nobody else has and your experience that nobody else has, that will build authority and trust in both places.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, the irony is that all of the experts will help you to chase the algorithms and the technology, but the reality is that all of the search engines and all of the AI engines, they’re all chasing the user. All they’re trying to do is try to deliver what a real person wants.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And so it’s ironic that, that we set them aside, the humans aside to chase the technology when the technology is chasing the people. So it’s kind of a weird circle and I’ve consistently maintained for 20 plus years. If you focus on the user, you’ll get to the right place. You may not be there today.

And, and it, it’s gonna ebb and flow over time as algorithms and technology changes. But chase the user because that’s how you sell your business. That’s how you find new clients and that’s how you keep people happy.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s, yes. Focus on the humans first. That’s always been the advice.

That strategy has not changed. The tools change, the tactics change, the execution changes, but the strategy remains the same.

Chip Griffin: So let’s say, you know, you’re, you’ve gone through this audit on your website. You’ve chucked out the things like the praise of Elon Musk that you don’t want on there anymore.

You’ve gotten rid of the content that’s no longer relevant to the business that you are today. So now you’re left with some things that you could update, you know, maybe you could strengthen them. They’re not obviously wrong. They’re still pretty good. How do you decide where you want to invest your energy as far as which of these do you update?

Which of those do you flesh out and make bigger deals? Because I think that’s where the real challenge comes in. You know, do you, are you better off updating old content or are you better off creating new content?

Gini Dietrich: I think it depends, which is the tagline to this podcast, of course, but, it depends on a few things.

One, if you, if there’s older content that you can refresh and update with minimal resources, like it’s just a five or 10 minute, gosh, this needs to change, this needs to change, and then I republish it and it’s showing up in Google results. I think it’s probably worth doing it. Obviously if it doesn’t support or reflect where you are right now, I would not worry about it.

But if there are things where you have some SEO value or AI is using it to bring real humans to your website based on the questions they’re ans they’re asking and it’s accurate, then I would take a few minutes to update it. And like I said, maybe you, you create a list of things that you need to do and you just check one off a week.

Right? And then I would focus my efforts on new stuff. So where are we now? What are we thinking? How are we? How have we evolved? What kinds of things are we offering to the industry? That kind of stuff. So I would first focus on the stuff that you can repurpose because it’s easier and it’s a smaller lift, and you still have the value of SEO from that perspective, and then focus on the new.

But like I said, if your website in general, your homepage, your about us page are not updated, I would start there.

Chip Griffin: And I think it’s important that you, as you’re looking at the old content, that you’re thinking about refreshing that, that you don’t look at it through the lens of I could make this perfect if I spent some more time on it.

It really, you have to see that there’s some, that the outcome for the user, again, going back to the person on the other end, is meaningfully different because of the additional work that you’ve put in. I mean, if it’s just simply that it’s phrased better, it’s organized, neater. It’s, you know, a little bit clearer that that’s probably not enough for me.

Right. But if you’re able to, you know, things have changed between then and now as far as either what’s going on in the world, what’s out there, what your knowledge is, and you can, you can make it 50% better. Okay. Now you’re talking about something that, that may be worth the investment of time and energy, but if it’s, you know, if you’re just, you know, kind of polishing.

That generally isn’t gonna pay off.

Gini Dietrich: Totally agree with it. Yep. Totally agree. Yeah. If it’s new, like if it’s your thinking has evolved and it supports that and you just need to polish that piece or you know, like… We are constantly evolving the PESO model. And so I’m always looking at that content to say, oh gosh, that doesn’t represent where it is anymore.

Right? Do I wanna put a date on this or a year in the content so that anybody who visits it understands that this is three years old. Do I wanna delete it? Like, so I, you know, I’m constantly. Our marketing team and I are constantly looking at those kinds of things, so I totally agree. If it’s just a polish, I wouldn’t spend the time.

But if it’s evolved thinking, if it’s new services, if it’s new products, if it’s new IP, if it’s, you know, those kinds of things, then I would definitely include it.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. Well, hopefully we’ve given people some good ideas so that they can take a fresh look at their website as we start the year. And figure out, you know, what they might wanna tweak, improve, get rid of, hide from, any of those things.

And it, it doesn’t have to be a giant project as you suggested. No. It can be the kind of thing where you chip away at one piece of content a week or something like that and you’ll see a meaningful difference over the course of time.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yep. Get it done. Get that homepage updated.

Chip Griffin: So with that, we will draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close.

I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich,

Chip Griffin: and it does depend.

As agency owners settle into 2026, it’s easy to operate on autopilot—chasing the next tactic without reconnecting with what made the business work in the first place. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case for looking backward before charging forward.

Chip admits his first agency started because “consultant” sounded better than “unemployed.” But the real question isn’t just why you started—it’s why you decided to keep building. That motivation should be informing your strategy today.

Gini shares how she once believed she wanted a large agency with hundreds of employees and global clients. When she hit 30+ people, she realized she’d built something she didn’t enjoy leading. She was buried in HR issues instead of doing the work that energized her.

The Great Recession forced a reset, and she restructured the business around her strengths. Her advice: figure out what brings you joy in the business, and protect time to do more of it. Otherwise, you risk drifting into micromanagement or burnout.

The episode also digs into practical growth tactics from the early days that still work. Gini recalls how she built her pipeline by developing relationships with business development leads at large agencies. When prospects came in below their fee threshold, they’d refer the work her way—a principle that remains just as relevant today.

Both hosts encourage owners to revisit their “things I’d never do” list from when they started. It’s worth checking whether you’ve quietly drifted into those same patterns over time.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I am Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m thinking way, way back, way back decades now to why I started my agency.

Gini Dietrich: Oooh. Decades, huh?

Chip Griffin: And I can’t remember ’cause I’m too old now, so. No,

Gini Dietrich: you can too remember.

Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, the honest answer is that I started my first agency was because I was unemployed.

And it was better to describe myself as a consultant than unemployed. Yeah. Sure. And then than accidentally started accumulating business. Yeah. But I, but I do think it, it is a helpful exercise for us to go back and, and think about why we started the businesses or, or maybe not, in some cases, like mine, because I was unemployed, is not the greatest explanation.

So you know more why did I decide to, to, to build it into an actual business.

Gini Dietrich: Why? To keep going. Yeah. I think that’s good, especially as we’re, we’re thinking about starting out the new year and remind ourselves, you know, of the reasons that we started this.

Some of us do it because we’re, we’re unemployed. Some of us did it because we found a better, we, we think we had a better way of doing things. Some of us did it because we have a problem with authority. Some of us did it ’cause we’d make terrible employees. I mean, there are lots of different reasons, but I think reaching back into our archives in our brains and thinking about why we did it or why we, I think that you’re right, why we continue to do it is a, is a really good exercise.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I, and, and I’ve said over and over again over the years that, that I think too many agencies operate on inertia, as opposed to any kind of a, a fundamental strategy. And so, you know, it’s very easy to say as, as I’m sure many people ask you as they do me, well, what’s the, what’s my next step?

Here’s where my agency is now, what, what should I do next? And the answer is very different depending on what you’re trying to accomplish with the business. So trying to think back to those early days and what motivated you to start the business.

Evaluate it because it, that may have changed, right? You, you may have started it because it served a particular need in the moment, and maybe it’s different today, but thinking about that and thinking about what you really want from the business is usually a better way to come up with strategic decisions than it is to say, well, what do other agencies like mine do when they get to this stage of growth or to this challenge?

It’s, you really need to to match it up because otherwise, what’s the point of taking on all of that risk and stress of being a business owner?

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I mean, a really good example of that is I really thought I wanted to build a great big agency with hundreds of employees and, and clients around the globe and all of the, all of the things.

And as I started to grow and we got to about 30 ish, 33, 32 people, I realized that’s not what I wanna do. Right. It was not enjoyable. I had built a company that I was not thriving in, that I didn’t enjoy leading. You know, I was dealing mostly with HR issues and not doing the work.

And so the, the Great Recession did afford me the opportunity, unfortunately and fortunately to kind of take a step back and, and think about what kind of business do I want to have? And what kind of business do I want to lead? And while we’re back up to that same size, it’s a different structured business that allows me to focus in on the things that I do best and do the things that I enjoy versus HR ’cause that is not something I enjoy at all.

Chip Griffin: I, I think I’ve yet to meet an owner who likes, enjoys doing HR or accounting or those sorts of things. Not fun. There are some who do it well. But don’t enjoy it. But I, I don’t think I’ve found any that actually enjoy doing it.

So, but, but I think that, you know, as you think back to those early days and you think about what motivated you, it can often help you to figure out, you know, what is, what is that spark that you need in the business for you to either continue enjoying it for a longer period of time or bring back some of that, that joy that you had in those early days.

Because I know a lot of agency owners these days are, are frustrated and, you know, trying to figure out how to change things for the better. And I think part of the way you inform yourself of that is by thinking back to those early motivations and figuring out how you can inject more of that into your business today.

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s really important to do that. And I think there, you know, for me personally, I get really passionate and enjoy my job when I’m learning and doing new things. So artificial intelligence, of course, has been a great big thing for me because I’ve really enjoyed learning it and understanding it and implementing it into my business and then taking it to clients.

You know, last month we launched the PESO operating system, AI edition, where the AI prompts you instead of you prompting it. So it will say, what are your business objectives? What are you trying to achieve? What are your audiences? What are your messaging? And then it builds a PESO program for you that’s fully integrated versus you saying I need you to act like a marketing director who can, who understands PESO and can build this and this.

It’s that. So I like, those are the kinds of things that really get me excited. And building those kinds of things gets me excited and motivated. So it’s, it’s easy because I understand that about myself. It drives my team crazy ’cause they’re like, oh, she’s got something new. Or my, their favorite thing is, I had an idea.

And they’re like, oh no, no, not again. But that’s what keeps me, yeah, that’s what keeps me motivated. So finding a way to understand what brings you joy in the business, I think is incredibly important. So that without exhausting your team, of course, but doing it in a way that keeps you motivated and, and not burned out.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. One of the things that always used to, to drive my teams nuts was I would say, you know, over the weekend I was playing with this new thing. And, and you could just see the looks on their faces and they’re like, oh, this is a lot more work for me now.

Gini Dietrich: This is gonna be fun. Yep.

Chip Griffin: This is, yep. Yep. They, they never seemed to appreciate it the way that I had hoped they would when I came to them.

Correct. With these, these brilliant brainstorms of mine.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: I, and I think as, as you know, founders of agencies, most of us come in with some sort of that. Idea that, that we want to be creative or strategic or those kinds of things. And as we end up in more of a management role, we have less and less opportunities to do it.

So I, I think that, that rather than giving up on that dream, we need to figure out how we can sprinkle enough of that in there to keep ourselves motivated. We can’t give up the, the management piece. We can’t give up the business development piece. Many of us would like to. But the, the reality is that, unless you’ve built a fairly large agency, you just don’t have the ability to pull yourself out of that, as a solo owner.

But it doesn’t mean that you have to give up on those things entirely. You can carve out a piece of time to work on that, and if you are structuring your role in such a way that you’re enjoying what you’re doing, it also means that you’re frankly less likely to be doing the, the, the bad things that founders of businesses can do, which is micromanagement and tinkering with things that you don’t really belong in because you, because you’re not occupying yourself with the things that really motivate you.

And instead, you’re continuing to try to do every aspect of the business. And that’s where you start to, to run into team morale problems quite often.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years is that, yes, I can do the work, and yes, I can probably do it pretty well, but is it really something that I should be focused on?

And if not, is it something that I can pay an expert to do because in the long run, it’ll cost me less money, less time, less resources, all of the things. And I know as small agency owners, it’s really hard to say, gosh, I’m gonna have to spend $2000 or $3,000 a month on an expert. When in fact it might save you, you know, 15 or 20 grand on the backend.

So I think you have to think about these things as investments in your business and investments in your time so that you can focus on the things that, that you are great at and the things that make you the happiest and the things that are most motivating to you, because that’s how your business will grow.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And if, if that happens to be being creative and strategic, then, then you can, you shouldn’t be doing it day to day in all likelihood for clients. Sure. But you should find ways to do it either as part of, you know, quarterly or annual client reviews. Or internal brainstorming sessions that you’re engaging in.

There’s a lot of things you can do behind the scenes to be useful and, and to, to exercise those muscles in a way that that gives you satisfaction. But doesn’t put you on the front lines so that you’re, you know, now the, the one that the, the client decides they’re gonna call every time they’ve got an issue. Because that, that ends up eating up a lot of your time in a way that probably you’re not going to enjoy.

So sometimes it’s doing things behind the scenes that gets you the, the most value, or doing annual in person with the client. But they understand it’s special that you’re here, this is not. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This is not something they can or should expect every week.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, I, I know I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but we do quarterly planning with our clients.

We do a quarterly look back, and then we, you know, say, okay, based on metrics and data and all that and your priorities, here’s what we’re suggesting for quarter two or in the next quarter. And that has afforded many opportunities. A, for me to, to work in my where I’m, where I’m strong, but it also almost always gets us more money.

So when you’re, when agency owners are like, oh, should I do a cost of living raise every year? Should I increase by 10 or 15% every year? That kind of goes away because you are getting new projects every quarter based on the the plan and the strategic strategy and creativity that you’re providing to the clients every quarter, because they’re like, oh gosh, yeah, we should actually do that.

And some, and sometimes they’ll say, we don’t have extra budget. Can we move some things around? Which is okay, but most of the time they’ll say, you know, we, we have a little extra budget. Let’s focus on doing that. We have to launch a new website. Here’s some extra budget for that. We have to do a series of webinars to maintain our CEUs. Let’s here’s a little extra budget for that.

So there are things and opportunities for you to, for lack of a better term, term upsell when you’re doing these quarterly meetings versus waiting for the annual.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and so, you know, finding a way to, to inject yourself in those things is a valuable exercise.

Absolutely. From that, look back to the early days. But the other thing that that can be helpful in looking back to your early days of your agency is, you know, what helps drive your early success? Because a lot of times when we’re trying to find solutions to our current growth issues, we can find clues in some of those early days and mm-hmm.

A lot of that, you know, in the early days of, of most agencies, it may be that low hanging fruit from personal networks and things like that. But there are usually other patterns that you might be able to see there that might help you to understand what are, what are the basics that you need to go back to?

How do you, how do you employ some of those rather than, than focusing on, you know, all of the fancy new things that you see, you know, some, you know, genius podcast hosts talking about as far as how to grow an agency and instead say, Hey, this is what worked for me. Yep. Because you may find something that works again today.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we say this to clients all the time, but going back to the basics. It works. And it works for you too, so absolutely you should think about those kinds of things.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, you didn’t get here by accident. Well, maybe you got, maybe it’s a little bit of an accident sometimes that happens.

Maybe, yeah. Some of it. But, if you’ve had any longevity at all, even a few years of longevity as an agency owner, there are patterns that you can find usually that started in those early days. That you can lean into for understanding and rather than trying to do something wild and different, focus on the things that you know, you’ve proved can work for your business.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. One of the things, if I were to dig back into the archives, one of the things that worked extremely well for us is I had developed relationships with people who did business development at the large agencies, and what I found is that if they had an RFP or a current client or a prospect come in and say, we only have a quarter of a million dollars to spend.

They’re not even gonna look at that. And so they started just referring that business to us, which is how I grew the business. Mm-hmm. So if I think about that now, how could we replicate that kind of, you know, pipeline development? It was extremely effective. And I, I gift that to all the listeners too.

Like there are larger agencies in all of your cities that they have a certain threshold, and if any something comes in below that, they are happy to refer business. So there is, there is one way for you to start thinking about how am I going to, you know, keep myself motivated? How am I gonna keep my pipeline full?

How am I gonna keep cash coming in? That’s one of the things that you can think about.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and thinking those things through. I mean, sometimes it’s not a one for one where you did exactly the same way you did it originally, but you take that nugget of an idea. And you know, things like, finding other people who can refer you business that’s not quite a fit for, for them, but might be for you.

It’s a good reminder to be out there and having conversations with your peers. With people even that you might perceive sometimes as competitors, because there are often opportunities. In the work that I do with agencies, it’s not uncommon for some of the other consultants in the space to refer clients to me that are a better fit for my background and the kinds of agencies that I work with and vice versa.

Because you know, we all have our specialties. And as an agency you have your specialties, so it is very common for many agencies to have grown this way. So certainly something to be looking at today, particularly if you’re struggling to find that new business in 2026.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think I really love the advice of thinking back to how you got to where you are and some of the things that you did, and going back to basics a little bit, because those are the things that are going to continue to work.

And to your point, maybe tweak a little bit to make a more, be more effective in ’26.

Chip Griffin: I mean, it also puts you in the right mindset, I think, because if you’re thinking back to those early stages, that tends to be when many agencies have the most growth, when things are most exciting. And so if you can try to bring back even a sprinkling of that, that can be really helpful.

Particularly when times are tougher, or you’re looking for the inspiration to take things to the next level or whatever challenge you may be facing today, those lessons can be extremely valuable and also motivating at the same time.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. I used to, I used to get mad at companies that would hire big PR firms for like brand awareness and, you know, sending news releases and they didn’t get any coverage. They didn’t get any results. And I would get, I would get angry and I would call the company and be like, you’re so stupid. I would never do that today. But I had such a, I was just so naive and passionate about what we were doing, that it didn’t bother me to call and be like, we can do this significantly better for you.

And in some cases they laughed and hung up on me. And in some cases, like we became agency of record. Like we took AOR away from Fleischman Hillard one year from a big, big company with a big, big company. And it was because I made a phone call where I was like, I can’t believe that you’re spending this kind of money and getting these kinds, these lackluster results.

They were like, all right, let’s listen. I don’t think I would do that today, but it worked.

Chip Griffin: Right. But, thinking back to those things can help you do two things. One is to think some of the positive things that you can do or the affirmative steps, right. That you can take.

But the, but sometimes looking back to, to how you got started can also be reminders not to do certain things.

Gini Dietrich: Sure, sure.

Chip Griffin: So, particularly if you’ve started an agency and maybe you worked at an agency previously when you started, you probably had this laundry list of things. I would never do these things as an agency.

And I, I think back to my first agency and some of the agencies that I had worked with previously, you know, did a lot of what I felt was nickel and diming of you in terms of back in the day charging you for faxes and photocopies. Sure. Yes. And all sorts of little expenses. And so, you know, I was committed back then to making sure that my invoices were always clean and simple and fixed, and I just worked in the cost of all of these things.

Into my total cost of doing business so that I never had to aggravate a client. Fast forward to today. If I found myself doing that, I, by looking back, I would say, wait a minute. Let me think about that. Am I, am I being true to what my vision was of the business? And if not, is that because I’ve actually learned something and it does make sense to do what I thought was wrong back then.

Because I mean, you can learn and grow. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sure. Or have you just fallen into the trap because you walked around and you saw other people doing it. So you said, well, I’m gonna start charging for faxes too. And if you’re charging for faxes in 2026, by the way,

Gini Dietrich: we have a problem, but

Chip Griffin: we have a huge problem because, what the heck are you using that fax machine for?

Let alone that you’re charging for it. And by the way, where did you find a fax machine? Because I haven’t seen a fax machine in person in a really long time, except maybe like at the back of a doctor’s office. The, you know,

Gini Dietrich: the bank and the doctor’s office. Yeah, I think that’s it.

Chip Griffin: Well, I haven’t, I don’t, I kind, I haven’t been inside a bank in a long time, but

Gini Dietrich: yeah,

Chip Griffin: everything’s, everything’s electronic now.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. There’s no need for that.

Chip Griffin: But yeah, think, think back to those, those motivations that you may have had that rather than I want to do this, it was, I never want to be the kind of agency that does this. Because it, it is really so easy to fall down those rabbit holes over time without even realizing that you’re just, you’re doing the same things that, that you didn’t ever want to see when you started your business.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think it’s so easy to sit on social media, and you’ll get served ads from experts who say this is the way that you should do things. And in some cases it might work. And in some cases you might be like, there’s no way. And I think it’s really easy to listen to somebody and say, yeah, but we went from $3 million in debt to making $3 million a day, like, you know, these wild claims.

And then you kind of get sucked into that. I think if you’re really true to who you are and what kind of agency you want to build, that’s going to enable you to say, this just doesn’t feel right to me. I’m not, I’m just gonna… great if he’s really making $3 million a day, I need to just bypass this one.

Chip Griffin: Because you need to do what’s right for you. And so, I think that the key to that is, is really going back to your roots, understanding what motivated you to get started, what drove that success in the early days. And by understanding the, the early months or years of your agency, the more that you can inform some of the decisions that you’re making going forward one way or the other.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Think about it. It’s a good way to start ’26.

Chip Griffin: Nice positive way. We, we managed to get through an episode here without beating up on our listeners. We didn’t start the year on a negative note, did we? We started positive. We did. Think about, we think about what has worked for you previously.

Yes. And do more of that. Do more. So we will do more of this on a future episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. But in the meantime, I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of strategic planning for 2026. As they near the end of 2025, they emphasize the need for agencies to set themselves apart and adapt to the evolving landscape, particularly through the effective use of AI.

Despite ongoing economic challenges, they highlight the potential for AI to enhance both efficiency and strategic thinking. Chip and Gini also stress the importance of refining the ideal client profile and taking calculated risks. They share their personal experiences with using AI to assist in planning and decision-making processes, pointing out both the benefits and limitations of current AI technology.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m, I’m flipping through the calendar here, you know, ’cause I still have a paper calendar. Of course. I mean, who doesn’t?

Gini Dietrich: Of course. Right.

Chip Griffin: And it looks like we’re almost to the end of 2025.

Gini Dietrich: We, we are. Which is crazy. Crazy.

Chip Griffin: Which, which means that 2026 is right around the corner.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes it is.

Chip Griffin: And what do we usually do near the end of each year?

Gini Dietrich: We plan for the following next year. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And, and we have an episode talking about that. So when we have no other good ideas to bring to the table, we turn to the trusted proven stuff from the past

Gini Dietrich: 2026.

I mean, we could talk about 2026 trends. We could talk about 2026 AI things, but I think planning for our business growth is good.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. That all goes into planning, right? So, I, and, you know, I, I’m, as long as we don’t do predictions, I’m fine. I hate predictions.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, shoot. Let’s do predictions next week then.

Chip Griffin: No, no, no predictions. No, that’s, that drives me up a wall.

Gini Dietrich: Note to self. Note to self.

Chip Griffin: And I, and I know we are just, you know, probably days away from the flood of

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Articles and Yep. And podcast episodes and videos with everybody making their predictions for the year ahead. Yep. Just stop it.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: So my prediction is we will see lots of predictions.

Gini Dietrich: That is a good prediction. I think you’re probably going to be right.

Chip Griffin: It seems pretty likely.

Gini Dietrich: I’d bet on it in fact. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alright, so as we start thinking about 2026 planning, let’s look at it for through the, the lens of, of what, what we might do differently in thinking about 2026 than we typically do.

Right? Because we, there’s plenty in our archive where people can go back and listen to us generally talk about planning. I’m sure we’ll touch on some of that in the next 20 minutes. I don’t wanna disappoint listeners. We, we will, you know, reach back to the things that we’ve talked about before, but I think it’s helpful to, to think about, you know, what’s, what’s different about 2026, and I think you’ve already hinted at one of the key things.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, AI for sure. Yeah. I saw a really interesting post on LinkedIn from Parry Headrick who was talking about how he used to work for Shift and he was the VP of the San Francisco office, I think, and he said, you know, this was during the recession and I was… Anybody who was in business during the recession knows all of your business went away.

It was not a fun time to be in business at all. And he talked about how he went to the office every single day for months on end, and he made cold calls to tech firms and he, he would say, we can do like a PR plan for you, a PR 101 like, and he said one out of every 100 calls accepted the offer. And then they went all out and created a really strategic, as much as it could be, plan for these companies.

And gave it to them for free so that they had, they could generate some business. And he said that that was one of the things that kept the office going during that time and how miserable it was. Like he talked about it was boiling the frog, like it was miserable and it was not enjoyable. It’s not why he was doing that job, but they had to keep the office open.

And I think that, I read that and I thought, you know, that’s really interesting as we think about 2026 because the last couple of years for agencies have been miserable. We have been slowly boiling the frog for sure. And you know, I have a lot of friends who have laid people off, some have gone out of business, some haven’t gone outta business, but don’t have any clients.

Like, it has been rough. And I’m not sure that 26 is going to be much better. So I think one of the things that I will be advising people is, and, and for us too, is really think about how you can set yourself apart and get in front of prospects now and in January so that you can be doing the things that will help you scale and grow and be sustainable for the future.

And some of it’s not gonna be fun. It’s not.

Chip Griffin: Well, you’ve, uh, certainly taken this on a depressing turn here.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, we can talk about AI too, but

Chip Griffin: I mean No, I mean, we can, we can talk about how miserable and awful things are for everybody. Uh, that’s,

Gini Dietrich: it’s been rough. It’s not like it hasn’t been rainbows and unicorns.

It hasn’t.

Chip Griffin: No, it, it has, it has not been rainbows and unicorns. But I, but I would also, I would, I would push back a bit. I, I don’t think we’re as bad as ’08 or ’09, or back in the early two thousands. I don’t think it’s, it is not as widespread as it was back then.

I’m certainly in the agencies that I’m talking with, seeing a lot of agencies that are struggling, most, not catastrophically, most just kind of, you know, sort of malaise is, is the word I would use. Yeah. It’s good for it. And there are still some that are actually doing quite well and, and even growing. So that, to me, that is a little bit different than what we’ve seen in, you know, in  08 or ’09, or during the pandemic. Certainly.

You know, where it was pretty much… I guess even in the pandemic, we had pockets, right? The, the digital firms did well because everybody had to transition from doing things in person to doing things electronically. But it, it’s just… so, I, I think we’re in that general period of malaise, you know, sort of in, in my mind, I’m old enough, I, I think Jimmy Carter, right?

You know, you just sort of think, ehhh, you know, and, and how America of the late ’70’s was. And so there’s some of that, at least within the economy and, and certainly in, in the agency space. So I think that that part of the, the challenge here is that it is not as simple an explanation as to how you get out of it.

Right. I mean, back in ’08, ’09, it’s like, okay, well the economy just has to come forward. And in this case, part of it’s the economy, but part of it is the, the shifting nature of the relationships between agencies and brands, and other organizations. And so I, I, I think that one of the reasons why some agencies are struggling is because they’re not taking a fresh look.

At what they do, how they fit into that picture. And I think there needs to be a lot more creative thinking. And I think AI is a big driver of it, not necessarily in the, in the way that people think, though I don’t, I don’t see AI as taking away agency work. Mm-hmm. I see it as agencies just haven’t figured out how to capitalize on it effectively.

And, I think that there is tremendous opportunity for those agencies who are willing to adapt their service offerings with and without AI. And moving forward in a way where they’ll leave behind a lot of of other agencies that are more committed to just plodding forward and doing the same old, same old, and, you know, sprinkling in a little bit of AI here and there.

Gini Dietrich: I read a really interesting article a couple of weeks ago and I’ll see if I can find it so Jen can include it in the show notes. I’m sure it’s in my history somewhere, but it talked about how, you know, we’ve seen all of these layoffs at all these large companies in the last couple of months, you know, thousands and thousands of people.

And they’re telling, most of these companies are telling the teams that remain. There are two things that you need to focus on: upskilling. So, you know, using AI to help improve you, you know, understanding your own professional development, taking charge of new professional development, new skills. And the other piece is really using AI to help improve your, the work that you’re doing to make you more productive.

And it went on to say. If you’re an agency that can help with one of those two things, or both of those things, you’re gonna be in better shape than an agency who does new media news releases and news conferences, and you know, social media. So if you can think about how you can provide professional development or help an organization implement AI from a marketing and communications perspective, you’re gonna be a lot further ahead than those that can’t do that.

So I think that goes back to really thinking about how to freshen the services that you provide in a way that keeps up with what’s happening in the world.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, look, I think that’s absolutely a piece of it, but I think a piece of it is also figuring out, you know, how can you use AI to help you do different things that are not necessarily even explicitly AI related.

Or made more efficient by AI or it, I, I think it’s just a, it’s a opportunity to take a very fresh look at how we do everything. And, and I think we need to be careful, not just us as agencies, but also on the brand side. We need to be careful about how much we believe AI itself is changing things or can change things.

And, and I, I saw in the last couple of days, a video that our friend Chris Penn put out, where he talked about how you need to change your vocabulary to get the most out of the various generative AI platforms. And I don’t disagree with what he’s saying. You do need to adapt your language to those models so that you get the results you want.

But, but the flip side of that is, to me, that says AI has not come nearly as far as we think because we shouldn’t have to change for AI to be responsive to us. Right. Right. True AI would be adapting to us instead. And, and so we’re not quite there yet. And, and the progress has been absolutely amazing. I’ve, every time I try out the latest version of a model, I find new things that it can do and continue to get more and more impressed.

But I also have ongoing frustrations with them. In part because of this vocabulary issue, but in part because, you know, we’re still, we’re still overestimating what the, the technology can do for us today as far as allowing us to, to replace work hours, et cetera. And so I see many brands laying off marketing and communications people thinking, well, we’ll have fewer people, but AI will help them do the same amount.

Nope. And AI certainly makes you more efficient, but not, not that efficient.

Gini Dietrich: Not that efficient. No. And you still need somebody with a brain to prompt it and ensure that it’s not hallucinating and ensure that it’s the right information. And that it’s been edited. Like you still need humans for those things.

Does it help you get a start? For sure. But you still need the human beings to do the work. And make sure that it’s accurate because what it pumps out on first try, I mean, my favorite response is meh. I just write MEH meh, and it goes, okay, lemme try again. And then I write, meh. It tries again.

Finally. I’m like, okay, that’s halfway decent.

Chip Griffin: Well, that, that’s better. My habit is to actually get into arguments with it, which… Really serves no good purpose, but I just, I get, I get, I get frustrated when I explicitly ask it to do something and it doesn’t,

Gini Dietrich: it doesn’t, right.

Chip Griffin: And I’ll be like, well, why didn’t you do what?

Yeah. Oh no, you’re right. I should have done that. Yes, because I specifically for it, right? Like, please help me,

Gini Dietrich: please write a thousand words and it gives you 300. And you’re like, Hmm, right. Just do what thousand words.

Chip Griffin: Just do what I ask, you know? Or, you know, please make the logo smaller in this image.

And it doesn’t change it. No, don’t do that to me, that’s just, it’s very frustrating.

Gini Dietrich: It’s very frustrating. I agree.

Chip Griffin: But I think, you know, we need to be thinking how we can leverage some of these tools to help us adapt our service offerings. And I was, I was talking with someone recently who, they had shifted a, a process from humans to AI recently.

And they were running into issues because it was some data analysis that was being done and, and it turned out that the numbers were wildly different between the humans and the AI. And so the first instinct was that the AI was wrong. But in fact, upon further review, it turned out that the AI was too good.

And it was being in incredibly consistent in the way that it was doing the task. Ah, whereas humans. Sure. Inevitably we get distracted, we make a mistake, we, we hit the wrong key. You know, I mean, there’s all sorts of things that can lead to this, but because the AI was more consistent and the volume of data and such being analyzed by the humans and the AI was substantial, it, it made a real difference because the AI was actually better.

And so, but to me that’s an opportunity. You’ve got a short term problem that you gotta deal with that, you know, you’ve been generating these historical reports that don’t look quite right now. But there’s a real opportunity there because you can actually improve the quality of what you’re doing, along with the quantity, along with reducing the, the labor hours involved and that sort of thing.

So we need to be looking at, at how we can take that and take it to the next level, not just how can we use AI to do first drafts so that we only have to edit and so therefore we save, you know, 30% of our time or something like that. There’s, we have to be thinking much, much more creatively if we’re gonna be successful going forward.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I mean, I’m sure I’ve shared this before, but some of the work that we’ve done in my business this year, I’m not sure we could have done it without AI in the, in two years ago, like some of the work that clients have asked us to do. I’m not sure that we would’ve been capable of doing it without AI.

So it, it does have the ability to make you more efficient for sure, but it also helps you think more strategically. And to your point, like, bringing in the, the consistency piece of it so that, you know, maybe the, the way that you reported on results in the past isn’t fully accurate, but now it’s more accurate.

Like those kinds of things I think it has helped immensely with, and you know, I can think of at least three situations where I’ve been in a meeting with like big, big, big, big executives and they’ve thrown something out. Do you think your team can do this? And I’ve gone, sure. And then we come back and, you know, as a team, work on it and, and prompt AI.

And it’s helped us get to where we need to be. And I don’t think we could have done that on our own two years ago. For sure.

Chip Griffin: So, you know, we’ve been talking a bunch about how AI is impacting our businesses, but let’s talk a minute about how AI impacts the planning process itself. And so, you know, my question to you would be, as you’re doing your own 2026 planning with your team, are you using AI to facilitate that process at all?

Gini Dietrich: Some of it, I would say I have a co CEO, GPT that I built. So it sits as my Co CEO and sometimes I just vent to it. It makes me feel better, but sometimes it will say things like it will point out things that I didn’t think of. And so, you know, when we, especially right now, ’cause we’re working on cash flow projections for next year with our CFO and I’ve, I’ve put in like…

Not actual numbers, but percentages to, and said like, can you help me figure out if these are our goals, what we’re going need to do? What software do we need? What team members are we gonna have to add? Like that kind of stuff. And it help, it’s helping me and our CFO think through all of those different scenarios for sure.

We haven’t gotten into like the nitty gritty planning yet because our 2025 plan is rolling over into Q1 a little bit. So we’re, we’re about a quarter behind from that perspective. But, from a cashflow perspective, it’s helping a ton and it’s helped me see things that I wouldn’t have seen on my own.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And and I think that’s a, that’s a real benefit that we ought to be looking at when we’re doing the planning process is using AI, not necessarily to give us all the answers, but to help us understand what else we should be looking at. So I love using AI to, to, to give it a list of questions that I may have about something and say, what, what other questions should I be asking?

What other data points should I be looking at? Or putting in some raw data and saying, okay, you know, what are the gaps here? What, what should I be looking to… What additional data should I be looking for? Or how can I analyze this in a different way? So I think in the planning process, there’s a lot of ways that we can use the AI to help us.

I think we just need to be careful about using it to give us the answers and instead help it to guide the conversations for sure. Yeah. That we’re having with our teams and with our clients, because it will inevitably help us find things that we are overlooking. And maybe we would still get to it halfway through the brainstorming session or the, the strategy meeting or whatever.

But if we know it in advance, you know, it helps us prepare better.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I do think, you know, to your point about the, the data and it being consistent, I think it does look at things more holistically and how, and I mean, it will say to me, have you thought about this or have you thought about that?

Or, you know. Here’s an opportunity for you. Like with the PESO model certification in universities, we had an idea of how we were going to approach it in ’26 ’cause the certification is being completely revamped because of AI. And it actually gave me a couple of ideas that I was like… Huh, I hadn’t even thought about that.

So like providing curriculum and grading rubric and things like that, that helps professors that I hadn’t even, ’cause I just don’t have that kind of experience. Right. But it helps me think through some of those kinds of things. So I think you’re right. And you know, I love the idea of, of a list of questions and asking what you haven’t thought of.

I’ll put in and say, you know, we’re looking to do this, this, and this, and here’s what we’re thinking. What are we missing? And it, you know, it does come back with some ideas. Sometimes it comes back with things you’ve thought about and you’ve dismissed, and sometimes it comes back with things that you’re like, Hmm, okay, let’s, let’s explore that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I mean it, there’s, it’s not a replacement for human judgment. You still need to look at it and say, oh, yeah, that does make sense, that it’s something we look at. But, but my experience is more often than not, it does come up with things that, you know, that given the right amount of time I would have thought of, but Sure.

You know, it, it’s, it’s, it’s good to have it reinforced that, it’s good to have it, you know, bubble it up higher on my list so that, again, I, I’m not finding it out, you know, halfway through the meeting when the light bulb goes off and it’s like, oh, right, I forgot about this. We should be, we should be looking at that.

Right. You know, but I, I think this is the, the planning process is, is an opportunity for you as well to be thinking about challenging your own assumptions. And, and I do think more than ever continuing forward on the path that you’re on for the vast majority of agencies is not a good idea.

I think most agencies require at least some modest course correction and some more than that. And so I think that we’ve already talked about, you know, what kind of services you can deliver and those kinds of things. But I think the other thing we all ought to be looking at in 2026 is the definition of our ideal client.

Because, because we do need to understand better how our clients of today are being impacted by the economy, by AI, by all of the social change that’s going on. And understanding how is that impacting who we’re targeting, how we’re targeting them, what kinds of engagements we’re, we’re trying to set up with.

And so I, I think really refining that ideal client profile is something that most of us ought to be taking a very close look at for 2026 in our planning process.

Gini Dietrich: One hundred percent. I could not agree more. And you know, I’m a big, big, big fan of really understanding at a macro level what’s going on so that we know how it affects our businesses.

And I think that the more that you can do that and understand how everything that’s going on in the world is going to affect your agency and you know, the sustainability and stability of it, I think are, is really, really important. And being willing to try some things and take some risks and see what works and see what doesn’t work, and then go move on to what works and try again.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and you need to, to look at the data that you’ve got in front of you, not data from three to five years ago, right? But, but data from 2025. And so whether you’ve had a great 2025, a mediocre 2025, or an awful 2025, look at what the data is telling you. And look at where you’ve had success. Success in terms of where you’ve had the best results for clients, which we often overlook.

We, we often look at just, you know, what we’ve been able to sell, but you need to see what is producing results for clients. You do need to understand what you’re selling, where those leads came from, and, and look at those recent trends and lean into what’s working. And again, that doesn’t matter whether you’ve had a good year or a bad year.

You still wanna lean into what you know is working today because it is a, a very different environment than it was 3 years ago, 10 years ago, and and beyond. So you need to be relying on that kind of analysis if you wanna make smarter decisions in your planning process.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you’re right, like this is different than 2008, 2009, and 2020.

It’s, it’s different. So be willing to take some risk. It’s uncomfortable for sure.

Chip Griffin: You and I both love risk, so we’re always gonna preach risk. Calculated risk, not just reckless risk.

Gini Dietrich: Calculated risk.Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Please be calculated.

Chip Griffin: Yes, have a reason for what you’re doing, and have a reason to believe that there’s a decent chance of success.

Don’t just blindly walk out there and say, Hey, let’s try crossing the street now without looking and see what happens. That’s not the kind of risk we want you to take.

Gini Dietrich: Please don’t do that. Please do not do that. Please, please do not do that.

Chip Griffin: So with that, if you’re, if you’re listening and you’re driving or something, still pay attention ’cause we’re gonna wrap up now.

Keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open. If you, if you wanna listen to this again, wait. You, you can go back to the link. There’s resources that’ll be there. There’s the transcript there, all those things. So stay safe. Yes, yes. However you’re listening to us. And with that, that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.

I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complexities of hiring in growing agencies. They highlight the challenges of finding skilled, reliable employees who align with agency values.

Sharing personal experiences, Gini explains the pitfalls of hasty hiring and the benefits of thorough vetting and cultural fit. They stress the importance of a structured hiring process, including clear job roles, career paths, and appropriate compensation. They also underscore the value of meaningful interviews, proper candidate evaluations, and treating the hiring process as the start of a long-term relationship.

Lastly, Chip and Gini emphasize learning from past mistakes to improve hiring effectiveness and employee retention.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, a few weeks ago, I think I fired you. Today, you’re hired,

Gini Dietrich: You keep playing with my emotions. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I’m fired. I don’t get paid. Now you’re rehiring me.

I don’t know what to do.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, it’s difficult. Anyway. It is what it is. But no, we are gonna talk about hiring today because we are, you know, we can’t just talk about all the bad things. So, we’ll, we’ll spend some time talking about something that is overall more positive. Because if we’re hiring, hopefully that means that we are growing, or at least we have the need for additional resources, even if it’s replacing someone who has left.

But it is something that is very challenging, so it can create its own problems along the way if you don’t do it right. So this is, something that comes from one of our favorite topic inspiration sources. Reddit. I know it’s a place that you live and breathe.

Gini Dietrich: And by favorite, we’re using quotes “favorite”, scares the crap outta me.

But ok.

Chip Griffin: You are on Reddit all day every day. Just kind of combing around to see what conversations you can jump into. But this is one that was on there, probably a while ago honestly, it’s in our topic document. We didn’t date it, so I, I can’t tell you how long ago it was, but, what it says is, hiring the right people is harder than it looks.

Finding skilled, reliable people who align with your values is a challenge. Early on, I rushed hires and paid for it in missed deadlines and miscommunication. Now I take more time to vet people and focus on cultural fit as much as skills. So I thought it would be helpful for us to have a conversation around how we approach the hiring process.

How do we find the right fits? How do we vet those fits? And how do we frankly think about going from hiring them to, to beginning to on onboard them. We’re not gonna talk about the full onboarding process, but just sort of, you know, that, that evolution of saying, Hey, I need this role. Where do we go from there?

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s, it’s funny you say that this is our topic today. ’cause just the other day I was thinking about some of the very early hires I made that didn’t work out. And all of the mistakes I made in, in hiring them. And I will say that one of the biggest mistakes that I make is I meet somebody online who has the right skillset from a paper perspective, resume perspective, and I just hire them.

I’m like, oh yeah, you, you look like you can do the job. And we may have a conversation, but there’s no, like, thought about it. There’s no interviewing for skills. It’s more just like a, a conversation to see if we, we might be able to work together. And every time I have done that, it has not worked out. So earlier this year I hired a chief learning officer to help with like certification and, you know, all the professional development things we do on the PESO model front.

And about three or four months in, we both realized that, that that while she can do that job and she’s great at that job, she would be more valuable as a chief operating officer. So we switched her over. And let me tell you, being professionalized on the hiring front is phenomenal. I mean, she has set up interview guides, so like if you are an assistant account executive, and this would be somebody that you report to maybe two or three levels up, and we’re having you interview, you have a set of questions. If you’re the direct report, you have a set of questions. So we, like, she’s created all this. She’s created salary bands and like, you know, a career path for everybody where from where they start and she’s done, she’s done it in such a way that it isn’t bloat, but it’s just kind of professionalized the way that we do things.

And you don’t have to hire a chief operating officer to do this, like I know you, you like to talk. Patrick is your go-to person from an HR perspective, someone like Patrick can help create these things so that you can professionalize it because as they say, hire slowly and fire fast.

That quote is there for a reason, because you have to be really meticulous about who you hire. So that they do last. So they are a culture fit, so they don’t miss deadlines so that they are getting the, the work done that you need done and you’re not being, like, I have been in, in the last 20 years of just hiring people I like.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I, I mean, I think that, you know, you’ve touched on some important things here and, and you do have to have some sort of a process in place. It doesn’t need to turn you do into a bureaucratic circus,

Gini Dietrich: You do, right.

Chip Griffin: But at the same time, you need to have a process. And, and it really, to me, starts with being clear about what it is that you need. And who it is that you’re trying to hire. And, and too often when we’re trying to hire, it’s either because someone has left or because we’ve got a new client. And so our, our mindset is we need to get someone in here quick because we’ve gotta relieve this pain and this pressure. But that often leads to some of those bad decisions because you’re not really evaluating. Not even just the individual, but the role. Mm-hmm. And you need to think through, you know, what do you actually need at any given point in time? And it’s one of the reasons why I am a very strong advocate of only hiring, particularly in small agencies, only hiring one person at a time, one role at a time.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes.

Chip Griffin: Because every time you add someone new to the mix, it changes a little bit what you think you might need in the next one. And if you hire two people simultaneously, it increases the odds that you don’t actually have the right mix of talent on board. So you’ve gotta be crystal clear with yourself about what you’re looking for, but to your point, you also need to have a process in place that helps to understand what are our salary bands, what are our titles?

How does this fit in? What is their growth path? Because those are questions you will get during the interview process. And if you’re not clear about those things going in, you will either overpay or underpay or assign the wrong title. Or frankly, get the wrong person because you’re not thinking about it in the big picture.

So put the thought process in upfront, and that is the, to me, the first step in making sure that you make as good a decision as possible. Accepting that frankly, a lot of hiring decisions are gonna be wrong. Right? Even of course, even, even the, of course, even the best organizations, of course with the, with robust HR teams and, and talent evaluation, they still have a lot of misfires, so you can’t beat yourself up over those.

But you’ve gotta increase your odds by having the right thought process and structural process in place.

Gini Dietrich: One of the things that, you know, early on I would do when I didn’t have a team who could interview people, I would ask my business coach, or I would ask, you know, friends that were in the industry, other agency owners, if they would participate in some interviewing, just to kind of get me out of the Gosh, I really like this person. I think we’ll work well together. And, rather than, gosh, I really like this person and I think they can do the job right. So just having different outside perspective helped me when I didn’t have a team that could also do the interviewing. So I think, you know, doing that kind of stuff too helps.

And I also think that, you know, I, one of the biggest mistakes, and you touched on this that I’ve made, is not having that career path or clear career path. Because people come to work and even though you’re an entrepreneur and you’re the agency owner, and you kind of know in your head how things work, they need to know that because this is their career that you’re talking about.

So they need to know that if I wanna be promoted in 6 months, or 12 months or 18 months or whatever it happens to be, these are the things that I need to achieve so that they’re working towards something, not waiting for the annual review and saying, am I up for a promotion? What does that look like?

Do I get a raise? Like, so having those kinds of things I think is incredibly important upfront so that you know, this is what we expect, this is how you’ll get to the next step, and you can be very clear about that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, because it, it is a question that you absolutely will get. I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years.

I continue to, to do interviews for clients, and I can tell you that you get a lot of those kinds of questions where people want to understand what their career path is. The other one they ask a lot is, what does a typical day look like?

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: You’ve gotta have the answers for those questions as best you can, and, and you need to be honest with them where you don’t know.

So don’t, don’t, you know, blow smoke and, and

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: You know, give them an answer if you don’t have one. If, if the honest answer is, I don’t know. Tell them that, but then also explain how you think about it or how you would go about it, or the kinds of things that, that might be included so that you can paint some kind of a picture there.

Because it’s, it is important for people to evaluate it. And frankly, we look at these things as, as evaluating the talent for us. But they’re also evaluating us.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely.

Chip Griffin: And, and so you also need to make sure that in the process you’re giving them plenty of time to ask questions. In fact, I usually start by letting them ask questions for two reasons.

One is because it helps them to get the information that they need to evaluate it. But second, you learn as much from the questions they ask as anything else. And to me, a red flag is when they have no questions at all.

Gini Dietrich: No questions. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Because if they have no questions at all, it probably means they did no research.

They’re probably not all that interested. They’re just trying to get a job of some kind. It doesn’t, it doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re a bad fit. Some people just freeze up because they’re, you know, that’s, that’s not a traditional approach to interviews. To start by saying, what questions do you have of me?

Right. By the way, introduce yourself first. Talk a little bit about the business and the role. I mean, don’t just, you know, say hello. What questions do you have?

Gini Dietrich: Hello. What do you have? What questions can I answer?

Chip Griffin: But, but honestly, I, I almost always will ask people what questions they have before I ask my first question.

We just do the intros and then start with that, because you learn from that. And it, it also helps them get onto a more comfortable spot. And so you can steer the, the conversation, I think, more effectively that way.

Gini Dietrich: One of my biggest pet peeves is, you know, now that we have a, a team who does the interviews, if the candidate gets to me, that means they’re one of the finalists, right?

And I will say, what questions do you have of me? And they will say, and this happens more often than not. Well, I kind of already asked my all my other question, my questions from everybody else.

So ask them again. Right? Make sure you get the same answer like. Right. Yeah, because that will, as I know we’re not talking, we’re not talking to candidates right now, but that will tell you as much if there’s, the answers are different than anything else. So that is also a red flag.

Which brings me to, we actually created a list of red flags, and we’re going through the A process right now ’cause we’re hiring and our HR director is doing pre-screens, phone screens, and one of the red flags is Are you able to work with within bureaucracy and lots of change and indecisiveness and you know. And one, one of the people that’s interviewing said, I just don’t like bureaucracy. I don’t like lots of change. I don’t like indecisiveness, I’m not. And she was like, no, like, because we have our list of red flags.

So it’s, it’s an easy way also to sort of get yourself out of the, gosh, I really like this person. I’d like to work with them. If you have that list of red flags that you will allow you to objectively say, probably not the right fit for this job.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and the more that you do of this, the more easily you can come up with those things that just, that it, they’re the indication that this may not be the best fit. Yeah. And I always encourage probing just to make sure that, and I prefer to think of ’em as orange flags rather than red flags most of the time. Because most of the time it’s more the accumulation of those things than, than a single one that

Gini Dietrich: fair, fair,

Chip Griffin: that says, okay, no, this isn’t the right fit.

But I also like to probe. And so, you know, in an example like that, I might say, well, well why does that bother you? Why is that a problem? And just kind of see,

Gini Dietrich: yeah.

Chip Griffin: You know, what their, what their root thinking is, because I mean, chances are it’s not gonna change anything, but it’s always interesting to find out why.

I think the other thing, and, and you touched on this in, in, you know, having a, a, an interview guide and all of that, if you’re going to have members of your team interviewing, you need to make sure that you’re educating them on how to do it well. And how to do it without causing problems.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And I think I’ve shared this on the podcast before.

Yes. But I have seen so many egregious questions in interviews

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: Over the years that create substantial legal and regulatory issues.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: Please, please, please train your juniors. Frankly, some of you probably need some training yourselves.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: On how to do this,

Gini Dietrich: I was just gonna say yes. Yes.

Chip Griffin: In a way that’s not causing problems.

Yes. Because the, I mean, the questions that I’ve seen asked in interviews are just off the charts and, and, and so blatantly inappropriate.

Gini Dietrich: Do you have some examples?

Chip Griffin: Focus on, and, and, and the other thing is focus on questions that, that actually might reveal something that’s useful to you.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: You are not, this is not Google.

You’re not out there trying to ask, you know, weird mind game questions. Ask straightforward questions. I, I mean, ’cause the other thing

Gini Dietrich: if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, in addition to the inappropriate questions, you just get these dumb ones, right? Where someone, someone read an article and they’re like, oh, you learn so much if you ask, what kind of tree would you be? Really, you just look crazy as an interviewer.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: You’ll look like you’ve lost your mind.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Just don’t do it. Have a real conversation. Treat them like a professional. Treat them with respect. Treat them like you would a prospect. Don’t sit there and, and try to play gotcha games.

It’s not a quiz show. It’s not. If you want to go on a quiz show and, and you wanna run your own quiz show, fine. Do that. Your interview subjects, that’s not what it’s for. Don’t ask them in Google Analytics, where do you go to do this? Come on, seriously, just knock it off.

Gini Dietrich: That’s funny.

Chip Griffin: And if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna try to apply tests to people, you gotta pay them.

Gini Dietrich: I totally 100% agree with that.

Chip Griffin: But you can’t,

Gini Dietrich: yes.

Chip Griffin: You can’t say, I need you to write a plan for me.

Gini Dietrich: No.

Chip Griffin: Or write a press release or something like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Particularly if it’s for an actual client you have Correct. And you might actually use it. That’s just wrong. That’s, and I see that way too often.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Where someone says, well, I need to evaluate you. I need you to, to do this. On the technical side, I’ve seen people ask to be written to write all sorts of code. Why?

Gini Dietrich: Bad idea. I, you know what, actually Reddit is full of, of those like, so I’m interviewing for this job and they asked me to put together a 12 month plan complete with deck and strategy and blah, blah, blah. Is that normal? And I’m always like, no?

Chip Griffin: No,

Gini Dietrich: don’t do it. I understand the hiring market is tough right now, but no.

Chip Griffin: It’s just bizarre. I mean, honestly, I, I would be suspicious of anybody who could put together that kind of a plan based on, you know, 10 minutes of conversation.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right, right.

Chip Griffin: I mean, and that’s the other thing. You have to be realistic about what kinds of answers you can get from people in these short windows of time. And so it really is…

it’s not necessarily about whether you like them, but it’s, it’s trying to get to understand how they think, how they approach things. You can get those big picture senses off of these conversations, but the, the more granular you get with your question, the less likely it is to be a reliable indicator.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And, and you need to, to again, treat it like a real conversation. So to the extent you have interview guides. Please use them. Just look through them and, and use it as, as a, a general format for the questions you might ask. Please do not do as, as. When I used to advise members of Congress and I prepared questions for them for hearings.

Some of them would sit there and ask question one, question two, question three. They wouldn’t even listen to what the, the answer was from the witness at the hearing. They wouldn’t listen to what their colleagues had asked. So I, there were any number of situations where a member would read my question.

The member previous to them had asked the exact same question, but they weren’t bothering to listen. Or they asked question one, and they move immediately to question number two, even though the person actually answered question number two as part of their response to question number one. Use your brain.

Have a meaningful conversation. Do not walk through your, these are the 10 questions I always ask on interviews and just march through them

Gini Dietrich: right

Chip Griffin: in forced order. That doesn’t make any sense. You, you need to, to have a real meaningful conversation with someone if you wanna evaluate them properly.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

You’re gonna be working with this person eight hours a day. You should have a real meaningful conversation with them. This, that’s ludicrous.

Chip Griffin: Alright, so you, so we’ve, we’ve figured out what we need. We’ve done the interviews. So now how do we pick, we, you know, we’ve got, I mean, let’s say we’ve got a couple of finalists.

They’re both in our view, viable finalists. They’re, they’re, they both could do the job. What do you weigh most heavily when you’re evaluating one versus the other? How, how do you make that difficult decision?

Gini Dietrich: I’m the wrong person to ask that question ’cause it is based on whether or not I like you and that’s probably not the right response.

Chip Griffin: I mean the, there has to be an element of that, particularly in a small agency. Right. You know, you Yeah. If you just, if if you, if you don’t get the right vibe off of someone and you’re like, ah, this just doesn’t… listen to yourself.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Right. If, if you don’t enjoy having the conversations with that person during the interview process,

Gini Dietrich: it’s not gonna get better.

Chip Griffin: And maybe you say, well, but they’re, they have all the skills. They have all the connections. They know what they’re doing. Oh, it’d make my life so easy. Listen to yourself there. And that doesn’t mean that you have to have that, you know, you need to hire people that you want to go out and have a beer with after work or something like that.

But, you know, you’ve gotta feel like, I could talk to this person

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: An hour or two a day and I, I wouldn’t lose my mind.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Don’t ever say they’ve got so much talent. I’m gonna ignore that.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Never, because I, the way I think about it is, and the same thing with clients, I would say it will, it gets to the point that I’m gonna end up canceling meetings with this person or with this client.

If the answer is yes, then it’s not the right fit.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, and, and the flip side is true too. Going to your point very early in this conversation, if you, if you are enjoying your conversation with that person, don’t overlook the fact that they don’t actually have the skills Yeah. That match up. Mm-hmm.

Or, you know, they are under, it will bite you, underqualified or overqualified for the role. They still need to be a fit for the role. No matter how much you enjoy uhhuh your conversations with them or how smart you think they are, Uhhuh, that they may be a good fit for your organization at some point in some role, but it may not be the one you’re hiring for now.

Mm-hmm. So make sure that you’re clear with yourself and don’t talk yourself into something. I, I see this a lot where people will get through the hiring process and they find someone that they really like and they’re like, well, they’re not really a fit for this role, but I could see them doing this or that.

It’s okay to be flexible, but make sure that whatever this or that is, is really something you need. And you’re not talking yourself into an additional expenditure or putting yourself in a position where, yes, you’ve got that person, but now you still have to hire for this other role. You, you may make things more difficult for yourself in that.

So make sure that you’re always going back to what did you say you needed? And if we’re deviating from that, why? And is it, is it a sound business case for making that decision?

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. Learn from me. Don’t make those mistakes. It costs a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of angst. It burns, some bridges. Learn from me.

Chip Griffin: And, and also throughout the interview process, and I think we’ve talked about this on the, the show in the past before start thinking about those interview conversations, the hiring conversation where you’re making the offer.

Think about all of those as part of the onboarding process. Because it really is a seamless transition or should be a seamless transition into the onboarding and ultimately retention. I mean, when, when we talk about retaining employees, it goes back to how the interviews went. Absolutely. The questions you asked, the way you handled yourself, all of that impacts things that will happen 6, 12, 18 months down the road or even more.

Yeah. And so you need to be mindful of that and thinking about how would this person perceive the questions we ask, the process we follow, are we frankly canceling a lot of times on them during the interview process. You need to treat them with respect, if you want to be treated with respect, if you want to build a lasting relationship.

So think about all of that at every step of the hiring process, from that first interview, to the last interview, to the offer, et cetera.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely, yes. It’s very, very, very important for you to be organized and prepared. Hire slowly. Those will be the things that save you from a hiring perspective.

And like I said, learn from me and don’t always hire just people you like.

Chip Griffin: There you go. But don’t hire people you dislike either.

Gini Dietrich: So well, sure. But they also have to have the skills to do a good job.

Chip Griffin: All right, well I guess with that, we’ll let you keep your job for now, so

Gini Dietrich: Well thanks. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Chip Griffin: On that note, we will draw this episode to a close. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich,

Chip Griffin: and it depends.

In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the difficult subject of firing an underperforming and problematic employee. They discuss a real-life scenario where an employee with a bad attitude refuses to do their work, causing frustration among team members.

They advise against prolonging the inevitable firing decision, suggesting that acting swiftly can alleviate overall team stress. Both hosts share insights on why Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) are largely ineffective, stressing the need for proper documentation and the guidance of an HR advisor during termination processes.

Additionally, they highlight the importance of showing proactive steps to the remaining team to mitigate the workload burden and maintain morale. The episode emphasizes the critical role of leadership in making tough decisions for the greater good of the team and the business.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini…

Gini Dietrich: I’m so excited

Chip Griffin: you’re fired.

Gini Dietrich: I knew you were going to fire me.

Chip Griffin: Maybe not, because if I fire you, then I have to just talk all by myself, so that might be too much work for me. So maybe I’ll put you on a PIP instead and we’ll just think about it and then we’ll come back and figure out if it makes sense.

No, I don’t know about that either. I just don’t know what to do.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Hmm. Well. I guess you could find a replacement. Do you have a replacement?

Chip Griffin: I don’t,

Gini Dietrich: well start there.

Chip Griffin: I don’t know that anybody else would, would wanna put up with having to do this with me every week, so that could be a problem.

Gini Dietrich: Truth be told, it is kind of fun, so people would be missing out, but I don’t wanna be fired.

Chip Griffin: Okay. Well. I’m fine. I won’t fire you. You’re unfired.

Gini Dietrich:  Okay, great. Woohoo.

Chip Griffin: So we are gonna talk about firing, but I, it’s not about firing either one of us, it’s about firing employees.

And I guess I’ll let you set this one up, but it, it’s a, a question that showed up in an online forum about an underperforming employee. I think that’s fair to say.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And an owner trying to figure out what to do about it.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, yeah. The, the gist of it is that there’s an over an underperforming employee, with a terrible attitude who refuses to do work.

She gives it back to her manager regularly. She doesn’t share information. She hoards stuff. But my friend was like this is a problem. She needs to be fired, but we don’t have an immediate replacement and it will put her work on others. And I was like, okay. She’s already, other people are already doing her work, especially if she’s giving it back to her manager.

Other people are already doing her work. And the, the way I look about the, at these kinds of things is the team is already frustrated by the time it gets to you. The team is super frustrated with this human being. They don’t wanna do their work anymore. They’re tired of, of standing out for them. They’re tired of helping out.

And so they’re looking to you to be the leader. They’re looking to you to make the tough decision. And when you waffle like this, they lose respect and trust in you because you’re not able to make that decision. So trust me when I say that, they would much rather you fire them and take the extra work than to keep going in this manner.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, I mean, I’m, as we say at the end of every episode, it depends, you know, I, I think there are things you need to, to think about here. And there have certainly been occasions where I’ve held on to employees until I had a replacement because I, I needed the bandwidth, right? Sure. But there’s a difference in what you’re describing here or what your friend describes where I, I think of this as a diseased employee, if you will.

Yes. Right. Because they, they have a bad attitude, which in almost all cases affects the rest of the team.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And so it’s not that they’re just not as productive as they could be, but still get along well and, you know, kind of try their best. We’ve all had team members, I’m sure over the years that fall into that category where you’d like to replace them, but they’re not, they’re not doing harm.

They’re just not, they’re not living up to the potential that you would like to see. Those are cases where I think it can make sense to, to make sure you have a replacement lined up before you take action. Sure. But in a case like this where you have someone who is actively contributing in a negative way to the business.

I’m, I am much more a fan of just rip that bandaid off and be done with it. Because to your point, your team is already looking at you and saying, why aren’t you doing something about this?

Gini Dietrich: That’s right. Yep. They are. And I think if you, you can’t do this from an HR perspective, but if you polled your team and said, what do you think? They’d all be like we don’t know why she’s still here. Like, come on.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. Please do not treat this like Survivor. Do not take a vote of the team. Right. As to whether someone stays or goes. That’s that is

Gini Dietrich: it’s a bad idea.

Chip Griffin: It is derelict of duty. It may well be illegal or at least problematic. Just, no, don’t do that.

Gini Dietrich: But if you did, they would all vote her off the island.

Chip Griffin: Yes. More often than not, when you terminate an employee, the other team members that you have will be like, oh, finally.

Gini Dietrich: Finally. Yeah. I also think you’re right that when you have somebody who’s negatively affecting the organization, they, you know, it’s the bad apple, but spoils the whole lot, right?

So then they start to influence how other people feel. Correct. And maybe someone was feeling a little burned out, or maybe somebody was annoyed about something. Well, now they’re listening to this person go on and on and on all day long. And they start, that little annoyance becomes something bigger and all of a sudden you have a bigger cultural issue on your hands than just one terrible employee that you should just rip the bandaid off and get rid of.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t make it any more pleasant that, you know, to go through it, but it’s, it’s important and it will help your business overall. One of the other questions that I believe was asked in this particular scenario was, should there be a PIP? Please don’t do PIPs. Unless, unless your HR advisor tells you you need to do a PIP in order to lay the proper groundwork for whatever the particular scenario is, please don’t do them.

Don’t, or let, let me put it this way, don’t do a PIP anticipating that it’s going to have any impact.

Gini Dietrich: Yes,  it’s essentially, a 30 day notice.

Chip Griffin: Because I can think of maybe one scenario over the course of my career work, a PIP actually worked to turn an employee around.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. It’s essentially a 30 day notice. It’s like we’re giving you 30 days.

You’re not going to be employed here anymore, is essentially what it’s, I agree with you. I’ve never seen it work.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And so if, if you’re doing it for HR protection, fine, go for it. You should absolutely. Anytime you’re looking at terminating an employee, you should always talk with an HR advisor, employment attorney, whoever it is that you work with, just to make sure that there’s not something that you’re overlooking, that there’s some possible claim there that you need to address carefully and make sure that you dot your T or dot your I’s cross your T’s,

Gini Dietrich: dot your T’s. Cross your i’s

Chip Griffin: dot your T’s too. I mean, you know, whatever it takes. So you absolutely wanna make sure that you’re, you’re doing those things correctly and appropriately for the rules and regulations that apply in that particular scenario.

But if you are doing it because you think it’s gonna work, a PIP will not work.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. 100%. I’ve literally never seen it work. You’re exactly right. So I, and I agree. You know, we have an HR leader on our team, and she, she has us do PIPs, but it, it is too just, she’s super, super risk averse and super conservative.

So it’s, you know, very much to protect the business. And I’ll say that she has gotten me in a good practice of documenting everything, which as a business owner I was not very good at before. But she has definitely gotten me. So even if you don’t have, even if you’re not gonna do a PIP, I think it’s really important to document, document, you know, conversations that you’ve had where you’ve provided critical feedback or, you know, things like that.

Just document, because those are the kinds of things that’ll save you in the long run, especially from a risk perspective.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, and look, I mean, ultimately you do want to give people a fair chance and, you know, I, on occasion I have run across owners who are a little bit too quick to pull the trigger on getting rid of an employee.

Very rare.

Gini Dietrich: I was gonna say really?

Chip Griffin: Very, very rare. But, but by too quick I typically mean someone who is in their first few weeks still.

Gini Dietrich: Oh yeah.

Chip Griffin: Right. That, that is when, take a pause. I mean, to me, if, if you’re, if you’re going to part ways with someone that you’ve just brought on, there has to be a really good reason.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Like, it, it can’t be just that they haven’t quite met your expectations. I mean, it has to be that there is something dramatic in their, usually in their behavior. I’ve, I’ve certainly had some where in their first 60 or 90 days, I’ve, I’ve parted company, but it was, I think in every situation it was because of their behavior and attitude, not because of performance. Right? Because performance, honestly, unless someone has completely misrepresented themselves and you’ve done a very, very poor job of vetting them in advance, most of the time, you shouldn’t be seeing that dramatic a difference in those first couple of months that you are truly surprised by it.

And there still should be room to improve with them. So. But behaviorally, yes. Fine. Then that’s a, that’s a good termination cause for the early stages of employment. But otherwise, most of the time I see owners wait too long to terminate.

Gini Dietrich: Always, always.

Chip Griffin: And, and usually by the time that you’re even thinking about it, you probably passed the point where you should have done it already.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. I have been guilty of that myself. I have to tell this story because it goes, it fits along with the firing somebody within the first 60 to 90 days, I have a really, really, really close friend who hired somebody, you know, they’re, they’re remote, um, hired them without, you know, meeting in person. They did Zoom calls, but the person would never turn on their camera, and the person starts and goes through onboarding and everything.

And the first like three weeks, they’re like this person doesn’t seem to be able to do this job that we’ve hired them to do, and they keep digging and digging. What they learned is that the person that they interviewed was this person’s friend who had the experience, and this guy wanted the job. So he had his friend interview for the job.

They offered the job thinking that they were, oh yeah. So this person started, and I mean, I think that’s called catfishing. But that’s what happened to them. So

Chip Griffin: That’s called fraud, is what it’s called.

Gini Dietrich: It’s called fraud. Uh, yeah. So they like it. They did fire that person in the first three weeks. But to your point, there are situations like that that you would do it.

But you’re right. Like most of the time people are in their honeymoon stage for the first six months at least.

Chip Griffin: I mean, they’re in their honeymoon stage and/or, you know, if I’ve got issues with performance in the early stage, I need to ask myself, am I, am I giving them the support they need, the training they need, the guidance they need,

Gini Dietrich: right?

Yes.

Chip Griffin: Because, to miss that badly in a hiring process is somewhat unlikely. It’s not impossible, but you know, more often than not, it takes a while before you really get to that point and you’re like, no, this really is not a good fit, but you, you shouldn’t wait too long. And you shouldn’t drag it out.

If you can find a replacement beforehand, whether that’s a contractor who can help fill the gap or something like that, I absolutely encourage that because you don’t want the rest of the team to feel burdened by the termination. But if they’re a bad apple, like the one that we described in this scenario where they are, you know, actively harming things and not simply not living up to their potential, you’re better off, even if everybody else has to pick up extra workload for the short term to part company and move on.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes. Because I think everybody, like people are, are understanding for the most part. Right. And if they’re already feeling this, then relieving them of that stress is more important than them taking on some extra work. And they’re probably already taking the work on, so it’s not gonna be that much different for them, except that they don’t have this extra stress of this negative person around all the time.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And in some ways, I mean these, these are, these are easier situations to deal with with the team because if someone does have this kind of a pervasive bad attitude, it will not come at all as a surprise to their coworkers when they’re terminated. Yeah.

There are times where if it’s simply for underperformance, if someone isn’t closely enough working with that individual to notice the underperformance, that they might be surprised by it, and that can be more alarming to the team. So, you know, those are scenarios where you have to be more direct with your messaging. In this case, it sounds like everybody would completely understand exactly why this individual was let go.

Yeah. And so it solves some of that issue. Yes, yes. Now, the important thing, anytime you terminate somebody, particularly if there’s going to be a workload issue, you have to immediately be able to show your team proactive steps that you’re working to address it. Because they, they may be willing to step up in the short term to help fill the void.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: But they’re not gonna do that forever. And if it looks like you are dragging your feet and just trying to, you know, maybe pad your profit margins by waiting, or even if that’s not your intent, if that’s the appearance that can be problematic. Yep. So usually what I want to do, if I don’t have any kind of a replacement lined up, or a contractor who can help, I want to be clear, here are the steps we’re taking.

Here’s how we’re gonna try to fill this as soon as reasonably possible. Being clear that I’m not just gonna hire someone for the sake of hiring somebody, but I’m actively moving forward because I don’t want you to be shouldering more of the burden for longer than you have to.

Gini Dietrich: And, and you brought up a good point, which I think is having contractors pinch hit. Because every single agency owner should have a bench of contractors that they can, that they have relationships with, that they’ve worked with before, that they can bring in and off, on and off the bench when necessary. And this is a good reason to bring a contractor off the bench to be able to help you in, in the interim. If it’s 90 days, if it’s six months, however long it takes, because that will show your team exactly to your point that you’ve done something to help mitigate the workload and their risk, while also giving you all time to interview and hire the right person.

Chip Griffin: And you also need to be looking at the workload that you’re providing to your team. Are there things you can do to relieve the burden of what you’re asking them to do for a period of time? Maybe that means that there are internal projects that you’ve been working on that you want to hit pause on for a few weeks.

Gini Dietrich: Sure.

Chip Griffin: So that, so that you’re not contributing to that overwhelm that they potentially feel. So, you know, be mindful of those things and, and think about how can you make it as good as possible for them given the difficult circumstances they may be facing if they’re having to pick up this extra work in the short term.

Gini Dietrich: And like I said, always, always, always think about it from the perspective of, am I doing myself, as the leader a, a big injustice because I’m not making this decision? And I think that makes it a little bit easier.

Chip Griffin: Yep. I mean, bottom line is if, if you have decided that it’s time to, to move on from a particular employee, figure out how to do it as quickly as possible, there is no good reason to drag it out.

Gini Dietrich: 100%. Yes. And every time you do it, you, you take, it’s just like this big weight and you’re like, oh, why didn’t I do this sooner? Yep. Every time. Every time.

Chip Griffin: Yep. So with that, I guess we’ll ask why didn’t we end this episode even sooner?

Gini Dietrich: Oh boy.

Chip Griffin: No. Oh well, so that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.

I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the growing concerns surrounding AI in the agency world. They highlight the irrational fears and cyclical nature of technological disruptions, drawing comparisons to social media and content marketing trends of the past.

The hosts argue against the notion that agencies should discount services due to AI efficiencies, emphasizing that AI should be seen as a tool to enhance productivity and strategic value rather than a cost-cutting measure. They stress that agencies should focus on delivering more value and maintaining regular client communication instead of simply protecting existing revenue.

The discussion also touches on the importance of transparency in AI use without oversharing minute details. Finally, they underscore the benefit of quarterly planning to align agency efforts with client business goals, thus fostering stronger client relationships and ensuring mutual success.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I am Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini I, I think that AI is making people crazy. They’re losing their minds and acting irrationally.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes. I completely agree. Some of the stuff I see online, I’m like, you guys,

Chip Griffin: take a deep breath.

Gini Dietrich: Breath, everyone. Take a deep breath. Stop clutching your pearls. It’s okay.

Chip Griffin: Well, maybe the AI really has become sentinent and – sentient – and the, the robot overlords are doing this intentionally to make us go crazy and eat each other alive.

Gini Dietrich: Maybe, maybe. Although this happened with social media, it happened with content marketing.

It happened with blogging. Here we are with AI. Everybody’s freaking out. Like, this is cyclical. Everyone’s gonna calm down. It will be okay.

Chip Griffin: I don’t know if they’ll calm down, but eventually they’ll, they’ll come to the realization that perhaps it isn’t what they thought it, it was, and that it is, it is important.

It is useful. It is valuable. It is not something that upends absolutely everything we do every moment of the day and we need to orbit around it. I mean, it just, it really does remind me of those early days of social media where, you know, you’d see these, these articles and posts about, oh my God, CEOs, they need to be blogging and they need to be blogging every day.

And I don’t care how big your company is, the CEO needs to write those blog posts themselves. Ghost writing is an evil thing and we shall not do it. And if we do have it ghost written, we must disclose on that blog post or article that this was ghost written and not actually written by the CEO. Because we all believe that CEOs write their own darn stuff.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes. That’s why I say it’s all cyclical. Everyone calmed down. It’s going to be okay. That said, I happened upon the LinkedIn post by a second connection, who’s a chief marketing officer, and it essentially said, I’m trying to figure out how to manage my agencies who are using AI and how to ask what kind of discount and how to ask for a discount, because I know they’re using AI. and I was just like, there is no discount because you’re, they’re using AI.

They’re able to focus on other things because of that, and they’re able to be more strategic in some areas because of it, but they, they should not be giving you a discount, just like the surgeon doesn’t give you a discount. Because the imaging is faster. You shouldn’t like the same. You’re not. Just because you’re faster at some mundane, laborious task does not mean that you should reduce your fees ever.

Drives me freaking nuts.

Chip Griffin: Yep. And I would absolutely agree with that, with the asterisk that if, for example, you are being hired to do writing and the AI does all the writing and you don’t edit and you don’t do anything else, and so you know you’re spending 10 minutes on it instead of 10 hours. You absolutely should be either figuring out how you can do more for the client, correct.

Or you should be reducing your rates. Yes. Because it is, you know, I love all the talk about, you know, value-based pricing, which we talk about all the time, and certainly there are a lot of people who say, well, it doesn’t matter if I use AI to do it. They’re getting the same value out of it. Well, they are and they aren’t because they could do the work themselves if they wanted to in less time with less cost.

And so. You’re not really creating that value anymore if the AI is doing it totally on its own and it doesn’t have anything to do with the prompts that you’re writing or, or the management of the whole process. And all of those things do take time, by the way. Mm-hmm. So we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t forget about that.

Right. Particularly when we’re thinking about our own agencies and how we can be more efficient, the time it takes to manage the AI matters. We’ve talked about this recently. You cannot allow those things to, to be forgotten about. And so all of that does go into it. But the, I mean the comments on this post were just other worldly and there was another AI post recently as well that I saw and, and I mean, so we’ve got people out there who are like…

CMOs want agencies to reduce their fees because they’re using AI. We’ve got a whole discussion around, well, we need to be transparent and tell every possible use of AI that we have and be really clear about it with our clients. This is how we’re using it exactly. And this is, and, and people say you can’t do hourly billing anymore because of AI, and so you must go to value-based pricing.

And I mean, just all of this stuff. Take a breath, folks. Take

Gini Dietrich: Yes. It’s a breath. Okay.

Chip Griffin: Again, it is a tool, it is a valuable tool, but it is a tool.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: And it doesn’t mean that you just throw everything out and start over on either side of the agency client relationship.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yeah, that’s absolutely right.

I, I say this all the time, you know, like in other podcasts that I’m being interviewed on or webinars, whatever, the strategy stays the same. The best practices stay the same. The tools have changed and the tools continue to change. The tools have changed dramatically in the last 15 years. Use the tools to make you more effective and more productive.

But like I said, the surgeon is still going to charge you what they charge you for brain surgery. Regardless of how fast the imaging is, regardless of how fast you get your MRI results back, like the, it doesn’t matter. Your expertise is over here in the surgeon bucket, not in the imaging bucket. So remember that. Like the, the stuff that you can do just because you’re faster at creating drafts or you’re faster at predicting outcomes or you’re faster at results reporting does not mean that the real value in what you provide in strategy, the creativity, the innovation, the ideas, all of that is what they’re paying for. They’re not paying for the output over here.

Chip Griffin: And we need to take ourselves out of the mindset that, that the AI is coming in and so we need to protect what we have. Instead, we should be thinking about how can we elevate, how can we produce more and better results for our clients? How can we be more effective, not just how do we protect our piece of the pie? Keep doing things the way we always have. If you wanna keep doing things the way you always have, yes, you will suffer in this new environment.

Absolutely. You absolutely have to grow and adapt and figure out how this helps you. But that’s no different than, as we’ve said before, you know back 30 years ago when we shifted from faxes to emails. Right, right. That made you more efficient in being able to communicate with other people. Yes. You didn’t have to be on the phone.

You didn’t have to send a fax. Yes. Or a telegram or any of these kinds of things. And yes, I’m old enough to have received telegrams, so in fact, when I worked on Capitol Hill, we would get a delivery of telegrams on a regular basis.

Gini Dietrich: For real?

Chip Griffin: For real. For real. It was still a way. In the early 1990s, that was still a way that people communicated with Congress.

They would send telegrams to express their opinions.

Gini Dietrich: All right.

Chip Griffin: You know, I don’t know why, but

Gini Dietrich: I hate you. Stop. Please vote differently. Stop.

Chip Griffin: I mean, the thing is, today if you, if you mention a telegram, people are like, what is that? They don’t.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Right.

Chip Griffin: They don’t, they, they, they’ve never even heard of it, you know?

Yeah. Fax machine, they can at least maybe kind of halfway visualize. Yeah. I was watching a conversation on TV and there were some young people and, and someone mentioned a modem and, and that was completely beyond anybody. They didn’t have the concept of having to actually dial up to access the internet.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right.

Chip Griffin: Things like that. But, but I’ll ask before we continue to date ourselves by talking about all of this old technology, we need to think about how to use this new technology in order to improve what we are doing. And it is not simply about, you know, running around and, and telling people what brand of shampoo you use, because that’s how you wanna be transparent to your clients.

They may ask you how you’re using AI and you might wanna have a general conversation about it.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely, yes.

Chip Griffin: But for God’s sake, you do not need to be sending them an email and saying, by the way, I used AI to proofread this, or I used AI to create the first draft of this. Those are not things, unless there is some specific requirement in your contract, and please do not agree to those.

But if there is a specific requirement in the contract or if there’s some special circumstance with the kind of work that’s being done. There’s always the exceptions to the rule, but 99% of you should not feel compelled to do it, and in general shouldn’t do so in detail if asked, because that’s just like telling them what kind of shampoo you use.

It just doesn’t matter.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, Sharon Toerek at Legal + Creative has a really good AI toolkit. I can’t remember how much it costs, but for it’s, it’s affordable for agency owners to download it and then understand like, what, and you can pick and choose like. What paragraphs or information you should include in your master standard agreement, what you might wanna include in your statements of work, but it’s, again, it’s not like we use it forever to draft this blog post.

It’s really general, like we use AI. We, we use green and yellow information from our clients. We never use critical, confidential, red information ever. You know, it’s general kinds of things that you can insert into those, that documentation to help be transparent that you are using AI, and I think today people are, that’s not a surprise, like everybody’s using it.

Right? But not having to, to be really specific about what kind of shampoo you’re using.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and you have to be really careful about this because you have to think about how does this stand up over time? Because you don’t wanna be going and, and having to revise your master services agreement, right?

So, so, you know, my general advice as a non-lawyer is that you should put as little as possible to tick the boxes in there. So that you have the flexibility to adjust and adapt and do things differently over time. Because the reality is AI is baked into almost all of the software that we use now.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Yep.

Chip Griffin: In one form or another. Yep. Sometimes it’s pretty much just lip service, but a lot of times it’s more substantive. And so, you know, are we now in the business that we’re gonna have to try to disclose every little, you know, we, we use Lightroom to go edit a photo that we’re putting on the website and, and we use it to remove a piece of garbage in the background.

Well, that’s technically AI that did that. Do we feel like we need to now go and, and report to the client that we used AI to remove a trash can that was in the background of the environmental portrait that we took, that we’re gonna put on their website? I don’t think so.

Gini Dietrich: Right? I don’t think they care.

And neither should we. No. And like MuckRack or you know, one of the other media databases, if you use it, there’s AI baked into that. Do you have to say, well, I use a media database and the AI helps me do like that, that’s ridiculous. Should you be transparent about saying you use AI? Of course, but I think to your point, you don’t have to get into the nitty gritty.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, and, and I think that that saying you use AI is fine, but, you know, getting into the nitty gritty is sort of like explaining to a client, whether you’re using a landline or a mobile phone to reach out to reporters. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. They’re technically different technologies.

They, they, the signals get there in very different ways. I could imagine there’s probably some weird client out there who’d rather you didn’t use a cell phone ’cause they don’t want to go on up into the atmosphere and they just want it on the, the hard line, the wires, whatever. It doesn’t matter. So you don’t need to get to that level of detail again.

No. You not in, in, in special circumstances, which most of them don’t apply to most of you.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right, right, right. Yeah. So I would visit Legal + Creative website and, and look at that AI toolkit. Of course, have a conversation with Sharon if you need something more. Because she’s, she, they work exclusively with, with agencies and are great on that, since you and I are not attorneys.

 But I do wanna go back to the values based, hourly based, retainer kind of idea that, okay, so if, let’s say for shits and giggles. We, we have a client that’s $5,000 a month, and in the past we would use all of that budget on, you know, executing their webinar, taking the transcript, and creating social assets and blog assets.

You know, putting some money behind page to amplify it to get more registrations there. Well, now AI can do most of that, right? Does that mean that we should reduce our retainer or does it mean that there’s probably other things that we could focus on to help that organization’s growth and use the extra retainer for that?

Those kinds of things. I think that’s the conversation that you should be having internally and with your clients is, yeah, it’s made us more productive. You know, this list of stuff over here that we haven’t been able to get to because we haven’t had time. Let’s start. Check, check. Checking these off the list.

Chip Griffin: I mean, the vast majority of agencies don’t have any shortage of ideas for things that they could Right. Implement with their clients. And, and most clients don’t have any shortage of things that they would like to see their agency do. Right. So, so rather than simply trying to protect what you have and, and doing the bare minimum to fulfill the existing checklist, find ways that you can continue to enhance and improve.

And, and I think you mentioned webinars and, and webinars and podcasts are a great example because 10 or 15 years ago, you had to, it took a lot of work and you kind of did the bare minimum to get those things edited, produced, distributed. Nowadays because of AI and, and AI even before, you know, the current AI fad, things like automated transcription that came in mm-hmm.

Within the last decade, which now gets classified as AI, didn’t get classified as AI when it was first done. But you know, that’s an argument for another day about how we define things. If you’re able to now produce transcripts, now it’s pretty standard for webinars and podcasts to have a transcript available.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: 15 years ago, you had to pay someone to do it. And so That’s right. It was not the kind of thing that was done routinely and, and now we can produce those kinds of things. We can edit things a lot more easily. The platform that we use for this podcast. It uses AI to do automatic camera switching.

For those of you who watch the video, it cleans up the audio so that, you know, we can’t hear all the background noises in our various offices. And, and those are all great things and improve the quality of the product that we’re putting out for you, but also that you can put out for your clients.

Focus on those things. Elevate the game. It’s not just about kind of doing the bare minimum. If you do that, absolutely, you’re gonna run into problems,

Gini Dietrich: of course,

Chip Griffin: but find those other opportunities and say to your clients, you know, here’s something else we can do for you. Here’s a way we can get better results from what we’re already doing.

Whether that’s by adding a transcript to it or being faster to get something published, or having the time to go pursue a third webinar or some other brand new idea that you weren’t able to do. That’s how you continue to demonstrate value to your clients, and that’s how you continue to not just protect revenue, but actually grow it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And you know, and I’m sure listeners know too, that I’m a big fan of quarterly planning. So instead of doing a big annual plan, you meet with your clients every quarter. You talk about what worked, what didn’t, and what, what things you should focus on for the next quarter. Not only does it help you stay aligned with the business goals more effectively, but it also, in most cases, get, gets you more revenue or more retainer because they’re like, oh, we gotta focus on this.

And yeah, they were great results from that. And you’re not having those conversations once a year. You’re having them four times a year. Right. So a big, big fan from that perspective. But I think what that allows you to do from an AI perspective is say, Hey, listen, we’re able to save 25% of our time, and I know this, this, and this, have been on the priority list that have, that keep moving down because of, you know, all these other things. Of these three, what can we bring up to the forefront for the next quarter?

And you start to have those conversations where you’re part of the business planning and the business continuity. And the business workflow so that you know, you don’t have the… it happens more effectively and you don’t have to have the, gosh, we’re out of scope, or we overbuilt, we over serviced last year.

It’s a, a continuous conversation that happens all between all of you and there’s no conflicts in it, and it’s really strategic and, and clients begin to see you more as, you know, someone they can count on without asking you to reduce your fees because you’re using AI.

Chip Griffin: And that ongoing conversation is, is so important.

It’s so critical. And one of the things that really bothered me about one of these LinkedIn threads was, was really a very much an an us versus them kind of thing. Yeah. Whether you are on the client side or the agency side, the agencies are looking to protect revenue. The clients are looking to cut costs.

Have actual mutual conversations with each other and figure out how you can work together. And I’m not gonna use the word partners because I don’t like that word.

Gini Dietrich: I know, I, I avoided it too, because I know you don’t.

Chip Griffin: As I have said repeatedly on this show, you are not partners with your clients. You do not share in the risks and rewards. You have similar things.

You can be aligned, you can work together. In any case, figure out those ways to work together. If either side of this relationship is viewing it as us versus them. I need to maximize my revenue. I need to maximize my profit, or I need to keep my costs as low as possible. I need to get as much from the agency as possible.

That’s not a healthy relationship. No. And that is not gonna lead to the same kind of success where one, where you have regular ongoing conversations and quarterly planning or semi-annual planning, or even annual planning, which a lot of agencies don’t do with their clients ’cause they just charge forward

Gini Dietrich: fair

Chip Griffin: on autopilot.

Yep. And hope that they don’t get noticed and that the revenue keeps coming in the door. So true. I mean, that’s, that’s reality. Yes. I mean, a, a lot of agencies just sort of take that head down attitude because, you know, as, as soon as you poke your head up above the fence line. You know. Yes, there’s the possibility that you can increase the size of your relationship or build or, or strengthen the, the quality of the relationship with your client.

But there are also risks involved with that because you’re drawing attention to yourself, and particularly in larger organizations, it can be kind of easy to skate. So sure, I do understand there’s a risk to it, but if you’re having those conversations, you’re more likely to build that strong relationship with more of your clients, which will lead to better results.

Even if occasionally putting your head up above the fence line causes a problem.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And you know when you, when your client is going into meetings with the CFO and they’re saying, we’ve gotta cut X amount of dollars. This agency is a big piece of that. The client stands up for you and stands up for that because they can’t do their job without you.

And they know that because of the ongoing relationship and, and that you’ve been building and the ongoing planning that you’ve been doing with them. If you’re just keeping your head down and hoping they don’t notice you year, year after year, it’s gonna be a lot harder for them to stick up for you.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, and, and I think this is sort of a, a common theme for how I view AI and everything that I do, which is that you’ve gotta have that intersection of the technology from the AI, but the, the human, yes. Not just expertise, but the, the ability to, to engage with other humans. Yes. If you put the best of both of those together, that’s where you will achieve the best results for both sides of the agency client relationship.

And ultimately that should be what we’re looking for, right? Right. That if, if you are truly in it to be long-term successful, you want it to work for both sides. And it shouldn’t be one of these things where we’re having constant fights about transparency or pricing or these kinds of things because you know, we’re just looking out for our own self-interests.

If you align yourselves well, you will get good things coming to you

Gini Dietrich: every time, every single time. So do that

Chip Griffin: 99% of the time. Let’s, let’s, let’s admit that, alright, fine. There are times most of the time where you do everything right, everything you know, you, and it just doesn’t work out.

Gini Dietrich: Fair.

Chip Griffin: That’s life.

Gini Dietrich: That’s fair. That is life. Yeah. So I agree

Chip Griffin: that’s life. And that’s this podcast

Gini Dietrich: 99% of the time. And that’s this podcast.

Chip Griffin: So we’ve completed 99% of this podcast with the final 1%. We will sign off. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.

In this episode, inspired by a newsletter from David C. Baker, Chip and Gini discuss the authentic motivations and realities behind agency mission statements and values. They emphasize that many agencies publish values that are either not reflective of their true operations or are overly broad and similar to others.

The hosts stress the importance of being honest about the core purpose of a business and aligning public statements with actual behavior. They argue that values should stem from the owner’s true beliefs and actions rather than aspirational ideals.

They also caution against spending too much time wordsmithing values for marketing purposes, as clients are more interested in results. The conversation touches on the impact of leadership behavior on agency culture and the pitfalls of misrepresenting agency values.

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

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And, you know, I wanna talk about the, the mission of this podcast and Okay. What we’re trying to achieve.

Gini Dietrich: Okay. Our values, talk about values

Chip Griffin: and all of the values that I hold, hold dear that I’m sure you do as well.

Mm-hmm. That, that we want to embrace. Mm-hmm. As podcast hosts and purely doing this entirely out of the goodness of our hearts for our community, there’s no marketing benefit to us. There’s no thought leadership benefit. It’s all about you, the listener, and how much free stuff we can give you.

Gini Dietrich: I mean, some of it is, but yes, we do get value from it.

Chip Griffin: I mean the, the reality is I probably would just come on and talk anyway, even if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing for a business. ’cause it’s just fun.

Gini Dietrich: It’s fun. I agree.

Chip Griffin: But the reality is, I mean, you, you gotta have some real motivation behind it and it, and for this podcast, it’s marketing our respective brands, both personal and business, and sharing our insights.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: As an agency you also have mission, values, and purpose.

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: But I can pretty much guarantee you that it’s not aligned with what you’re publishing and sharing with prospects, putting on your website, including in your proposals and all this kind of stuff. And this, this discussion is inspired by an article in David c Baker’s newsletter where he talked about value washing and, and he touched on a, a bit of this, you know, agencies and, and how they present their values.

But I want to go further than that because I’m particularly cantankerous today. And I just, I, I kind of get sick to my stomach when I see these, you know, missions and value statements and all that kind of stuff that agencies just love to put out there. Because the reality is for most agency owners, your mission is to make money for yourself as the owner, to give yourself flexibility to do what you want, when you want, from a time commitment standpoint. And all of the other things are side benefits of it.

You are not running a not-for-profit. Unless you are a nepo baby with a trust fund, you’re not sitting there purely doing good for others. You have to do good for yourself too. But I gotta tell you, I have yet to see a mission statement for an agency that says anything about that.

Gini Dietrich: I’ll share mine ’cause it does.

Chip Griffin: Do you publish it publicly though?

Gini Dietrich: No, I was gonna say now it’s not public, it’s not on the website, but like internally, everybody, especially on the leadership team, they know exactly what we’re driving toward. They know exactly, and it is not, I mean sure like ethical PR and cri, like doing good from a reputation standpoint and those things for sure.

But our mission is to become the best and biggest consulting firm that implements PESO. Well, truth be told, the only one, ’cause nobody else can do it, right? Because we own the copyright. But that, that is our mission. Like that’s what we’re working to achieve. And so, and, and we wanna work with the best and the brightest organizations in the world to do that.

That’s our mission. Is it published on our website? Absolutely not. Do our, does our internal team know? Yes.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, look, I, I think the problem is that we need to start by being honest with ourselves as agency leaders about why we exist and what we’re doing. And it’s fine to want to do some of the nice stuff as part of it.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yes.

Chip Griffin: But, but it has to start with an acknowledgement of what the core purpose of the business is. And when you start pretending that it’s that that’s not what it is, that’s where I start to have an issue. And then we start looking at what’s actually said publicly by most agencies about their mission and purpose and all of that.

And most of it is so broad, so vanilla, so similar to what everybody else is saying, that it, it’s, it doesn’t really serve a purpose. And I know I’ve, I’ve been part of, of agency conversations where there are, are deep, thoughtful, ongoing conversations about mission, values and purpose. Why? Why? And none of that means that you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t have, you know, a general ambition, an ethical framework, all of those kinds of things.

Sure. Yes. But you don’t need to burn a lot of time on it.

Gini Dietrich: No.

Chip Griffin: And you don’t need to work on wordsmithing it to share with prospects, because I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, your prospects don’t care.

Gini Dietrich: They don’t care.

Chip Griffin: They are not hiring you because of all of these things that you say, they, they don’t really care.

They care about the results you’re getting and how much it costs them.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: That’s the only two things they care about.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. I just had this very conversation

Chip Griffin: and as side benefit that you’re decent to work with.

Gini Dietrich: Sure. Of course. That they like that you have chemistry and they like working with you.

Yeah. Like they wanna show up, be able to show up to meetings with you and humans like other humans, you know? Right, right. I just had this very conversation with a client because she was stressing about her clients and some changes, and I was like, listen, they don’t care. They don’t care. As long as the work gets done, they’re still getting the same results or better.

They don’t care. So. Let’s, I, I understand you’re worried about it. I understand you’re stress, but let’s put that stress somewhere else because this bucket, they don’t care about. As long as you communicate it, the work still gets done. They’re still getting the results that they expect. You’re fine. Let’s put the stress somewhere else.

So, as an aside, but I agree with you, like, most of us go into business for ourselves because we know there’s a better way to do it and we wanna make more money. And for me, I have a problem with authority. So. And there may be others that, that feel that as well.

Chip Griffin: I think, I think a lot of, of business owners and entrepreneurs are unemployable for that very reason.

Gini Dietrich: Correct. Yes. So that that’s why we own businesses and there’s nothing wrong with that. For now, we live in a capitalist country where you can actually make money and it’s okay. It’s okay for you to make money. It’s okay for you to be profitable. It’s okay.

Chip Griffin: And, and I mean, profit itself is not a dirty word.

Gini Dietrich: No, it’s a great word. I love it.

Chip Griffin: There’s a fair argument to be had about is there, is there a point where the profit is too much? Where the compensation is too much? That it, it, it’s a, it’s a worthy debate to have at some point, but I can guarantee you that 99.999999999% of small agency owners don’t need to worry about that.

Gini Dietrich: And don’t have enough profit,

Chip Griffin: probably a hundred percent, but I’m just being holding open the possibility that there’s just some small agency out there that you know is, is really just rolling in it.

Gini Dietrich: And I will add that you probably 99.9999999999% of agencies don’t make enough profit. 5% profit is not enough.

Break even is not enough. 10% is not enough.

Chip Griffin: Well, particularly when that profit doesn’t even include the owner’s compensation. But that’s an argument that,

Gini Dietrich: right.

Chip Griffin: That we’ve had ad nauseum on, on this show and that I have ad nauseum with clients as well who, who like to count the profit while paying themselves zero zero. Right. And your profit margin, that does not count.

That does not count.

But I mean, you know, I, I think we also need to be mindful of the fact that a lot of the, the missions, values, and purpose kind of things that I see out there do not conform to how the agency even operates. So not only are you starting from a point where you’re not acknowledging what your real objectives are, but what you do say may not reflect the reality.

And it’s this, this goes along with, you know, when I get asked by agency owners, you know, how do I create an agency culture of X, Y, or Z? What do I need to do to establish this culture? And, and my first piece of advice is always, well, that’s what you need to do first, right?

You need to actually be echoing what you’re saying. You need, it needs to reflect what you’re doing, how you behave personally, and that establishes the culture. You don’t say that we have a culture of X, Y, or Z. You don’t say that we have these values and then assume that they just, you know, take root.

Your values come about because of what you and your team are actually currently doing internally and externally. Right. It needs to reflect what it is. You can say you want to change it for the future, but it should never be, your value statement should never be an ambition. It should be an accurate reflection of what the reality is.

And if you don’t like that reflection of reality,

Gini Dietrich: right, then you have to make,

Chip Griffin: figure out what you need to change.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but I… As I mentioned, I have a problem with authority and sometimes that includes clients, not often, but occasionally. And we had a client who we loved their marketing team.

We loved their chief marketing officer. She’s great. She and I are still friends. She actually lives down the street. Their CEO though was not a good guy. And I remember him coming to a meeting with us unexpected. He, he was not expected to be there, and he shows up to this meeting because he’s mad that the website copy doesn’t reflect the culture that he wants.

And I had this conversation with him about it. He’s like, well, I want to like demonstrate that we do rooftops for Cubs games on Friday afternoons and we have a beer cart and like all of these things. And I was like, but do you do that? And he’s like, well, no, I expect them to work 12 hours a day. We don’t do that.

And I was like, well, we can’t say that and then not have you with that. And he, I, we actually ended up parting ways with that client be because of this. Because he would not, I mean, he got very aggressive and unprofessional with me about it, but I wouldn’t step down either because I was like, no, like you can’t, you can’t say.

And he kept saying, but then we’ll get the brightest and the best that come in and wanna work here. And I was like, yeah. And then they’ll leave because all the things you promised them aren’t true. And he just, we, he and I could not, and we were butting heads big time. But I think you’re right. Like you can’t.

You have to live the culture that you want to demonstrate, that you wanna talk about, that you wanna publicly put on your website before you can actually do those things. And if you, you’re absolutely right too, that if, if you want to have a culture where you do rooftops for Cubs games every Friday afternoon or when they’re in town, or you have a beer cart or wherever it happens to be, great.

Do those things first and then you can start to talk about it.

Chip Griffin: And, and I would also, I would go so far as to say that in a lot of agencies when I look at their published list of values or whatever, that a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times those are actually some of their biggest weaknesses.

So when I see an agency that talks about how they value their team members, to your point, there’s a better than even chance that they’ve got some team morale issues. And they’re trying to spin it for themselves and make them feel like, you know, we, we are actually valuing it, but they’re not doing the things that they need to do in order to actually achieve that.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: Another pet peeve of mine and, and all, I, I would say this one is more often than not, when I see an agency’s website talk about the importance of ethics, that is almost always a red flag for me. Because I think the vast majority of the time that I’ve seen anything about ethical behavior, there’s a, a really, really strong chance that there is some variety of unethical behavior taking place.

Gini Dietrich: I agree. Yes, I agree with you.

Chip Griffin: And it’s definitely in the category of me thinks you doth protest too much.

Gini Dietrich: Correct. Yes. I absolutely think you’re right. Yeah. I have a theory about that, which I will not share here, but yes, I agree with you. That’s, that is definitely what’s happening. Yeah. It’s kind of like when you read job descriptions and it says things like, energetic employee candidates that don’t mind long hours. Like, you know, and you start to read between the lines where it’s like, we want 22 year olds who we can’t afford to pay and we expect to work 12 hours a day. And like, those are the things to read between the lines. Right? Yeah. Those are the kinds of things that you, that I, I think people are getting really smart too in these days where, especially Gen Z, they’re like, yeah, I’m, I’m not putting up with that.

I understand what you’re trying to say. And so I, I think, you know, just when, and we’re from my perspective as a communicator and I from, that’s the lens I look at things like if you’re going to communicate something, you have to absolutely live it. You can’t say it because that’s what you want or that’s what you aspire to.

You have to be living it.

Chip Griffin: And you’ve just given me a great idea for a future episode, it would be fun to just take a blind list of job descriptions, job listings.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, we should totally do that.

Chip Griffin: in the agency world and, and translate for people what what is actually being said there, because it’s sort of like real estate listings. You know, when it, when it says cozy, it means super tiny.

Gini Dietrich: Right?

Chip Griffin: When it says lots of potential, it means it would fail every code inspection possible. And, and there are a lot of those kinds of things that I do see in agency job descriptions that, that immediately tell you, this is a sweatshop.

Yep. You, you are, this is gonna be a miserable place, or

Gini Dietrich: we really don’t value our employees.

Chip Griffin: Right. Or, or, you know, your role here is to sit down, shut up, and do exactly what you’re told. Yep. And there are a lot of things in job descriptions that often make it pretty clear what’s really going on.

And it’s usually because they ran some past employee into the ground and they said, well, the way we’re gonna solve this is we’re just gonna tell them what they need to do upfront. And they don’t ever look in the mirror to see if their management style, if their behavior as, as leaders, as owners, as whatever contributed to it.

And so, your values are not something that you establish. They’re something that, that come from your behavior and the behavior of your team and the activities and the clients that you take on, right? And, and you can’t be putting things out there that don’t reflect reality because people figure it out and it just makes it worse.

So if you say that, you know, you’re looking for a diverse workforce and you don’t actually have one, that’s a problem. And I think David C. Baker specifically, I forget whether it was the same newsletter or a different one, where he singled out agencies that talk about a diverse workforce, but then you look and they, they have diversity in some ways, but not others.

Gini Dietrich: It’s all, it’s all white young women.

Chip Griffin: They all think alike. And, and, and that’s not, that’s not what you are actually, you, you’re saying something that doesn’t reflect reality. And so you need to understand why that is and whether perhaps you should make a different claim. Perhaps it’s not something that you want to actually make a claim about anymore.

Perhaps you need to change your behavior so that it, you know, more closely mirrors it what there are things that you need to do. But the, the bottom line for me is just that so much of this is rubbish out there and so much of it doesn’t reflect reality. And so much of it is a wish that is, is not rooted in what is actually going on.

And if we do not understand what our actual mission, values, and purpose are as a business, we have no business making public claims that don’t back that up.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Absolutely. And I think that you, you started to make this point, but I think it’s incredibly important for us as agency owners to understand that the values are derived from us personally, because we are the ones who are driving all of that.

So if you are, if you are living things that you believe are important, that’s going to come across whether or not you put it in writing, right? So. I think that’s, I think it’s really important for us to remember that. And if your values, if you’re trying to create a value for the agency that you may not mirror or don’t agree with, it’s not gonna work.

It’s just not going to work. So really understand that until you get to a certain size, and I would say it’s big, like it’s not 20 employees. It’s big lots and lots and lots of employees. Your values are derived from you personally. And that’s what you have. If you’re going to be thinking about this and you’re going to be publishing values and you’re going to say to your team, these are our values, really look inward to understand what your values are and what you stand for, because that’s what’s going to drive the, the business as well.

Chip Griffin: And again, it’s what you actually stand for, not what you wish or hope,

Gini Dietrich: right.

Chip Griffin: That you stood for.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: And, and I think that’s where we often get lost. Because we wanna sit down and we wanna put down a list of values of, of things that we aspire to. But that is very different from what, what we’re actually doing now in most cases.

Yep. There, there are times where we’ve already reached all our aspirations. Fine. Okay. If, if that’s you, kudos to you. You’re not, you don’t need to listen anymore of this episode. If you are like most of us, where you have aspirations that are beyond where you are at today, you need to understand where you’re at today first.

Yes. And you need to acknowledge that and work from that basis. And, and to your point, it all does start with the owner. Yep. I would say. Even in the largest independently owned agencies. So we’ll take the holding companies out of it, but Yep. But if you found the largest independently owned, no matter how many hundreds of employees they may have, it still is derived from the owner themselves.

And the reason for that is because what you model for your behavior, your direct reports will then model to their direct reports. That’s right. And so on. That’s right. And so if you are a micromanager, there’s a better than even chance that your own managers are gonna be micromanagers because it’s what they see.

It’s what they believe is expected of them. Yep. And particularly in the agency world, in the small agency world where most managers don’t have any real experience before their current management role that you’ve given them, they will absolutely mirror your behavior. So if you yell at them, they’ll yell at their team members.

If you’re inspiring, they’re more likely to be inspiring. Yep. You’ve got to be looking in the mirror more often and, and understanding that and not putting out all of this stuff that just, you know, reads like traditional marketing speak about your own business. Because nobody cares at all, but nobody cares, particularly if it’s not accurate.

Gini Dietrich: You know what I will challenge everyone to do and it won’t take you very long, but take all of the URLs for the websites of the agencies that you admire and, and then your own, and throw them into AI, your AI tool choice, and ask it to create a chart of what the values are. And what they, what, which, what, what each agency says they deliver.

And have the AI create a chart so you can see side by side comparisons. And I will guarantee you, to your point Chip, it’ll guarantee you that nobody is different. You can take that then and go, oh, geez, okay, now we get, we have some work to do, but really let’s not focus on our values, our mission, and our our vision statements for the website.

Let’s focus on our true differentiators. it’s not results driven and ethical. And yes, because those things, we all do those things. What makes you truly different?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and they’ll all tell you by the way that their teams are their differentiator. Yes. Because that’s

Gini Dietrich: mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: Every agency loves to say that, but.

It’s not possible.

Gini Dietrich: Results driven. Team. Yep. Our people. Yep. They all our team. Yep. That, that’s exactly what they’ll all say.

Chip Griffin: Our, it’s all about our people.

Gini Dietrich: Okay. Do the work I wanna see. And then sending your results.

Chip Griffin: Please do. And maybe, maybe then we could have an episode where we walk through some of that and find out that they’re all exactly the same.

Gini Dietrich: They’re all exactly the same

Chip Griffin: that everybody has submitted to us.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: But yeah, in any case, I think that’s probably enough beating up on people today. We do this a lot now, maybe we need to be a little bit, we do, yeah. Kinder and gentler to the agency community.

Gini Dietrich: It’s okay,

Chip Griffin: but you know some someone’s gotta speak truth to it.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right.

Chip Griffin: And that’s what we do. So on that note, we’ll wrap this episode up. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.