I have the good fortune of hanging out with agency owners and their teams every day of the year. We work with over 250 agencies that range from a handful of employees to several hundred team members. While every agency is absolutely unique – there are some common themes and trends that bubble up as we work alongside our agency clients.

Every year I pull together the trends I see time and time so the agencies we serve aren't surprised by any of them. I've categorized them into some big buckets: money, employees, agency structure, clients, tactics, and revenue opportunities.

There were too many trends to pack into one solocast, so I'll cover half this time and the other half in July.

Here's the good news – it's a great time to be in the business. As always, both challenges and opportunity abound. My goal is to help you spot the opportunities so you can maximize them while sidestep the trouble spots.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

• How agencies fared financially in 2017
• Why 2017 was a great year for agencies to make money – and where that profit got re-allocated
• The factors complicating employee hiring and retention
• Agency structure changes in terms of both department structure and employee life/work models

Drew McLellan is the CEO at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency since 1995 and is still actively running the agency today. Drew's unique vantage point as being both an agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year gives him a unique perspective on running an agency today. AMI works with agency owners by:

• Leading agency owner peer groups
• Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams
• Offering AE Bootcamps
• Conducting individual agency owner coaching
• Doing on-site consulting
• Offering online courses in agency new business and account service

Because he works with those 250+ agencies every year — Drew has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog "One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read."

Ways to contact Drew McLellan:

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/drewmclellan

We're proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!