FIR Podcast Network

Chip and Gini take a look at why you need to treat your own agency as if it were a client — and how to do that most effectively.

This episode includes feedback from the Spin Sucks and Agency Leadership communities on Slack where agency owners have shared their own stories of how they operationalize the concept.

During this episode, you will learn:

* How to use your own agency as an R&D tool

* How you can empower up-and-coming leaders within your agency

* How to turn agency self-care into new revenue

* How one major technology company uses its own product — and what agency owners can learn from this

A few notable quotes:

“If you’ve got an up and comer who you’d like to assign to a third party client in the near future, have them run your internal client service team for your own agency.” – Chip

“That’s how Spin Sucks was created. We did it as an experiment to see if this blogging thing that everybody was talking about was something that we could offer to clients. And here we are.” – Gini

“Why make the client the guinea pig if you can be your own?” – Chip

[read the transcript]

In this episode of the Chats with Chip podcast, Rick Gould of Gould+Partners, an agency mergers and acquisitions advisory firm based in New York, provides useful insights for agency owners on the process of selling their agencies — including perspective on current trends in M&A.

By listening, you will learn:

* How agencies are valued and ballpark estimates of typical multiples

* When sellers pay buyers and the current mix of earn-outs versus cash at closing

* Why owners need to prepare years in advance of a successful sale

* Why agencies should be run as if they are going to be sold (even if that isn’t the goal) to ensure maximum profitability

* What explains the recent increase in M&A activity in the agency space

* What the introduction of consulting firms and private equity to the field of buyers means for sellers

* Why middle management can often be the key to better valuations

* What agency owners an expect post-sale

* How to reward key staff after a transaction

* Why agency owners need to do reverse due diligence on buyers

* What impact geography has on M&A

[read the transcript]

There are parts of a business that make money and parts that cost money. There is no question that companies need support services. It would be hard to make money without an accounts receivable department; the departments that make money need robust systems to do their jobs, which IT provides.

In his book, “Zone to Win,” Geoffrey Moore includes the “Productivity Zone” in his matrix. This, he says, “is home to a host of enabling investments in shared services” that include marketing, technical support, manufacturing, supply chain, customer service, human resources, IT, legal, finance, and administration. “Simply put,” Moore says, “any function in the corporation that does not have direct accountability for a material revenue number goes here. The focus is on applying sustaining innovation to productivity-enabling initiatives.”

The fact that communication functions do not have accountability for a material revenue number, however, does not mean these departments cannot contribute tangibly to the bottom line. Other support functions have adopted this view. Human Resources, for example, has transitioned from a largely administrative function to a partner in the C-suite, consulting on strategic decisions based on the value of their insights.

That is, they add value to the organization.

Typically, corporate communication is viewed strictly as a cost. That’s why, when the economy sours, it’s a no-brainer for leaders to see the communication function as a target for savings.

Many communication departments have already undergone the transition to a value-add function in their organizations. IABC’s Fellows believe it is time for the rest of the industry to follow suit. The activity focus — cranking out intranet posts and press releases, producing events and crafting collateral — needs to give way to a value focus: The measurable gains the communication function creates must be greater than the cost of producing those gains. The communication value proposition should be clear: We either make money or save money; if our efforts produce neither, we need to question why we’re doing it.

On April 18, four Fellows gathered to discuss this evolution in episode 44 of the “Circle of Fellows” program.

About the Panel

Mary Hills’ career as a marketing and communication professional has been in companies undergoing significant evolution, change, and growth. She has held leadership positions with responsibility for developing plans and schemas to support long-term growth and business sustainability goals. She has more than 20 years experience and expertise in designing and delivering training and development programs for companies and organizations, bringing theories, models, and frameworks into everyday practice. In addition to her role at HeimannHills Marketing Group, Mary serves as Adjunct Faculty in the MS – Global Strategic Communication program at Loyola University Chicago.  Mary speaks internationally and nationally on marketing, communication, standards, and practices.

James E. Lukaszewski, America’s Crisis Guru ®, is a bestselling author, national speaker, and trusted strategic advisor to FPO and NPO business operators and leaders during crises, disasters, reputation attacks, contentiousness and when the boss’s future is at stake. Corporate Legal Times listed him as “one of 22 crisis counselors to have in your speed dial when all hell breaks loose.” For more than 30 years, he has confidentially guided hundreds of company leaders thru tough, touchy, sensitive situations. Lukaszewski’s strategies inspire constructive, ethical problem resolving management behavior. A powerful and inspirational speaker, he teaches executives and managers the lessons he has learned. A prolific author, he is quoted and interviewed often as one of the most recognizable leaders in his profession. Lukaszewski is on the web at www.e911.com.

Jim Shaffer is a business advisor, leadership coach,

Leif turns the table on his co-host Chris Christensen as we get meta and talk about the state of podcasting and how destinations and other travel companies can use podcasting in their campaigns.

Chris is the creator of AmateurTraveler.com. Amateur Traveler is a popular online travel website that focuses primarily on travel destinations. It includes a couple of audio podcasts and a blog. His travel podcasts got around 4 million downloads in 2018. He has created more than 1,500 podcast episodes across 4 different podcasts.

The Amateur Traveler is 13 years old and they use Amateur Traveler to teach English at Oxford University and to test English proficiency for employment with the Thailand Foreign Ministry.

Chris has won a Lowell Thomas Award, 6 NATJA awards, and a SMITTY Award from Travel+Leisure as the “best independent travel journalist”.

Chris is the owner of BloggerBridge.com which is a startup connecting bloggers and industry contacts.

He has worked for years in technology startups in Silicon Valley. He was formerly the Director of Engineering for TripAdvisor’s New Initiatives group and was the EVP Engineering at LiveWorld where his team built and ran online communities and events for companies including eBay, HBO, TV Guide, Expedia, Marriott, A&E, History Channel, the NBA, NBC, ABC, Disney, Microsoft, WebTV and American Express.

Slides of the Edison Share of Ear Study 2019

Hosts: Leif Pettersen of Leif Pettersen PR and Chris Christensen of BloggerBridge.com and AmateurTraveler.com.

Paul and David are old hands at email newsletters. Paul had his own for several years and has produced several for his clients. David currently publishes two: his own Web Informant, which he has been doing almost weekly since 2003, and Inside Security which is part of a group of newsletters. We share a few tips from our years of experience.

The first is to know your audience and segment them for best results. This post in Marketing Week documents how marketers are segmenting the audiences at a much finer level than they previously did thanks to an explosion in behavioral data from third parties. One bottled water vendor was able to dramatically boost the response rate of its YouTube ads with an email newsletter sliced by 16 different segments. The survey found that behavior and location are the most effective segmentation methods, with the old stalwarts like age and gender being the least effective. 

We discuss how to craft your subject line and choose a coherent theme as well as how to pick the optimal length and number of hyperlinks to include. If you do use links, beware of URL shortening services, since many as spam filters block them. There’s also the question of whether to make your newsletters text-only or to go the HTML route. If you choose the latter, be sure to test each newsletter with different browsers and different screen depths. Finally, we cover how to choose the right tool for the mailings. We’ve used a variety of them over the years, and each has different strengths and weaknesses. Some of these topics are mentioned in this piece for Marketing360.

We’d love to hear from you about your favorite email newsletters and tips for creating your own.

Most agencies begin as one-person shows. But to grow and expand — and keep the owner sane — it can’t stay that way forever. That’s the challenge that Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich tackle in this week’s episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.

Clients who originally signed up with an individual naturally want to maintain that access even as the agency takes on more clients and employees.

But that doesn’t scale.

Owners need to focus their time to work on the business, not in it.

That doesn’t mean that there’s not a place for owners to step in and work on client service, but Chip and Gini explain how to position the team for success and set the right expectations with clients.

During this episode, you will hear:

* Specific examples of cases where agency owners struggled with this challenge.

* Detailed explanations of why it will hold back growth and make the owner miserable.

* Strategies for dealing with the inevitable desire of an owner to micromanage projects.

* Process improvements that will make it easier to escape the “agency of one” trap.

* Personal stories of how Chip and Gini have addressed this issue in their own agency businesses.

A few notable quotes include:

* “You do have to put priority on coaching and mentoring a team to be able to do the same level of work that you do.” – Gini

* “You have to be needed, but not necessary. In other words, you have to bring something to the table, you can’t be in a situation where you’re worthless to your own agency, there needs to be some there there.” – Chip

* “If I were going to do it, again, I would not put my name on the door.” – Gini

* “As an agency owner, if you want to help your team grow, if you want to help build the relationship between your subordinates and the client, that means you have to shut up and just be the pretty face.” – Chip

[read the transcript]

Douglas Spencer knows brand strategy. The former VP Global Brand Management for Thomson Reuters and founder of Boston-based consultancy Spencer Brenneman has spent two decades traversing the globe to work with brands in every sector from financial services to nonprofits.

He has the same advice for all of them: Embrace brand strategy as “your business’ very best friend – part coach, conscience, parent, partner, judge, jury, conductor and station agent.”

The same advice applies to internal communicators. And in this episode of EE Voice, you’ll hear why.

Tune in as we talk with Douglas about the many ways internal comms can support the brand and learn how to:

* Incorporate branding elements in your internal communications plan

* Engage employees (without turning them into salespeople)

* Enhance your employee brand while staying true to the corporate brand

* Turn branding and internal comms into the ultimate brand partnership

Join us as we discuss brand strategy’s role in business performance – and why the marketing team should be your new best friend.

Brent Lightner of Taoti Creative in Washington, DC joins the podcast to talk about how he became an accidental — but quite successful — agency owner.

At the dawn of the Netscape era, Brent took on a web development challenge in search of scholarship funds. Two decades later, he leads an award-winning creative firm.

“When I went to college, I was a chemistry and biology major, and I ended up getting accepted to Tulane medical school. And so this whole thing was supposed to come out with me being a doctor on the other end, and the websites were just kind of a means to an end to pay for school the whole way through the process,” Brent told Chip.

It turned out that wasn’t the path Brent followed. Instead, his work drew the attention of news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel.

As a young web designer, Brent had the kind of life that many 20-somethings would envy. “I’m hanging out by the pool all day with my laptop and my bathing suit,” he explained.

Later, he gave up poolside work and set up his team at his house. “First, it was my second bedroom. And then we moved to the dining room. Then we moved to the basement, and I had to buy a new house just to get the bigger basement. And I was basically running a sweatshop out of my basement at that point.”

Today, Taoti makes its home in its own building in the nation’s capital.

As a marketing agency leader, Brent made an observation that will resonate with many of his peers. “The clients pay us, but it’s their audience that we actually work for.”

Brent isn’t content to rest on his hard-won success. Instead, he is looking to what the future holds.

“I think there’s a lot of new stuff that’s going to be coming out, between virtual and augmented reality, and all these other different ways that you bridge that gap. That’s where I think there’s just a huge amount of potential for innovation. That’s what excites me,” Brent said.

[read the transcript]

In this episode, Mitchell Levy (http://aha.pub/MitchellLevy), TEDx speaker and the AHA Guy at AHAthat (https://AHAthat.com), introduces his co-host for the month, #ThoughtLeader Ronan Leonard (http://aha.pub/RonanLeonard), an author, business mentor, speaker, and founder of the Return on Intellect and Eccountability, which helps overwhelmed and frustrated owners grow their businesses fast (https://www.eccountability.io/). This month’s episodes will be interesting and motivating, as they will focus on the importance of creating a Mastermind group as a venue for learning and a tool for establishing credibility.

Ronan shares insights about how to run a mastermind group that promotes collaboration and respect for other people’s opinions. For him, being part of a mastermind group is a win-win situation, where every member is given the opportunity to learn new ideas and use these ideas to grow their businesses. He also believes that a person who doesn’t teach and doesn’t share their knowledge with other people is almost a nonexistent person. Four more stellar thought leaders will be speaking in the next episodes to share their valuable ideas on how to grow your business.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from the episode. See more in the “AHA Moments from Thought Leader Life” eBooks available in the social media-enabled eBook platform, AHAthat: http://AHAthat.com.

* The collaboration of amazing people gathered in one heart produces a great #Mastermind. #TwoIsBetterThanOne http://aha.pub/RonanLeonard http://aha.pub/MitchellLevy

* What are the fruits of a #Mastermind? 1) Greater ideas, 2) bigger business opportunities, and 3) the #LearningNeverStops. http://aha.pub/RonanLeonard

* What types of people participate in a #Mastermind? 1) People who are open and curious of other people’s opinions and 2) people who welcome feedback from their audience. http://aha.pub/RonanLeonard

* The reason some people fail in establishing their #Credibility is that they are not willing to share what they know. #Mastermind http://aha.pub/RonanLeonard

* It is only through #Collaboration with people who potentially have different ideas and solutions that a business may be able to keep up with technology and advances in any industry. #Mastermind http://aha.pub/RonanLeonard

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, subscribe to the channel: http://youtube.com/user/thoughtleaderlife.

As Gini returns from a vacation of her own, she and Chip discuss the pros and cons of unlimited paid time off (PTO) policies for agency employees.

Gini has implemented such an approach in her own business, while Chip has simply taken a lax approach to counting days instead of a full-blown open-ended plan.

What works and what doesn’t when it comes to unlimited PTO? How do you avoid abuse, plan for agency needs (especially on small teams), and still deliver on the promise of unshackled time off?

[read the transcript]