How to keep making money in 2023

With all the talk of inflation and recession, agency owners are understandably concerned about maintaining — let alone growing — profitability in the new year.

In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how you can correct your pricing to handle shrinking margins due to inflation and other factors. They look at how you should think about client retention as part of the profit mix.

Finally, they remind agency leaders that price increases aren’t the only way to protect profits and that managing scope and efficiency can have the same effect in some situations.

Key takeaways

* Gini Dietrich: “Really it’s less about raising your rates and more about how you message it.”

* Chip Griffin: “Our nature is we want to over service. Fine. Just plan that into your estimates for how much it’s going to take to do the work so that you can price appropriately.”

* Gini Dietrich: “Don’t raise your rates just to raise your rates. Find creative ways to embrace the opportunity with clients, and you’ll be able to make money that way.”

* Chip Griffin: “When you’re trying to think about how do you continue to make money in an uncertain environment with all the things that are circling around us right now, part of that is focusing on client retention.”

Related

* Follow the 4-20 rule to get your agency high profitability

* A small price increase can lead to a big boost in profits for your agency

* Setting and Meeting Your Revenue Growth Goals

View Transcript

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 need to figure out how to make some money. I just, you know, it’s crazy time. I, I gotta figure it out.

Gini Dietrich: Holiday time. You gotta make some money. Get it. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: Right after this.

So we are creeping up on the end of the year here. Lots of folks are doing their year ahead planning and they’re reading about how inflation is continuing. There’s still the possibility of a recession and who knows what else 2023 might have to offer. So, so we thought we would talk today about how do we keep making money in this environment as an agency?

How do we, you know, not just generate revenue, but actually profits. And so that’s our jumping off point for today and, and we’ll see where we wind up.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I’m glad you said that because I was going to say, making money does not necessarily mean more revenue. It means profit.

Chip Griffin: Yes.

Gini Dietrich: How do make money?

Chip Griffin: And we beat that dead horse all the time.

Gini Dietrich: We do.

Chip Griffin: Because still too many people come to us and say, Hey,