Welcome to episode 152. I’m chatting again with my go-to guru for the now, next and future of the agency business model, Spencer Gallagher. Spencer has relaunched Bluhalo with a renewed focus on helping agencies and businesses transform with AI. Bluhalo is a business for the next decade, focused on supporting B2B organisations across three core pillars: People, Technology, and Asset Growth.

In this conversation, we really dig into what transforming with AI means in practice for you as an agency leader or account manager.

Here’s what we cover:

- Why so many agency services have matured and what that means for your positioning and growth
- How Spencer thinks about the "now, next and future" of agencies in an AI-driven world
- Why founders and leaders need to reconnect with their creative side and carve out proper thinking space if they want to reinvent their business
- The cultural shift required to build high-agency, growth-mindset teams that actually embrace AI rather than resist it
- How AI is likely to reshape agency structures - from headcount and roles to pricing, automation and the types of services clients will value most
- Practical examples of how tools and no-code platforms have gone from clunky to powerful in a very short space of time, and what that means for your IP
- Advice for agency leaders who know they need to speed up their adoption of AI, but feel their team is low-energy or stuck in old ways of working
- Guidance for account managers whose leaders are dragging their heels on AI, including how to use real client feedback to influence from the middle
- What Spencer is seeing in the M&A market for agencies, including what buyers now look for and why AI capability is increasingly on the checklist

Spencer has a rare mix of lived experience building and selling an agency, deep technical curiosity, and a very honest take on where agencies are kidding themselves about the future. I think you’ll come away with both a clearer sense of direction and some very practical ideas to take back to your team.

If you’d like to stay connected with Spencer's thinking, you can find him on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencergallagher/
and check out Bluhalo to see more of the work he’s doing to help agencies and businesses become truly AI-enabled. https://www.bluhalo.com/

And if you want to get a sense of where your own agency stands, you can assess your "AI readiness for client retention and growth" over on my website: 
https://www.accountmanagementskills.com
The quiz takes just a few minutes and you’ll receive a short report with suggestions for how you can start weaving AI into your client management workflow.