Wil Reynolds joins You Can't Lose! this week, hold onto your butts. Wil is the shot in the arm you need if you're working in client services trying to figure out how to connect with clients.

He's a content marketing machine, founder of SEER interactive, and a great example of how good citizenship of you community = equity in both business and in life. This is a great glimpse into Wil's mind.

Richard is fresh off his trip to Config in SF and has thoughts on what the demand for this event tells us about the value of live events, some quick thoughts on the latest Figma news, and a long conversation about the value of people connecting IRL.

Somehow we got Tracey Halvorsen to join the podcast again!

Tracey is the CEO at Adeo and shares her thoughts on a lifetime of client services experience, her thoughts on value pricing, the value of relationships, and the secret to a long and successful career: You gotta listen to learn more!

Warren Wilansky is founder and President of Plank, our favorite Montreal web design and dev agency, and he joins us this week to explain how to grow an agency over 25 years. 25 years!!!

It's super simple, it's all about relationships. Don't think about leads or accounts or marketing or sales. Cultivate authentic relationships and BOOM you're an overnight 25-year-long success story.

Warren unpacks mentorship among team members, planning for a post-Warren & Steve Plank, baseball as biz dev, LinkedIn buttsniffing and more.

Ryan Irelan reminded me of this quote he heard on Julia Luis Dreyfus's podcast Wiser Than Me when she interviewed Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, who attributed it to Teddy Roosevelt. That's how information works these days btw.

Comparison shopping and Keeping Up With the Jones focuses on outcomes instead of on the journey. This week we talk about ways to mitigate the risks of comparing your accomplishments to others, and instead learn to focus on the journey and the lessons to be learned along the way.

There are no answers. No book that solves all your problems. No operating system to save you.

What will serve you is an ability to see through these remedies to the underlying lessons or principles they're built on. Apply what works. Be flexible about what doesn't. Evolve constantly and question everything. There are no golden eggs or skeleton keys. And when you accept all of that you're ready to win.

How do you grow your most valuable accounts? Is that the PM's job? Do you need account managers? What can we learn from an ad agency's account strategy playbook? This episode we go HARD into account leadership. We share recommendations and best practices.

Start here: Establishing process is an act of generosity, and when it comes to defining process first dog to the bowl wins.

To kick off the episode, with EightShapes closing doors, Richard and Joe discuss the life expectancy of agencies against the back drop of their 18 year run. Would owners be happier and make better decisions if they embrace the idea that client services are finite businesses that end? A services business is fulfilling, and exhausting. Ending an agency doesn't have to be a failure if owner's embrace a business lifespan attitude from the beginning. Let's get into it.

How can we apply what we know about client services sales to B2B sales? To SaaS sales? To small businesses? To traditional selling environments? It's easier than you think.

This episode is about applying base principles of agency and client services sales to ALL KINDS OF SALES. How can you punch above your weight? How can you break through the noise of your competitors? How can you employ Richard's "Oprah" strategy? What can we learn from Owner Camp and other experiential offerings?

How can you evolve and adapt? We get tactical this week baby!

On the topic of in-person teams and distributed teams a population of unintentionally hybrid teams are struggling with their identities. Teams that embraced a distributed approach during COVID, and are now left reconciling with the remnants of their in-person culture and the reality of their distributed staff.

In this episode we discuss the remedies for this existential friction, how to get started solving these problems, why they need to be addressed sooner than many leaders realize, and the myths we tell ourselves that cloud our judgement.

We're out here fixing things this week!

Building out from Richard's Extreme Agency Playbook we dive into the issue of co-located and distributed teams. More accurately we really dig into the current state of many teams: Unintentionally Hybrid.

COVID created an industry of unintentionally hybrid teams and we're only starting to deal with the aftermath. While enterprises are forcing a Return To Office policy agency owners can't convince, beg, or bribe staff to come back into the office.

The moral of the story is in-person interaction is worth fighting for. You may need to manufacture it more deliberately if you're a distributed team, but the value remains irreplaceable.

How can your remote team draw on the benefits of in-person interactions? What experiments can we conduct to test the viability of different team structures? What is the underlying danger teams that were once co-located, but now distributed need to be scared of? Let's do it.