Planning for agency growth

Agency Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss strategic planning for growing an agency in 2025. They stress the importance of planning during Q4 and consistently gathering ideas throughout the year, whether digitally or using methods like post-it notes. They highlight the common mistake of agencies relying solely on referrals or word-of-mouth without proactive strategies.

The hosts also emphasize the need for business owners to define their personal and business goals before crafting a detailed strategy to grow, warning against simply emulating others without considering personal business objectives. They touch on diversifying revenue streams and advise focusing on mastering one business development approach well before expanding to other approaches. The importance of involving team members and contractors in the planning process is highlighted to ensure a holistic and informed strategy.

Key takeaways

• Chip Griffin: “You need to make sure that you’re defining what you want from the business before you start putting together the plan for the agency. Because otherwise you’ll just be following some steps that work for someone else, but not for you..”
• Gini Dietrich: “I think a lot of agency owners say, well, I grow by referral and word of mouth, but they don’t actually do anything to help referrals and word of mouth come in.”
• Chip Griffin: “What you need to do is pick one business development strategy and do it well and do it consistently. Once you do that you can think about adding additional tactics to it.”
• Gini Dietrich: “If you hate speaking, if you don’t want to get up on stage, but you hear everybody’s doing it, don’t do it. Because if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it consistently.”

Related

• Agency owner growth expectations and business development insights revealed in Q3 SAGA survey
• How to accelerate your agency’s growth in the year ahead
• Smart use of content helps agency business development

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 want to know how do we grow our businesses next year? I realize that’s not a fun, entertaining intro.

Gini Dietrich: I know, but you also, you also started this by flipping me off. So we’re, we’re in good spirits today.

Chip Griffin: Well, you know, you were picking on me and I was having trouble getting the Streamyard thing to record correctly. And so, yes, we were off to a great start, but our goal is to help you to get off to a better start in the year ahead. Cause it’s Q4, so people are starting to make their plans for the next year, or at least thinking about it.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: And it’s better to be planning now than, you know, starting to think about it during the holidays and saying, Oh, wow, it’s January 1. I probably ought to do something different.

Gini Dietrich: Or, or in like March of next year, when you realize you’re not growing the way you thought you would and you start planning.

Chip Griffin: Sure. No, that’s, that’s, that’s fair. But, but I will say that, you know, usually in the first couple of weeks of January, I get a flurry of emails from agency owners who are saying, Oh, you know, I was thinking about it and I need to do something different this year. Uh huh. Think about it now in Q4 so that you can hit the ground running on January 1, as opposed to, you know, not being ready to do something until March or April of next year.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I mean, it’s just like you’re doing, you do for clients. You don’t start their planning in January. You start their planning now. So that’s a really good time. You’re already in the mood. You’re already in that mode. Like start thinking about it from your perspective. But one of the things I do is throughout the year, I keep post it notes, and so for those of you on video, you can see my post it notes, of ideas that we have. And then starting about now, I’ll start to put them up on big poster paper and moving things around to say, okay, this is what we want to do this quarter and this quarter and quarter.

So we have, I have a big piece of paper for each quarter. And then once we kind of figure that out, we craft the plan from there. So you. It’s something that I think about all year. It’s something that my team thinks about all year. I just keep it on post it notes on my desk. And then about now is when we’ll start crafting the plan.

Chip Griffin: Post it notes.

Okay.

I mean, you know, the rest of the world has gone digital and you, I mean, I…

Gini Dietrich: It’s one of those things that it’s like, First of all, it’s, it’s in front of me. And secondly, it’s like a quick note, like a quick thing. So I don’t want to have to open a document where I keep stuff. And you know, it’s just the, or my, I might be on a call or I might be doing a podcast recording and somebody says something, I’m like, Oh, that’s a good idea.

And I jot it down on a post it note.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, look, in all seriousness, it’s a good idea to be collecting ideas throughout the year on all sorts of stuff, your business, your clients, anything else. And so whether you do that digitally. Or whether you do it on paper doesn’t really matter, but it’s, it is a helpful exercise to go through and now is the time to start collating those, bring them together, talking with your teams, flipping through them yourself and just, and, and seeing, do they still resonate?

Sometimes you’ll make a note six months ago and you’ll be like, no, that’s, that was a fleeting thought, but that’s not.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah,

Chip Griffin: that one didn’t hold up too well. But then you see another one. You’re like, Oh, absolutely. I need to zero in on that because that is something that I need to address or that is a helpful idea or what have you, because it doesn’t necessarily have to be an idea of how to solve a problem.

Sometimes it’s just noting that there is a problem so that when you are doing your planning, you can try to figure out how to improve things.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. So I think it’s really, it’d be really interesting for us to talk today about what that looks, what the plan looks like. Because I think a lot of agency owners say, well, I grow by referral and word of mouth, but they don’t actually do anything to help referrals and word of mouth come in.

They sort of just wait by the phone for it to ring. There are lots of agency owners who say, Oh, well, I’m not I want to start with strategy, but I don’t know how to get clients to pay for strategy or, Oh, you know, we tried that and it didn’t work. So we’re going to do this instead. So I think there’s a lot of like, we’ve done, we’ve kind of grasped at things to see what works and what doesn’t, but there isn’t anything that says, This is what we’re going to do in 2025, and this is how we’re going to achieve it.

Chip Griffin: Can I beat a dead horse first?

Gini Dietrich: Yes, please.

Chip Griffin: So, with all apologies to PETA. Look, you have to start with figuring out what you want from the business, because the, the problem that I see time and time again working with owners is that they come in and they start talking about how to get more clients or generate more revenue, but they haven’t even taken the step of trying to figure out what they want from their business in terms of financial benefit, the kind of work they want to be doing, the amount of work that, so you need to, and that’s something you need to refresh on an annual basis or as life events happen, because what you want this year may not be the same thing that you wanted a year or two ago.

Maybe your family circumstances have changed. Maybe your own personal interests have changed. Maybe, you know, whatever it is, you need to make sure that you’re defining that before you start putting together the plan for the agency. Because otherwise you’ll just be following some steps that, that work for someone else, but not for you. And your business needs to work for you fundamentally.

Otherwise you’ll be miserable. And there’s no point of being a business owner if your business isn’t giving you what you want.

Gini Dietrich: I have such a good point and I don’t think it’s beating a dead horse because it’s a good reminder for all of us. And one of the things that I said in 2019 is we’re going to do less agency work and we’re going to do more Spin Sucks professional development work.

Well then 2020 happened and the world fell apart and clients suddenly needed crisis work. They needed reputation. They needed help understanding how to communicate values. Like there was all this stuff that they needed. And so we jumped back into agency work and had a couple of really bad experiences in the last couple of years, where at the beginning of this year, I said again, so this is five years later again, We’re going to do less agency work.

I’m going to grandfather our current clients in, and we’re going to do more Spin Sucks professional development work. And for the most part, we’ve done a really good job of that. So going into 2025, one of the big goals for us is just to continue down that path. And so I have to constantly remind myself, no, I really appreciate that.

This just came over through email. It’s not the work that we want to be doing because It’s, it’s not the team that I’ve built. It’s not the expertise that we have anymore. It’s not what I want to be doing. So can we do agency work? Of course. Do we still do it? Yes, but I don’t want to be going full feet 100 percent into it.

I want to be focused more on the Spin Sucks side. So it’s a really good reminder. I think for all of us that it’s, this is the kind of business at this point in my life and at this point stage in my career that I want to build. And it doesn’t matter what other people think or say, like stay the course.

Chip Griffin: So now that we’ve beaten people about the head and shoulders and reminded them they need to, to make the business work for them and set their own objectives, you know, now I think it’s fair to talk about it because almost everybody is, is going to want to grow their business in some fashion.

Right. You know? Absolutely. And, and, and the the old saying is if you’re, if you’re not growing, you’re dying as a business that’s, you know, not exactly true, but pretty close. Yeah. And so even if you have a full slate of clients that you’re happy with today, you still need to be out there. Looking for new business because you will lose clients over time.

You will have clients that get out of scope and, and that you need to, you know, bring on better paying clients, more profitable clients, those kinds of things. So there’s always a reason to be out there hunting. And so if you are in that position as 99 percent of our listeners are, if not all of them, how do you think about going about and growing your business in 2025?

Gini Dietrich: Well, there’s a couple of things, right? I mean. We are really great at content and we’re really great at marketing the agency. We’re really good at it. And so a lot of the work that we do, just like anybody listening comes through referrals and word of mouth, but we’re really active in promoting that and in staying top of mind.

So we have the blog, we have a podcast, we have this podcast, we have a LinkedIn newsletter. We have a weekly email newsletter that people can subscribe to. There’s a whole bunch of different things that we’re doing for my business to be able to grow and to stay top of mind. And I’ll still, to this day, a lot of our referrals are a lot of our business comes from referrals. But they come from places that I wouldn’t expect.

Like we just got a gigantic piece of business that the referral came from the American Marketing Association. I don’t have a relationship with the AMA, but they know of us. and they know of the work that we’ve done and they know of the PESO model and they said, listen, if you want to do this, this is who you should talk to.

And, and because of that, so we got that referral from the AMA, but they knew about us because of all the content that we create. And that we have developed around the PESO model. So, you know, I’m big on passive income. I’m big on process. I’m big on all of these things because that’s, what’s going to keep you top of mind and bring those referrals and word of mouth in more actively than you just sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, ultimately you’ve got to do something, right? So, so I, I think the real problem is, is so many agencies do sit around just waiting for the phone to ring and, and, and that may not be intentional. It may be because they just feel like we’re too busy where it was too much client where we, or, you know, or, or we, we can’t make a decision about what kind of business development strategy to follow.

Ultimately, what you need to do is you need to pick one thing and do it well and do it consistently. Once you do that you can think about adding additional things to it. But the problem that I see is a lot of agencies, when they sit down and do this planning is they say, Oh, you know, Chip and Gini talk about podcasts being a great thing.

We should do that. And I was listening to these other folks who said, you know, you need to have some kind of an outbound strategy. So I’m going to be doing outreach and someone else said, it’s really important to have an email newsletter. So I’m going to start an email newsletter. You can’t do all of the things at once.

And so you need to pick something. And execute on it well, first, then you can think about adding other things. And I’ll tell you, it really doesn’t even matter what that tactic is.

Gini Dietrich: I agree with you.

Chip Griffin: It really doesn’t. I mean, it can be a podcast. It could be blogs. It could be newsletters. It could be LinkedIn strategy.

It could be outreach. I don’t even care what it is. Just pick one thing. And if you do it well and you do it consistently, it’s going to make a difference. Is it going to get you everything you need? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know, but you’ve got to start there because if you do all of the things at once, I guarantee you, it will not work.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And you can’t, like, it’s too, this is what I say to people all the time when they’re implementing the PESO model. Don’t try to do it all at once because you become overwhelmed. You become overwhelmed by it. If you’re going to create an online course, for instance, because you have, you want to develop some passive income, people get all overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed by, I have to produce, I have to write the script and then I have to produce the videos and then I have to have it all

be made beautifully. And then I have to create the online course and then I have to do an LMS. And I like, you don’t have to do all of those things. Just start with a webinar and charge for it and, and build it from there. Like. We try really, really hard to say, this is the one thing I’m going to do. And this is how I’m going to use it to help me grow my business in 2025 and then break it down into easily manageable chunks. So that you’re not saying, Oh, you know, it’s June and I haven’t done anything because I’m so overwhelmed by this gigantic project.

It’s just like anything else that you’re producing for client. You produce those things for clients because you break them into small, manageable chunks. Not because you say, Oh my gosh, I have to have this done by the end of October. And it’s October 15th. That’s not how you do things. And it’s not, it’s the same thing with your own planning.

So to your point, Chip, figure out the one thing that you’re going to do and just do it really well. And then you can grow from there.

Chip Griffin: Well, and let’s, let’s talk about diversifying your revenue streams as well, because that is often part of the plan because they listen to us. And we talk about the value of diversifying your revenue streams, whether that’s simply having retainer and project revenue, or bringing in more passive income streams, as you talk about a lot.

That is often part of the plan, but just like the business development tactics themselves, you can’t go adding a whole bunch of things at once.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: And, I would also tell you, you should not be looking to diversify until you’re executing well on what you’ve already got.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: So one of the challenges that I, I often see is that someone will try to introduce a passive revenue stream, but they haven’t even really nailed the their core model of retainer or project or a mix of those two.

And so you need to make sure that you are executing on that well, before you start adding in other things, because otherwise they will all suffer. Now, the one exception would be is if you’re pivoting your business and if you’re saying, okay, I’m moving away from retainer based revenue to projects or to passive or whatever.

Fine. But you need to accept that you’re doing that and it is going to, and you, and you’re going to put the emphasis on that new revenue stream, which you understand will likely harm the existing revenue stream. Because you’re, you’re not likely. I mean, it’s possible that both will work at the same time, but it is unlikely for most small organizations and so you need to be committed.

Gini Dietrich: Right. It’s two different businesses if you’re doing that, because one is service based, fee based, and one is for lack of a better term, product based. So it’s a completely different business. So if you haven’t figured out how to run your business on the agency side, it’s going to be really challenging to try to run it on the product side and to do both. And trust me coming from me, like it’s, it’s really challenging. It’s two different businesses.

Chip Griffin: And, and I would also say, as you’re thinking about business development tactics or revenue streams, you don’t necessarily have to love everything that you do, but you can’t hate it.

Yep. And, and so if you hate cold outreach, I don’t care how many gurus tell you that cold outreach is the answer. Don’t do it. If you hate LinkedIn, do not emphasize LinkedIn. Because if you hate it, you will not move forward with it. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to love it and say, just, I I’m really super passionate about this.

I want to do this. I mean, does it help? Sure. Absolutely. But I think the core thing is to make sure that you don’t hate it. Same thing with different lines of business. If you hate teaching, don’t, you know, create a course or a webinar. See, like if that’s not you don’t do it. You’ve got to get satisfaction from it and you can’t hate it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. If you hate speaking, if you don’t want to get up on stage, but you hear everybody’s like, don’t do it. It’s like, because you won’t, if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it. So I have one client who has a podcast. And the beginning of this year, we said, I, we, we started to work on it and we said, okay, if this is the one thing that you’re going to use to promote your business in 2024, let’s think about how to do that so that you can actually drive business from it.

And so what she did is created a dream list of clients that she wants to work with. And she started inviting their chief marketing officers or marketing directors on as guests. And they have a discovery call first. So, you know, just like, This is the podcast. Here’s what, you know, do a tech check, all those kinds of things.

Because a lot of these people have never been on podcasts before, or they’re on very few. And during that call, that first call before she has them on the podcast, she askd some questions to get to understand, like, do you have an agency who you’re working with? What works? What doesn’t? She gets, she understands that.

And then she does the podcast interview. And at the end of that, she says, you know, when we were talking before, something like this, when we were talking before you had mentioned that you were really wanting to do some more thought leadership kinds of things this year, I think we can help you with that.

I’ve really been thinking about it. Would you mind, would you like to have that conversation? And nine times out of 10, they say yes. So she’s been able to grow her business doing that with something that she’s already, that she was already doing. But you know, before she was inviting people like that she knew would help grow the audience.

So they were influencers in the space, but not necessarily anybody who was going to help her with her business. And now she only invites people that she wants to work with, you know. That she has like, they’re on her client list, her dream client list. So there are lots of things that you can do, but that the only thing she does is that podcast, that’s it.

And then she promotes it on LinkedIn with a nice video recap. And she promotes it in her email and that’s it. And she’s been able to grow her business this year because of it. So you don’t have to do all the things. Do one thing really well.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, I think what you’ve underscored there too, is that doing one thing doesn’t mean that you just do a podcast, launch it, throw it out there and walk away from it.

Right. It feeds other things, right? So. For me, the podcast that we do here is one of the things that I do, but it gets used in many different ways. There’s an audio version. There’s a video version. It goes in the newsletter. It goes on the website. It goes in our Slack community. I mean, it goes so many different places.

And so that one, that, you know, the 30 minutes that we take to record this. Plus another 30 minutes of just, you know, gossiping and chit chatting and whatever.

Gini Dietrich: Gossiping.

Chip Griffin: It gets reused in a much more useful way. Right. And so we are leveraging the time that we spend in order to get more results out of it.

So when we say focus on one thing, it doesn’t mean literally just one thing. It means that’s the nucleus of it. And you do other things to help build it up, but it’s, everything is oriented around that tactic in order to be successful. As opposed to, we’re going to do a podcast and separately, we’re going to do a whole different blog series and separately, we’re going to do a whole different webinar series and all those things.

Once you execute on one thing, fine. Start adding other things to the mix. There’s nothing wrong with that, but execute well what you’re doing first, before you even think about it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And it’s, I think it, I think it’s a lot less overwhelming when you think about it that way. Like. I’m going to promote the podcast episode this week.

So it’s going to go in the newsletter, it is going to go on LinkedIn. It’s going to go on social media and we’re going to, we’re onto the next, but it’s also helping you grow your business. So it’s helping you stay top of mind for those referrals and word of mouth. And you’re being proactive about inviting guests to be on the podcast, who you think you’d like to work with.

So it helps you in it from, from both sides. So pick one thing, you know, and if it’s content development and you want to invite guests to contribute a quote or things like that, then, you know, if it’s written, if it’s video, if it’s audio, whatever’s comfortable for you, do that first.

Chip Griffin: And the other thing I would say is that as you’re thinking about your growth plan for the next 12 months, get help, talk to your team.

Don’t, don’t do this in isolation where you’re just, you know, sitting there on the couch by yourself, trying to figure it out, involve your team, involve contractors that work for you and know your business well. Work with a coach, join a community. There are all sorts of things that can help you to do a, a better job with your planning so that you’re not just trying to do it all inside your own head, because it is so valuable to get additional perspectives.

Obviously listening to a podcast like this. That’s great, right? But there are other things that you can do that are more interactive, whether that’s joining the Spin Sucks community, the SAGA community, or talking with other agency owners, just saying, Hey, you know, I want to see what you’re seeing and, and, and, you know, how we might be able to collaborate in the new year or what, what lessons you’ve learned over the last 12 months that we can apply for each other, those kinds of things.

There are so many of those opportunities out there. Again, figure out what works for you. If you, if you like to talk with groups of people, join a group. If you’d like one on one help, get one on one help. If you, you know, but certainly use your team. Start there because if you keep your team in the dark, you’re, you’re wasting an incredibly valuable resource.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think it’s really smart to involve your contractors because I’m sure they see things or have ideas. You know, and they’re working with your clients too. So there may be things that they’re like, Oh, you know, actually this, I had a conversation with so and so and they, so and so client and they suggested this and I forgot to mention it to you. So I think there’s a, I love that idea of, of working with your contractors too, because many of, most of us work with contractors and don’t usually involve them in the planning.

Chip Griffin: Right. And I think it’s, it’s key to understand that it needs to be a win win for them, right?

This can’t be, this can’t be, you’re just trying to, you know, suck free work out of your contractors. It needs to be in terms of, I want to talk about these things because it might create new opportunities for you as well. Yep. And so let’s put our heads together and see what we can come up with. And, and I think a lot of owners are hesitant to ask their contractors for help because they feel like they need to pay them for that.

But if you are brainstorming things that truly are mutually beneficial and that you’re not just, you know, sucking away their time, it, it makes sense for those contractors to work with you and brainstorm as well.

Gini Dietrich: 100%. I totally agree with that. Love that idea.

Chip Griffin: So put your heads together. You get as much advice as you can, put together a plan, focus on one thing and just commit to it.

And once you execute well, you’ll start seeing results.

Gini Dietrich: Do it, do it, do it.

Chip Griffin: So that’s the plan. We’re all done. And, you know, we’ve given you all the information you need and nothing else. You’re all set.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. Don’t tune in next week. Nothing there.

Chip Griffin: No, this is it. Just go back. No, of course you need to tune in next week because I’m sure we’ll be talking about something really intelligent and important next week.

We have no idea what it is because we choose our topic 30 seconds before I hit the record button or sometimes a minute and a half when it takes me a hard, a lot of time to try to figure out how to hit record now in StreamYard, but it is what it is. So, on that note, we’ll wrap up this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast.

I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.