An Agency Story
First hand interviews of creative, digital, advertising, and marketing agency owners that have walked the talk of running an agency business. These are riveting stories of the thrill of starting up, hardships faced, and the keys to a successful business from agency owners around the world.
An Agency Story
Wisdom from the Archives Vol. #1
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This first edition of Wisdom From the Archives revisits standout ideas and lessons from past conversations with agency owners and experts. Russel adds his perspective to each clip, highlighting practical concepts worth bringing back into how you lead, position, and operate your agency.
A few highlights from this episode:
- Push people with purpose: Good leadership isn’t always about being liked; sometimes people need to be challenged to get beyond what’s holding them back.
- Listen for the wish: Look beyond what clients say they need to uncover what they actually want to accomplish and what’s standing in their way.
- Recognize the IP hiding in your agency: Your methodologies, processes, systems, brand, and other repeatable assets may be more valuable than you realize.
- Forecast forward, not just backward: Regular reforecasting helps you anticipate what’s coming and make proactive decisions rather than waiting for problems to show up in your financials.
- Rethink what good management means: A manager’s job isn’t simply directing people; it’s creating the conditions that allow their team to do their best work.
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host, Russell Dubree, former eight-figure agency owner turned business coach, who sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is An Agency Story.
RusselWelcome to the first edition of Wisdom from the Archives. In today's episode, I pulled together some great insights and lessons from past episodes with agency leaders and experts. I'll share some of my perspective as we re-listen to important concepts and reminders that are beneficial at almost any stage in the agency journey. The first conversation I want to start with is with Julia Wilk with Wheel Horse, and we had a really fascinating conversation she was being very transparent and authentic about the ups and downs as it means to be a leader within a business. But the, the takeaway from this and the idea of being a leader is not always about being liked and being seen as the air quotes good guy, and that ultimately when leading others, if we do it from a place of intention and well-meaning for whomever we're leading's benefit, that it's important to remind ourselves how much and at what level do they need us to push them or encourage them to otherwise break through the obstacles, large and small, that might be in front of them. And if you really talk to anyone that has achieved something significant or across their career or at any point in their life, I imagine in most cases they could point to someone that pushed them, believed in them, and challenged them. And just a, a reminder of that in our day-to-day leadership, how important it is to challenge people. My business coach back in the day actually told me, and I think he actually came from, of all things, a manufacturing background, but, what stuck with me ever since. I think this is so true, especially in an, even in an agency space. Every office needs a son of a bitch. Pardon the
Julialanguage there.
RusselYeah. Um, it, it's kinda true. You just need that person, that personality, and sometimes in your business that has to be you. But where we all could use a little more accountability, we need someone to push us and drive us a little harder and even if only in the back of their mind that we know they're there, that is a necessary force and it's not bad and it's not, it's not a sword you wanna swing all the time, but it's, it's very necessary.
JuliaYeah, I mean, sometimes in order to have success and grow as a person, you have to do things that you don't wanna do. And this is why we have personal trainers, by the way. How hard would it be to be doing a workout, it is very hard to push yourself while you're doing the hard thing. And so- Yes sometimes you need somebody to, like, hold you to the fire a little bit and be like, "I believe that you can do this, and where it's at right now is not acceptable. And actually we just had an amazing roller derby success where somebody had been struggling with a skill, and it was this one skill holding her back for so long, like, I'm talking about years. And, we came up with this plan where I was like, "I'm not willing to just keep having you at practice if you're never gonna get this thing. And I haven't seen you try day in, day out. Like, let's do 40 reps every practice." And it was hard. It was hard to face that thing that felt really, discouraging and she wasn't making progress and this and that. And it, it's like, it's been, like, two months and she can do it to the level as good as anybody else, you know? It's crazy how much facing the fear of trying something difficult It really helps to have somebody else Yeah give you the push, you know?
RusselSometimes you need someone to push you out of the airplane. It's not that you can't do the skydive, you just need the kick in the butt. Yeah y- I mean- Having that
Juliabalance is good. You know, we're not trying to, like, non-consensually or anything, but just being like, "You say you wanna achieve this, and this is your problem, and-
RusselYeah
Juliayou need to face it."
RusselThis next conversation is with Kelly Vance with Vance. And I really just enjoyed Kelly's energy, her, her calm confidence that she displayed throughout the entire episode. But, in this particular moment, she had a m- amazing phrase, and I just love it when there's a phrase that can capture the heart of a concept in a way that resonates more than we previously would have thought about or described that same similar concept in a different connotation. But this is about our ability to listen and hear what clients have to say and being able to differentiate between wants and needs, and how important it is for our jobs to really understand that, and that the sooner we can get to the heart of the wish, listen for the wish, as Kelly likes to say, we can start to work backwards and help them actually achieve whatever that wish may be.
KellyI would flip that to say, "Listen for the wish." Underneath, you know, we need this, we need that, what is it that you really want to happen?
RusselYeah.
KellyAnd what are you really up against? So the next best question is what is keeping you up at night, right?
RusselMm-hmm.
KellyBecause then you get into really understanding what those pressure points are. I... Certainly, we do plenty of research, and all of that is, integral to our success. But I think just those initial conversations about you can trust me with this, tell me what it is that you want, and there's a lot in the way of that. But I, I think that's where understanding that it's not always about pushing out information. But I don't expect, I don't expect my clients to know that. Yeah. Nobody seems to know that. So it's- It's, we're learning together.
RusselUp next is a conversation with Sharon Toerek at Toerek Law. And the episode was called "Everything Your Agency Does is IP." And, that statement that Sharon made during the course of the episode really struck me. And, I think it's just, again, a fascinating way to encapsulate, a really cool concept. But that ultimately taking inventory of our IP can be an exercise in collecting the unique traits and what separates us from others and forces to really think about what is our secret sauce and our unique value propositions. Taking that inventory can be a really fascinating exercise. Overall, the conversation I'd say, say itself was, getting into the idea of legal and how to think of that as a less boring and expensive and dare I say, some parts of the business we might try to often avoid. But how do we turn that into more of a meaningful asset and, a, a component in our business that works for us, not against us. what are the examples of IP and how businesses and agencies should be thinking about the work they're doing as it relates to ip?
SharonRight. Uh, it's a great question. There's a couple things to be thinking about, to the extent you're gonna create anything in your agency that you will deploy multiple times. Software code's, a great example of that. Original proprietary content that is maybe industry specific, might be a good example of that, you know, a methodology and way of assessing a client problem and making recommendations to a client or conducting your discovery. And any outcomes of that. So these are things that an agency needs the ability to own because they are gonna deploy them multiple times. So you don't want to create any impression either in your conversation or in your communication or in the contract that gives a client idea that this is a work for hire. So you wanna carve it out as an exception to the work for hire language generally. Again, I'm not your lawyer. Ask your lawyer about all of this is educational conversation. Well just go
Russelahead and stamp that asterisk throughout the rest of this conversation.
SharonIf you're my client, then you know, call me offline and we'll talk about it then.
RusselYeah,
Sharonso that's one thing. The second thing is. What you said a minute ago just rings so true, and it is such a soapbox issue for me. Agencies consistently underestimate and undervalue the intellectual property they create every day. They are so used to being in the mode of creating. On the fly under pressure and for a specific time and reason that they don't take the time to separate out what is theirs and what is unique and what they might wanna offer across the board to other similarly situated clients. It could be your software, it could be your methodologies. There's brand, which is what you're naming not only the agency, but the things that it offers and sells. And then there's transactions, which is in this case means you wanna carve this out of your client services agreement, but you wanna make licensing terms a part of the deal. And that's a subject you know, of another conversation. But. Every agency has stuff at every point of the triangle. And it's kind of addictive in my experience. Once you start looking for it, you start to see opportunities everywhere to connect the dots and put it together, and it can create a whole separate revenue center. For your agency. I've seen it happen. We've helped clients make it happen, and it's exciting for them because not only does it give them. Additional revenue, which is wonderful. But it also gives the agency owners who are looking at either succession or maybe selling the agency, um, and getting outta the agency business, but keeping some of the ip, or maybe they wanna sell the IP and keep the agency. It gives you more options if you've thought this through strategically. And all of those have financial implications on the upside for an agency.
RusselFascinating. I mean, it's so funny in having gone through the m and a process, the net takeaway theres when they're purchasing is, well, an agency doesn't really have any assets. We don't really, and outside of some computers desk, some chairs and maybe in a rare case or you know, more and more I guess. But you know, a building maybe that
Sharonis limited thinking from any
RusselI know, that's what I'm saying. You're thinking of just taking inventory of. Everything your agency owns and is unique to you and that process itself, I can see where that can be really impactful.
SharonYeah, just about everything an agency sells is ip. Your client list is a trade secret that is its form of intellectual property. Your methodologies, your processes, your systems, those are intellectual property. Your name, your brand is intellectual property. Your licensing transactions are intellectual property based, so any agency transaction involves a massive transfer of ip. And yes, the computers and the desks and the other physical stuff can be a component of it, but they're typically not where the value lies.
RusselNo.
SharonSo that's limited thinking on anybody who does m and a work, if they tell you that if you're an agency.
RusselThat's just my fault. Well, this was probably the buyer telling us this more so than anyone else in this transaction, but, uh, as we would expect, um, I really love that. I mean, just as a frame of reference to think about it, that everything an agency sells is ip.
SharonYep. Every day.
RusselUp next, we have a conversation with Jill DeChavez with Bright Web, episode number 176. And Jill's story is one of my favorites to share because hers is one where she went from employee to owner of the same business, and that's always just a fascinating path and perspective to get to hear. But one of the ideas and concepts that came out of that conversation was, what I would describe as sharing the load, and she was describing it in the context of all the things that she didn't know about the business and the inner workings and some of the pain points and challenges when she s- transitioned from that, employee to owner role. But ultimately a reminder that to us as owners to not only our future potential leaders in the business, but just to be more open and honest, to not hold so tight to our chest and, quietly, some of the pains and challenges we th- we're thinking and feeling with the business. But how can we bring others along in that journey, share and communicate with them, and we might be surprised in what they'd be able to help and otherwise empower them, and not keep that burden all to ourselves. I think a lot of them probably want a Jill in their own business as they start to think ahead about the exit or just taking some of the weight away, from the day-to-day business. Well, I think ultimately there's all different ways you can go about it. I, I think everyone wants a little bit of that secret sauce of is it someone you find or is it someone you create? And where's that magic answer? Yeah.
JillIt could be both. It depends on how your current shape of your team is and or who's within your organization. What I will share is if you think it's someone within, it would be so helpful and kind to them to be able to bring them into a lot of like what owners hold. Like they really hold onto things, right? Mm-hmm. There's a piece of whether it is. Fear of sharing or a level of distrust, like all those are probably something as an honor you need to reflect on, but by bringing someone in and sharing, you know, that information, that burden, or whatever it might be. That will help only set them up for success. I often felt that things were not shared with me, and so when I got to certain levels, it was always like, whoa, I had no idea that this is not sorted out from the outside. Mm. It looks like things were in order, but from the inside there was a lot of work that needed to be done. And, and there's that whole catch up time and every minute's valuable when you're trying to replace. Someone. 'cause you have to have your eyes on everything. So to have your eyes on everything and then, Hey, where's our finance actual numbers at? Where are we at with KPIs? And to go, oh, there's none. That's a lot. Then I gotta go learn it. I gotta go learn it. I gotta know it. I gotta be able to delegate it. I gotta be able to catch it. And that's a lot for just like one piece of the business, let alone all the other things.
RusselThat's a great perspective. I mean, that's why, again, I think I just love the employee to owner stories. You've been on both sides of the table and sharing the notion of transparency there surprises are painful. And not that they might not be somewhat natural, but the more you can let people in the door let them experience what ownership looks and feels like. The better. You're both understand, hey, is this something that you know you can step into further or maybe is not the right thing for either one or either side. So always win with transparency.
JillTransparency. Also, I wanna say like the ego. Check your ego. Figure out why you don't wanna let go figure out why someone's new idea. Makes you feel a certain way. There's a piece of like just being willing to show up and learn and listen. Like we're all still learning. I think as agency owners, we don't know how to do all this. Like we're all still learning, right? And so there's a piece of learning more about yourself that I think people need to do as they are trying to let go of the reins to go, why do I feel this way? Why am I reacting this way?
RusselOh, you could get me on a whole tangent here, Jill. If we could just check a little more ego in the world, we might have a lot better world in front of us. Up next, we have, Sarah Patterson, a fractional CFO that sat down in episode number 174, "7 Habits for Building Financial Clarity in Your Agency." And I thought this was a very practical episode, kind of a crawl, walk, run approach to, getting more sophisticated in your business from a financial perspective, hanging on the idea that, almost any successful owner in the long run that I've talked to, in, in all the different facets and conversations I've had, will tell you that s- some of their success can definitely be attributed to them having a better understanding and grasp on the numbers and financials in their business and how important that is. And probably haps one of the most-- perhaps one of the most important elements of that is what Sarah's talking about in this clip about having a forecast and being able to look forward, on a six to 12 month viewpoint in your business, and then consistently re-forecasting that model as new information and actual things begin to happen and, and, occur throughout the business. So, I'll say it many times, and you'll hear me in episodes of if you don't have a financial forecast that you're consistently looking at and updating in your business, that's an important thing you need to do
SarahSo next level is, a reforecast. And this is something that is not as common to do, but something that I feel is really important. You're looking every month at what was the performance year to date. And I like trailing 12, just 'cause you get that full kind of prior 12 month view, what was the trailing 12 months income statement, performance, and then how can you re project. What's going to happen for the rest of the year, and that exercise is also useful because. Everything's changing all the time, right? And so all of the assumptions based on the business conditions and the pipeline and the staffing and all the things that you did when you created the budget are all different like a minute later than the budget is complete, right? So especially since, if you're doing your budget and completing it in October, November. By the time January actuals are done, it's now been several months since you've created those assumptions and it's time to do a refresh on what's the momentum and how's that you lost a big client. Okay, let's reforecast the revenue for accordingly and figure out if you need to make adjustments in expenses. So the reforecast allows you. To have that forward looking view and be proactive about making changes. Because if you just look in the rear view mirror and say, well, I'm gonna wait until profitability is down, but I'm gonna wait three months for it to be down before I do anything. You're already losing money. You have the ability to predict and project what's gonna happen in the business based on what you know. And if you're not profitable or you lost a client or whatever, the sooner you can factor that in and make moves the better off you're gonna be. Now, listen, I'm not advocating you lost a client. That automatically means you have to fire people. Because if you've got good pipeline and a good, probability that something's gonna land to replace that revenue within 60 days, it's way more costly to fire and hire people than it is to carry that. But that's what the reforecast is gonna help. It's like you're doing that thinking between drawing that connection between the pipeline and. Where that's gonna land and how much and when and then that's accountability for the sales team and things like that, which a lot of times is the founder. But it's just clarifying all of that.
RusselYes, yes. Such a good way to put it. And I personally believe in the folks that work with it. this is a non-negotiable that gets set up very early on in my client relationships. We have to have everything else we've talked about before to even be able to build a good forecast. But this is absolutely critical and essential and does exactly what you were saying there of should I be worried? Should I not be worried? If we just leave that to counting the beans in our head or instinct, we're gonna be That's right. We're probably gonna be off. So, that's right. This is clearly an important piece to that.
SarahAnd it doesn't have to be that laborious. 'cause if you think about it, you built a budget, it was all forward looking. So now just take that, make a copy of it and change some numbers. So like this doesn't have to cost you a lot of time and energy. It's just it important to reground yourself every month and make yourself sit back and think. What am I anticipating?
RusselGreat reminder. Make it easy. I have seen some very complicated forecasts that end up almost not being useful to that end. So that's a, a great reminder, right? Keep it simple. Keep it simple. That's right. Up next is Tom Conlon with the founder of CEO and of North Street Creative and a couple of other brands. But this conversation just really hits the nail on the head in terms of thinking about positioning. And, what I really like about Tom's story is the power of really sharp positioning and this idea of thinking of it like a tip of the spear, where, super sharp positioning is about penetrating the mindset and thinking or just the memory banks of potential clients with something that's really gonna resonate and how that can open up doors to other services and parts of the business if we have them. And so just a really, really great example of how he did that through the creation of a sub-brand and how that expanded the en- entirety of his business through super sharp positioning.
TomI had already been thinking about spinning the service off into like its own company and I was just like, whoa, I have to do this now. We worked on some really tight messaging, and this is the point is that like, because we niched down into this like specific offering, our message could be super specific because we knew exactly who the audience was. Mm. And they, they get it and they have money is no object kind of money to hire us or they don't get it and they don't, don't understand. It's irrelevant to them anyway. Right. What I found was like North Street. Great. We're a branding agency. We're a creative agency. Yeah. Take a number, sit in line, right? Like, I can approach these strategic comms agencies and be like, Hey, here's my portfolio. We've done some cool stuff. And they're like, okay, we'll take your, we'll take this, we'll put it in the Rolodex, but. When I was suddenly able to go to them and say, Hey those like shareholder situations where you have to get a website up in like a weekend or sooner? Like, that's what I do, check it out. Mm-hmm. And they were like, whoa, come in, come in right now. I had one group literally say, they're like, Tom, when you walked in our door, it was like you had been sent from God.
RusselAnd I was like, that's quite a, that's quite a testimonial.
TomBut I'll tell you what. What was an unexpected surprise there was that this actually became a door opener for North Street. So I would recommend anybody just thinking about some sort of service or offering you have and thinking about maybe sub-branding it with some very specific messages. 'cause I'll tell you what, I get into the room because of ent, and more often than not, I walk out with North Street work 'cause it's like, okay, this timely website, they don't have this need right now. They just wanna know that they can call me when it goes down. And then they're like, oh, well, okay, well, do you guys do like slide decks and investor presentations and then just sort of long-term website projects? I'm like, well, ENT doesn't, but North Street does and it's been effective. It's just been really interesting. I did not expect that. I was just like, oh yeah, this will help me get clients for this service, and it's opened up other opportunities, so yeah.
RusselThat was interesting. Well, it's like the tip of the spear, concept. That's definitely it. Concept. Exactly. It pierces the shield, builds a relationship, builds the trust, and then you can take it and run with from there. In episode number 158, I sat down with Stephanie Norris with Norbella in an episode called "Learn Once, Solve Forever." And in this clip, we'll just talk about the need and how important she shares the idea of constantly learning and using that learning process to evolve and essentially stress test ideas and new concepts into the business. But, we talk about, in this episode is just this idea that how important it is for, agency owners, business owners in general to always be learning, whether that be books, articles, but otherwise a very intentional learning process. There is so much to know, and we can use that learning and that knowledge to better help, internally and externally and essentially leave with the idea of the important concept of always be learning. You talk about learning and nobody gets this thing perfect. It's just too complicated of a business to be in, when, especially when we bring in the factor of all things people. Where do you feel like. You just as an individual, as a person, where did you get your knowledge from? Where were you helping guide your own professional and personal development as you're growing your agency? I.
StephanieUm, well, so through in the earlier years, I was still focused on media and obviously my job changed and evolved, I would say every couple of years where I took on responsibility shifted and it continues to, actually this year I'm spending differently than I have in the past. Um, so early on. I would say that again, it was talking to other agencies, learning how to collaborate with them. It was a different way of working than what I had before where I had always been in full service agencies, but then as a leader and a manager. I leaned in a lot to yes, conversations with people. Thinking back on what I enjoyed or didn't enjoy with my previous managers, as well as reading a lot. Um, I don't do it as much as I used to, but business books, leadership books, management books. Harvard Business Review articles. Oh yes.
RusselGet old Harvard Business. Yeah,
Stephaniethose are good. Quick five, 10 minute reads, and you can share them with people. And so we would do a lot of things too, like we started doing, and we still do them probably only about once a year now, but we do executive offsites where we learn and share from each other, and we really dig in on how the company's doing and how we're working together. And we all learn from that. When you have that much time with people, you are really gonna be able to see into the details of what's going on at your company. And so we continue to make sure we're spending the appropriate amount of time talking about not just what's happening in the day to day, but the bigger picture.
RusselWhat's your favorite, like if you had to think of like, Hey, this, this book really shaped my thoughts on business or as a leader. What's that book for you? Hmm.
StephanieUm, there's a few one that I'm thinking of because I just mentioned the offsites. It's kind of hokey. It's called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
RusselOh yeah, that's a good one.
StephanieYeah. Yeah, it's a good one. And it, I feel like it really taught us how to communicate and hold each other accountable and lots of other things. So we all read it and would have discussions around it. And then, starting with Why by Simon Sinek is Oh yes. Is definitely one, daring to lead by Brene Brown are probably the ones that pop into my head. And then, like I said, again, those HBR. Are always invaluable. So I don't do it as much. Oh, there was a book by, the CEO of Zappos when Zappos was a really big deal back in the day.
RusselOh. Uh, guide to Happiness or something. Yeah. Delivering Happiness. Delivering Happiness.
StephanieThat was a great one. Yeah. Yes. For both internal and external and customer service and all of that. That was another one that I think I bought. So I would buy these books for the agency, encouraging people to read, not holding them to it. But, anything I was excited about there, I would always share with everyone.
RusselAll great books. I haven't read The Daring to Lead by Brene Brown, but, I hear so much about her and see so much of her other content. I feel like I need to get that one on the list.
StephanieYeah, she's great. She's great.
RusselYeah, I'm curious your thought, you hear it so much in the world, right? You know that a lot of successful people say how important reading is. Is that a causality or a correlation? Right? You know, do people that tend to read a lot, do they do something else that actually gives them more successful traits? Or is it the actual knowledge gained and learned from reading? What are your thoughts there?
StephanieI think it's probably the knowledge gained from learning. I, you know, it definitely through that reading with each book or each article, it would open my eyes to something and it would allow me to at least test something out.
RusselThis is a clip from episode number 91, where I sat down with Weston Wax of Wax Eloquent, and Weston is a third-generation agency owner, which I thought is always a pretty cool thing. Don't see that too often, in multi-generational agencies. And I'll let you guys listen to the story, but it was just a great reminder to me and something I wish I had done better in my own journey to bring others, and especially your family, along on the journey in a way that can be meaningful, and really help them understand more about what is this weird, crazy thing, mom or dad or whomever goes and does on a day-to-day basis.
WestonThinking through the way I felt about the business, even now, some of my earliest childhood memories are sitting around the dinner table with mom and dad and my siblings problem solving for the business. I'm an eight year old, a nine year old, and there's a personnel issue or there's a client issue. Mom and dad talked about pretty much everything in front of us at all times. We're just listening, caught up in into that conversation. My dad's a great kind of Socratic, teacher method. He would just kind of field questions or put the question out to the family, what would you guys do in this situation? We have this key employee who's doing this, how would you handle that? I remember, being asked those questions at a really young age and feeling really affirmed and validated to have opinions and to try to contribute at a really young age. I'm sure most of my answers were very that, an eight year old answer. But mom and dad did a great job of affirming and making us feel like we were a part of that conversation and we are contributors. It is truly some of my earliest memories and some of my greatest memories are really revolve and center around the business being a part of the family and something that we were tribal in. This is our, our thing that we're in it together.
RusselThat's really cool. Makes me wish I would have done that with my kids, even though I don't think I had any intention of them being involved in business or they wanted to but just to bring them along that journey. This next episode clip is from a special episode I did a while back, episode number 78, with Jack Skeels of Agency Agile, and Jack had just recently come out with a book called "Unmanaged: Master the Magic of Creating and Empowered and Happy Organizations." And I- I'd love to just probably pretty much just reinsert the whole podcast here. Jack has tons of insights into just how we've learned how to manage within an agency structure, so many of the pain points and challenges, and as well as providing a lot of insight on how to do that better. But in this particular clip, I think it's just an important reminder to really just understand the essence and what is good, effective management to begin with. And so if we can understand really well the definition of something, we're probably a lot more likely to perform it better, and this is a great reminder of that
JackYeah, so the part of the idea of a manager, I'll, I'll sort of go to the, what I call the first law of unmanagement. Which is this idea that the, the single most important thing that a manager can do is enable productivity in the workers. And that means all the things that they need to actually be maximally productive, and also none of the things that actually decrease their productivity. That's my little guideline is make sure it's going to add to their productivity and among the, the reason. So if we think about that, the, the productivity of the organization is the productivity of the workers. Managers aren't productive. Managing isn't productive. It's kind of, you know, it's contrary to productivity actually. But the workers are. And so if we start organizing that way, then it isn't asking managers how productive everyone is. It's actually asking the people who are productive, how productive they are, and you can start doing things like that, and the research bears this out as well. Asking quote unquote workers, if you will, the non managerial group, asking them a range of questions about the organization, you get better data. That is the data, the responses they give you actually track better across time than the managerial answers. Like if you say, How are we doing on quality? And you ask the managers and the managers are like, well, my job is quality. So we're doing really good. And you ask the workers and you'll actually get a good number. In fact, a lot of times we used to do this for fun. We would ask the team what they thought the quality of the work they'd produced for the client was, and then we'd ask the client and the numbers were always so close to each other. It's like, no one's hiding anything. But you ask the managers and they're, it's always like, Two points higher. Oh, it was a 9. 5 and the team's like 7. 5. And so the use of the team is essential to get really understanding what's going on. And you can ask things like quality. We have an eight point scorecard at agency agile, but includes things like. How productive are you? Just simple question. Are you able to be productive? How often are you getting interrupted in your work? How well do you understand the work that you're doing? You ask a manager how well they did a briefing. I spent a lot of time on briefings in the book. You ask a manager how well they're briefing. I can tell you from my experience, I was amazing at briefing, uh, but not. Okay. And the, the real question is you ask the team member. Did you understand, do you understand what you're supposed to work on and what it needs to be and all that kind of thing? And you get some pretty sad answers in there. They're like, no, not really. No, Jack talked to us for a half hour, but I still don't know what we're doing or why we're doing it. So it's the, there are a set of metrics I go, you know, and there are, like I said, there are eight of them. I think six at least are in the book. Measure from the core of the productivity of the organization, that is the worker, the maker, the team member. Love that.
RusselAnd so, yeah, if you want to look more at that, and I mean, needless to say, go read the book, folks, but because I think that is some really great insight in terms of what we should actually really be measuring when we're going about this, this complicated work we're doing. We kind of been highlighting and I think it's been, it's been read between the lines and some of the conversation, but it seems very important to just be very succinct at defining what the role of a manager is and how does that, how do you define that?
JackYeah, it, it is just what I was getting at. I'm going to step back and explain why real quickly, which is back at, you could make the argument back in 1920 when factories were filled with workers that were immigrants from Europe, maybe didn't speak English, maybe no education, um, or the farm, the rural farm poor that have come to the big city because they were starving on the farms and everything. You could argue that there was a huge gap in both both knowledge and also thinking capacity between managers and team members or workers that's gone. I mean, that's completely gone. That was gone 40 years ago, right? And now it's even worse is that you're the people you have inside your organization probably understand more about doing what they're doing than you do as a manager or over time they will. And so this idea of what is it that you need? This is really the question that probably the best question that a manager should be asking of workers and truly asking it, not, not saying what is it that they need and I know what they need, but actually saying to the team, what is it that you need? What do you need to understand? What do I need to get for you? What do you need for time to work on this? What do you need for people getting in your way or out of your way? And it's that essentially that's the heart of management is is how do I make sure that only one but everything I'm doing is serving the productive function of the work. I love that.
RusselAnd it's almost like a paradigm shift. Just hearing you talk through that, right? I think we've developed in this mind coming from all these things. It's what we tell people is what makes us a good manager, but everything you said there is it's what questions you should be asking as a manager is really going to help define success and really epitomize that role as you described it. This is one of my more favorite episodes from a couple different reasons, but, or especially this clip, but this is from episode number 67 with Daniel Griggs with ATX the brand. And one of the fascinating things about Daniel's story is he played, high-level professional football, American football that is, and he brought in this entire conversation just a lot of great lessons and analogies from the sports world, which is not an entirely uncommon thing, but from someone that's seen it and done it at the highest of levels, it was pretty cool to get some of his perspective on that front. But this particular clip was interesting because I think it gets to this idea of one, just being intentional in, in how we show up in the world, but also the idea of importance of if we can make a concept... The more we can make a concept or idea of what we're selling and providing a client tangible and something they can see, feel, or touch in a way that's not giving up too much expertise, early on in the process, it tends to, produce better outcomes, and this was an example that's worked well in particular in Daniel's case.
DanielI was, I doing mock ups and this came from sports too. I had a coach one time and he told me, this is when I was playing arena football and it had to do with, when I get opportunities in the NFL, etc. Something that he told me was, when you step off the plane and you get to the facility, when the coach, player personnel or whoever sees you, when they look at you physically, they need to say in their mind, if he runs fast, we're signing him. Basically what that had to do was, talking about physically, you need to physically look up to par. I took that same analogy with business and we even do it to the day. We have a client that contacts us and they're interested and serious about moving forward. We'll draft up a mock up based on the conversation that either me or one of my sales representatives have with them, and we'll basically give them that process for the majority of people before they're even a client. I take that exact same approach, because when someone physically sees something versus when they're hearing it, you take either what's in their mind or what they couldn't even imagine and you put it there. It already shows we have a level of commitment and we understand what they're looking for.
RusselI'm blown away already by this episode. So often in business, we try to make sports analogies, but I feel like I've failed massively relative to the level of detail and connections that you're making and taking to your business. Very cool stuff. I hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane and some of these past conversations and some of the great insights shared. And maybe if you think about it, you can go to, And then you can visit anagencystory.com/podcast. Go to that, find this episode, uh, today, and I'll have some of the links and everything and some of the takeaways from the episode itself, uh, as well as a breakdown. And you can listen to some of these episodes if you were inspired by a part of that conversation. And All right, let's redo that. I hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane with some of the great conversations, from the past episodes. And If you're inspired to listen, to one of these previous episodes or check out some others, visit anagencystory.com/podcasts and on that page, find this episode, and I'll have links to these specific, entire episodes from the past as well as a breakdown of this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. Have a great day, folks. Talk to you soon.
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