Skinny jeans, delegating work, and leading business development

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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Small Agency Talk Show. I’m Chip Griffin. Oh.

Gini Dietrich: This is like the Agency Leadership Podcast. We’re just getting right into it.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, this is, this is a hybrid, right? So in fact, we’re going to have to figure out in a moment, do I play the opening for the podcast or the talk show?

Because this is doing double duty this week because you and I are lazy. We are lazy. Yeah. We’re lazy. So we’re, we’re just doing one since it, since it turns out you were the only panelist to sign up for this week. We will do the podcast and the small agency talk show together. So anyway, this is the Small Agency Talk Show and that’s Gini Dietrich.

For those who don’t know, since this is not the Agency Leadership Podcast feed. And so therefore you might not know it’s possible. So,

Gini Dietrich: um, Chip and I were having a conversation about skinny jeans, which apparently are out of style. So I need to know because I am old and I don’t have a teenager yet who can harass me about my jeans.

Do I need to go buy new jeans? Are they going to be the mom jeans of the 80s? Or can I wear jeans that are stylish? These are very important questions. I

Chip Griffin: need answers too. And that’s what we’ll talk about right after this. I

don’t even really know where to go from here. I mean, we’ve, We, we have barely even started today’s show and we’re already going off the rails. I, I just. I, I need answers. I’m lost. I’m lost. I need answers. Well, for so many reasons, I am not going to address that question. So if people are watching and, and they would like to weigh in on the concept of Gini and Skinny Jeans, feel free to do so.

That’s what the comments are there for.

Gini Dietrich: I would like to also state for the record that in high school, my nickname was Skinny Gini.

Chip Griffin: That was not my nickname.

Again, for so many reasons, I mean, my name’s not Gini, first of all. So that’s a little strange to be called Skinny Gini. But no, no, my, my high school nickname was Gerber. People thought I looked like the Gerber baby.

Gini Dietrich: I can see that. That’s a compliment. I

Chip Griffin: look like I’m on a baby food jar. Yeah, that’s a compliment.

Gini Dietrich: It is a compliment. The Gerber baby is cute.

Chip Griffin: Well, of course, back then I had hair, so it was a little bit more, I mean, now it kind of actually would make more sense, right? Because I don’t have any hair.

Gini Dietrich: Speaking of, the other day, Addy says to me, um, what’s the man’s name that you talk to without the hair?

I was like, Chip? She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, Chip. And then she went on to whatever else she was talking about. She could not remember your name, but. Oh. No hair.

Chip Griffin: Was she saying something about me or she just thought of me and she just thought of you, yeah. Okay, yeah, sure. In the middle, right. That seems completely normal.

Uh huh, yeah. I, I can’t even, yes. Okay, well that’s kind of fun. Um, I, I don’t, I don’t know what to do here. This is just very confusing now since we’re talking about skinny jeans and, oh, here, oh, thankfully we have a comment. Okay, good. Oh, here we go. Skinny jeans, in or

Gini Dietrich: out? Skinny jeans. Thank you, Katie. Katie says you can wear skinny jeans.

Thank you. I’m going to. I’m wearing them right now, actually.

Chip Griffin: Can I wear skinny jeans? Let’s put that out to the crowd. Absolutely. Should I wear skinny jeans? Yeah, you can. And then show up on camera with them? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that would be Next week. That would probably get views. I mean, if I’m just, if I’m just out there trawling for views, that might be the way to do it.

But, alright, but people aren’t tuning in to listen to this gibberish, or maybe they are. I don’t know, it’s Friday. We’re all kinda, you know, here in New Hampshire, we’ve actually got some warm weather for a change. Is all your snow gone? Uh, no. Um, it was, uh, it was almost 70 yesterday, today. Wow! Today, it’s, uh, let’s see, right now it’s 55.

Wow! I don’t think it’s supposed to get above 60 today, though, so it is cooling. And then it will cool down in the next couple of days. So we’ve had a lot of snow melt, but, uh, but the front yard is still covered with snow. Because it doesn’t get, uh Oh, no, are we getting comments? Yeah, Katie says, you do you.

Very diplomatic, Katie. Thank you. I think Katie’s

Gini Dietrich: wearing skinny jeans in her photo that she uses.

Chip Griffin: Okay, sure. Again, I’m, I’m staying, I’m steering clear because no good comes from me talking about skinny jeans.

Gini Dietrich: Okay, well, what shall we talk about? This is your shoes after

Chip Griffin: all. Well, it’s our show. It’s the, it’s all of the panelists who participate in this.

And by the way, those of you who, who saw the scheduled item for this, you will see I have a new thumbnail for this that shows. You do. It has them all. Yeah. Yeah. And, and some of them are, I was wearing my tuxedo tie and Karen was wearing her tiara. So. I tried to make it as interesting as possible so that people would want to tune in.

But so, so here’s where I thought we, we might start, uh, you know, until and unless someone wants to chime in with an actual question for us to answer. But this is a question I got from an agency owner yesterday, which is, you know, most small agencies, there’s a problem where the owner is too deep in the weeds on actual client work and, and actual running of the agency as opposed to building the business.

But the question is, how do you effectively transition from How do you give your team more while keeping clients happy, while making sure things are getting done? And in particular, this person asked me, so how do I do it when it actually takes more time to explain how to do something than it would be for me to actually just do it myself?

Gini Dietrich: I have been there. I know that surprises you. I have done this and what we did is I hired sort of a second in command and I started taking her to meetings with me. Um, she, at first, for about the first six months, it was more just to learn and to absorb and to understand who the client was and what their challenges were.

And I led those meetings. And then after about six months, She started to lead the meetings. I was still there. Um, and she started to answer emails that came to me and I would just forward them to her and she would, she would start to answer them and copy me. Um, and then after about a year, at that point we, we were having conversations with clients to say, Hey, listen, we’re growing.

It’s important to us that you still get the same level of attention and care that you have become accustomed to, but it’s not always going to be Gini. And. Uh, it took about a year. I think I would say it was like 13 or 14 months that we finally were able to transition over. And for the most part, with the exception of one client, everybody was like, great.

They, they didn’t feel like they were being abandoned by me. They felt like they were still getting. In some cases, better attention and better care because I wasn’t being pulled in 75, 000 different directions. Right. Um, and they knew that if. And they still know that if they need me, they know where to find me.

And I still do check ins, you know, monthly and quarterly big check ins and things like that. But it worked really well. It did take a lot of time. It did take, I mean, that year was extraordinarily painful for both of us. For both of us, I think, uh, my second in command and me, but, um, and it does, it does take more time than just doing it yourself, but you have to commit to it.

And in the long run, it ends up saving you time and energy and all those things later,

Chip Griffin: right? And I think there’s a lot of good things in there, but let me highlight two of them. The first one is that I think ultimately clients often prefer to deal with someone other than the owner. They may not realize it at first, but my own experience was as I would hand off projects, um, over time to team members, I would often, you know, talk to the client and they’d say, yeah, no, we’re, we’re happy talking with so and so because, you know, they’re, first of all, they’re the ones who are typically doing the work.

So there’s no game of telephone involved. So there’s less chance for screw ups from that perspective. But, you know, what you said. Availability, right? You know, typically those more junior people are available like that, whereas you may be harder to schedule with. And so oftentimes, you know, if you asked a client, would you like to work directly with this person instead of with me, they’ll generally say no at first.

But if you check back six months later, you often find out that they’re quite happy with the new arrangement. The second thing that I wanted to focus in on there was your last point. Um, Um, it, it will take more time in many cases for you to show someone on your team how to do it, to explain what you want, those kinds of things, but you have to look at it in terms, not of the amount of time for that single task, but an investment in, in the future.

So, If it’s always going to take you more time to show someone how to do it, then that’s something that you’re either not doing frequently enough, or is too complicated, or requires some expertise that only you have, or whatever. And so those things probably aren’t the right things to be moving off your plate.

Maybe they just shouldn’t be done at all. But the things that you are actually, that do make sense to move off your plate, yes, it’s going to take you more time in the short run, but it absolutely should take you less time in the future if you’re doing it right and if you’ve got the right team members.

Yeah.

Gini Dietrich: And I think if you have the right team members is exactly right, because you do have to have the right people, um, as a client of mine used to say, the, the right people on the right, in the right seats on the bus, um, if that, if you don’t, you’re going to find out pretty quickly that they’re not the right, or that you don’t have them in the right spot.

But I think another thing you said that. Is interesting is, you know, not everything can be delegated. There are things you’re still going to have to do. And I mean, when you think about business development versus client service, those are two things that you have to figure out a good balance of that.

Because if you’re not doing business development, you don’t have any clients to service. And if you’re only doing client service and you lose a client, which you’re happens, all of us lose clients, then you don’t have anything from a business development standpoint to replace it. So I think you have to figure out what that nice balance

Chip Griffin: is as well.

Absolutely. And there are some things that you just don’t do often enough to make it worthwhile doing it, right? I mean, if it’s, you know, uh, for example, I have often done things in some of my businesses like just, you know, resend an invoice to a client rather than passing it on to my bookkeeper because it happens.

Everything’s so automated today. Almost nobody ever asks for a fresh copy of an invoice anymore. Right. So if it happens twice a year, is it worth explaining, you know, how do I want the message to be to the client and all that kind of stuff? Because if it happens every six months, I might as well just take the 30 seconds it takes to go into QuickBook and hit Resend.

Because that’s literally what it takes. Right. So 30 seconds twice a year, that’s not worth the time savings to explain it to anybody else. And as long as I’m not going to screw it up, Which is, you know, 50 50, but as long as I’m not going to screw it up, then it’s probably better to keep that. But there are certainly things that you have to keep on your own plate, or should keep on your own plate.

And if you’re of the mindset that you want everything off your plate, and you just want to kind of, you know, kick back with a Mai Tai in the sun. I don’t want that job! Well, not only do you want that job, but then you also have to question, you know, Do you really want to be running an agency? And that’s a whole different conversation, right?

Because you should enjoy some aspect of your job, at least.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, well, that’s not fun.

Chip Griffin: You should. And it will take time to get there. Right? It’s this is not these are not overnight things. And when it comes to client work, you know, I do like to see a more gradual transition. So I don’t like generally speaking, you know, if you’re servicing the client as the owner, and you’ve got a team member that you want to take over running the day to day, I wouldn’t just go to the client and say, effective tomorrow.

I’m out, and this person’s in. Yeah, no, that won’t work. Cold, cold turkey, not, not so good. Uh, you, you really want to have a situation where they don’t even really realize that it’s happening. Right. You know, so, so you just work with your team members so that they take the lead when you’re having calls with them.

They take the lead in responding to emails. You’re still copied. You’re still on the call. You can still chime in as necessary. But by the way, one of the things you have to really work on as the owner is zipping it, right? Unless what you’re going to add, particularly on phone calls, unless what you’re going to add is really consequential.

Keep your mouth shut because anything that you does undermines your team member in front of the client and also undermines their confidence. And you need, you need both sides to be confident in the new relationship. And it’s

Gini Dietrich: really hard to do that. I’m glad you brought that up. Cause I was going to say that too.

Um, just keeping your mouth shut. And they’re going to say things. In meetings or do things that you don’t agree with, and they’re going to say and do things that you’re just like, and you’re going to want to jump in and save it. You are exactly right. The only thing you do is undermine them when you do that.

And so you just have to keep your mouth shut. And after the meeting is ended, you provide that feedback in a constructive way. You know, I would have handled it this way. And this is why kinds of things versus undermining them in front of the client, because otherwise you’ll never get where you need to be ever.

Chip Griffin: Right, because you need to become a coach. Your role is now as the coach. And so, you know, just as Bill Belichick can’t go out there and throw the football, you know, he has to go out there and tell his team how they should do it and give them advice on how to read the defense and those kinds of things.

You, as the agency owner, need to do the same kind of thing. You can’t throw the football yourself.

Gini Dietrich: That was a nice analogy. Do you think he misses Tom Brady? I think he misses Tom Brady.

Chip Griffin: I think we all miss Tom Brady. I love Tom Brady. But not the Patriots, right? No, I don’t love the Patriots. Why would I love the Patriots?

Gini Dietrich: I love the Buccaneers now.

Chip Griffin: Is that because of his football skills, Gini, or? I’m just curious.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes, and.

Chip Griffin: Uh huh. Oh, okay. He’s very handsome. Whatever.

Gini Dietrich: I’m here for you, Chip. I’m here for you.

Chip Griffin: I just, I like his quarterbacking skills. I

Gini Dietrich: mean, he’s a good quarterback. Probably the best of all time.

Chip Griffin: Oh, probably. I mean, who else would compete? Who’s even in that conversation?

Joe Montana.

I mean, he’s okay. Oh, jeez.

All right. So what, what other advice do we have for folks, uh, as they’re, they’re trying to put themselves in the, in the role that they want or, or should we, should we maybe try to find a different topic? Where should we, what were some, what were some of the questions that you answered in your video this morning, other than the skinny jeans question?

Cause

Gini Dietrich: I didn’t answer that question. I asked that question because I need to know, this is the first time I have felt my age where I’m now realizing that I don’t know if I can wear my skinny jeans, or if I have to go buy baggy 80s style jeans now. And this is terrible.

Chip Griffin: I don’t even understand. Why can’t you just wear what you want to wear?

I don’t really understand this. Because they’re not in style anymore. So what? I don’t want to be Are you on the runway in Milan or something like that? I am! You are? I am. Okay. I mean, just so you know, Italy’s numbers aren’t looking real good according to the article I read this morning, so I probably wouldn’t be going over there.

Or Brazil for that matter. Right, but, but Brazil has been bad, stayed bad, Italy had improved and now apparently is going back in the wrong direction again. Up 50 percent in the last two weeks or something like that. That’s not good. Hopefully that is not our future because we’ve, we’ve followed our

Gini Dietrich: future in the past.

We have, we have tended to follow them, so I hope you’re right.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, yeah, we don’t want to see that. But in any case, um, I’m trying to remember what you, because you did have a couple of actual questions

Gini Dietrich: that hang on. I want to just the other thing on this topic is, um, as you, as you do this process, this is with existing clients, right?

But with new clients, it’s a lot easier because you just bring the team that would be working with them or the person or whoever happens to be at the start of the relationship versus. And I think that’s important too, is saying. In, in the new business meetings, not at, after you become a client, you start to introduce the team and then that becomes a lot easier too, because they start to trust the team versus just you.

Chip Griffin: And that’s a huge mistake that gets made. Agencies frequently say, look, I don’t want to, I don’t want to bother my team. I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t want to tie them up with business development. They’ve got to be doing client work. And so it’s, uh, You don’t want to be in that situation. You want them in those meetings.

So the prospect gets to know them and trust them. So you never have to be in a place where you have to transfer your trust and respect to your team members. It’s already there.

Gini Dietrich: And I have always also made this mistake. And what I found when I did that is that the team wasn’t always bought into the ideas or the strategy or the plan.

Because I had done all of that before I transitioned it over and gotten approval and all that kind of stuff. And then when I transitioned it over and they were like, it’s there, there’s not, there’s no accountability or ownership to it. So they, they felt like they were just doing my bidding versus actually participating in something that they had ownership

Chip Griffin: over.

Right, right. And actually we have, we have another comment here and, and we actually have, Uh, from, from Brazil, all

Gini Dietrich: places, we actually, he and I were just emailing about Brazil and how bad it

Chip Griffin: is excellent. Well, so then he was not surprised by what you said, you know, and, and he’s not offended by it, even though we were talking about how things weren’t great there.

In any case, um, So, yes, I mean, having having your team involved from the start, super important, and I think that, you know, the other piece of this is you have to have a team that you’ve brought into the full picture anyway. And we’ve talked many times on the agency leadership podcast about the importance of a strong degree of transparency.

In small agencies, the team needs to know where things are headed. They need to know what’s going on. They need to know your point of view and how you approach things. And so you need to be making sure that you’re constantly imbuing them with that knowledge, because that makes it easier for them to service the clients in the way that you want.

And so if you’re able to do that, then that will make the transitions that need to take place much easier.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, for sure. So let’s, let’s, speaking of transition, let’s transition to business development and talk about pivot, pivot, transition,

Chip Griffin: evolve. Pivot is the word of the year. Well, the decade really so far.

Gini Dietrich: Let’s, um, I’m, I’m curious about your perspective on business development and who inside the organization does it?

Chip Griffin: Nobody. I mean, that’s the reality in, in, in most small agencies, right? It’s

Gini Dietrich: accidental. organization should do it?

Chip Griffin: Um, so, so look, the, it, you know, part of this depends upon the size of the agency because even within small, there are still, uh, degrees.

So, uh, Ultimately, the owner absolutely has to be part of it, right? There’s, I don’t think there’s any scenario where you’re looking at an agency of, you know, 25 to 30 employees or less where the owner doesn’t or shouldn’t have a significant role in business development. Yep. Beyond that, as we said before, you, you need to have the participation of people who are going to be involved in the delivery.

So you don’t want to be in a position where you’re proposing things blind. You certainly need to have the conversations internally before you propose something to make sure that the team is on board. I’ve seen this one go off the rails a number of times where you have the owner says, well, we can do this on this timeline and all that kind of stuff.

And then the client says, sure, let’s do it. And then they go back to their team and the team is like, uh, yeah, no boss. There’s 72 hours or, you know, whatever, whatever you promised. Um, and I’ve been on both sides of that, right? I’ve been on the side of, of over promising because I forgot to, you know, I just assumed I knew how long it would take to do something or I assumed I was up to speed on what their workload was.

And, um, but I’ve also been on the delivery side where I’ve had a boss or an owner come to me and say, so I told so and so we do this. Really? Okay. Hope you have a big checkbook that you can give me. Um, but, but they also, they also should be involved in the actual pitch process. But as far as, you know, other things to do, To do sort of the initial stages of business development, I think you should try to involve more of your team to the extent that they’re comfortable with it.

The mistake I have seen is where people force account managers or even VPs into doing business development when they’re just completely uncomfortable with it. And so you may need to find a way to involve them that Doesn’t feel like business development. It might be doing thought leadership type activities.

It might be bringing them in after the lead is in the door because some of them are more comfortable with that. But, you know, you should find ways to involve as much of your team as possible in some aspect of business development.

Gini Dietrich: Um, okay, so I have two questions around that. And the first is, I, um, I’m pretty good friends with Andy Christodina, who runs Orbit Media Studios here.

He has a business partner and they have a CEO. So when you have an organization like that, where there’s maybe multiple partners, or you’ve built a big enough company that you have somebody, a hired gun to run the business for you, who’s in charge of business development from that

Chip Griffin: perspective. Well, that’s what you have to agree on, right?

I mean, anytime you’ve got a partnership or you’ve got, uh, an owner and, uh, and a hired CEO, you need to be crystal clear on what everybody’s individual roles and responsibilities are. Because anytime you say, well, we, we share this responsibility. That means nobody really has that responsibility, because whether you want to or not, it’s so easy to just say, well, I thought you were doing that.

Oh, I thought you were doing that, right? So somebody needs to have primary responsibility for each sphere. And so I think if you, but it’s going to be different for each organization, right? So I’ve been in partnerships where I have been the business development lead because I was stronger in that area than my business partner was.

I’ve been in other ones where I took a secondary role on business development because I had a partner who was much stronger at it than I was, and I was more on the operation side. So you need to figure out what those roles are and what works. It doesn’t mean that you can’t all be involved, but someone, a single person, needs to be the driver of

Gini Dietrich: it.

Okay. Um, when I worked at Fleischman Hillard, and this was in my twenties, um, one of the things that they did is they would bring in, Gurus to teach us how to do business development. And I remember sitting like you’re anxious. You want to be able to do it, but in your twenties, you don’t have the network or the connections yet to be able to bring in big pieces of business.

Right. And all of your friends are in the same spots and they’re not decision makers yet. And. And it wasn’t until, you know, I went out on my own and I, you know, started to grow my own business that I realized that while it was great that they were trying to give us these skills so that we could help them generate business.

It wasn’t. We didn’t have the capacity or the capability yet. And so as I started to build my agency, that’s one of the things that I always kept in mind was how do I teach the younger generation how to do it, but without saying you have to go bring us in a million dollar client, or you have to talk to your friends about so, and because it’s, it’s too much, you can’t.

You can’t do it and you don’t have the relationships to be able to do that. So how do you, and that’s one of the things I really focused on is how I teach them the business development process. And I think some of the things we’ve talked about, like bringing them in early on, letting them participate in the brainstorms and creating the plans.

And, you know, we, as you know, we do a two day, um, strategy, strategic workshop, letting them participate in those kinds of things. Um, that’s all business development. That’s all creating opportunity to grow.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And some of those folks may feel like they, they’re not interested in business development, but as they get exposed to it, they may, they may either develop a skill for it or they may develop an inclination to do it.

Yeah. So, so it’s useful to expose. I mean, I’m a huge believer in junior employees should be exposed to as many different. Absolutely. kinds of roles within the agency as possible for, for two reasons. One is it helps them understand what everybody else does, so they have a greater appreciation for it. Yep.

Um, but the second is it may be that they discover areas where they’re more interested or, or a better fit and it may be better for the agency over time to find a way to evolve their role. Well, and

Gini Dietrich: I would even add to that, that, you know, when I worked at FH, we over serviced to death. And I’m fairly certain there were clients that got a million or more dollars in free fees from us because we over serviced to death.

And we were, we were expected to To work to build 60 hours a week and do new business on top of that for another 20 and then you had all your admin stuff and your time sheets and all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, we were easily working 80 to 100 hours a week.

Chip Griffin: Part of the problem is that the junior people generally don’t even know what the scope of work is.

No idea.

Gini Dietrich: And then I went to work for an ad agency. To build their PR department. And that was what I had been taught is you just do the work, like whatever it takes. And I remember the, the owner of the agency sitting me down and saying like, you can’t, first of all, you can’t work like this. He’s like, you’re insane.

And second of all, we can’t build this time to the client. So stop giving away your time. And because I didn’t have the. And I really didn’t understand that until I started running my own agency. Like I was like, okay, okay, I get it. I get it. And then I just didn’t track it. I didn’t put it in my timesheet.

Like I was doing, I just did it anyway. Um, because that’s what I had been taught, but I didn’t really understand it until I started my own business. And I think if you have. Access to different departments and you learn different parts of running an agency. It makes you a better rounded counselor, which is what we are in all aspects.

Chip Griffin: And we actually, we have a, uh, a good perspective here from a mutual friend of ours, Jason Falls has, has chimed in and has decided to be, uh, constructive in his comments today, despite the fact that I troll his show and put all sorts of nonsense in the comments. So thank you, Jason, for, uh, for taking this seriously in a way that I tend not to.

Um, uh, he says we’ve recently formed a small team of five people and are contracting with a commission based salesperson to help us land leads and meetings. He says we meet weekly with updates and it’s the best process I’ve seen work outside of having a full time biz dev headhunter. Um, and. You know, so, I mean, what’s your thought on, you know, bringing in someone on the outside who’s commission based to help grow your agency?

I know this is something that a lot of agencies try. Yeah,

Gini Dietrich: I mean, I’ve tried it several times and I’ll Jason, I’m super curious to see how and if it works for you because I have not been able to make it work ever. And I’ve tried it in different at different stages of the agency. I’ve tried a different, I’ve tried all sorts of things.

It just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I have to be honest. I, you have rarely seen outside salespeople, whether it’s a firm or an individual, help in at least traditional PR agencies. I, I, I have seen it work. As you get more onto the marketing side of things, particularly as you skew towards, you know, the advertising side, um, and it’s, but you have to be realistic about what it is and you have to understand what you’re really trying to do.

So, for example, ones where it’s more of appointment setting, those tend to work much better than, than ones where you expect the outside person to full on close the business. I rarely have seen, in fact, I’m trying to think of a case where I’ve seen someone on the outside who is completely closing business actually succeeding.

Because so much has to be done involving the internal team to make sure that you’re really, I mean, agency world is about a relationship between the client and the agency. And so, If you have someone who is sort of an intermediary doing selling, that works on products and software and things like that.

It tends not to work as well on the people side. But if they’re doing appointment setting or, you know, doing the initial qualification stages, that potentially works better. And I have seen that work. Again, I haven’t seen it on the PR side, but I’ve seen it more on the marketing side of things. Yeah, Jason, you’ll have to keep

Gini Dietrich: us updated.

I’m super curious to see how that works.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, he’s chimed in. He says, I think it works, but only if you give it time. Yeah. Remember that the B to B lead cycles are 18 to 24 months. So trying for six months won’t work. Yeah, that well, that’s true of almost all business development activities or any marketing activities that and the funny thing is, agencies tell clients this all the time.

It takes time. We’re not going to be there overnight. And yet we expect the things that we’re doing for our own businesses. That they will magically transform things. Um, and that’s, that’s not the case. And I, I do have to say, I do appreciate that Jason has, has chimed in with a trollish

Gini Dietrich: comment. We are like, it is, you’re right.

We are very matchy.

Chip Griffin: See, I’m just, I brought out my pink shirt because I wear my pink shirt when it’s warm out. And so it’s, it’s been gathering dust all winter. Cause I, I just, I, I don’t know, for me it just doesn’t feel right to have pink on in, you know, 10 degree weather. So, you know, I said, you know what, it’s warm enough.

I can crack this out because it’s 55 degrees, which in New Hampshire is sweltering hot for this is warm indeed. Um, so, thank you for, for making sure you got a trollish comment in there too, Jason. That was, that was very helpful. Unfortunately, we are, we’re out of time, Gini. Because I, I try to keep this show to about 30 minutes or so.

So, you’re, you’re gonna have to move on with your day without me and head into your weekend with, with no more Chip. I don’t know how you’ll do it. I don’t know how all of the viewers will have you next

Gini Dietrich: week. So I can survive for six days.

Chip Griffin: You can survive. Well, that is, that is good. I feel very happy to hear that, but I know, I’m not sure that we really resolved anything about your skinny jeans, but you can, well,

Gini Dietrich: I mean, I need to find out what, what my, my options are.

So,

Chip Griffin: On that, we will, we will, uh, close this out with one, uh, final comment, uh, uh, where Michelle Widger says that, uh, she agrees with ownership and team buy in. So it’s, it’s always good to end on agreement and Oh, even better. Now this is even better comment to end on. Yay! That is a good one to end on. So, so on that note, um, and, and comments are still flying in, so we’ll have to read them after the fact, because otherwise I’ll just be sitting here continuing to hit the button to show them.

Um, I don’t, I don’t even know what bootcut is. I’ve heard the term. I do. Don’t worry about

Gini Dietrich: it. I, I got

Chip Griffin: it. Okay. All right. Well, there you go. Katie, the fashionista, has explained it all to you, Jenny. So you now have your answer. You can go into your weekend.

Gini Dietrich: I

Chip Griffin: don’t think that’s why on that note, we will draw this episode of the small agency talk show to a close.

I look forward to seeing you all back here next Friday at noon. Eastern time for another entertaining episode and hopefully informative as well. Have a good weekend, everybody. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Agency Leadership Podcast. You can watch or listen to every episode by visiting agencyleadershippodcast.

com or subscribing on your favorite podcast player. We would also love it if you would leave a rating or review at iTunes or wherever you go to find podcasts. Be sure to check out Gini Dietrich at Spinsucks. com And join the Spin Sucks community at spin sucks. com slash spin dash sucks dash community.

You can learn more about me, Chip Griffin at smallagencygrowth.com, where you can also sign up for a free community membership to engage with other agency leaders. The agency leadership podcast is distributed on the FIR podcast network, where you can find lots of other communications oriented podcasts.

Just visit www. fir. com. F I R P O D C A S T N E T W M. We welcome your feedback and suggestions and look forward to being back with you again next week.