Taking a sabbatical from the agency you own

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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 we’re taking a sabbatical from this show. So this is the last time you’ll hear from us until right after this.

There we go. The world’s shortest sabbatical.

Gini Dietrich: That was something. Seven or eight seconds.

Chip Griffin: Something like that.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, that was, that was something. That was, yeah, that was something.

Chip Griffin: So, but we are going to talk about sabbaticals today.

Gini Dietrich: We are.

Chip Griffin: It is, it is something that honestly, I haven’t really thought of in the context of being an agency owner before, but it’s something that a client of mine came to me with and, and asked about the idea of potentially taking a sabbatical in the coming years.

And I said, well, Well, that’s, that’s an interesting thought. Let me, you know, let me dig into that and, and think about how it might work. And so you and I happened to be talking and you mentioned that you knew some agency owners who had done just that. So. Why not? I mean, this is, this is a, an interesting topic for conversation.

I think after the last year or so, lots of people have thought about just saying, okay, I need a break. I need a break. And so, you know, let’s talk about how that might work for an agency.

Gini Dietrich: So I have a couple of questions. Is this agency owner, is it a boutique small agency? Is it?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I would, I would describe it as a microagency.

Gini Dietrich: Okay, so just a handful of employees. is this person the lead on most things? Client service, business development, all of that?

Chip Griffin: Well, that’s actually something we’ve been working on already to try to to move this individual away from day to day because as, as you and I talk about on the show all the time, it’s important for owners to extract themselves from being the, the, the account lead.

And so, so this agency has made some good progress on that front in getting team members to really be the day to day point person, with clients. So that’s, that’s a, that’s in the, the pro column here, the, you know, the, I think it’s being set up well for that already. But that’s, that’s obviously critical.

If you’re going to be taking, I mean, frankly, if you’re going to be taking, you know, two or three weeks off from your agency, you need to find some way to have other people managing that work and servicing clients in that interim period.

Gini Dietrich: Well, I think it’s an interesting concept because there are plenty of women who run agencies and have babies and don’t take maternity leave.

Like most of us don’t get the normal. You know, six weeks to however long, 90 days, if you’re in the U S if you’re in the Canada, you get much longer, but, we don’t even take that time off because we can’t afford it or the business isn’t set up for it, or maybe we don’t want to, or whatever it happens to be.

But I think even just the idea of taking maternity leave, that’s. It’s not a sabbatical, but it’s taking time away from your business. So how do you, how do you create something so that you, you can take the time off? You know, if it’s six weeks from attorney leave or even a month or two weeks, or is it six months or a year?

Like I have a friend who took a year off from his business. So I think it’s an interesting thing to start to think about if it’s and but it’s not something you can just do, right? You have to actually plan for it, right?

Chip Griffin: Yeah, it absolutely requires planning. And, and, you know, as regular listeners know, I have a difficult time taking time off myself, not because I I feel like I’m so critical to anything or ever have been, but more so because it’s not my style.

I like to work. It’s what I enjoy doing. I mean, when I, when, when we had our first child, I took half a day and, and with the second one, because it was a scheduled C section, we basically did it on my lunch break and I was literally back in the office that afternoon.

Gini Dietrich: I bet Jen appreciates that.

Chip Griffin: Well, you know, I mean, look, here’s the thing, and I actually give this advice to new fathers all the time.

In those early days when they’re in the hospital, do other stuff. There’s nothing you can’t do anything. And so, you know, torturing yourself by being, don’t do that. Keep yourself, you know, rested in a good frame of mind because there’s going to come a period of time You know, either a few days or a few weeks, depending on whether you’ve got family staying, because obviously a lot of times family comes and stays and helps out.

And I’m like, let them do that because then it’s going to hit you and you’re really going to have to step in and help later on down the road.

Gini Dietrich: So that’s yeah, I think that’s really good advice, actually.

Chip Griffin: Because you, I mean, you get, because if you, if you front load it, and I know that, you know, particularly, new fathers have that instinct.

Let’s, let’s, you know, let me take the time off right up front. And I say, you know, no, you know, try to, you know, do what you have to do in, in those early days, but really plan on taking the more extended period of time off two or three weeks in when family evaporates, goes home. Yep. And, and, mom needs a lot more help.

Gini Dietrich: so when you, and, and I think this goes for either men and women. Well, it goes for every binary people as well. It goes for everyone. Sorry, I’m trying to work on my, my pronouns. you have to really think about what it is that you’re going to do. And I think what you said in terms of, you know, making sure that you’re not the lead on, on client service.

Do you have somebody on the team who can help with business development, even if it’s, You know, in the interim, just following up on leads, not necessarily being proactive. Do you have a second in command? That was always really important to me is having a second in command so that when I, even if I took a week off, I knew that things were handled and I wasn’t going to get panicked emails or text messages or phone calls because it was just handled.

so all of those things I think lead up to it for sure, but I think you have to have those things in place to be able to take any extent of time off.

Chip Griffin: Right. Well, I mean, the reality is a lot of the steps that you should be taking in your business anyway

Gini Dietrich: are things

Chip Griffin: that will help you if you want to take a sabbatical, they will help you if you just want to take a month off in the summer, you know, in the future when you can travel somewhere, whatever.

Gini Dietrich: Well, even if you don’t, even if you just want to have a staycation or you want to work on a Even if you just want to have

Chip Griffin: a Yep.

Gini Dietrich: Side hustle, or you want to write a book, or whatever it happens to be.

Chip Griffin: I mean, and it also is the same stuff that will help you when you want to sell your business. Right?

Because all of those same steps of putting in structure, putting in process, not making the agency depend on you as the owner, those are all. So. These are steps that you should be taking anyway, but certainly if you’re planning to take an extended period of time away from the business, you really need to make sure that you’ve got those all under control.

Oh, of course, the, you know, the difference is in those cases, you know, even if you’re taking, say, a six month sabbatical, you are still. Theoretically reachable in an absolute emergency.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right.

Chip Griffin: And I would, I would generally advise that, you know, keep your phone on, you know, if whoever you’ve put in charge has something that they absolutely positively can’t handle.

It should be like a once every six months kind of conversation. It shouldn’t be a once every six hours

Gini Dietrich: conversation,

Chip Griffin: but you are still accountable. Okay. I mean, even when you take a sabbatical from your business, you are still typically the, the chair of the board, right? Because you are the owner of the business.

And if there are no other owners, someone still has to play that ownership role, even if you’re on a sabbatical. And so there may be things that you still have to make an occasional decision on. So, you know, I think you have to be realistic about that as you go into it, because, you know, you would never be the chair of any company or own 100 percent of any company and just completely ignore it for the

Gini Dietrich: No, I think it would be, I think that many of us go into business for ourselves for the reasons that you, you have said, like you, you continue to work.

It’s not your style not to work. Those kinds of like, I can’t imagine. Even if I took a sabbatical. To say, okay, I’m not going to be working on the business. I’m not going to be working with clients. You’re going to be doing this. I’m going to work on this project, whatever it happens to be. I’m going to write a book.

I’m going, whatever it happens to be. I think, I feel like I’d still be checking email and checking in and, you know, I don’t think it would be completely off the table and I don’t know, I, I personally don’t know anyone who’s taken a sabbatical from any job, even in university, academia, that hasn’t done at least that.

Check in, you know, once, once a day or once a week or whatever happens to be.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think one thing that can be helpful there, you know, because email can be a giant black hole, right? So, so I’m, so I’m with you that you need to be paying attention to some of it. I, my advice would be something that I’ve seen, frankly, other people do even just for, you know, a one week vacation, which is set up a separate email account.

Gini Dietrich: Like,

Chip Griffin: and so, you know, so, so the, the people who absolutely need to reach, you know, that they can use this private email address. Yep. to get things to you. So maybe that’s your lawyer, your accountant, your second in command, whoever absolutely might need to reach you should have a private email address, and probably a phone number to reach you if absolutely necessary.

But I would, I would encourage you to try to avoid checking your main Account. In fact, I know, I know one venture capitalist who has a, an email account that he uses for vacations, which is something like, I really need to interrupt Brad at, I forget exactly what it is, but it’s one of those things where as you are typing it in order to send the email, you realize, okay, this better be important.

Gini Dietrich: I like it. So I

Chip Griffin: like something like that as, as your buffer so that you don’t get sucked into the, you know, Oh, I’m in here because, you know, I know my accountant sent me, you know, the quarterly report. I need to go take a look at it. Oh, while I’m in there. Oh, I just saw this. I can’t help myself. I need to respond to this.

I’m going to tell the team how to respond to it or whatever. So I think finding ways to segregate that is important. I think that you know, you want to have you do want to be reachable by phone in an emergency, but really your second in command should be about the only person who has that. I would not give that to clients, right?

That the clients should know that in an emergency, your second in command could reach you, right? Because they, they are viewing it as your business still, if you’re a small agency, but it shouldn’t be that they have the ability to reach out directly. And the expectations need to be clearly set up front with everybody.

Clients, vendors, employees, you know, contractors, whomever, that your availability is very close to zero, not quite zero, but very close to it.

Gini Dietrich: So you said something earlier, which was, and, and I think this is, this is a really great point, which was you, if you’re setting yourself up to take any extended time off, it’s just like you’re setting the business up to be sold.

And I sit on the board of a startup where it there, we just started their third year, in January. And we are now looking at adding additional offices. outside of Chicago. And one of the things that we’re helping them sort of plan out is what does that look like? Where do we go? You know, what’s the environment like all those competitive analysis, all that kind of stuff.

But who do we have, or who do we know that can lead that office? So it’s, it’s the same kind of mentality in that, Even if you’re not opening a second or third or, you know, multiple offices, maybe you have an employee in a different location to service clients there, or like we do, we’ve been virtual since 2011.

And so I’ll hire people wherever they are, just based on the expertise that we need. We don’t need them in Chicago. So I always think about who’s the best person for that and what, and how do we hire for that role so that in some cases the clients there don’t even know, I mean, they know who I am, but they don’t know me personally because I’m not doing the work.

And I think that’s a really good way to think about it is heroin. How am I setting this structure up or this foundation up so that If I sell it someday, or I take an extended leave, or, you know, I ha I’m caretaking for my parents, or there’s a global pandemic and I have to teach second grade or my husband, my spouse gets sick, whatever it happens and happens to be, you know, there’s all these different scenarios where you may have, you may have to take time off, maybe you have to have surgery and you’re out for two months, you know, whatever, whatever happens to be create the foundation now.

So that you have the ability to be able to do that later,

Chip Griffin: right? And that means, you know, everybody needs to understand who takes over if you disappear, right? Because I, I’m also a big believer in you need to have your hit by a bus plan because the things we’ve been talking about are things where, you know, even though there’s not really a choice, the owner is still available, but there are, there are, there’s always the potential that You know, you could get hit by a bus and then what happens?

And so one of the things that I’ve seen in small businesses in small agencies is that the owner has kept things so close and, and hasn’t shared enough information that it becomes very difficult for someone to even act as a caretaker. So, I mean, you know, let’s say that you are disabled for a period of time, a month or two, and you, you know, you can’t.

For whatever reason, you probably want the business to keep running so that you have something to come back to right in that scenario. But you know, so that means that someone has to have access to the business bank account. Someone has to have all of the appropriate permissions and passwords. And I know that that’s a that’s a tough thing for most.

Small business owners to, you know, to, to understand they need to give out and be comfortable with it, but you have to do it because I mean, I know that, you know, that, that if I got hit by a bus and I’m sitting in, in a hospital room, I want someone to be able to pay those bills for me.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right. Yeah.

Keep going.

Chip Griffin: Keep the lights on. Yes,

Gini Dietrich: please.

Chip Griffin: you know, so you, you want to make sure that you’ve got those things in place and it may be that even you don’t give it necessarily out, but you’ve got literally an envelope. I mean, when I first started my, my first business, you know, back 20 some years ago, I literally had an envelope in my desk that said hit by a bus.

It was sealed. and, and it had in there all of the passcodes for Anything sensitive, like bank accounts and such, so that if the worst happened, someone could still step in and take the necessary steps.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and that’s a really great point. I mean, I use LastPass, but I have my master password hidden away in the safe.

So. You know, if something happens, all you have to do is open my computer and put in my master password, and you can get into the bank account and all that, and QuickBooks and all that kind of stuff.

Chip Griffin: Well, and LastPass actually has a great functionality in that regard where you can designate someone. And so they can, you know, they don’t even have to find your safe, right?

They can simply say, you know, this is the account that I want access to. It sends an email to you, and if you don’t respond in, I don’t know, it’s a week or two or something like that, Then it’s presumed that it’s because you’re incapacitated and they then get access. So you can, you can designate someone to have that level of access to your account.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah.

Chip Griffin: yeah. And, and, and some of the social media accounts have that now as well. Facebook, I know has that ability so that you can designate effectively an heir to your Facebook account. you know, which is, I think, a good thing these days.

Gini Dietrich: Morbid, but good.

Chip Griffin: Morbid, but, but good. And I still, I mean, this is, this is, you know, a sidetrack, but it still gets to me when, you know, when someone who is deceased, there are people going on there.

Gini Dietrich: Hope

Chip Griffin: you have a great birthday.

Gini Dietrich: And you’re like, Oh my gosh,

Chip Griffin: they’re dead. I mean, I, I have a friend who’s been dead probably for eight years now, and it’s, he still gets posts on his Facebook page every year. Oh, we need to grab a drink soon.

Gini Dietrich: Not happening. Yeah,

Chip Griffin: not gonna happen. Unless you’re going to the

Gini Dietrich: afterlife as well.

It’s not happening.

Chip Griffin: Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s, I don’t know. That’s, it’s one of the creepy things about social media.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Chip Griffin: But, so, so you need to be planning, you need to have these steps in place. I think one of the, the, the most important is what we’ve touched on is having, if you don’t already have a second in command, you will as soon as you take the sabbatical because someone has to be primarily responsible for the business.

You certainly don’t want a situation where it’s management by committee. That never works anywhere. You need to designate a first among equals at the very least, who is, who is, you know, who breaks a tie or figures out what needs to be done or those kinds of things. You need to think about who that is, particularly if it’s not clear to you already, because it needs to be someone that you trust, but also has the faith of the team.

And, you know, we all know that, you know, there are personality clashes that happen and things like that. And so, you know, it doesn’t mean that you can’t put someone as that. Interim leader who may have a conflict with some other member of the team or that maybe they just, they’re not necessarily a conflict even, but just that they don’t always see eye to eye, but you need to make sure that you figure out how to address that and lay the groundwork.

You know, if you’ve got two people who are, you know, potentially in that role, you’re going to pick one. The other one may feel a little bent out of shape that they weren’t picked. So you need to think that through. And how do you, you know, again, all of the communication that goes into this is really critical because you don’t want anything to put it off the rails because there’s already enough risk in doing something like this that, that you don’t want to unnecessarily add to it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I just think, I mean, even if it’s not something that you’re, if you’re not thinking about an extended sabbatical, I do think it’s important for, and we’ve talked about this before. In other episodes as well, but it’s really think about what that foundation is for me my accountant who’s external has doesn’t have access to Removing money from the bank account, but he can pay bills and all that kind of stuff and then he is on the emergency list if you know, that’s

Chip Griffin: removing money from the account, right?

Well,

Gini Dietrich: it has to go through the there’s an approval process that we have that he can’t yet I I actually had that happen to me where the accountant was

Chip Griffin: Unfortunately, a lot of agencies have had that, even big ones. I mean, what MWW had, had an experience and, and I forget, it actually was the same individual at MWW and somewhere else, where that happened, where the individual, you know, even in large agencies with, with, you know, all sorts of controls, he was able to pocket all sorts of money for me.

Fortunately, they caught him and prosecuted him. But, I have a

Gini Dietrich: friend who has, petty cash and for 20 years, 20 years, her assistant was taking money out of petty cash and setting it aside. And she bought herself a house before they caught her 20 years. She’s and the best part about it is. My friend probably would have bought her the house Had she asked it was she’s that kind of person, right?

But yeah, anyway, so but so my

Chip Griffin: but don’t let those Horror stories scare you off You still need to do it It just means you have to have proper checks and balances and controls in place But you absolutely need to have other people involved in your finance process beyond just you

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, so and then the other thing I like about having my my accountant do it is and because he’s external is He has no emotion tied up in it.

So when I say my family gets this, my employees get this, he, he can separate that all where I, I used to have my bookkeeper who’s on staff handling that. And she, there was emotion tied up into it. She was like, well, why don’t I get this? And why don’t, and that relationship ended up ending, in the long run.

But I, I like that because he has no emotion, he has no emotion in it. He’s just like, okay, this is what it’s sort of like the attorney and the will. Like, this is just what they wanted. Then my assistant, she has access to pretty much everything except the bank account. So she could do, you know, she could keep things running, everything, make sure invoicing is still going out and all that kind of stuff.

And then my second in command is. in charge of the clients. And then I have one person who’s our director of sales, who’s in charge of business development. And, but he’s been in charge of that for two years. So even though I’m, I’m, you know, the closer, so to speak, he’s still the one doing all that kind of stuff.

So it would be a little more difficult, I think, if I weren’t here because he’s not the closer, but at least they could keep the agency running. at a level to be able to make, continue to make payroll and continue to, they may not grow, but it would be sustainable.

Chip Griffin: Right. Well, and I think, I think you’ve touched on the, you know, probably the toughest thing with the owner stepping away for an extended period of time is going to be business development.

Because in most small agencies, the owner is the, either the sole or at least the primary rainmaker. And so even to the extent that you’ve got a process and you’ve got other team members involved, it’s likely that your business development efforts will take some sort of a hit. And so you, again, in the things that you need to plan for, you need to plan for that possibility.

If you assume that you’re gonna, you know, continue on the same growth trajectory while you’re out of the picture, that may not be reasonable. It depends on how you’ve got things set up and all that, but it may not be reasonable. And you also have to keep in mind that, you know, if you’re taking, let’s say, for argument’s sake, a six month sabbatical, that You know, your actual pause on business development is going to be longer than that.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: Right, because there will be a period of time leading up to that where it will ebb off. And then there’s going to be a period of time where it takes to ramp it up because your pipeline doesn’t just magically reappear overnight. And so one of the things that you need to figure out is, you know, is, is your sabbatical 100 percent or are you still going to continue to do some level of networking and those kinds of things that will keep you out there so that you can, you know, generate that business?

You know, will you still have conversations where you can, you know, Maybe not work on the actual pitch and proposal and all that, but you know, you’re, you make the initial connection and you pass it off. So there’s, there’s degrees of all of this and it depends on how you want to structure it. You can structure it however you want.

You just need to plan for it and understand what that impact is.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Very right. I think the, the moral of the story is it can be done. You can certainly take the time off. sometimes it’ll be forced, sometimes it will be voluntary. but if you plan for it and you build the foundation correctly. Not only can you do those things, but eventually you’ll be able to sell the business or it will be, you can have, you can do an ESOP, you know what, however, as you think about, you know, 20, 30, 40 years from now, what the business looks like as you exit, you’ll be able, you’ll have built that foundation for that as well.

Chip Griffin: Right. And I think as, as, as our, as our parting portion of this, you know, we’re, we’re communicators. And so one of the key questions to me is how do you communicate with your That you’re doing this, right? I mean, there are certain times where if you’re taking time off because it’s to, you know, to take care of a sick relative or because you’ve had a baby or because you’re sick yourself.

Those are those are relatively straightforward to communicate. Most people are immediately understanding of those kinds of scenarios. but when you, when it’s, when it’s voluntary, when you’re simply saying, I’m going to take a sabbatical and step away from the business, how do you communicate that so that you, you know, continue to maintain the confidence of your team and your clients?

And so I’m curious in the, in the cases where you’ve seen people step away, how have they handled that? Because I think, you know, as communicators, we often forget. Our own communications,

Gini Dietrich: but this is a

Chip Griffin: place where it’s really important.

Gini Dietrich: You know, I mean, this is a crappy answer, but it’s our tagline. It depends, right?

I mean, it depends on how involved you are in the business and how involved you are with clients. I have one client. Who would be like, you’re doing what, wait, what am I going to do? And only one. And I would, I would start preparing him for that several months in advance. he also would not understand it.

He’d be like, well, I don’t understand why you can’t do that and run the business. He just, he just wouldn’t get it. So I would start preparing him in advance, but because I’ve built the foundation where, I mean, I’m working on the business and I’m growing the business and I’m creating, I’m building the vision and doing all those things.

Yeah. But I’m not critical to the day to day execution. So I’ve done everything that we’ve talked about here. You know, I might get hit by a car while I’m riding my bike. I once had a really bad accident and I was in the hospital for five days. Like, right. You just don’t know. And so I have built the foundation for that.

So communicating it, I think is a little bit easier. From that perspective. But if you’re in it day to day, it’s going to be a lot harder. I have a friend who runs a web design firm here and they have 45 maybe employees, 50 employees, and he started preparing for the time off at least six months in advance.

They would have, they were having meetings, they were creating, you know, expectations on all that. And I bet it took him probably six to eight months to prepare to leave.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think that’s realistic because it really you have to make sure you’ve got all of these systems in place and that you’ve, you’ve thought through, you know, what are the things that are going to need to be handled in that time period?

so that you can set it up so that you’re not being constantly interrupted with emergencies because they were simply things that, You know, you could have foreseen, but you didn’t. And so, you know, you want to foresee as much as possible and, and get it all laid out so that everybody has a clear understanding.

And I think, you know, with, with communications, you’re absolutely right. That if you are, if you are not involved with clients, it becomes a whole lot easier, right? Because essentially six months later, you pop back up and they’re like, Oh, you were gone. We

Gini Dietrich: didn’t even know that’s the ideal, right? And

Chip Griffin: I know we have a lot of, you know, solos or super solos who are listening to us.

You know, you’re in a much more difficult position in my business. I can’t take a sabbatical right now from this business, because

Gini Dietrich: understandably

Chip Griffin: clients would not want to pay for coaching from nobody,

Gini Dietrich: nobody. And

Chip Griffin: it would be unreasonable for me to expect that. Right. So I can’t even, I can’t go to Europe for a month.

If I want to right now without working, because nobody’s going to pay me. For nothing. It doesn’t work that way. Right, right, right. So, so you have to be realistic about it, and you have to figure out what’s going to work in your situation. So, you know, I guess that, that brings us to the end, which will allow us to give that sum up advice, which you’ve already mentioned.

But I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends. Thank you for listening to the Agency Leadership Podcast. You can watch or listen to every episode by visiting agency, leadership, podcast. com or subscribing on your favorite podcast player. We would also love it. If you would leave a rating review at iTunes or wherever you go to find podcasts, be sure to check out Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks.

com and join the Spin Sucks community at Spin Sucks. com slash spin dash sucks. Community. You can learn more about me, Chip Griffin at small agency growth. 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.firpodcastnetwork. com. We welcome your feedback and suggestions and look forward to being back with you again next week.