🧩🖊️🌳  Dear Agency Founder

This article wanted to be different

I had worked in a large agency and I wanted to do things differently.

Not just agency things, but 'how business works' things. Meetings and management. Remove some obstacles that got in the way of great work.

We were small, so we didn't have time for a lot of process, nor did we need it.

And because I was trying to do things differently, I imagined a world where we'd never need it.

The internet was new and brought new ways of running companies. I had my heroes; they were leaving the old ways behind and seemingly doing fine.

This article is a reality check for that version of me.

The rules

There are certain fundamental rules of business. The reasons some of them exist will reveal themselves as you grow.

Let's look at two that I see people resisting: new business and line management. However for you it might be something else, client relationship building or financial planning.

An area you find hard, that you outwardly are saying you need less of, and internally are hoping you can do without.

Line management

When I started an agency, and before I had any of the headaches (and joys 😇) of employees.

I wanted to get away from line management, hierarchy and the inefficiency that I saw.

I would read about companies that had adopted structures with no managers and fewer rules. The places that ideas like unlimited holiday came from.

This seemed incredibly radical to me. It was instinctively how I wanted to do things.

But as you grow, you realise that those structures are in place to be effective and to do your duty by the people you've employed.

You will employ amazing people. Their careers are in your hands and you need to attend to that in some way. If you don't, then it will unravel and you won't get the most out of them.

Even as we grew we kept fibbing to ourselves, “we’ll only employ senior people, they don’t need managing”. Well, actually they do. Everyone does.

You don't have to be a pyramid, but you do need to understand what people need from you as an employer and deliver that in some way. You can't just ignore it.

New business example

Another area that people resist is sales and marketing. We all experience too much bad sales. When you have set out to serve your clients with authenticity, being salesy is repellent.

There is another way, but it isn't doing no sales. We can be tricked into thinking it's possible to just let it sort itself out when we see others approaching it the way we want to and making it work without hard-selling.

Those people have done something, because something meant we noticed them. It could have been:

Maybe they've done great work and then been invited to talk about it on a podcast. Whatever the intention was in that, it is new business. A type of PR to be exact. If your agency isn’t being invited to talk about your work on a podcast then you need to do something else.

I suggest not just waiting to see if you get lucky.

Make it as authentic as you want, just make sure it happens because we absolutely never hear of the agencies that ignore it.

Be aware of why you want to be different

Whether it's the examples above or another part of business that you dislike (finances, anyone?), you need to be aware of the "I'll do it differently" voice in your head that I had.

Try completing this sentence: I'm not doing this thing because:

  1. I understand it and I'm going to innovate a better way
  2. I'm resisting it because I find it hard or boring

If you are choosing to do away with a proven process. What are you going to replace it with? If the answer is nothing, then expect a headache. And running an agency is enough headaches as it is.

Being different doesn't mean doing everything differently.

You can go off-the-shelf for some of your processes and still change the world. Put the growth mindset down and allow yourself the ‘adopt mindset’ for some things.

Once you understand them, you can find a better way and then tell the world about it.

Maybe you’ll get invited on a podcast.