EP 365: Weathering an economic storm with recession planning with Drew McLellan

10/03/22 • 31 min

We’ve all been hearing it: a storm is coming. Or maybe it’s not. Depending on who you ask, we don’t know what our economic future holds. But one thing is for sure, if you stay prepared with recession planning, regardless of what the economy is doing, you can hold strong against those unexpected changes much more easily. In this solocast episode, I will share with you the best ways you can start recession planning even if your agency is financially okay right now. It’s never the wrong time to start looking at how you can operate better, earn more profit, and keep great clients and employees, no matter the economic outlook.

Instead of waiting out the economic storm and wishing you had been better prepared, start making changes today and know that you have the power to pull yourself through anything while still making a profit. You just need to be smart about it.

For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Things you should already be doing for recession planning
Why you should be raising your hourly rates
How to prepare yourself against a longer sales cycle
The importance of renewing contracts and locking in good clients now
The good and the bad of employee staffing during a recession
Why having too much money in your agency is a bad thing
The importance of maintaining a good attitude with your team
Why you can still be profitable even if there’s a recession

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Things you should already be doing for recession planning
Why you should be raising your hourly rates
How to prepare yourself against a longer sales cycle
The importance of renewing contracts and locking in good clients now
The good and the bad of employee staffing during a recession
Why having too much money in your agency is a bad thing
The importance of maintaining a good attitude with your team
Why you can still be profitable even if there’s a recession

Previous Episode

EP 364: Marrying creativity with technology for brand awareness innovation with Alvaro Melendez

What do you think of when you hear about Disney? Fireworks, castles, and happy families all probably came to mind for a moment. But you probably didn’t think of dishware — and we’re not talking about those cups from the 90s with Lion King characters on them that were in every family’s kitchen cabinets.

Today’s guest, Alvaro Melendez, knows brands deeply in a way that most of us could never even imagine. If you think you know the core of what makes a brand who they are, think again. Alvaro has been developing and using machine learning to measure brand awareness or “Brand Love” for years to help companies, both big and small, understand what makes people connect with them.

In this episode, we discuss how Alvaro uses technology to help brands reach a bigger audience. He speaks about how to advertise effectively, how DEI is imperative for brands, and how creativity and technology go hand-in-hand in brand innovation.

And, if you’re still wondering why Disney is defined by dishware, you’ll just have to tune in to the podcast to get your answer.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

How Alvaro and his team are using machine learning to make brands trackable
Why organic social is the best way to advertise and promote your brand
How machine learning has taught major brands things they never knew about themselves
What the PPAI branding framework is, and how to use it to identify major brand metrics
How smaller agencies can learn from the experimentation of big brands
The importance of making DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) a huge part of your brand identity
Why creativity and storytelling must still be people-centered and collaborative in an automated world

Next Episode

EP 366: Agency metrics and what to measure with Marcel Petitpas

We always say, “What you measure matters,” on the podcast, and today is no exception. To keep you and your team fed, you need to measure metrics in your agency. Without this vital system in place, you likely have no idea how much money is coming in or being spent, which directly affects your team. That’s why we have Marcel Petitpas here to teach us all about running your agency by the numbers. He’s the expert in AGIs, delivery margins, and profit and loss statements, and he knows how to keep agencies on the right track.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the most important metrics agencies should already be measuring, how to improve time utilization, calculate billable rates, and the importance of excellent project management. It might seem like an intimidating topic, but we promise that it’s not as painful as it looks, and it will make your life so much easier once you make the changes we discuss in this episode.

Marcel Petitpas is the CEO & Co-Founder of Parakeeto, a company dedicated to helping agencies measure and improve their profitability by streamlining their operations and reporting systems, a problem he discovered while running his own agency back in his early 20’s.

He’s also the fractional COO at Gold Front, an award-winning creative agency in San Francisco working with brands like Uber, Slack, Keap, and more. As well as the head strategic coach at SaaS Academy by Dan Martell, the #1 coaching program for B2B SaaS businesses in the world.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: