Agency Leadership Podcast Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich

Chip and Gini get asked frequently about the state of the economy, the prospects of a recession, and what it means for agency owners. Not just now in 2023, but all the time. For years.







But what is the state of things right now, in Q2 of 2023?







The co-hosts explore what they’re hearing and seeing from agencies that they’re talking to. If prospects are being more cautious and more risk-averse, what does that mean for the length of agency sales cycles and the types of projects that are more likely to succeed?







How can you find opportunity in the mix and what can you do to protect yourself?







Key takeaways









* Chip Griffin: “Even in the worst economic times, there are still agencies that will do well because they’re working with clients who are continuing to be willing to spend.”







* Gini Dietrich: “If you can show flexibility and willingness to work with clients, they are going to remember that when times are good and they’re ready to rehire.”







* Chip Griffin: “Just get out there and start talking to people.”







* Gini Dietrich: “Don’t make decisions or do things out of fear.”









Related









* Agencies and the possible Recession of 2022







* Let’s talk about the “R” word







* How agencies can prepare for the coming recession (part 1 of 2)







* How agencies can prepare for the coming recession (part 2 of 2)











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The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.







Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.







Gini Dietrich: O…M…G.







Chip Griffin: The topic today naturally is are things slowing down just like I was right after this.







Perhaps one of my worst, worst openings yet. But hey.







Gini Dietrich: Oh, actually, I was gonna say the best part about your openings is I never know what’s coming, so







Chip Griffin: neither do i. I mean,







Gini Dietrich: when you did that, I was like, what’s happening right now?







Chip Griffin: I was just thinking in my head, slow down. How can I, oh, I can just speak slowly.







Gini Dietrich: There we go.







Chip Griffin: There you go. So in the moment,







Gini Dietrich: I love it. I love it.







Chip Griffin: This, this gives listeners a window into how my mind works and mm-hmm. It’s pretty disturbing at times.







Gini Dietrich: It’s, it is, but that’s okay. That’s why we love you.







Chip Griffin: In any case, we are gonna talk about whether or not things are starting to slow down for agencies, because I mean, we’ve been being asked this question since before the pandemic, during the pandemic, after the pandemic.







And it’s, but it’s picking up steam yet again. More and more people are asking about it.

While many agency owners believe that recurring revenue is the answer to all of their problems, the reality is that a large number of agencies become quite successful by generating most of their income from individual projects.







However, project work comes with a unique set of challenges, especially as it relates to dealing with clients who may end up inadvertently delaying completion of a project.







The unpredictability of resourcing and revenue that these delays can create mean that agency owners need to find ways to account for that.







Chip and Gini offer tips for improving cash flow, minimizing delays, and increasing your flexibility to handle the ebbs and flows common with project-focused agencies.







Key takeaways









* Chip Griffin: “People shouldn’t turn away from project-based work simply because of the challenges.They just need to be thoughtful about how they go about doing it.”







* Gini Dietrich: “As the agency owner do not say, well, I’ll just do it myself.”







* Chip Griffin: “You need trip wires, fail safes, whatever you want to call it, to make sure that you don’t get In a bind because a client didn’t get you what you needed in a timely fashion.”







* Gini Dietrich: “Hope is not a strategy.”











View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.







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 I’ve got a real project conundrum for you right after this.







Gini Dietrich: Conundrums such a great word.







Chip Griffin: I, I, I really like conundrum.







Gini Dietrich: You like that word? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really good word.







Chip Griffin: I don’t know whether it was the right word here, but That’s okay. It was, it works as, as every regular listener knows, I just make this stuff up literally on the fly Sometimes it literally works and sometimes it doesn’t.







Last week it did not work at all.







No, no. But you know, it is what it is, and it just adds to the adventure of this recording. That’s right. And really, as we said before we do this recording for ourselves, the fact that listeners come along for it is that’s just an added benefit. So let’s talk about agencies that rely mostly on project work.







And there’s all sorts of different kinds of agencies that might do this. You know, might have web development agencies, for example, design agencies, even some PR agencies, particularly if they’re more crisis focused or something like that, might have either all or a large chunk of their business in project work.







And I think this creates some unique challenges for agencies to think about because everything from cash flow predictability to resource planning to, I mean all sorts of different things are, are much more challenging when you are project-based. But I don’t think that people should turn away from project-based work simply because of that.







They just need to be thoughtful about how they go about doing it.







Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And, and I will say from my experience, one of the biggest challenges that we have with project work is they’re usually milestone reliant. So you hit a milestone, you get a check, right?

In this episode, Chip and Gini review the recently released PR Council guidelines for the use of generative AI by agencies.







They explore which elements small agencies might consider adopting, as well as identifying others that may warrant more of a “wait and see” approach.







As the use of AI by communicators continues to expand, there will be many thorny issues to navigate. The PR Council guidelines provide a useful starting point for some of these discussions.







Key takeaways









* Chip Griffin: “To sum up my guidelines, the Chip Griffin guidelines for using AI, just use some common sense and understand your own risk tolerance and the risk tolerance of your clients.”







* Gini Dietrich: “We shouldn’t let this scare us. Let’s just use the tool to make us more effective.”







* Chip Griffin: “Ethics are never going away here.”







* Gini Dietrich: “Our jobs as the protectors of reputation…AI is not going to change that. We will still have jobs.”









Related









* PR Council issues generative AI guidelines for agencies











View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.







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: Today we’re gonna talk about, yeah, we’re gonna just gonna talk about the PR Council guidelines on AI. I mean, that’s, that’s –







Gini Dietrich: you got nothing. That’s nothing.







Chip Griffin: I just, no, like not creative. It is what it is.







All right. If only I had some AI, maybe it could have helped me do a better intro. After this,







definitely not one of my better openings.







Gini Dietrich: Nope. But it was honest and it is what we’re talking about.







Chip Griffin: It is. Honesty, transparency, ethics, all those kinds of things come together because as we are all thinking about artificial intelligence and a particularly generative AI, we’re considering not just how we use it as an agency from a business perspective.







How does it fit into our client needs? How does it impact our business models? We also need to be thinking about how do we use it ethically, appropriately? What kind of disclosures do we need to make? All of those kinds of things. And the PR Council, Has taken a stab at a a, a, essentially, I, I view it as a first draft of how you should approach generative AI as an agency. And they put together a task force that took a look at it and they, my understanding is that the task force had people of differing views of AI, some who thought it was great, and some who thought it, you know, I dunno whether they thought it was evil, but at least they weren’t nearly as keen on it as, as I think, the way that it was described.







And so it, it does bring together a lot of different ideas. It does have a bit of a feel of something written by committee as these things do because it was. Right. Yeah. Great. So, so it’s, it’s hard to hide that fact and everybody kind of gets their own, their own checkbox in there I think. But there’s still a lot of useful things in there and I think particularly for small agencies being ...

Agency owners often micromanage their employees without even realizing it. They think that they are merely seeking better results, when in fact, they are slowing things down and demoralizing their teams.







When Chip and Gini speak with many owners, they express frustration with how many hours they work and how they can’t spend enough time on building the business because they are so deeply in the weeds.







The reality is that leaders need to trust their team members to do a good job — and then support them in that effort. Constant editing and fussing over the details adds little value.







Chip and Gini offer tips on how to break the cycle of micromanagement and empower your team to produce the best results possible.







Key takeaways









* Gini Dietrich: “Why have you hired experts to do this job for you if you’re not going to let them do the job?”







* Chip Griffin: “You want to take time off. You want to get work off of your plate. You know what is the best way to do that? Take a week off and get work off your plate.”







* Gini Dietrich: “Why is my churn so high? Why are people leaving? It’s because you’re micromanaging them.”







* Chip Griffin: “What does perfect get you?”









Related









* Letting go as an agency owner











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The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.







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 Gini I’ve gotta go over how you keep track of the topics that you would like to discuss on this show. We’re gonna need to go through step by step what I need you to do, and I’m gonna watch you while you do it to make sure you do it correctly.







Gini Dietrich: Great. Can’t wait.







Chip Griffin: Right after this.







So see, I just don’t think that keeping topic ideas on a post-it note makes sense. I think we’ve got a shared Google Doc that that is a, the appropriate place for this. And you know, I don’t care whether the job gets done well, I don’t care whether you’ve got good ideas for topics and you can use the Post-It to remind – you need to do it my way, exactly my way, otherwise I’m gonna be unhappy.







Gini Dietrich: I really wanna flip you off right now, but I’m going to try to think of an appropriate response that’s not that,







Chip Griffin: well now, you know, if you’re listening, how your employees feel when you do this to them. Mm-hmm. And you micromanage them. Mm-hmm. Which is the topic for today’s show, because we know that, that most of you will profess not to be micromanagers and you say, I don’t wanna micromanage my team.







And yet I think it’s fair to say that, that Gini and I consistently see you guys micromanaging your teams.







Gini Dietrich: Absolutely, yes. 100%. And it’s in the form of things like, oh, well this document needs a second set of eyes, and then you rewrite the whole thing. Or I don’t really trust that person to go to the meeting by themselves, so I’m gonna go too.

In this episode, Chip and Gini offer up some tough love for many agency owners who aren’t compensating themselves fairly.







The co-hosts discuss the need for two income streams: compensation for work provided to the agency and profit-taking as a reward for entrepreneurial risk.







They talk about the different ways that owners can take compensation, the value of getting professional advice, and specific areas where they have seen owners miss opportunities.







Key takeaways









* Gini Dietrich: “Just because you own the business does not mean you should be giving your time away for free. Ever.”







* Chip Griffin: “If you’re in the United States and you’re an agency owner and you’re paying yourself less than six figures, there’s something wrong.”







* Gini Dietrich: “You can’t go to work every day and not be compensated for the work that you’re doing. You just can’t, nobody does.”







* Chip Griffin: “When you’re thinking about how you calculate your compensation for the work you’re doing, not the profit piece, just the work you’re doing, it needs to be substantially more than your highest paid employee.”









Related









* Ways you can compensate yourself as an agency owner







* The difference between agency owner compensation and profits











View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.







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 Gini, I want to talk about our compensation today, because I think, I think it’s about time we started paying ourselves.







Gini Dietrich: I agree. Boom. Do it.







Chip Griffin: Right after this.







So today we’re gonna talk about owner compensation at agencies because this is something that I think a lot of owners struggle with getting correct for all sorts of reasons. First of all, I think they don’t think about it correctly and, and how they should be compensating themselves. They don’t think about all of the tools that they have to compensate themselves, and they don’t use the right numbers for compensation.







So I, yes. We can explore this from a lot of different angles, but I think fundamentally, if you’re going to be running a successful agency, you need to be taking the kind of compensation that makes you happy to be doing it. But you also need to be taking the compensation that fairly represents the work that you’re doing, right, so that you know whether the business is performing well or not.







Because too often I go into an agency and I look at their books and they tell me, oh yeah, we’ve got a 40% profit margin. We’re just killing it. And then I find out they’re not paying themselves.







Gini Dietrich: They’re not paying themselves. I’m like, So you don’t actually have a 40% profit margin.







Chip Griffin: Correct. And so that, I mean, and,

Most public relations agencies hire employees with a mix of experience. Some already have a proven track record in generating media coverage, while others have only just begun to learn the ropes.







In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how agency leaders can help their team members to develop the skills and knowledge needed to produce excellent results for clients.







The key is understanding the needs and learning styles of each individual so that the appropriate type and level of support can be provided.







Resources









* Spin Sucks Community









Key takeaways









* Chip Griffin: “Do you want to invest the time and money in training or do you want to invest in the salary of someone who already has that training and experience?”







* Gini Dietrich: “There’s no real replacement from learning from people who have more experience. You can’t replace that with an online course or professional development.”







* Chip Griffin: “Just because they have a job history does not mean that they have expertise.”







* Gini Dietrich: “Make sure they don’t drown, but do allow them the opportunity to fail because that is where they will learn. It’s where we all learn.”









Related









* How to help junior agency employees grow











View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.







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: Gini, can you explain this whole PR thing to me? I, I don’t really understand it, and I, I think I need to know how to do it.







Gini Dietrich: Sure, no problem.







Chip Griffin: All right. Right after this.







So. PR. Yes. It’s what a lot of our listeners do. Mm-hmm. At least it’s one of the services that they offer. And when you hire a new employee, you gotta figure out, how do I teach these people how to do PR if they’re not someone who comes into it with PR experience? And this is a question that came up in the Spin Sucks Community lately, so I thought it would be a good one for us to talk about.







Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean the, the specific question was curious for all you PR pros who own… who run your own service agency, have you come across any great sources on resources on how to approach training, new hires to do pr? And it’s an interesting question cuz it was posted and I was like, huh. I guess we do it by just giving them the work to do and coaching them through it. Like I, we don’t necessarily, you know, send them out for professional development specific to quote unquote PR. Like, we may do things on writing, we may do things on, certainly we make everybody here go through the Peso Model certification. We might do some things on media relations but we, so we would take cer certain skill sets, but just to say, oh, you’re in PR now and, and you’re working in PR, we’re gonna give you that kind of professional development is really more on the job training types of things.







Chip Griffin: So, I mean, let’s back it up a minute. When you’re hiring,