Agency Leadership Podcast

Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich
  • 4.8 (19)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich help PR and marketing agency owners make better decisions about the businesses they run. With 300+ episodes, the Agency Leadership Podcast covers the topics owners deal with every week: pricing, profitability, hiring, client management, positioning, and what it takes to build an agency worth owning. Chip is the founder of SAGA Agency Growth Advisors and creator of the Build to Own approach. Gini is the founder of Spin Sucks and creator of the PESO Model. 

  1. 2d ago

    The top two traits for new agency hires

    If you’re screening candidates on experience or technical skills, you may be making a mistake. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that curiosity and problem-solving are the two traits that separate great hires from mediocre ones, and neither one can be taught from scratch. Most agency skills, from writing a press release to running Google Ads to using AI tools, can be picked up on the job. Curiosity and problem-solving are different: people either arrive with some baseline capacity for them, or they don’t. Gini makes it about AI, where ever-evolving tools and audience behavior reward the people who keep asking questions instead of coasting on routine. The two discuss how to actually screen for these traits in a couple hours of interviewing. Gini leaves 15 to 20 minutes at the end for the candidate’s questions and reads a lot into what they ask, or whether they ask anything at all. Chip changes up the order entirely, opening by asking the candidate what questions they have for him before he’s asked anything himself, and he’ll throw a candidate’s own question right back at them to see how they handle being put on the spot. Both dismiss scenario-based questions and interview theater like “what animal would you be” as close to useless. Gini also flags a habit she’s trying to break on her own team, being “Gini-GPT,” where people default to asking her for the fast answer instead of working through problems themselves. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “Curiosity and problem-solving in my experience are things that most people either have or they don’t. And they can perfect it, they can improve it, but starting with a clean slate there is gonna be much tougher than teaching someone how to write a press release.” Gini Dietrich: “You can teach how to write a release, how to use AI, how to pitch to media, how to write content, how to do Google Ads or social media ads. Those are skills you can teach. The innate sort of curiosity and wanting to know more, that can’t be taught.” Chip Griffin: “If the questions are all about, ‘Well, how much does it pay, and what are my hours? And do I have to work weekends?’ And that kind of thing, then clearly they’re not curious. They’re just looking to punch their ticket.” Gini Dietrich: “I think problem-solving and curiosity are two of the most important things that you can hire for, because like I said, you can teach many skills. You might be frustrated if you’re teaching a seven-year professional how to write a news release, but you can still teach it.” Related Hire people who understand how to solve problems Rethink entry-level hiring to succeed in the AI era Balancing skills and personality when hiring a new team member 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: You know, Gini, we have a problem today with this recording, and I’m curious as to how we’re going to solve it. Gini Dietrich: Oh, boy. I live, I live for your intros ’cause I never know what they are. They’re always really bad. You come up with them on the literal fly. Chip Griffin: On the fly as I watch that five, four, three, two, one on the screen … I dream something up, which is, uh… I mean, that’s more thought than we sometimes give to what we’re gonna do for an episode. Although we have- at some point we’ll talk about our new system for this, because we have- Gini Dietrich: We do have a new system, and it’s very good … Chip Griffin: it, it is- Gini Dietrich: It’s very, it’s very good. Thanks to you. Chip Griffin: You know, thanks to me with a little, little assist from Claude, so, Gini Dietrich: It’s very good … Chip Griffin: but we’ll talk more about that in a future episode. But no, today, normally we, to record this episode, or each episode, we get together, we kibitz for a bit and talk about the world, and then we end up recording as soon as we look at the clock and say, “Oh my God, we’re about to run out of time- Right. … to actually record something before our next meeting.” Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: Um, because really, this show is just an excuse for us to have social hour. I mean, let’s, let’s be honest. That’s- Gini Dietrich: Right, yes … Chip Griffin: we happen to end up with content out of it. But today- Gini Dietrich: We do happen to end up with content because of it, Chip Griffin: but today it turns out you’re getting a grocery delivery right in the middle of when we would normally be having that panicked conversation about how we’re gonna record in time. Gini Dietrich: Correct, yes. Chip Griffin: So- Gini Dietrich: There, there was a- Chip Griffin: We’re flipping the script as they like to say … Gini Dietrich: that was like an hour early, so- Chip Griffin: Yes … Yes. But- Gini Dietrich: Although right now it says five stops away even though it’s only four block- … the, the GPS shows they’re only four blocks away, so maybe it’s five stops in between four blocks of- Chip Griffin: So, so basically, if all of a sudden Gini disappears in the middle of this episode- Gini Dietrich: You’ll know why Chip Griffin: you’ll know why. It’s because she didn’t want her milk to spoil, so. Anyway- … we’ll do our best to muddle through as we always do, but we are gonna be talking about curiosity and problem-solving, because I firmly believe that those are the two qualities that agencies should be hiring for first and foremost, not worrying so much about what experience do they have working with the particular industry that you serve, or even their specific technical capabilities for whatever role they may have. Because a lot of those things can be taught, but curiosity and problem-solving in my experience are things that most people either have or they don’t. And they can, they can perfect it, they can improve it, but starting with a clean slate there is gonna be much tougher than teaching someone how to write a press release or teaching someone about the industry that you’re primarily working with. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s, it’s the things, like when you think about the type of people that you want on your team and the things that you can teach versus the things that kind of come innately, and I think you’re right, curiosity and problem-solving are the, the critical thinking skills are the things that you can’t really teach. You, they, people have to come with those. They either have it or they don’t. You can teach how to write a release, how to use AI, how to pitch to media, how to write content, how to do Google Ads or social media ads. Like, you can teach those. Those are skills you can teach. The innate sort of curiosity and wanting to know more, like that’s, that can’t be taught. That’s, that’s just something that people either come with or they don’t. Chip Griffin: And, and curiosity is taking on increasing importance in the age of AI- Gini Dietrich: I think so, yeah Chip Griffin:… because things, things are changing so quickly and so we need to be not just creative, but we need to understand, you know, how to take advantage of all of the tools that we have, how the audience behavior is shifting right under our feet, and all of those things benefit from curiosity. But I think as we look at problem-solving, I mean, that’s fundamentally agency-client relationships are about just a continuous cycle of problem-solving. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Right? I mean, you… From the problem-solving to acquire the client, to onboarding the client, to keeping the client, to dealing with team members, look, it’s all problem-solving just over and over again, and I think most agency owners, if they looked at how they spent their week, they would be spending a lot of it solving one problem or another. And, and problems don’t necessarily have to be bad things, right? Problems can be just challenges. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah, of course. Chip Griffin: But you, you gotta try to figure out how to surmount whatever is in front of you. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, I think, I think a good way to think about this, especially for agency owners, is when you think about the work that you do with clients, which kinds of clients are really fun to work with, and which ones kind of make you wanna poke your eyeballs out? For instance, we have a client who, their chief communications officer is so incredibly curious that he’s constantly… He– like, he and I are always like brr, to the point where our teams are all like, “What’s happening here?” But be- but he’s- he and I are at the same curiosity level where we’re constantly asking questions, and for me, it’s so fun to work with him. It’s so fun. Every time I get an email from him or he texts me and he wants to call, I’m like, “Yes,” because I know we’re gonna have a really good conversation, versus the clients who are like, “I don’t understand why we would use social media for the business when, you know, social media is for the kids,” even though it’s been 15 years, right? It’s the, like the, the kinds of… It’s a different kind of working relationship. And those are the people you want on your team, the ones that are curious and ask lots of questions and want to understand and want to grow and want the professional development to be able to do that. That’s who you want on your team. Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, it makes all the difference in the results that you’re producing for your firm and also for the cl

  2. Aug 27

    Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI

    Some advisers are telling agency owners they don’t need to know AI all that well themselves. They suggest owners go deep on AI for a month or three, then pass the day-to-day to the team and move on with life. In this episode, Chip and Gini explain why that’s backwards, and how owners who step back from AI are making a mistake. Chip’s argument is that AI doesn’t fit the usual delegation model because it’s moving too fast and touching too much of the business to hand off after just a few months of study. Gini agrees, noting that advice which made sense six months ago is often stale today. Both connect this to credibility with the team: Chip compares the situation to a non-technical manager overseeing developers, who then gets disrespected because they don’t speak the language. Gini says her own coaching works because she’s in the tools constantly enough to give specific workable advice. They also describe pushing AI into something closer to a personal operating system than a work tool, from Chip wanting an assistant that catches him contradicting his own past positions, to Gini’s agent that calls her out when she takes on work she said she’d delegate, telling her flatly it’s not the best use of her time. The episode closes with the advice that staying curious personally is what keeps owners sharp enough to lead a team through a tool that keeps rewriting its own rules. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “You need to be in the trenches on AI, at least for the foreseeable future.” Gini Dietrich: “I honestly and truly do not know how I did my job five years ago.” Chip Griffin: “You just don’t come across as confident if you haven’t tried it yourself.” Gini Dietrich: “If you simply get a general knowledge and then leave off in delegation, you’re not getting anywhere near the value that you ought to be.” Related AI should be your agency’s friend, not foe Stop chasing AI tools: Start with what actually hurts Using AI the right way for agency biz dev 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 have no creative introduction whatsoever. Gini Dietrich: That’s fine- So maybe- … because I’m gonna phew. Chip Griffin: So maybe, maybe we should just take a, a deep dive for w- you know- … couple of minutes here and try to figure out what it is that we’re gonna talk about today. Gini Dietrich: We’re gonna talk about the bro culture who told agency owners to use AI for three months and then not again. Chip Griffin: Yes. apparently, agency owners need to, to really get up to speed on AI, but then just to hand it all off to the team and move on with their lives. Gini Dietrich: This is the most ridiculous, ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard, and I understand that I don’t have context ’cause I didn’t watch the bro video, but that’s ludicrous. Chip Griffin: And in fairness, I watched it a while back, so my context is a little bit off too. But it- look, this is, this is not, this is not one-off advice. I mean, frequently I hear people advise, you know, agency owners to, to have some general knowledge of something but then to let go. And, I think in some cases that may be worthwhile. But I think AI is moving so fast- … and has such an impact on our businesses that, that we need to … as leaders, we need to remain curious, we need to be hands-on. We cannot simply rely on our teams to do this because it is transformational to our businesses and to our industry, and that’s not something that you leave in the hands of somebody else. Gini Dietrich: Yes, and I know I’ve said this before, but I honestly and truly do not know how I did my job five years ago. Chip Griffin: Yep. Gini Dietrich: Because, it’s such a huge thinking partner for me to help me figure out what I’m missing, what holes I need to fill, what’s overly complicated, what’s too jargony. Like, I don’t know how I did my job without it. So the idea that you would do a deep dive for three months and then be like, “Okay, everybody else take over,” like that doesn’t, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Chip Griffin: No, it does not. Now, in fairness, I think, I think what they were saying was sort of hand over the day-to-day of it, and you can certainly still use it to help you with your own writing and the basic stuff. But I, think you still need to be beyond that. I think you need to be pushing- Yes … the envelope yourself- Yes … experimenting, innovating- Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes … Chip Griffin: inspiring your team. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: And, if you’re not doing that, you’re not getting the most out of it that you can. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Like, yes, because this is one of those things that if you’re not using it, you don’t know what has changed, and it’s changing so fast, right? I mean, a couple of weeks ago, Claude came out and said that they’re watermarking everything, and you can’t just retype it into a new document because the watermark is in the tokens and how it thinks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And everybody freaked out. Like, everybody’s using AI. So, okay, so it’s watermarked. Like, we all know we’re using it. Everybody’s using it. I use it, you use it. Everybody uses it. Like, okay, so it’s being watermarked, but like, if you’re not using it and understanding it and evolving with it, then you might freak out about that. But it’s not that big of a deal. Chip Griffin: It is absolutely not that big of a deal. It’s stupid, in fact, but, you know, if it, if it amuses somebody to, do that, fine. I’m sure that somebody will figure out how to, to reveal those watermarks and post gotchas, kinda like in the old days when people were like, “Gotcha, that CEO didn’t write their own blog post.” No, duh. Gini Dietrich: Really? Yeah. Chip Griffin: And, and, and, their shareholders don’t want them to do that either. Gini Dietrich: Correct. Right. Yes. Chip Griffin: Not, at their hourly rates. And- No … and that, and that was 20 years ago before their hourly rates got to where many CEOs- Right … have their hourly rates today. But in any case, so you Chip Griffin: need to be learning and experimenting and understanding how it’s evolving, because, I mean, even some of the advice that, you know, someone might have given you or I might have given six months ago is not the same advice I would give today. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: And, in fact, you know, some of the things about, you know, the importance of providing instructions and guardrails and all that kind of stuff, that may be shifting. You know, we’re now seeing Anthropic saying, “Well, that’s, that’s not really the best way to get things out of the, the more recent versions of Opus and Fable and that kind of stuff. You actually wanna give it more freedom than you did before, otherwise you may not like the results.” And- Yeah … and those things are changing. You know, a, a couple years ago, everybody was like, “You need to tell it what kind of mindset to have. Act as a social media strategist.” Nobody will tell you that today, because that’s not the best way to get stuff out of it. But if you’re not continuing to experiment and roll up your sleeves and be in there day to day and figure out not only how it can help your business, but how it can help you personally, and that’s beyond just the thought part of it. That’s figuring out how do I make it my own personal operating system, my second brain, which I am extremely passionate about, and I think that, most agency owners should really be thinking about this whole, you know, whether, you wanna call it that operating system or second brain concept, having something that really knows you and as much about you as possible so that it’s really there, not even just as a thinking partner or a sparring partner. I mean, it’s, there as a mini you- Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: That can help you to think things through and not forget stuff, which- Yep … as I get older, is more and more important. Gini Dietrich: Well, and one of the things that I’ve done is I do– I’ve done exactly like that. I’ve done exactly that, and I think I’ve talked about this before, that I have a co-CEO agent that I’ve built, and it will s- it kinda, it kinda makes me mad sometimes. But one of the goals that we have inside my organization is to have everything less dependent on me, because right now the, the business is very founder-led. It’s, you know, I’m the thought leader, I’m the brand, all of those things, and it’s a big, big goal over the next three to five years to extract me from some of that and start to build other leaders inside the organization that, you know, can help us scale and do all of those things. So my AI knows that, and I will do something, and it will say Is this the best use of your time? I thought you were trying to extract yourself, and I’m like, “Ugh. Fine!” Chip Griffin: See, yours is more polite than mine because mine will just straight up tell me that it’s not a good use of my time. Yeah, yeah, sometimes it will do that, yeah. and, that I shouldn’t do it. Yeah. Or, my other favorite is it will say, “Well, this does not, you know, match what you said in, you know- 2022.” Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah. Chip Griffin: You know, “Why are you saying this now?” Or something like that. Gini Dietrich: What has changed, or yeah. Yeah, yeah … Chip Griffin: yeah, what has changed, or just it’s, it’

  3. Aug 13

    The audience has (and always will) matter most for PR and marketing leaders

    Times change, but somehow the job hasn’t. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into what’s stayed constant across their combined decades in PR and marketing, and why chasing the latest platform update is a losing game if you’ve lost sight of the fundamentals underneath it. The episode was sparked by a LinkedIn series from Doug Simon, who asked longtime PR pros what has remained constant in their careers. Gini was asked the question of whether the PESO Model still holds up, and her answer is that the four media types haven’t gone anywhere, and earned media’s third-party credibility now matters more to how LLMs learn. Chip extends the logic to SEO and its successors, advising to chase the people, not the algorithm or the platform. Other changes may also have less of an impact than you might think. Influencer marketing is the latest version of celebrity TV endorsements, but with a YouTube channel. The agency-client relationship continues to run on the same dynamics it did 70 or 80 years ago. Gini brings up the story about a UK agency reportedly running AI agents to pitch journalists undetected for eight months. Chip’s take is that just like with interns and inexperienced team members, there are well-managed AI agents as well as poorly managed ones. It’s the human factor that matters most. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “If you lose sight of the fundamentals, you can have all the technology in the world, and you’re still gonna have rubbish results.” Gini Dietrich: “If you create content for humans, you will win the SEO game. You will win the AEO, GEO game. You will win whatever comes next game.” Chip Griffin: “Chase the people. Don’t chase the algorithm.” Gini Dietrich: “Your job, especially as a communicator, is to protect reputation, build brand, and create thought leadership. That has not changed.” 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’m gonna have to try to rack my memory from way, way back, and as I get older, that, that distance gets longer and my memory gets poorer, so we’ll see how this works. Gini Dietrich: Ok- okay. Well, I have the same afflictions, so let’s see what happens. Chip Griffin: So we thought that this was, this was spurred by something that our friend Doug Simon did recently on LinkedIn where he did a video series and talked to a bunch of people who have been in the PR industry for a long time and asked a series of questions, one of which was, what has- Remained constant over the course of your career in PR. Obviously we talk a lot these days about everything that, that has changed, is changing. There’s no shortage of those things. I’ve talked about it here on the show, you know, how we started with fax machines and mailed press releases and things like that, that just kind of blows the mind of a lot of the younger listeners that we have. But, but even with all of that change and with everything that AI is doing to our industry today, there are a lot of things that have stayed constant. And I think that as we think about how we run our agencies, it’s important to remember the fundamentals that have remained the same no matter how much technology has changed in PR and marketing. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right that the, probably the way that we do things has changed, but not the strategic reason. Like I say to people all the time that the reason you do your job has not changed. The strategy, the strategic reason behind it has not changed. The tools have changed, for sure, but your job, especially as a communicator, is to protect reputation, build brand, and create thought leadership. That has not changed. Yeah. The way that you go about it has changed, but not, not the actual doing of the job has changed. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, the tools have changed. The landscape certainly in media has changed. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yes. Chip Griffin: The landscape in terms of the public and where they go for information and where they receive messaging and all of that, obviously that has changed substantially over the 35 plus years that I’ve been in communications. But it is still about communicating the right message at the right time to the right people. Yeah. And building relationships with the people that you are trying to influence, whether that’s a member of the media or a member of the public or potential client or whomever. And if you remember those fundamentals, it helps you to figure out how to use all of these technologies for their greatest impact. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I had a convers- I was on Zoom with Fred Cook of former GolinHarris, now at Annenberg Center. I was on Zoom with him last week, and he’s like, “So has PESO changed?” And I was like, “No, because we still do those things, right?” Like, the way that we implement it today versus the way we implemented it in 2014 are completely different, for sure. But we still use earned media, we still use shared media, we still use owned media, we still use paid media. The way that we use it has changed, but we still use the four media types. And to your point, media has changed, so earned media has changed, like the, the recipient of our earned media has changed, but the outcome of third-party credibility is probably even more important today than it was back then because that’s how the LLMs learn too, is by citable information. So yes, the way that we go about it has changed, but the actual work itself, the outcome itself has not. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think the, the important thing to think about here is that, that ultimately all of these tools and publications and platforms are all designed to connect one human to another. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And, and so you know, when you think about public relations, for example, it’s got relations right there in the title. And so you really need to think about how you are building those relationships between whoever the person is on your end and the person that you’re trying to reach. And, if you, if you take the humans out of this entirely, then you’re missing the plot, and you really need to be thinking about how do these tools and how do these techniques allow you to do more of that, to do it better, to do it at greater scale, all of those kinds of things, but not, not just, you know, chuck everything that you knew out the window, have the machines do everything on their own, for you. Gini Dietrich: No. No. Chip Griffin: Abandon proven approaches. None of those things make any sense. Gini Dietrich: No. Please do not do that because that has not changed. Like, the way I- we talked about this last week, like, AI is making us far more productive and far more efficient, but you still have to know how to, to your point, relate to other human beings. Are you creating content and engineering your visibility to show up in AI? For sure. But that’s also because human beings are using AI to get the answer, so you still have to build those relationships with other human beings. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and if you follow the fundamentals, then it allows you to evolve with whatever tools and technology- That’s right come along. It’s similar to what I’ve always said in terms of SEO in the old days and now AEO, GEO, which is chase the people. Don’t chase the algorithm. Yep. Don’t chase the platform. Yep. Chase the, the people because ultimately all of the tools are designed to do that anyway, right? Right. I mean, Google for years has been trying to figure out what is the user actually looking for and trying to deliver that in the results. And so if you are sitting there trying to say, “Hey, I need to figure out how to reach that same person,” you’ll probably be okay no matter how they change the algorithm. If you sit there and say, “I need to figure out what was the latest Google algorithm update, and what does that mean?” “How should I move things around on my page? What should I bold?” If you start thinking in those terms, you may win the short-term battle, but you will lose the war because you do not understand what you’re actually trying to do, and that has not changed over the course of our careers. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I’ve said for at least a decade, if not longer, that if you create content for humans, you will win the SEO game. You will win the AEO, GEO game. You will win whatever comes next game. Because human beings are still the ones that are purchasing your services. The robots are not. Chip Griffin: Right. Gini Dietrich: And so if you create content, if it’s whatever content it is, it’s earned media, it’s video, it’s audio, it’s written, whatever it happens to be, if that audience, number one audience is human beings, you will win all the other games. Chip Griffin: And look, even most of the things that we look at today as new, they aren’t really. They’re just, they- they’re packaged differently. I, you know- Right … we, we have all of this talk around influencers- Yes, yes … and the rise of influencers. Yes, yes. Which to me is one of the silliest things in the world. Not the influencers themselves, I mean, some of them can be silly. They’re certainly useful to us as communicators, marketers, et cetera. But that’s no different than three decades ago when we had celebrity endorsements. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: Right? The, it is just the modern-day equivalent of it, and we just define celebrity a little bit differently than we might have back, you know- Yep in the ’80s or ’90s, but ultimately it’

  4. Aug 6

    Managing “Shadow AI” at your agency

    Most agency owners probably haven’t thought much about shadow AI (the name for when employees use their personal ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini accounts to do work). In fact, owners may be doing it as well. In this episode, Chip and Gini walk through what the risks are and how to respond without overreacting. The instinct to crack down is understandable but wrong. Employees are going to use their own tools regardless, often because personal accounts are better trained or more accessible than whatever the company has set up. The goal should be education, not elimination. Most employees don’t know that personal accounts default to feeding data into training sets, or that a single toggle can turn that off. That one fix alone is worth a conversation with your team. Vibe coding and a plain-language AI policy get discussed, in addition to educating your team. Gini’s team runs weekly micro-learning sessions to help people use AI as a thinking partner, not just a drafting tool. Both Chip and Gini advise that owners and employees who aren’t using AI meaningfully within the next year or two are putting their careers and businesses at risk. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “You’re probably not going to stamp it out. So at a minimum, you need to educate employees, because a lot of employees don’t realize the risks in what they’re doing.” Gini Dietrich: “I also think that shadow AI is one thing, but there are plenty of people who are not using it at all. And I was actually kind of shocked to find that in my own organization.” Chip Griffin: “We need to avoid the knee-jerk reaction when you hear an episode like this, shadow AI, oh my God, I need to shut this down. You cannot have that reaction.” Gini Dietrich: “The real value is that AI helps you operate at a completely different level.” Resources The Birthday Dirge 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, think it’s appropriate that it suddenly got dark, in, in- Yeah. … in your office as we were trying to begin this recording- Mm-hmm … because we’re gonna be talking about being in the shadows. Gini Dietrich: Yes, we are. In the dark. But before we do that, happy birthday. Chip Griffin: Oh, thank you. Thank you. You’re welcome. I appreciate that. I thought maybe we’d escape that since- Nope … ’cause we were on hiatus during my actual- Nope … birthday month, so. Gini Dietrich: Nope. Ah, come on. Yeah. It was just a few days ago. Happy belated I guess. All right. Thank you. Especially by the time people hear this, but. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Well, nobody will really know, so. Gini Dietrich: I know. Chip Griffin: I, I, appreciate it, and I mostly appreciate that you’re not singing, so, Gini Dietrich: I can. Do you want me to? Chip Griffin: I do not. I- Okay, well- ‘Cause, ’cause isn’t, don’t you have to license “Happy Birthday,” I think? I think that’s- Gini Dietrich: Well, I have a different song. It’s a song that- Oh … the kids learned in third grade that we sing instead of “Happy Birthday.” Chip Griffin: Is, is this the dirge? Gini Dietrich: No. Chip Griffin: Oh. See, I like the birthday dirge. Gini Dietrich: I don’t know the birthday dirge. Chip Griffin: Oh, it, it, it’s, uh, it goes something like, you know, uh, another year closer to the grave or something. I mean, it’s very more… But, the- I wouldn’t- Our kids learned it, learned it at a kid’s party, you know, 20-some years ago. Oh, that’s so good. I’ll have to look it up and share it with you. It, or- I’ll look it, yeah. I’ll delete it … or maybe, maybe Jen can do that because, and maybe sh- b- maybe she can include a link to it, in, in the show notes, ’cause it is somewhat entertaining, but I, I don’t remember the lyrics, nor do I want to try to, to invent them or sing them even if I knew them. Gini Dietrich: All right, fine. Chip Griffin: But, no, the, the- Gini Dietrich: Maybe for my birthday. You have s- you have several months to, to learn it. You could sing it to me for my birthday. Chip Griffin: Well, more than several, but yes. Anywho, so moving on from that. We, are going to talk about the shadows, the deep, dark shadows of the PR world. No, we’re gonna be talking about, shadow AI, which is, in a lot of organizations, you have employees who are using their own ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever accounts to do work. They are not using corporate accounts. A lot of them do not understand the implications of it. The employees do not understand the implications. The employers do not understand the implications. And I’ve seen it, either bite people or potentially bite people of late, so I thought I would raise it as something that, that owners ought to be thinking about in the current environment. Gini Dietrich: I will tell you, not to get anyone in trouble, but almost every one of our clients, and they’re big clients, people do that. Could be, and they’re doing it from their personal devices. It could be because it’s blocked at work. It could be because what they have at work isn’t sufficient. It could be because CoWork is significantly better than, Copilot. It, like, there are lots of reasons, but people will full on pull out their phone or their iPad and do it on their personal device at work all the time. Chip Griffin: It is incredibly common, and, from my perspective and what I advise owners is that you’re probably not going to stamp it out. So at a minimum, you need to educate employees- Yep … because a lot of employees don’t realize the risks in what they’re doing, and they haven’t set up any kind of a, a process to make sure that they’re, you know, doing it as intelligently as possible at least, if they’re- Right … gonna use their own accounts. And, look, I, mean, I, don’t necessarily think that, that it’s awful for them to be doing this. I wouldn’t try to eliminate it. But you do need to educate them because a, a lot of times when I talk with rank and file employees of agencies, they don’t realize that, for example, that their personal accounts, by default, all of the data leaks out for training purposes. And it’s in many cases, depending on which tool you’re using, as simple as a toggle to make- Yep … sure that that information- Yep … does not go straight into the training sets- Yep … of these providers. And that’s the default setting on your corporate accounts if you’ve got them as an agency, but it is not the default on most personal accounts. And so just that one change can make a big difference. But I have yet to talk to any individual employee using their individual account who knows that that’s even something they can or should do. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I agree with you. I think that having just a really easy AI policy is the right way to go because I don’t– I think you’re right. I don’t think you’re gonna stamp it out. I mean, heck, I use my personal one for lots of stuff too. Mostly because I trained it before we had the corporate account, and I don’t wanna go back and retrain what I’ve already worked, what I’ve already created. So, but we just created a one-page, like, bullet points AI policy that says exactly what you said, like toggle it off. If you’re gonna be vibe coding, here’s what you need to be thinking about. You know, all of the things. I think it’s probably 12 bullet points. It’s not a huge lift, but it just helps them understand. And one of the things that we did is we spent some time building the cowork Instance for the organization, and it has, you know, our OKRs and our plan and our vision and, you know, all of the stuff, our brand kit, all of the stuff. So it’s easier for, my team now, it wasn’t six months ago, but now it’s easier for my team to use the company one because it has all of that stuff in there and it’s already been trained. Chip Griffin: Yep. Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, so I think there’s, this is a multi-stepped process. You know, part of it is the policy, part of it is education. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: Part of it is you should have a standard corporate tool that you are using. It doesn’t mean that it’s the only one, but, it should be– If you do that, it will allow you to do a lot of the information sharing, skill sharing, things like that, that ensure the consistency across the organization and make sure that everybody doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel constantly. But I think the you brought up two things that I think are worth exploring more. One probably is a separate episode in addition to this, but the other, I think, makes sense within this context. The one to sort of put a pin in and come back to is your fear of moving from your personal one to the corporate one because of the lost, you know, memory and context and all of that kind of thing. And, I think that there is, I, I, think there’s a lack of knowledge in the agency community generally about how best to capture all of the, the knowledge and things that you’re developing alongside these AI tools and making it as portable as possible. So, you know, one of the things I’ve been focused on in recent months is really making sure that, that my second brain, if you will, in AI is portable across multiple tools. And so I’ve now built it so, for example, I have one brain that I share across both my Claude and ChatGPT accounts- Gini Dietrich: Yep. I do the same thing. Yep. Chip Griffin:… so that you have consistency, and, I think it’s worth sort of explor

  5. Jun 25

    How can agency owners hold themselves accountable?

    Most agency owners will tell you accountability is something they value, but fewer will realize they’re often the biggest obstacle to it. In this episode, Chip and Gini offer suggestions for how to stop being the bottleneck at your agency. Chip tells of his own recent experience where he missed putting out a newsletter after an emergency root canal. Even with Jen repeatedly pinging him, the decision of whether to get something done rested with him. Most employees won’t push back hard because they know who signs the paychecks. The exceptions are rare, and you can’t build your accountability system around them. Gini’s structural fix has been making “less founder dependence” an explicit OKR, tracked at every leadership meeting. When the goal shows up red on a dashboard, the visibility creates its own pressure. Chip thinks it’s less about any specific single system. AI has helped him stop some procrastination, but it’s also added new projects he’d never have attempted before. His takeaway is that you need to figure out what works for your specific wiring, and not rely on someone else’s approach. For external accountability, peers, coaches, and organizations like YPO or Vistage can help, particularly for big-picture questions you wouldn’t bring to your team. But formal advisory boards are another story. Both Chip and Gini are skeptical, since even paid corporate directors with legal obligations frequently fail at the oversight function. For owner-led agencies, the complexity almost never justifies the benefit. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “The reality is that I have told many employees over the years, ‘You need to hold me accountable for this or that.’ 95% of them won’t because they know you sign the paycheck.” Gini Dietrich: “I need people to say, ‘I need this from you. You’re the bottleneck. Here’s why, and here are the consequences.’ So then I can decide, okay, well, it’s not that big of a deal, or shoot, we don’t want that. Let’s get this done.” Chip Griffin: “You need to develop systems and processes and approaches that get you to that accountability. And what works for me may not work for Gini, and may not work for you.” Gini Dietrich: “In the Spin Sucks community, there’s a group of people that they’re each other’s accountability partners. I think they meet every two weeks, and they hold each other accountable. You can certainly have a coach, like what you do. You can join a membership organization like a YPO or a Vistage or something like that.” Related Five words every agency owner needs to understand Accountability as an agency leader Who holds you accountable when you’re the boss? 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, I need some accountability. Gini Dietrich: Okay. I’d be happy to hold you accountable. That’ll actually be fun for me. Chip Griffin: It is very difficult as a business owner to, to be truly accountable, and just before we started, I was relaying how I failed to get out a newsletter last week because I was, I was tied up catching up after an emergency root canal, and so I did not get a newsletter out, and there was nobody there yelling at me to tell me that I needed… Well, actually I take that back. Jen- Gini Dietrich: I was gonna say, I’m sure Jen, I think Jen holds you accountable … Chip Griffin: Jen asked me like 400 times, “Are we actually gonna get a newsletter out today? Are you gonna send me something? Will we have something?” Gini Dietrich: I’m sure that that’s true. Chip Griffin: But, it just, it really underscores that, that as the owner, ultimately you make the decisions, and it is very difficult to have proper accountability for what you do or what you don’t do. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. It’s super hard. You know, it’s funny because we talk internally all the time about how I’m the bottleneck. And people are like, “I really need you to review this,” but there’s also six direct reports, and I’m, and six people, different people saying, “I really need you to review this.” Things get bottlenecked. I just thought, “Ugh, I’ve got my own priorities as well.” So it’s a real challenge, and even when you have, to your point, even when you have people saying, “I need this, I need this, I need this,” you ultimately make the decision on what’s the priority and whether or not it gets done. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And it’s, you know, I, think a lot of times we’ll have employees and we’ll ask, them to hold us accountable, and sometimes that works, but most of the time it doesn’t. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Right. Chip Griffin: The, reality is that I have told many employees over the years, “You need to hold me accountable for this or that.” 95% of them won’t because they know you sign the paycheck. Gini Dietrich: Right. Yes. Chip Griffin: I have been blessed to occasionally have some in that 5% who were persistent and, they would, they would come camp out in my office and say, “You told me you would get me this answer by this time. I need it.” But that’s a very, very small percentage of the people that, that I have worked with at least, and I suspect that most owners have worked with. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I think there’s, I think it’s twofold. I think there is an opportunity for your team to manage up, and by doing that, I think exactly you’re, what you’re saying, like camp out in your office. Or I have one person on my leadership team who is phenomenal at coming to her one-to-one with everything she needs me to make a decision on. And if it’s a document that she needs me to review, she provides me the highlights, and she says, “These are the two areas I need you to, review, and I need it as soon as we hang up.” And then she gives me 15 or 20 minutes back at the end of the meeting so that I can review those things. And then if I don’t, like I’m the a*****e, sorry, the jerk that didn’t do it because she gave me the time back and I did something else. So like she does a phenomenal job of managing up, and that’s how she does it. But I think you’re right that it has, it comes with, I think it comes with experience, I think it comes with other leadership roles that they’ve played, like all of the- and some confidence, you know, to be able to say to the owner or the person who signs the check, “Hey, you gotta focus on this.” Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, I think even though you know it, it may not be as effective as you would like it to be to have your employees holding you accountable, you still need to create a culture in which- Yes … it’s possible to do that- Yes … where, they are encouraged to do that, because that will at least provide some degree of accountability for your actions and follow through. Certainly more so than if you scare people off, if you make people, if you kinda flick people away and say, “No, no”- Yep … “stop bothering me about this.” Yep. If you do that, it’s gonna be really difficult to get any kind of sense of accountability with your team and, it really does help you to have that. We complain all the time about, you know, clients who are on our back about this or that, but it does help us to make sure that things get done. And, so as long as it’s not overbearing, there is a benefit to that. Internally, we often have challenges with that, particularly for things related to our own business as opposed to for clients or for prospects. But we need to try to, as best as possible, create that culture where everybody is willing to step up and say, “Hey, this needs to be done. You are the blocker.” And, if you don’t, if they don’t call you out on it, things are probably gonna slip through the cracks. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, for sure. And, I find that I reprioritize based on what I think is the most pressing, right? And for me, what might be pressing may not be the same as it might be for somebody else on the team. So I need people to say, “Listen, I know that you’ve got this and this and this, but I, this is, this will, is what will happen if I don’t get this from you by this date.” And then I can go, “Okay, let me look at everything and kind of rejigger based on, those kinds of things.” So I, like from an owner’s perspective, I need people to say, “I need this from you. You’re the bottleneck. Here’s why, and here’s what it, here are the consequences.” So then I can decide, okay, well, it’s not that big of a deal, or shoot, we don’t want that. Let’s get this done. Chip Griffin: Well, and, part of the accountability function for you as the, boss/owner is to identify, you know, where you are, where you need to be the bottleneck and where you don’t. Right. Right? If, you- Right. Part of this comes down to- Yes … reducing the amount of things that you need to be held- Gini Dietrich: Yep … Chip Griffin: accountable for. And- Yep … you know, we’ve talked in the past about the importance of delegation and, trusting your team and giving them more responsibility, but that is very closely related to the accountability question. So if you are either micromanaging or you are overpromising and saying, “Yeah, I can get to that tomorrow,” when you know you can’t get to it tomorrow, you need to, to- Gini Dietrich: You think you can because you think you have 36 hours in the day instead of 24. Chip Griffin: Fair. Fair. But you need to get better at, estimating how long it’s really gonna take to do things so that you’re in a position where the commi

  6. Jun 18

    In the age of AI, people skills matter more than ever

    You’re using AI to handle more of the work that your team used to do. That’s exactly why the human side of the business has become a competitive advantage. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that as AI slop floods everyone’s inbox and feeds, the bar for genuine human interaction has dropped so low that clearing it will make you stand out. Demonstrating real experience and expertise in conversation — not just in content — is where agencies will win. That starts with having actual conversations. Chip argues that meetings have become more valuable, not less, because you can’t fake a real-time interaction the way you can a written deliverable. And Gini adds that it extends to one-on-one meetings with your team, which can be used to get the specific decisions needed from you. Written content is increasingly hard to trust, and Chip admits even he can’t reliably tell his own writing from AI output. Video helps close that gap for now. So does the handwritten note, which Chip still sends to podcast guests when he can track down an address. He jokes that the illegibility is proof of authenticity. In person beats everything. Chip pushes agency owners to budget for it deliberately, with clients, prospects, and remote team members alike. Gini mentions the Augusta Rule as one way to offset some of those costs, though both are quick to say talk to your accountant before you try to benefit from it. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “In the age of AI, meetings are even more valuable than they were before because you can’t fake this kind of interaction.” Gini Dietrich: “The more time you can spend with a client or with a prospect really understanding their business, the way that they operate day to day, their pain points — those are the kinds of conversations that are gonna make you smarter.” Chip Griffin: “When you hit that inevitable rough patch somewhere down the road, and we all hit rough patches with our clients at one point or another, it gives you that oftentimes reservoir of goodwill that you can draw on because you made that human connection.” Gini Dietrich: “My day-to-day contact there became one of my closest friends. She’s one of my closest friends today, even though we haven’t worked together in 20 years, and the reason being is that we got together in person all the time.” 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 think we’re, we’re people people. We’re- Gini Dietrich: We’re people people? Chip Griffin: I’m a people person, so that make us people people. People- People … people. We’ll just keep saying the word people. But in all seriousness, the age of AI, everything seems to be impersonal, so that opens the door to be more friendly to actual people, to be more personable. And so I think we can talk about how we can set ourselves apart as agencies, as leaders in this age where the tech seems to do almost everything for us. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, it’s funny that this conversation is happening right now because I’m coming to this conversation straight from our bimonthly learning session internally. And one of the things that we talked about today was, you know, how to use AI, our critical thinking skills, but also how to use questioning and probing with it- new business prospects and with clients to be able to uncover the real problems of what they’re, the real pain points of what they’re facing versus just the surface level, “I have a measurement problem,” kinds of things. And it’s, it’s definitely not something that you can rely on AI for. You have to actually use your people skills to be able to do that kind of work, and that’s what we spent about an hour going through internally today. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s so many more opportunities now to leverage the human connection piece with your clients, with your prospects, with your team because so much of what they’re seeing is AI slop. Is technology-driven. And, and whether that’s the pitches that we get in our inbox, and you sit there and you’re like, “I know AI generated this and sent it to me,” and all that. And so trying to find ways where you can break through and make a human relatable interaction with somebody and provide real human insight in those conversations gives you the opportunity to do things that, you know, a couple years ago nobody would’ve paid attention. Now they do. Gini Dietrich: Right. Right. Yeah. You know, one of the things I always talk about is, especially with content, and I think this applies here as well, is demonstrating your experience and expertise because nobody else can do that. And I think if, as you’re thinking about those human relations and the people skills and actually interacting with actual human beings, where you can demonstrate experience and expertise is really what’s going to set you apart in all of those conversations. Because nobody else has your experience or expertise. You know, they may have some of the similar experience, and they may have similar expertise, but nobody does it exactly the same way that you do. And I think being able to demonstrate that in your conversations is where you will win every time. Chip Griffin: Well, I think the key is having actual conversations. Gini Dietrich: Fair. Start there. Chip Griffin: I was talking with a leader today who said, “Look, I just, I don’t even have time to read half the stuff that comes in, even from my direct reports. And so for me, the best way to interact with all of my direct reports is through actual conversations, either in person or by video call because that’s, that’s the only way I have an opportunity to focus on it.” And so, you know, I, I know that we all are of the mindset, geez, you know, we don’t want to be meeting to death and all of that, but I would argue that in the age of AI, meetings are even more valuable than they were before because you can’t fake this kind of interaction. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: If you’re engaging with somebody on Zoom or Teams, I mean, sure, you could have one of those AI apps that, that, you know, the kids are apparently using to interview these days where it puts the answers up on the screen or whatever. I don’t know. But the reality is nobody’s really doing that that I know of, in the agency and client world. So, you know, it’s reasonable to assume that you are actually being yourself when you are communicating with a client, prospect, or team member. And so take advantage of those opportunities. Don’t say, “Well, this could’ve been an email.” Well, yeah, it probably could’ve been, but people are gonna think that was generated by AI. So, you know, don’t meeting yourself to death, but certainly be more open to meetings than you might’ve been five years ago. Gini Dietrich: And I would add to that, that I think the person you mentioned a few minutes ago, I think that’s exactly right. You know, at, I mean, as my agency grows and as we get bigger and, and like the amount of stuff that comes at me every day is impossible to keep up with, and the meetings, especially the one-to-one meetings that I have with my team that are most effective are the ones that they say, “I need this decision, this decision, and this decision,” and then they walk me through so that I’m not having to review decks. I’m not having to review documents. They walk me through what they’re doing. They walk me through their problem-solving, and they walk me through the decisions that they need from me to be able to move forward. Otherwise, it’s gonna sit on my to-do list for two or three weeks when they can use a one-to-one really effectively that way. So I think you’re absolutely right. You don’t necessarily have to have more meetings. You just need to use them more effectively. Chip Griffin: Right. And I mean, even before the age of AI, I always told all my direct reports, “Use those one-on-one meetings to just get every answer you need from me.” Yep. It, it’s the best way… you’ve got me focused. Take advantage of that. Absolutely. Don’t walk away saying, “Geez, I should’ve asked him this.” If you can get the answer, get the answer. And I think we can, we can do that, but it’s also your opportunity to show that you’ve actually got the knowledge yourself in these conversations. You’re not relying on AI to spoon-feed it all to you because, I mean, let’s face it, you know, we’ve all come to distrust the content we see from almost everybody- Mm-hmm … and say, “Well geez, is that really theirs or did that come from AI?” And people are, they’re trying to say, “Oh, well, I can identify the AI.” You can’t. I guarantee you can’t. I can’t tell the difference between my writing and AI writing unless I do a forensic analysis and go back to figure out who wrote the first draft of something. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, honestly, I think the people who have the toughest time with that are the people who, you know, were prolific writers before because prolific writers tended to write in a certain way, which is what the LLM’s all trained on. So, you know, those of us who were professional writers … we used a lot of em dashes. That taught the LLMs, “Use em dashes.” Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: Now, you use an em dash, you must be using AI. Yeah. Baloney. Baloney. Gini Dietrich: Baloney. I still use an em dash, and I will die on that hill because I am not going to stop. Chip Griffin: No. And, that’s the hum

  7. Jun 11

    Is your agency easy to work with?

    Most agency owners think their clients have it easy. But the gap between how you believe your agency operates and how clients and prospects actually experience it is often wider than you’d expect, and it’s usually the small, everyday frictions that do the most damage. In this episode, Chip and Gini ask if you were on the receiving end of your own agency’s processes, would you be happy? The answer, for a lot of agencies, is probably not. Their point isn’t that agencies should cave to every demand, but if you market yourself as a partner, act like one. The friction can start before someone even becomes a client. Contact forms loaded with qualifying questions scare people away. And back-and-forth emails to find a meeting time have no excuse in 2026. Use a scheduling tool, have a link ready, and make it especially easy for prospects. Once someone is ready to talk, the goal is to respond fast and remove every obstacle. When it comes to the handoff from prospect to client, agencies should have a standard proposal template so they can turn paperwork around in 24 hours, not days. Make invoicing and payments as easy on the client as you would want it to be if you were in their shoes. And when it comes to project management tools, if the client already has one they’re using, just use it. The tool matters less than having one. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “When someone is at a low point, that is not the time to try to extract stuff from them. It’s a time where if you believe half of your marketing BS that you put out there about they’re our partners, they’re not our clients, well, then act like one.” Gini Dietrich: “We have to think about scope creep, and we have to think about margins, and all of those are very real things. But let’s not cut our nose off to spite our face.” Chip Griffin: “Being easy to work with starts before they’re even a client. I am often befuddled by how difficult agencies make it to get in touch with them for a prospect.” Gini Dietrich: “There are some organizations that have a process that they put clients through, and it’s so rigid that it doesn’t meet the client where they are. And it’s impossible to work with them because of that.” Related How to onboard new agency clients How to do client collections right and get paid faster View Transcript 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: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I, I’m, I’m easy to work with, right? I mean, you know, I’m not too- Gini Dietrich: You’re super easy to work with. Chip Griffin: Well. Gini Dietrich: I mean, you’re a little cranky, but that’s why I love you. Chip Griffin: I, I, I think listeners know I’m, I’m cranky. They just… If you’ve listened to more than two or three episodes, you’ve probably heard me be cranky about something at someone. Gini Dietrich: Great. I love it. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Yeah. But we are gonna talk about whether or not you are actually easy to work with as an agency for your clients, and frankly for your prospects as well, because I think a lot of agencies believe that they are easy to work with, but their thoughts or their words maybe aren’t matched up with their actual actions. Gini Dietrich: Yes. And, you know, I will say that I learned this lesson when I started hiring agencies and solopreneurs. It’s not easy to work with other agencies. And you’re like, “Oh, that’s not… I thought that that was a good practice.” And then you realize when another agency puts you through it, not a good practice. Like for instance, making them, making you use their project management system when you have your own, bad idea. Sending emails with invoices that go into the void, bad idea. Like there are some practices that I’m like, “Nope, this does not work.” It’s not, you’re not making it easy on me. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, I think part of the problem comes from, I think part of the blame goes to people, people like us who are always preaching to agency owners the importance of protecting their time and their margins and- Gini Dietrich: Sure Chip Griffin: and all of that. Yep. And, and I think that, you know, some people listen to that, but they don’t think through, “Okay, well how does that look on the other end?” Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: Yep. And, and so yes, you absolutely need to, to make sure that you don’t have scope creep, and you need to make sure that you are protecting your time so you can get work done, and you’re not just getting eaten alive by meetings and calls and all of that. At the same time, you should think, “What does the other person on the other end think? How would I feel if I received this communication or if someone I hired acted in this way? How, would I be happy about it?” And I think if you start to do that, you’ll realize that some of your practices may not be as easy to work with as you think. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think you’re right. You know, I think about a couple of years ago, probably two or three years ago, it was a Saturday night and a client’s website went down, and the client called me, and the reason I remember this is Saturday night is ’cause I probably already had a glass of wine. And he called me and he’s like, “Hey, our website just went down and I can’t reach anybody.” And I was like, “What do you mean you can’t reach anybody?” He’s like, “I can’t reach anybody at the web firm. Can you help?” And I was like, “Of course.” So I called the web firm, and I finally got ahold of somebody, but I had to go through… I had to email three different email addresses, not a personal email address, and I had to go through their quote-unquote process. And I finally got somebody to call me and they said, “Well, keeping the website up and restoring a backup is not part of our scope of work, and so it’ll cost $2,000 an hour.” And I was like, “I’m sorry, what? But that’s not, that’s not a thing.” And they had taken this client’s… You know, they had… The client didn’t know, the client didn’t know what they were signing, and they did sign a scope of work that, that wasn’t included, and it was $2,000 an hour for emergency type stuff. And I was like, “No, absolutely not.” So their marketing manager and I got on with GoDaddy and we restored it ourselves, which it was not a fun process, but it worked, and that, that forced us to… I think they actually ended up firing the web firm, but which they should have. But, like, that kind of stuff I think is exactly to your point. They had put in a process. They had a contract. They did all the things, but they didn’t think through, like… restoring somebody’s website on a Saturday night is literally a click of a button. It’s not a $2,000 an hour emergency kind of thing. So, you know, yes, you should have a process. Yes, you should have a contract. Yes, you should protect your time, but also don’t do it at the risk of losing a client over something stupid like that. Chip Griffin: Right, and obviously there are some clients, as we know, who will abuse some of these things. So- Of course … there, there are certain times- Gini Dietrich: Of course, yes … Chip Griffin: where you have to be okay appearing to not be as easy as the client would want you to be. So this is not, this is not us preaching, “Say yes to everything that you’re asked to do.” It’s simply make some, make some good judgments here. Now, if this is, this is, the website disappears over the weekend, and it, you know, it’s not something that happens regularly, it’s not the, this client doesn’t generally abuse you, I mean, just get it done, and you can have a conversation after the fact and say, “Hey, that really wasn’t part of the scope of work. You, you know, we helped you as a show of good faith, but we need to, you know, we need to work this into the agreement going forward-” Right … or something like that. Gini Dietrich: Right, right. Chip Griffin: It, you know, when, when someone is, when someone is at a low point, that is not the time to try to extract stuff from them. It’s a time where if you truly want, you know, if you believe half of your marketing BS that you put out there about we’re our, they’re our partners, they’re not our clients, well, then, then act like one. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the, I think, you know, we think, we have to think about scope creep, and we have to think about margins, and all of those are very real things. But to your point, let’s not cut our nose off to spite our face. Like, there are some times where you’re just like, “Okay, yeah, sure.” I mean, I didn’t charge the client extra for them calling me instead of somebody on their account team because it was a Saturday night and they knew they could get me. I didn’t charge them extra for that. We just fixed it, right? Like, and that, that creates more goodwill in your relationship and trust in your relationship than being like, “Well, let’s deal with this on Monday.” No. No. Chip Griffin: Yep. And I mean, and a lot of it, a lot of being easy to work with is really the small things. It’s not the, it’s not the big giant stuff. It’s the little bits of friction that just become annoying. So think about how easy is it for clients to book time with you or your team, right? Again, and we don’t want this to be abused, but at the same time, I’ve worked with a lot of agencies where they’re like, “Well, you know, I, I’ve got a half hour two weeks from now for you.” Gini Dietrich: Right.

  8. Jun 4

    Using AI to extend your agency’s PESO Model expertise

    Most owner-led agencies know they should be doing more than media relations. One barrier has always been capability: you can’t execute paid media if nobody on your team knows paid media. AI is removing that barrier, and Chip and Gini dig into exactly how. Gini built a PESO model operating system AI that prompts you instead of you prompting it. Many agencies are strong in one or two media types and need scaffolding to think through the rest. The tool can be used to help agencies execute unfamiliar disciplines step by step. Chip frames this as an opportunity to do things that were theoretically possible two years ago but practically out of reach. A paid campaign to amplify a blog post no longer requires hiring a specialist. Beyond drafting, both hosts made a case for AI as a learning tool instead of merely a content machine. Gini tested this directly by vibe-coding a PESO model diagnostic, working through multiple versions with AI troubleshooting each step. The practical upshot is that you can use AI to build separate knowledge-rich agents for each media type, loaded with client messaging and context, and treat them as thought partners for areas where your team lacks depth. It won’t eliminate the need for people or strategic thinking, but capability is no longer a credible excuse for staying stuck at one letter of PESO. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “AI is a great opportunity for all of the things that you wished you could have done two years ago that now become much more feasible for you to do without having to go out and bring in-house new expertise.” Gini Dietrich: “I have built my entire organization using agents. It doesn’t replace anybody. I still need people to do the work, and I still need people to do the strategic thinking, and I still need people to service the client work. It makes us smarter, it makes us faster, it makes us more productive, but it doesn’t replace anyone.” Chip Griffin: “It doesn’t have to do it for you, it can help educate you… You can make it tell you at whatever level of knowledge you need in order to become comfortable with it, and then you actually start to learn it.” Gini Dietrich: “If you don’t have shared or owned and paid expertise internally, you can use those agents to help you build those things.” Related The PESO Model evolves for the AI era (and why your website isn’t dead) Has the PESO Model become a necessity for modern agencies? Agencies need the PESO model now more than ever How to allocate your client’s PESO budget View Transcript 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: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I think we’re gonna let AI do our jobs today. I know we don’t ever talk about AI on this show. Gini Dietrich: We don’t. We don’t like it at all. Chip Griffin: But I think AI is gonna let us do so much more here. Awesome. Maybe even, maybe we can even implement the PESO model as part of the show. Gini Dietrich: Beautiful. Let’s do it. Chip Griffin: I’ve, I’ve heard that the PESO model is something that’s really important that we should- … we should focus on. So why not let AI help us with it? Gini Dietrich: Oh, I love it. Maybe we could use NotebookLM and have it create its, our voices too. We’ll just be done. We don’t have to do anything. Chip Griffin: That’s a great idea. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, let’s do it. Chip Griffin: So then, you and I could just connect and just do our gossiping and chit-chat. Gini Dietrich: Right. Yes. Chip Griffin: And we’d still get an episode even without having to take the time to record. Gini Dietrich: Yes. I like it. Let’s do it. Chip Griffin: I like it. I like that. That would be- That would be fun. Gini Dietrich: We don’t gossip. What do you mean? Chip Griffin: Gossip, talk about world events. Whatever, however you want. I mean- Gini Dietrich: Yes. It’s kind of good that those aren’t recorded. Ah. Chip Griffin: It is. I suspect we would get a lot of listeners, but we’d lose a lot at the same time, so. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: In any event, we are going to talk about AI again because it is top of mind for all of us, and so we all ought to be thinking about it. And we are gonna talk about the PESO model because we just happen to have somebody here who knows a little bit about the PESO model. So let me explain it to you… Oh, no, I didn’t. Oh. I wasn’t talking about me. With the founder of the PESO model as one of the co-hosts. It, we’ve talked about the PESO model before, but I think, you know, one of the things that, that has occurred to me in recent times, and I’m sure it has occurred to you as well, is that AI can help more PR agencies go deeper into the PESO model, particularly in areas where they maybe don’t have as much in-house expertise. And, and one- Yep … of the things we’ve talked about with agencies a lot is that the PESO model touches a lot of different things, and it’s difficult for any small agency to have all of the skillsets needed to fully execute PESO properly. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yeah. Chip Griffin: AI seems to open the door to more of that. Gini Dietrich: For sure, it does. One of the things that we did late last year is I built a PESO operating system AI. And instead of you prompting it, it prompts you. So it’s built to do exactly that, so that you can say, “Okay, well, we’re really good at media relations, but we don’t have any expertise in shared, owned, or paid,” or, “We’re really great at owned and shared, but we don’t have any expertise in earned and paid.” Whatever it happens to be, right? And so it will h- it will prompt you with questions to help you think through, “Okay, if we’re great at owned and shared, but we don’t have the E and the P, here are the things you need to be thinking about.” And it will help you either figure out how to execute it on your own with step-by-step instructions, or it will give you a creative brief that then you could hand off to a partner. So it, it’s built to do that, but the point is, is that- I mean, would I prefer you use the PESO OS AI that I built? For sure, but really any AI could do that. I think if you,you have to prompt it. It’s not gonna prompt you. But I think any AI based on information that’s out there in the, on the web that we’ve created around PESO, it will be able to take all of that and say, “Here are some things you should be thinking about.” And I think it’s really good at helping you think through things that you’re just not an expert at. And it’s really good at helping you think through, gosh, we should be using paid to amplify our content, for instance, but I don’t have any idea. Do– should I do it on LinkedIn? Should I do it on Instagram? Should I do it on TikTok? Should I do it on Google? Like, I have no idea. So AI is a really good thought partner from that perspective. Chip Griffin: Well, and I think that’s the, that’s the key point is that it allows you to, certainly you can look at it in, at a 30,000-foot level, you know, with your specialized OS that allows you to really think the whole big picture through. Yep. But you can also use it in a very granular way to say “Hey, look, I know I want to amplify this content. Let’s, let’s look at the various ways that we can do it, and help educate me about how we do that most effectively.” Yep. And, you know, to me, AI is a great opportunity for all of the things that you wished you could have done two years ago Gini Dietrich: Yeah Chip Griffin: That now become much more feasible for you to do without having to go out and bring in-house new expertise, or hiring someone if it’s, particularly when it’s focused, right? If it, it really is just, “I need a paid campaign to amplify this blog post.” That is a whole lot easier to do with AI, frankly, than it is to go hire somebody in-house- Yeah … and a lot cheaper. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely, yes. And it will give you the step-by, literal step-by-step instructions if you wanna do it yourself. Right. And if you don’t wanna do it yourself, you say, “Help me create a project brief or a creative brief that will, that I can hand off to a partner,” and it does that for you too. So one of the things that we do is, you know, I have a paid media expert in, on our marketing team, but then we hire out, depending on what we need, we’ll hire out sort of the day-to-day minutia piece of it. ‘Cause, you know, especially in paid media, you have to be in there every day and testing and tweaking and all that kind of stuff. And AI’s great at saying, “Eh, pay attention to this,” but not great at actually pushing the buttons. And so it has helped our paid media team even just outsource some of that stuff too. So it’s, I think it’s really great from that perspective. You know, it’s still, you, like, I think some, especially PR professionals, are using it for, like, list development and media pitching and things like that, which is fine, but it’s still not… it’s still a good first draft. You still have to add your personalization. You still have to do those kinds of things. One of the things that we were kind of struggling with, actually not struggling with, we were arguing over internally, was our outbound sales campaigns and what those said. And I felt like they were way too long. Our chief revenue officer felt like the calls to action weren’t right, and so we put it into AI, and we were like, “This is where we’re struggling. We’re not agreeing on these five points.” And it pumped out some stuff

See All (100)

4.8
out of 5
19 Ratings

About

Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich help PR and marketing agency owners make better decisions about the businesses they run. With 300+ episodes, the Agency Leadership Podcast covers the topics owners deal with every week: pricing, profitability, hiring, client management, positioning, and what it takes to build an agency worth owning. Chip is the founder of SAGA Agency Growth Advisors and creator of the Build to Own approach. Gini is the founder of Spin Sucks and creator of the PESO Model. 

Information

  • Creator
    Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright SAGA Agency Growth Advisors
  • Show Website
    Agency Leadership Podcast

You Might Also Like