Build a Better Agency Podcast Drew McLellan

Keeping up with data protection and privacy laws is exhausting. Nearly every month, new legislation is being introduced state by state to help keep users’ data protected online. And while this is overall a good thing, it can get really messy if agency owners aren’t educated and informing their clients about what this means when they build out their websites.

Luckily, our guest today, Hans Skillrud, has collaborated with his wife to create an easy, self-updating tool that agency owners can implement on their own websites and the sites they build for their clients. He has committed himself to ensuring that data protection tools and documentation are easily accessible for anyone without needing a legal degree to make sense of it all.
 
In this episode, you’ll learn why you must educate yourself and your clients on the most current privacy policy and data protection laws, why not to cut corners in this department, and why you should never collect more data than you actually need.
Even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal right now, with the constantly changing environment of privacy laws, you never know when you could end up in a mess, even five years later. Don’t delay on this, and get your documentation in check today.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: What is Termageddon? What agencies are required to provide to their clients in terms of documentation The risks for smaller businesses and agencies for not practicing good data protection Why agencies should embrace data protection policies, even if it seems complicated Can chatGPT write our policies for us? Why copying and pasting someone else’s policies is a bad idea How data protection lawsuits happen How the Termageddon team keeps up with constantly changing data protection laws The confusing future of privacy law Three best data protection practices for agencies and website builders

Marketing today is not absolute. It’s experimental, iterative, and ever-changing. And with that comes many challenges that we have to overcome and adapt to as agency leaders. One of those challenges is offering data analytics services to our clients.

Many of us got into the industry, hoping to avoid doing math. And yet, here we are again, going over another way tech and mathematics are imperative in our industry. While it might be exhausting or frustrating, a subject matter expert is joining us to help make it a little less confusing for everyone.
 
This week, I’m interviewing Jim Sterne, a data analytics expert who knows so much about the industry. Jim started the Data Analytics Association and wrote 12 books on the topic.
In this episode, he’ll share the importance of offering data analytics expertise to better serve clients, how to hire either in-house or third-party data analysts, and tons of resources on where to look for advice and find other experts to help get you started.
Those who adapt survive. Don’t wait on this one, and don’t try to be a hero. The more we can help our clients reach their goals, the better off we are as an industry. Get help, look to the experts, and start offering your clients data analytics services as soon as possible.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: Why data analytics is more about the questions you ask rather than the answers you get The biggest hurdles agencies face when presenting data to clients Should you go third-party or stay in-house? What to look for when hiring a third-party data analytics expert How to make data useful to the client Data reports vs. data alerts, which is better? How to become a data storyteller Helping clients embrace experimental results over having absolute certainty The best resources for wannabe data analysts or those just starting out

AI-generated content is rapidly finding its way into professional spaces and changing the way we work forever. This fact is especially important for creative agencies that are quickly realizing there could be legal implications for using AI to create work proposals, creative IPs, legal documents, and more.

And like most legal questions, the answer to “Can I use AI to generate work for clients?” is, “It depends.” We’re in such a gray area with AI right now that the legal system hasn’t had a chance to catch up to technological advances. So how do agencies protect themselves, their workers, clients, and their IP when everything is so up in the air right now?
 
Sharon Toerek has some common sense advice for approaching AI in the workplace to avoid a potential legal nightmare. In this episode, we’ll cover human-generated vs. AI-generated content, the gray areas we need to look out for when using AI, how to protect client and agency copyrights, how to avoid infringing other copyrighted content, and so much more.
AI-generated content is an incredibly important and ever-changing topic. And if you’re an agency owner, this needs to be addressed in your agency today.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: The top 3 questions lawyers are receiving about AI Having conversations with clients about the use of AI-generated content The gray area between AI-generated and human-generated content The ownability of AI-generated output Creating documentation about implementing AI tools in a typical workflow Including AI prompt strategies in trade secrets documentation Can we protect the data we’re inputting into the collective that is AI? Addressing the use of AI in SOWs Should we use AI tools to create legal documents?

We all want to get paid what we’re worth. But it’s more than likely that we’re downplaying our agency’s value because we’re too worried about pricing ourselves out or overcharging. This week, our guest, Casey Brown, will explain why that’s wrong and how to get out of a fear-based pricing mindset for good.

Casey has been serving small to mid-sized agencies for the past 15 years to bring her corporate pricing expertise to private companies. She’ll teach us why it’s probable that we’re talking ourselves out of charging what we’re worth and giving discounts where they’re not needed.
 
Our time is valuable in a typically creative industry, and we deserve to be paid what we’re worth. Get ready to take action after listening to this episode so you can start having better pricing conversations with customers and stand up for your true worth as an agency.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: Why you should never pre-discount in pricing conversations The questions you should be asking when a client pushes back on price How to establish pricing integrity that establishes trust between you and the customer How to gauge if a client’s low budget is real Building confidence in your pricing How to get out of a fear-based mindset The best approach to raising prices on legacy clients Protecting your margins in this current economy How to know if your pricing is right

This week, I’m covering an important topic I haven’t covered on a solocast before — agency owner work balance. Often, agency owners get pulled into too much of the day-to-day client work or aren’t correctly staffing the agency to get the support they need on the work they have.

There’s a formula you should be following for how you break down your workday or workweek to be a successful business leader, and I’m going to map it out in an easily applicable formula. It’s not always easy to get ourselves out of the daily client tasks, but the recipe I’m sharing with you today will help you block out more time for the things that matter the most.
If you’re not doing your job, nobody else is going to do it, either. And your job is the most important job in the entire agency. So tune in to learn how to map out your days better, get out of the day-to-day, and focus your attention where you’re needed most.
For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: Getting out of the day-to-day client work The percentage breakdown of how an agency owner should spend their day Why blocking your time efficiently and effectively is incredibly important The key factors that add value to your agency How to shift to this new breakdown of work Why biz dev is the most important task How to delegate and divide tasks between you and your business partner The importance of making yourself unavailable sometimes

Podcasts, radio, and TV are all similar mediums with a broad reach across the US. But over the years, younger audiences have moved away from radio and TV in favor of other platforms that offer ad-free subscriptions.

Quickly rising to the top amongst millennials and Gen Z is podcasting. So how do we still reach people who are consistently opting out of popular advertising avenues? Tom Webster has some answers for us.
 
He’s on the podcast today to break down the findings from The Media Moves the Message study that his firm, Sounds Profitable, did on advertising performance between cable TV, AM/FM radio, and podcasting.
This deep dive will give you all the evidence you need to understand that podcasting has a bright future. And as long as we don’t oversaturate it with advertising, it will be here to stay amongst audiences, both old and young, as the medium grows.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode: How we can take advantage of the podcasting medium as advertisers The Media Moves the Message study The most noteworthy takeaways from the study How podcast listeners skew age-wise and where we can make improvements What the study results mean for agency owners and leaders Will we eventually oversaturate podcasts with ads? What the study means for content creators and podcast hosts Trusting that a podcast host knows how to advertise to their audience Areas where podcasting is lacking The power of small podcasts