I spent over 15 years as a consultant. During that time clients would hire me to fix a “problem” that they had in their business. Their new business system was broken, their margins were terrible, they had too much turnover, etc. They had a problem, my job is to fix it. Most of the agency…
Remember that client I told you about on Tuesday? The one whose energy was low, who was discouraged and started thinking about looking for another job? After we took a different perspective and she started to see a clear way forward she easily laid out a plan to get the outcomes she’s been looking for….
On Tuesday, I told you a story about how a change in perspective helped a client to see their situation in a whole new way. That new perspective offered her a way forward that engaged her creativity and energized her toward action. Many readers resonated with that story and replied to me with stories about…
My client got on the call and I could tell she was down. She’d had a tough couple of weeks — obstacles at work, disruptions at home. She’s feeling exhausted and discouraged. Because of these obstacles and disruptions, she wanted to talk about different directions she could take her career. “I just don’t love this…
Last week we talked about focusing on your job, the things that are only yours to do. When I see agency owners getting clear that they start to get free of many tasks that were draining energy from them, and that didn’t move the agency forward either. Theoretically, that should free up a lot of…
Over the last couple of posts, we’ve been talking about how important it is to let go of what you did as an individual contributor and embrace your role as the leader of a growing firm. But being an individual contributor was easy. I knew how to do that! I was clear when I had…
On Saturday we talked about how your job isn’t doing the thing. (The thing might be designing, writing, creating campaigns, storytelling, whatever it was that you were good at that you sold to clients to get the agency started!) Your job is to build the system. Your job is to create the container, the way…
Jerry Colonna coaches venture-backed CEOs, and he’s coached a boatload of them! He’s worked with the CEOs of Etsy, Foursquare, Intuit, and Soundcloud to name a few. But not just when they are big and famous; he works with many folks who are in their startup phase. On a recent podcast, he said of the…
Too many agency founders have drunk the 24/7 hustle culture Kool-Aid. “We’re in a service business, we need to be there to serve our clients! This is what agency life is like, it’s not a 9-to-5 job.” You’ve heard it, maybe you’ve lived it! I’m thinking that might be why so many of you responded…
The messages from last week where I talked about freeing ourselves from the endless grind with no finish line and the idea of reframing our work to be light, easy, and fun brought out many encouraging replies, including this one: Hey, Brad! This morning, I reflected that 10 years ago, I was grinding, traveling, building…