Ep 135 – Drew McLellan, AMI – The Owner’s Actual Job: Vision, Profit, and a Pipeline That Isn’t You
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Featuring: Drew McLellan, AMI
In episode 135, I sit down with Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute and host of the Build a Better Agency podcast. Drew’s been in the business for over 30 years and has coached thousands of agencies on how to grow profitably, attract better clients, and actually enjoy the perks of ownership.
In this conversation, we unpack what the real job of an agency owner is — and how easy it is to get lost in the weeds doing everyone else’s. Drew shares how founders can move from day-to-day chaos to the higher-level work of vision, leadership, and building a pipeline that doesn’t depend on them. We also talk about the mental shift from “founder hustle” to “CEO clarity,” and what it really means to build an agency that serves your life, not the other way around.
Key Bytes
• The three things only the owner can and should do
• Why your agency’s profit tells the truth about your leadership
• Building a self-sustaining pipeline that runs without you
• How to structure your week around the owner’s actual job
• The difference between running an agency and owning a business
• What makes an agency truly “sellable”
• Common traps that keep founders stuck in the weeds
• How to get your time back without losing controlChapters
00:00 Welcome and Drew’s background
04:12 The evolution from founder to true agency owner
09:45 What the “owner’s actual job” really is
14:58 Why agency profit is a mirror of leadership
20:17 Building systems and pipelines that aren’t you
26:04 The importance of clarity and delegation
31:42 Common mistakes that limit scalability
38:27 How to build an agency that can thrive without you
44:10 Preparing for eventual sale or succession
49:22 Drew’s advice for new and seasoned agency owners
Drew McLellan has worked in advertising for 30+ years and started his own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, in 1995 after a five-year stint at Y&R and still actively runs the agency. He spends the lion’s share of his time running Agency Management Institute (AMI), which he also co-owns/runs with his wife Danyel.
AMI serves thousands of small to mid-sized agencies (advertising, digital, marketing, media, and PR) every year, so they can increase their AGI, attract better clients and employees, mitigate the risks of being self-employed in such a volatile business, and best of all — let the agency owner actually enjoy the perks of agency ownership.
AMI is the only agency network that is run by an active agency owner. It offers:
Public workshops for agency owners, leaders and account service staff
Owner peer networks (like a Vistage group or 4A’s forums)
Private coaching/consulting for agency owners
Annual primary research with CMOs and client decision makers about their work with agencies
The highly praised podcast Build A Better Agency
The only conference built for small to mid-sized agencies – the Build A Better Agency Summit
Drew often appears in publications like Entrepreneur Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, AdAge, CNN, BusinessWeek, and many others. The Wall Street Journal calls him “one of 10 bloggers every entrepreneur should read.”
He’s also written several books, the most recent being Sell with Authority (January 2020). The latest book has garnered rave reviews and has been the guidebook for agency growth and business development in today’s world.
Drew also speaks at leading agency and marketing conferences like Inbound, Content Marketing World, and MAICON and is often cited in agency-centric content for his expertise in the industry.
When he’s not hanging out with clients or agency owners and their staff, Drew spends time with his wife, their blended family, and following his beloved Dodgers.
Learn more about Drew and AMI on their website.
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Steve / Agency Outsight (00:01.051)
Welcome back to Agency Bites. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. This week's guest needs pretty much no introduction, but here we go anyway. Drew McClellan has been in advertising for more than 30 years. After launching McClellan Marketing Group in 1995, he went on to co-own and run Agency Management Institute with his wife, Danielle. Through AMI, Drew helps thousands of small and mid-sized agencies grow profitably.
attract better clients and talent and actually enjoy the perks of ownership. He's also the host of the build a better agency podcast, a sought after speaker and the author of several books, including sell with authority. It's really great to have you here, Drew.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (00:43.02)
No, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:45.627)
Yeah, cool. So you've been running AMI for quite some time. You've built a massive community. Super like just love seeing what you're doing and agency owners that I interact with that are members there like have just nothing but amazing things to say about you and the content and the community. What was the evolution from taking your agency and saying I'm going to do something different for you?
Drew McLellan (AMI) (01:10.338)
Yeah, well, I sound like one of those hair club commercials, but I started my agency when I was 30. So was that perfect combination of arrogant and ignorant. thought how hard can it be? And then I realized how hard it was and what all the things I didn't know. And so I sought resources and bumped into an organization that was the precursor to AMI started by an agency owner who had shut down his shop. And he was a financial guy really. And so he taught a couple of workshops and he had a couple
So I joined one of the peer groups and it completely changed the way I ran my business. I finally learned how to run the business of my agency. So fast forward, you know, 10 years and he was like, he was probably in his seventies by then. And he was like, you know, I'm ready to retire. I think you're the guy. And I was like, I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, well, I think you should buy AMI for me. and, and back then it was called something different. It was called AMR, Agency Management Roundtable.
And he said, think you should buy it. And I was in an interesting place in my life. I've been a single dad most of my life. And until Danielle and I got married, and my daughter was getting ready to go to college. And I knew I had been looking for something to do that would sort of, you know, occupy my time. And at that time, AMR was this tiny little thing. It was a couple of peer groups and a workshop. That was it. So was like a side hustle.
So I bought it and I started thinking about all the things that I could do with it. And so just, it just started growing on its own and it's, it's sort of taken on a life of its own. And in many ways, the community drives it today as much as we do in terms of what we do next and what we offer and how we bring people together. you know, our, have a firm belief that we learn better and faster when we learn together. And so we let the community sort of drive a lot of
the new material we produce, the content, the offerings, the workshops. And today we're at, I don't know, 15 or 16 peer groups. We don't facilitate them all, but we have virtual ones and live ones and the workshop. And of course the podcast and then the conference every year, the Build a Better Agency Summit, which is coming up on year six in May of 2026. So it's just evolved into this ginormous thing that honestly, if you would have asked me back when I bought it,
Drew McLellan (AMI) (03:33.218)
what I thought it would become, it wouldn't have been this. It would have been much smaller in my vision, but it's sort of taken on a life of its own.
Steve / Agency Outsight (03:43.677)
The momentum just kind of helped it become what it is now and you kind of graciously became the facilitator of that, which is pretty cool. Yeah.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (03:51.5)
Yeah, I mean, COVID was a big turning point for us. I produce content every single day of COVID and I don't think I've ever worked harder in my entire life than I did that year. Just talking people off the ledge, just being available, doing live Q &As. We were one of the first ones to teach agencies how to apply for PPP loans. I we were in it up to our elbows. And I think that really grew the community in terms of just being
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:00.24)
Smile.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (04:20.758)
trusted resource and a place where people could confidentially and confidently talk to each other in a way that agency owners don't always have a place to do that.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:30.684)
Yeah, when we create that space for them and I run a few mastermind groups and a small Slack channel and you know, it's maybe 45 people, but you know, constantly the feedback is I needed this space to really talk about what's going on with me without fear of judgment with, you know, support and unconditional. And there's other communities like that. And I think that's invaluable. And so the fact that you're able to foster that and provide that space. Yeah, I love that for them. You like myself and probably most of your members, you are like an accidental agency owner.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (04:54.306)
Yeah, yeah, me too.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (05:00.238)
Of course. Yeah. Great.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:00.368)
You didn't go to school to run an agency. So that's the track path there as well. Yeah.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (05:05.229)
Yeah. And most, and most of our members fit that profile. was, they didn't go to school to run a business and they grew up in an agency and at some point in time, for some reason, hung up a shingle, even if they thought it was temporary while they were looking for a job, because all of us have been laid off at some point in time, probably in our career. And all of a sudden they've got five people and they're like, wait a second. I've got to figure out P and L and
payroll and things that I didn't know. And so, yeah, I would say probably 5 % of our community are intentional business owners who happen to buy or start an agency, but 95 % of them, it's the other way around. They're agency people who happened to start a business.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:51.303)
Yeah, yeah, same. So from your vantage point running AMI, interacting with thousands of agencies, what are you seeing as some of the biggest challenges that they're struggling with today and some of the also other side, what are some of the biggest opportunities?
Drew McLellan (AMI) (06:05.678)
Well, it's interesting. think the challenges are the opportunities. It's just a matter of what attitude you take into it, right? So I think one of the biggest challenges slash opportunities is staffing today. So, you know, the agency owners that still long for the good old days where everybody's a full-time employee and under a roof actually five days a week, we still have agencies that do that. You know, that's a challenge for them because of the
workforce wants something different. But I think the opportunity is you can custom create a team that truly is hardwired to serve your clients needs in a variety of ways and in some more cost-effective ways with full-time and part-time employees here in the States or wherever, whatever country you're in, but also global talent and, you know, virtual and hybrid. And I think there's just opportunity to create a new kind of great work.
doesn't mean that it's easier, doesn't mean that it's less expensive. think that's the fallacy. think a lot of people gave up office space thinking they were gonna save a lot of money. And then the smart ones realized that they have to spend that money to bring everybody together so that there's still that FaceTime and that connection with each other. So I think that's one of the challenge slash opportunities. AI, obviously, I everybody's talking about it all day, every day.
you know, sort of reinventing how we serve clients. you know, long before anybody was talking about AI, even though we were all using it, we just weren't calling it that. You know, the shift had already come that clients were tired of paying $175 or $200 an hour for something they could do on Canva. And they were finding cheaper ways to do it. And the agencies that clung to the deliverable model as opposed to the strategic model,
are struggling and have been struggling since COVID. And so the challenge is I want to sell what I want to sell and nobody wants to buy what I want to sell. The opportunity is how do I reinvent myself to be even more valued by a client so that I get back up to the C-suite where I want to be and I don't want to just be making stuff and I don't want to be, you know...
Steve / Agency Outsight (08:00.158)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (08:23.0)
I don't want to have to have a discussion about how many hours it takes to make stuff, but I just want to be so valued for what I know that, of course, they're not going have that important meeting without me at the table. So again, think that's the end. So AI in some ways hastened that much like COVID probably hastened the employment situation, but they were both coming anyway. Right. So I just think, I think there are some life things that happen that speed up the inevitable. know, we're, we're because our industry is always on the front end.
Steve / Agency Outsight (08:41.085)
Mm-hmm. All right.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (08:51.968)
of whatever is coming. We're trend setters, we're trend storytellers. We are the ones that recognize trends and make trends. And so of course our industry is gonna be a little more bumpy because we're on the front end.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:06.503)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're, because of that, we're one of the most volatile, right? You see it when the economy gets shaky. The first thing that gets cut is marketing, advertising budgets. when conversely it shouldn't be cut because these are great opportunities to get in front of audiences and do the marketing that separates them. You started to talk kind of about what I frame up as like the strategist versus the task taker, you know, and, and niching and, you know,
Talk more about that, what's your position on generalists versus niching and service versus industry niching and how you feel about all that.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (09:41.294)
Yeah, so anybody in our audience probably thinks the word that comes out of my mouth the most is the word niche. I don't think you'll survive to 2030 if you're not a specialist in something. So, you know, in our world, you know, we define niche as you're either a niche in an industry and most agencies define industry way too broadly. you know, I'll say to somebody, you know, what's your niche? And they'll say B2B. I was like, it's not niche. That's half the world. So no.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:08.433)
Right. Right.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (10:10.766)
Even healthcare isn't a niche, it's too big. So it can be an industry as long as you go narrow enough. It could be an audience like, boy, we understand the Hispanic market or the millennial mom market or whatever that is, women over 50 who use pharma products, whatever it is. Or it can be a deliverable, the challenge with deliverables, and I'm sure you're seeing this too, is there was, I can remember...
when there were bunch of social media agencies out there, they don't exist today. I can remember when there was a bunch of Amazon marketplace agencies, they don't exist today. Today, the hot thing is we're an AI forward agency. They're not going to exist in five years. So you can niche in a deliverable, but you have to know that that window is super narrow. But yeah, I...
Marketing has gotten too complicated to try and convince someone that with a staff of 12, you can be a full service integrated marketing agency and have everything under your roof and be brilliant at all of it. The clients, we do research every year and the clients tell us year after year when an agency says that to them, the BS meter goes off in their head. They know it's not possible. So we have to stop saying it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:21.597)
Yeah, yeah, and you can't do everything for everyone and so yeah, I'm a big fan of yeah choose the verticals that you specialize in and and you can be more general in the service and in the delivery and things like that But one or the other needs to kind of be honed in on or I agree man. The generalists won't be here Yeah, I think I say niche probably too much also
Drew McLellan (AMI) (11:43.246)
And you know, I don't think we say it too often, because if we, we would stop saying it if people would listen to us and do it. Right. So, you know, we're pulling to, but we're getting ready to redo our website. And so we're cleaning up all our content. And one of the people on our staff said, my God, we talk about this, that, and this a bunch. And I was like, because everybody hasn't done it yet.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:08.775)
There's a reason. Right.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (12:09.868)
Right? We have to keep talking about it because everybody's not on board yet. So I, you know, I, I, I know we repeat ourselves, but I know why we repeat ourselves. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, I don't know about you, but don't, mean, you know, some agency owners, we that come into our world for the first time have been doing it for 20 years and others have been doing it for, you know, 20 months and they need very different things from us. And so.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:13.938)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:20.465)
Yeah, yeah, because it's not done yet. I get that. I'm the same way. Other than not.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (12:37.282)
You have to keep repeating the same blocking and tackling, and I'm sure you do too, because, you know, for some people it's new.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:45.117)
Yeah, the things that apply for. Yeah, 100 % and but also I found that the things that apply for a new agency can also apply for the old agency and vice versa. And it's just a matter of the stage stage of their season that they're in. Absolutely. Yeah.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (12:45.294)
And just ignore us for a while.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (12:56.833)
no, now.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (13:00.962)
Well, it's kind like we were talking about before, right? You know, it's not all the old owners who are exhausted by the change. It really is about the attitude and sort of the vision of the leader of the agency or the leadership team of the agency. so they all mature. I mean, it's like people, they all mature in different ways and different timespans. so one of the fun things about the work that we get to do is, you you have to figure out sort of where they're at in a bunch of different places before you can...
diagnose what they need. They all need the same stuff sooner or later, but not at the same time and not in the same way.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:36.499)
Yeah. Yeah, fully agree. Yeah. The discovery and diagnosis and kind of path forward is definitely, definitely very unique for each agency. Leadership is different. Ownership is different. Ownership values are different. What are you, what are you seeing as far as like the role of the agency owner evolving in the next few years, three to five, 10 years out? I hate to say 10 years. I feel like that's an eternity, but even, you know, three to five.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (14:00.108)
Yeah, it's hard to know what's gonna happen in 10 years, right? I think the majority of owners aren't doing their job today. I think they grew up in an agency and it's so easy to default to doing what you were good at, which is either account service or strategy or creative directing or whatever your shtick is. And it's so hard to take yourself out of the work
which by the way, you probably love doing, right? And you're super good at it and you're super fast at it, requires no heavy lift from you at all. So you have easy and fun on one side, and then you have hard and new, which is, you know, the financial metrics and the numbers and business development and mentoring people. You can understand why a lot of them stay in their comfort zone and don't move over into the role that they should be in. But you know, what I will say to an agency owner all the time is, who do you think is doing your job if you're not doing it?
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:30.43)
Mm-hmm.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (14:57.878)
So these are the things that are not being done. No one's talking about the vision of the agency. No one's being innovative. No one's growing your team. No one's thinking about new business. No one's making sure you're making money. All those things. Are they sexy? No. Are they why any of us got into the business? Probably not. But when you decided to step into that owner role, that's where you need to be. So it's not even about where the role is evolving. I just want people to actually do their freaking job.
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:26.748)
Yeah, or delegated out to somebody that's going to do it for them, put that role in place and step aside and let them do it and trust them to execute. but yeah, that transition from like being the practitioner and I'm a designer to now I need to wear the CEO hat and, have the vision or delegate things out to the right people. Like that's a growing up process that a lot of owners fight tooth and nail. And I'm, I'm, yeah, I do too. Like I.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (15:40.301)
Right.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (15:48.748)
Yeah, and I get it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:53.111)
When I owned my agency, I wanted to do design work. it was a point where was like, the team was like, Steve, when you do this, this goes wrong and we missed this opportunity and this doesn't happen. Stop doing design work. You hired people for it. And so they taught me what to do. My coach did at the time as well. And I have plenty of agencies that I coach where the owner's like, in our discovery and in that first few months of working together, they're like, I really want to do the design work because I love doing the brand development or whatever.
Cool, let's build the business around you being able to do that as well, but know that you still need to do vision and biz dev or have somebody or systems in place that can do it for you. So if that's their priority, I'm good with it, but let's know that that's the direction we're going in.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (16:35.064)
but also know that A, there's a ceiling to how big your agency can get. B, odds are you're not going to sell your agency. You're going to close it down when you're done. And again, these are choices.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:40.85)
Absolutely.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (16:48.682)
Agency owners take a lot of risk and so they should enjoy every freedom that they have as agency owners. They just have to make sure they're informed decisions. So I'm with you. Like if you want to design all day as the agency owner, more power to you, but recognize these are the consequences of that decision. You have to be okay with that too. You don't get your cake and eat it too.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:55.006)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:08.846)
Yeah, there's sacrifices. It's yes and you want to do this? Cool. You might not be able to do that. Talk about like some of those blind spots that you think leaders are coming up against when they are building this agency of like something that could be sustainable.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (17:10.402)
Yeah, right.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (17:24.782)
know, what we see, we do a lot of M &A work. And so when we're doing valuations and things like that, what we see often is that the agency owner has not spent the time to really think about 10 years out, five years out, three years out, what do I need to be doing to ready the agency to be sold or to even be sellable? I mean, not even to be sold, but to be sellable. so, you know, yeah, right. Whether it's internal or external.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:27.454)
Okay.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:49.042)
be attractive to a suitor,
Drew McLellan (AMI) (17:53.39)
And so a lot of times we'll get somebody, I'll reach out to us and say, you know what, I want out in a year or two years. And when we go in and do the assessment, we're like, I hate to tell you, the only way you're getting out in two years is to pick a date and close the door because nobody's going to pay you much for this. And here are the things. And so I think one of the biggest mistakes agency owners make, we actually teach a one-day workshop on how to your agency ready to sell because they don't...
understand what influences the valuation, what buyers do and don't want. And their role in the agency is a big part of that. And by the way, the other thing they don't do, and I don't know if you're seeing this with the agency's YouCounsel, but they don't pay themselves well enough. How agency owners compensate themselves in all the ways they can be compensated, pass-throughs and all the other things.
really has a huge impact on the valuation of their business. So, so often they stay overstaffed, they don't pay themselves so they can pay somebody else. They're literally taking money out of their kids' hands and giving it to somebody else's kids, but they don't think about it that way. But they just sacrifice so much thinking there's gonna be a big payday at the end. And what they've done is they've diminished the payday. So compensating yourself well.
10 years before you're ready to sell and making sure that you never miss a paycheck and that you're taking dividends and you're maxing out your 401k and you're running a healthy amount of business expenses through his past. All the things really actually has huge impact on the final chapter.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:31.88)
Yeah. Talk about, so without dumping your full &A one day workshop into a 10 minute podcast, what are some of those other key things that you see buyers are looking for that agency owners could really start thinking about, I'm not doing this and that.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (19:46.924)
Yeah, they're looking for, know, somebody's buying an agency, they're buying it because they think they can make money. So again, they want to know how much money the agency owner has made over time. So number one, that's a big one. Number two, they want an intact leadership team that can run the agency when the owner steps away, because in theory, the owner is selling it, so he or she doesn't have to be there anymore. So they want as intact and as experienced a leadership team as possible, who has already proven
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:53.886)
Mm-hmm.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (20:15.384)
that they can run the business without mom or dad stepping in to save the day all the time. They want a new business machine, right? They want something that fills the pipeline at all of the different phases that is not personality driven or, you and I meet at a bar and I buy you a drink and now we're buddies and so I sell you something. That's not the way we sell anymore. They want an agency with a niche for sure.
They want an agency that does not have a client that's more than 20 % of their AGI. They don't want a gorilla client. Those are some big ones. And that's just and by the way, that's how we should be running our business anyway. Right? Yeah, yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:52.284)
Yeah. Do you see any? Okay.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:58.398)
Thank you, yes. Yeah, I get a lot of agencies that come to me because, you sold your agency, I also wanna sell mine. And so there's an attraction there and I get that. It's a shiny thing. I didn't sell my agency for millions of dollars. It wasn't life-changing money. Had I done some of those things that you just mentioned earlier on in my agency, that could have been a different story. And so I tell owners like, let's get under the hood, let's see what's going on and let's set it up to be an attractive.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (21:19.363)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:25.554)
business and you might just find that it's running so well and you're making good money, you don't want to sell it. Or you can step back and allow it to continue to pay you and that kind of thing. So it just makes good sense.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (21:36.91)
I just had that conversation with an agency owner this morning. She called because she wanted to sell her agency. And so we did some math and I was like, you know, you're taking home, she's running a good shop and she's taking home a good chunk of change every year. was like, you know, with a few small tweaks, you could do this for another five years, sock that money away and then sell it for X. And then honestly, you wouldn't have to work anymore.
If you sell it for X today, you're young enough that you're going to have to do something else, which is fine if that's what you want to do. But if you really want to not do anything else, then maybe you just keep doing the smart things you're doing. We do a couple other smart things and you're making bank for the next five years, tuck it all away, then sell it. And now you've got a great story to tell that buyer's going to be thrilled that you were able to take that kind of money out for the last five years.
Steve / Agency Outsight (22:10.718)
All right. Yep.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (22:35.19)
Now you've got a viable product to sell that is going to make you more money than if you sell it today. you know, to your point, normally when an agency owner gets ready to sell, they're ready to be done. so, you know, and valuations go back five years. So you can't start 12 months before you want to walk out the door and think that anything you're going to do is going to have a huge impact on the price tag because it just isn't. You really do have to start a minimum of three to five years back.
And if you're smart, you're starting at least a decade back.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:08.338)
Yeah, I don't think many agencies have the forethought to say, all right, where do I want to be in 10 years? They're not guided to think that far ahead. It's intimidating to think that far ahead, no matter how old they are, you know, especially as quickly as the world is changing around us. Like beyond five years is just absolutely insane to think about.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (23:26.606)
But if you think about it, what we're talking about is all behind the curtain. It's all back of the house stuff. So we're really talking about running your business like a business, which is what you and I talk to our clients about every single day, but making some tweaks in how you run that business so that it's more attractive to a buyer, which by the way, benefits you all along the way. So it may be that in 10 years, you want to keep it for another 10 years. Well, great. You've just built a better machine to keep for 10 years. It may be in 10 years,
You want to gift it to one of your kids. Fine. You're gifting them a better, more viable business. It may be in 10 years, you want to sell it to your employees or you want to just shut the door. It doesn't matter. The pursuit of building something sellable benefits you all along the way. And it just means you have more choices at the end of the road. So it's different than what if somebody said to me, what do you think agencies are going to sell to clients in 10 years? I would be like,
Other than strategy, I don't know. I have no idea what we'll be doing. But in terms of what makes a good business viable and sellable, that's not going to change as much. And so that, think, even the most weary, leery agency owner can think about and start making decisions about, even if they're not sure what the future on the front end, on the client end, on the sales end is going to be. You still have to have...
the right chassis for your business to run on. So build a good chassis now.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:58.184)
Yeah, yeah, those core principles, they will always be valuable. Yeah. All right, I'm gonna flip gears and throw a couple of random light rapid fire questions at you to wrap up the 25 ish minutes. So first is if you could only eat one ballpark snack at every Dodgers game, what would it be?
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:02.562)
Yeah, right.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:15.224)
Crackerjacks.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:17.508)
awesome. What's a book that you've reread more than once because it keeps giving you new insights?
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:24.844)
Radical Leap by Steve Farber.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:27.55)
Great book, awesome. And then finally, what's it one piece of common agency wisdom that you think owners should actually ignore?
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:28.632)
Mm-hmm.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:38.28)
That's a good one.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:44.386)
Common agency wisdom that they should ignore. I know this is a fast one, but I
Drew McLellan (AMI) (25:53.474)
Well, I...
I would say...
Drew McLellan (AMI) (26:05.102)
Okay. I know you can edit this out, so it doesn't sound like I'm pausing for 20 minutes, but...
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:09.342)
Hahaha
Drew McLellan (AMI) (26:17.619)
I'm thinking of all the things they don't do, trying to think of the things that they that they
Drew McLellan (AMI) (26:29.87)
I guess I guess I would say probably that the agency wisdom that they often hear is that they should go for the quick sale. And I think they should say no to more opportunities than they say yes to in terms of clients. think I think it's so easy to go for the sale. And oftentimes, they have that spidey sense that
not going to make money on this, or these people are going to be a pain in the rear end or whatever. But it's not all about the sale. And in fact, here's what it is. It's not about the new sale. It's about selling more to your existing clients. If we would focus on selling more to existing clients with half the energy we spend on chasing after strangers to give us a dollar, we would all be super rich.
Steve / Agency Outsight (27:17.938)
Yeah, I love that. Both of those, think are super valuable. Listen to their gut more. Stop ignoring those red flags because I'm afraid the next one's not going to come in. Like keep doing the process. The next one will be there, but also spend far more time growing accounts than chasing new land and expand. So now that I love it, Drew, I am super grateful for this friendship that we've developed and your time today and you sharing so much experience that you've, you know, gathered over the years of work with so many agencies. Thank you very much for joining me today. Appreciate you.
Drew McLellan (AMI) (27:45.004)
You bet. Thanks for having me. It was fun.
Steve / Agency Outsight (27:48.095)
All right.