Ep 166 – Hope Is Not a Strategy: How Agencies Build Real Resilience with Audrey Kwan
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Featuring: Audrey Kwan, Agency Together
In episode 166, I sit down with Audrey Joy Kwan, a coach and consultant who helps boutique agency owners get valued, priced, and chosen as strategic partners, and the host of the Small But Mighty Agency podcast.
We talk about why so many agencies feel fragile right now, with the economy, culture, and AI all shifting at once, and why execution alone has lost much of its value. Audrey shares how to tell when it's time to choose a niche, how to pick one that will still be growing three years from now, and why saying yes to outlier clients can quietly throw a wrench into your operations. We also dig into building real, in-person relationships and the collaboration-over-competition mindset behind her community, Agency Together.
If you have ever felt treated like a vendor, this episode offers a practical path toward strategic partnership. You will walk away with a clearer way to look at your client portfolio, a reason to show up where your clients actually gather, and permission to focus on one sprint at a time.
Key Bytes
• When anyone can execute at the push of a button, judgment becomes the thing clients pay for.
• Most agency owners already know they should niche; the gap is turning that knowledge into action.
• Find the 20% of your portfolio you love serving, then ask whether that industry will still be growing in three years.
• Saying no to the wrong client leaves room for the right ones to say yes.
• A pattern spotted across three clients in one industry becomes a point of view the whole industry wants to hear.
• Waiting for referrals isn't a strategy, it's hope.
• Collaboration over competition turns other agencies into your warmest source of introductions.
• Pick one sprint per quarter and finish it, because trying to balance everything means nothing gets done.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and intro to Audrey Joy Kwan
01:39 What makes agencies fragile versus resilient
03:13 Why positioning matters more as execution gets cheaper
05:06 How to know when it's time to niche
10:48 The real cost of saying yes to outlier clients
12:26 Signs your agency is being treated like a vendor
15:34 Building trust and earning a seat at the strategy table
19:56 Collaboration over competition and Agency Together
22:26 One move to make this quarter
24:52 Rapid fire with Audrey
Audrey Joy Kwan is a coach and consultant who helps boutique agency owners stop being seen as executors and start being valued, priced, and chosen as strategic partners. With 15+ years of agency and consulting experience, including helping scale and exit a boutique agency, Audrey now partners with founders who want to step out of day-to-day delivery, strengthen their positioning, and build businesses that are profitable, respected, and built to last. She is also the host of the Small But Mighty Agency podcast and the founder of Agency Together, a community for agency owners who believe collaboration beats competition.
Contact Audrey on their website, learn about their mixer events, or connect on LinkedIn.
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Steve Guberman (00:04.206)
Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I help agency owners turn their agency into an asset they can grow, sell, or actually enjoy. On this episode of A of Agency Bytes, I'm joined by Audrey Quan, a coach and consultant who helps boutique agency owners stop being seen as exe exec executors. Executors. Let me take that over again. Hang on a sec. See? Sometimes I'd stumble.
Audrey Kwan (00:29.23)
Tell the busy.
Steve Guberman (00:31.852)
Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I help agency owners turn their agency into an asset they can grow, sell, or actually enjoy. On this episode of Agency Bytes, I'm joined by Audrey Joy Kwan, a coach and consultant who helps agency owners stop being seen as executors and seen as valued, priced, valued, priced, and chosen as strategic partners. Drawing on 15 plus years in agencies and consulting, including helping scale and exit a boutique agency.
She partners with founders ready to step out of delivery and build businesses that are profitable, respected, and built to last. She also hosts the Small But Mighty Agency podcast and founded Agency Together, a community for owners who believe collaboration beats competition. Audrey, I am thrilled to have you here. Thanks for joining me today.
Audrey Kwan (01:19.844)
Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for the introduction. I have been in around agencies for about 20 years now, actually. And I've been on the inside running teams and also helping one actually grow and exit, like you mentioned. And I think the whole experience taught me a lot about what makes agencies fragile versus what makes them truly resilient.
Steve Guberman (01:39.479)
Well, let's dig into it. The the difference between the the fragile state, which I think is kind of our natural state as agency owners, versus what's keeping us resilient. The the the industry, the world, US economics, global economics, there's a zillion things that can kind of rattle the cage of what makes an agency resilient and go not only like through the test of time, but grow.
have an exit that is life changing. Like what are some of these things that you talk about? The difference between like the agency that as you talk about is like a pair of hands versus ones that's a strategic partner.
Audrey Kwan (02:11.959)
Mm-hmm.
Audrey Kwan (02:18.135)
Mm-hmm. I think let's talk about fragility right now, because I I think there are a lot of factors contributing to that in the agency world. There's the economy, of course. There's also culture. I think culture plays a a part into fragility, but there's technology as well. And I think when you put those three together, it's a bit of a storm that's happening and it's very hard to figure out what the next three years looks like.
For any agency owner, because so much is changing. I mean, even if you look at technology and specifically if you look at AI, what it was able to do two years ago to what it can do now, right? R there you go, right, two weeks ago. And so to be able to put together that three-year plan is really difficult right now. And so when we're talking about resiliency, we're talking about like core principles that agency owners can do right now.
Steve Guberman (02:58.382)
Two weeks ago.
Audrey Kwan (03:13.985)
To help them be more sustainable across this year and into the next, you know, three years. And I I think one of the things, and you and I have talked about this on my podcast, we've really talked about the power of positioning an agency. Right now, because you've got tools that can pump out and execute at a punch of a button, execution in itself and the value of that has shrunk.
And so for agencies right now, the ones that are thriving, they are leaning more into what we call strategic partnership, which looks less like execution and more like people who bring the judgment, so to speak. People who are able to make the call on behalf of the actual client, not just from I think, but from core experience, right? So when we say positioning,
What I'm really pointing to is industry positioning. And when I'm talking about experience, I'm really talking about core industry experience. And I think now more than ever, being resilient as an agency owner is doing this hard thing, which is choosing your niche. And I think for most part, most agency owners know it's the thing to do. Like it's it's in their brain and it just has hasn't dropped down into action. And I think
You know, we all in the industry, agency industry world know this. You, Steve, know this, right? That niching is important. But it's taking action for agency owners and finding that niche right now that I think is is is is feels like it's difficult because it feels like they have to shrink right now in order to grow. But I I don't think that's the case. I think that in order to be better positioned, you can you can start to discover a niche without having to look like need to shrink your business at this point in time.
Steve Guberman (05:06.958)
Yeah, and mean th it's vital. it's something I experienced when I had my agency of you know, we were generalists. And I think so most, you know, there's that ascension ladder of we start a business, I'll do anything for anybody to get some money in the door. And then at some point that maturity model says, Maybe I should hone my skills into I just do this and I just do branding or I just do web dev or I just do SEO and I do it for anybody, and then eventually now I'm doing branding web dev like what whatever that craft is, you know, often defined as as that horizontal
service niche and now I'm gonna define it for a vertical or two or three. At what point do you see that maturity model hitting where they're like, I really need to own this vertical. I really just need to play with lawyers and it's gonna stink because my create my team wants to be creative more with everybody, but like we've got to be courageous and lean into it. Like when does that happen in your experience?
Audrey Kwan (05:57.156)
Mm-hmm. Okay, there's the reality that you when you start a business, any business, including agency business, that in the beginning you got to put food on the table, right? And so I think that's what you're pointing to, is that in the very beginning, when you need to put food on the table, of course, you're you're gonna say yes more than no. You're gonna say yes to clients who come in who are of various different industries, right? Of course, right? I'm not saying, hey, if you're like year one or even year two in to
Steve Guberman (06:05.09)
Mm-hmm.
Audrey Kwan (06:24.107)
Say no to people because you've identified a niche and want to stay in that niche. No, I think what I'm really pointing to is there comes a time in your business. And maybe it's not years, but really it's about the amount of clients that you're serving and and and the ability to look inside your portfolio and say, okay, look, we're serving a healthy amount of clients right now. And there's profit in the business, right? And
If we keep going this route where we're trying to just attract whoever, it's gonna be a harder route for us, right? If we don't know where to do our marketing, if we're if we're just spraying and praying all over the place, it's you know, we're wasting time. Cause as a small agency, and those are the people that I serve are small agencies, doing marketing for five different niches is so much harder than choosing a core niche. You know, you if you choose a core niche, you show up at the industry events, you
Find where they're going to what I call drink water, i.e., educate themselves and show up in those places, right? And so there comes a time in any agency business when you look across your portfolio and you realize, look, there's a whole bunch of clients that we're serving. But if you look deep enough, is there a segment in your portfolio right now that might be 20% of your business, but have a lot of potential, right? A lot of potential, meaning that you want to choose a niche that is
gonna be growing across the next three years. Like the best example I can say is look like if you look like five years ago, 10 years ago, if you look back then and you looked at certain industries that were kind of dying. Like for example, newspapers, right? So if you were an agency way back ten years ago and you were trying to figure a niche, you obviously wouldn't choose the newspaper niche because you know that it was, you know, it was dying, right? And same thing now. If you were looking at choosing a niche, you need to look at
The clients you serve, the 20% that are doing the work that you're doing that you love the most with, 20% that you do the work that you love the most with, but also ask yourself the question, is this viable? Is this industry viable? Is it a growing industry across the next couple of years? I think that's important to do if you have an agency and you wanna have strong positioning and you're aiming to find a niche.
Steve Guberman (08:43.32)
Yeah, I mean I'm kinda you said the buzzword that you said that really stuck with me and I I I obviously kept listening, but the the part that you said that stuck with me is who am I marketing to? And if I don't know who my focus area is, I do blank for again the newspaper f industry or manufacturing or healthcare. I don't know where I'm going to be perceived as the expert in that industry. And that's that's what we're talking about. Is when I'm perceived as the expert, then people will pay me more. I will be in more demand. I'm not the
you know, I'm not being I'm not chasing after people. They're chasing after me. I can turn clients down, right? So like that's what we're talking about. and if if I do all things for all people, then I have to go to what, the Chamber of Commerce, where you're talking to like every business owner who doesn't have a budget to hire you anyway. So yeah, it makes perfect sense and finding what you're talking about is like the TAM, the total adjustable market. Like, is that rising? Is it falling? Is it you know, we saw it during COVID. There were
Complete verticals that just completely went away. And agencies that were deeply focused in just that vertical without a a you know adjacent vertical or two adjacent verticals, they had to close their doors unfortunately or pivot really freaking quick. We heard the word pivot every day. So yeah, go ahead.
Audrey Kwan (09:56.377)
Yeah. Yeah, we we had a health yeah, we had a we had a healthcare agency and during COVID the healthcare sector didn't fade. It actually grew because the one thing that was consistent, yeah, people needed healthcare. And so we were in the right niche. And because we have built a reputation in that niche, like you said, it was a good time for us. Although I you know, I know that COVID was not a good time for
many businesses, but in our business it it's yeah, it it really just it took off because we chose a niche that grew, but we also had reputation in that niche and we had the systems and processes focused in that niche to serve that niche well. Right. And I think that's another thing. When you are focused in an industry, your systems and processes become geared for it. And when that happens, scaling that business also becomes easier.
Steve Guberman (10:48.536)
Yeah. I it reminds me I had a call with a client earlier today and they do mostly branding and corporate communication design work for mostly like hundred million dollar plus agent clients and they've got twenty of these clients and so they're doing really well. And a small client came along and said, Can you either like an author and a publisher and they want to do like this e course and can you learn this LMS delivery system and and build us this thing and
They're Yeah, sure. And I'm like, why would you say yes to that? It's not your ICP. You're gonna spend a ton of time learning a new platform, a new system, a new thing to only do it once. It's it's doesn't make sense. That said, if it's something you want to break into, sure, do it. Have them, you know, learn on their dime and then you can turn it into this package that you offer to other people. But it's a total outlier. It made no sense whatsoever.
Audrey Kwan (11:38.051)
100%. It's almost like throwing a wrench into your operations, right? And then expecting your team to take that wrench and pivot in their entire way of doing things to serve this one particular client. And I think that can do more harm than good in a smaller agency. Like imagine how many clients you could serve in your own industry versus this one client that's now throwing a wrench in it, right? You could serve this one client that's throwing a wrench, or you could take the resources there and serve three more types of clients that are.
that can fit into your process and systems. Right. And I think that's kind of what we need to look at when we look at like the cost benefit ratio. So I think sometimes it feels like, you know, as an agency owner, we should totally say yes to this business over here. It's gonna be amazing. But the reality is there's more to lose there than there is to gain for yeah, for opportunities like that.
Steve Guberman (12:23.491)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (12:26.796)
I love when a client comes back and says, you we've gone through this vertic this like niching process, this positioning process, and they come back and they say, Man, Steve, we just said no to our first for the first time we ever said n said no. Like, cool, how'd that feel? And they're like, I was a little scary, but suddenly our pipeline opened up over here. And like so when you say no to the wrong things, and I talk about this in my niching workshop, you say yeah, you leave the the door open for all the right yeses. you talk about like commoditization and so like how do what are what are some of the signs that you see?
when an agency starts like becoming commoditized pricing, treated like a vendor, you know, even if the work is great.
Audrey Kwan (13:01.588)
Mm-hmm. first of all, no agency wants to be treated as a vendor. So and by that definition, what that means is you become the order taker. So that's when there's no trust between the client and the agency. And it happens in agencies, you know, it it it can happen where you have a client that is
Steve Guberman (13:08.174)
Right.
Audrey Kwan (13:27.46)
Coming in and instead of listening to what you see happening in the market, instead of leaning on your expertise, they have a full plan that they think is gonna work. And that's what I call that vendor type of relationship. And I think right now what we're seeing is that more and more so, clients are looking at hiring people who bring in the goods, so to speak.
Right. And so what does that really mean? Right. So I always tell my clients that look like even if you don't have one core niche, what you do need to do is be ahead of the game for the client. So you've got to figure out what is truly happening in that space. And it's so much easier when you have clear positioning, clear niching, because one pattern from a client can be spotted across potentially
three other of your clients, right? And that pattern becomes a learning. And that learning becomes an opportunity to bring it up with not just your current clients, but it becomes opportunity to take it into the industry and build that leadership around it. Right. And when you do that, that's when you actually build a super resilient business because
You're not depending on the industry to tell you what's happening. You're leading that industry and telling it this is what you see happening. And that's the type of small but mighty agency that I like to build, one where we're able to extract information, so to speak, from the industry. Look at how do we do that? How do put systems in places to help you understand how do you extract the information, build that leadership around it and start to build resiliency or ownership of that space. And so that's what I call true strategic partnership.
Right. That's what I call moving into true true strategic partnership is when you understand that you need to build thought leadership. But building thought leadership isn't just coming into the industry and talking generic stuff. It really is about pulling up what is truly happening and building yeah, building building, you know, building opportunities around it.
Steve Guberman (15:34.071)
It's what we're doing here. We are somewhat experts in our industry and we're sharing that information freely because we want to be seen as strategic partners and we wanna be in the relationships with our clients for the long haul. We have the the best vested interest in their success. And so that's what we're doing. I love that. That's a great analogy. Talk about like what is it what are some of the things that an agency needs to do to build that kind of trust to get a seat at the table? Because strategy is is winning, right? The tactical stuff, cool, it's table stakes.
If you can lead with strategy, if you can be seen as a strategic partner as you're saying, that's how the long term relationships like stay embedded. That's some people call it the moat, whatever you want to call it. Wha what do they have to do to win that?
Audrey Kwan (16:15.202)
Yeah. Okay. So this is the other part of resiliency. It's building real relationships. So, I know it sounds so simple building real relationships. but I think that a lot of again, a lot of agencies that I speak to, they understand that look, a lot of the work comes from referrals. We all know that look, you can't just
depend on referrals. You can't just sit back, lean back, and be like, okay, I'm gonna wait for the referrals to come because that's not a strategy. That's just hope. Hope is not a strategy, right? We all we all know that, right? And so yeah, hope is not a strategy. So when we when I say real relationships, what I mean is look, like 10 years ago, 20, 20 years ago, when I started in this industry, this is 20 years ago, there there was no social media at that time. Like it wasn't really a thing, right? We'd we didn't
Steve Guberman (16:48.728)
Say that again.
Audrey Kwan (17:06.126)
DM people, we didn't do cold outreach. We leaned into what we traditionally called networking, right? Although I think that word in itself has, you know, its own connotations. But nonetheless, we lean into getting out there and meeting people and having real conversations, you know, people meeting people, people shaking hands. That's that's what we did, right? And I think for the longest time, that whole strategy has been underplayed because the digital era came in, and with the digital era came.
Tools like social media, tools like Zoom, tools that just helped us kind of disconnect from that IRL in real life world. But what what we've seen across the last couple years, last two years in particular, is that people want to meet people in person. Like they're like it's we're we're going back to a time. I hate to say this, the good old days. That makes me feel so old, but we're going back to like the good old days where
Steve Guberman (17:50.467)
Mm-hmm.
Audrey Kwan (17:58.553)
Building real relationship means actually showing up in the places where your clients go, right? It means like a physical, physically showing up, physically introducing yourself. And this isn't just about finding opportunities to speak on a stage. Sure, of course, right? We all want to land that opportunity. We're gonna speak on a stage and we can like leverage one to many as we call it. I think that's highly valuable, but I also think it's highly valuable just getting your body into community.
right getting your body into places where people might be talking about business but they're also talking about everyday life because because you and I you know we're on LinkedIn and you and I see the slop that comes in right so slop is like it's so easy for someone to put a prompt into so into an LLM and then the LLM pumps up like 30 posts and and then you schedule that post right so that's slop
Steve Guberman (18:34.264)
Mm-hmm.
Audrey Kwan (18:53.716)
We see a lot of that, right? And because we're seeing more and more slot, a lot of people are tuning out of those channels. You know, I've talked to agency owners and I've worked with agency owners who have said, okay, we just need to be more visible, right? We need to get onto social media. Okay, I'm not saying don't be on social media because yes, people will look for you on social media, but social media is not where agency owners typically get clients. It's it's a channel that we use to build some credibility when clients are looking for us, but it's not a place where
actually our clients are actually looking for us. So yeah, I think part of resilience is understanding what communities do you need to be in front of? Where do you need to personally show up? And there's one more part to this, which is strategic partnerships, not just with your client, but what types of partnerships are you building out in the world that lend itself to bringing in more referrals, right? So partnerships can look like collaboration partnerships. So collaboration partnerships and
I'm truly passionate about this because that's what agency together is about. It's about looking at agencies who are serving a Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. C collaboration over competition. Exactly. And that's exactly what agency together is all about. It's about
Steve Guberman (19:56.751)
Stole my next question by the way. Go ahead. Keep running, 'cause I'm a big fan of agency together and collaboration over o over competition. Absolutely.
Audrey Kwan (20:08.534)
Agency owners who understand that look, like we may have a service niche or an industry niche here. And because of that, it's easy for us to collaborate with other agency owners to grow, right? And collaboration means trusting each other, number one. And number two, because you trust each other, it's easy to make that introduction. And anytime you're making an introduction from one agency owner
to another, there's a level of trust here. Cause if a client is working with an agency owner and that agency owner is doing great work and that agency owner says to them, look, like we specialize here in this thing, but we don't do this thing over here. You should meet our partner, you should meet our friend over here that does it immediately, you know, you're you're bypassing a whole lot of like cold, a whole lot of cold outreach, a whole lot of cold conversations. And that's what I think the future of building together really looks like. And yeah, that's agency together. And that's what I think resilience is really about.
Steve Guberman (20:56.696)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm all all in on that. Always have been community over competition, collaboration over competition. when I had my agency w I pulled together, you know, four or five of our closest competitors geographically that we would, you know, compete against each other for local RFPs, for local talent, and we became friends so we could like support one another and razz one another, like, we beat you or whatever it was. And
I still live that to this day, thirty, you know, almost thirty years later, that like I'm friends with all the people that would be perceived as my competitors. And I don't think of them as competitors. I think of them as if I'm not the right fit for agency ABC, talk to Audrey. Talk to any of these other six coaches who do what I do or MA advisors who do what I do. If I'm not your jam, choose one of them and I would recommend the heck out of any of them. And rising tides, man, I I fully support it. And from your your framework or your mindset is
If I do the brand and you do the SEO, why don't I bring you in and let's party on this thing together? Why wouldn't why wouldn't we support each other like that? You know? Yeah.
Audrey Kwan (21:59.737)
Yeah. You and I, Steve, we've talked about this a lot in terms of we're both in the agency space, but we're not for everyone. And so there's there's tons of opportunities to talk to clients and discover what their real needs are and who they who they might best connect with and share. Because if we think the industry is limited, we're gonna be limited. If we think the industry is expansive, it's gonna be expansive. And you and I really connect on that. And that's why we're here talking today, because we have the same values.
Steve Guberman (22:02.712)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (22:26.306)
All mindset. Absolutely. All right. So drop one like really hot thing for the owners that are listening that are like, all right, this is all cool. It sounds like a good idea. What's like one muscle they could change or one system they can implement or something they could change this quarter that would like either put a moat around what they're doing or help them dive into niching or have the courage to say no? Or like what's what's the one big thing they should start thinking about?
Audrey Kwan (22:47.862)
If you don't have a niche, start looking at your profile, start looking at your client profiles. Like what what type of industries do you serve? Analyze those industries and see if there's one there that is calling you, see if there's one there that you enjoy working with that has opportunity in the next three years and you could put some focus around. I think that's the first thing if you're thinking about starting to lean into a niche.
And I think the other thing is this, I I it's being an agency owner is not easy. I have been an agency in an in so many agencies. And I've come and worked alongside agencies and helped them grow and exit. And so I know it's not easy being agency owner, but I wanna say this. marketing isn't dead. You know, I wanna say this encouraging word to everyone. Marketing isn't dead, and I think
Our opportunity right now is to look at where this industry is going and make the right strategic bets in our business to align our agencies for the better. And so if I could, you know, if there's one thing I could leave everyone with, is that word of encouragement? sure, agencies are not going to look the same as they did today, three years from now. That's a given, right? That's an absolute given. But marketing isn't dead, it's just changing. And now is a good time to start looking at.
where you want to position your agency, your so that you know, you you can be resilient in in what's to come.
Steve Guberman (24:23.746)
Love that. Absolutely. And and honestly, it's worth looking at regularly, right? Because the world is changing. And so, you know, the three to five year business plan that like the SBA used to tell us as entrepreneurs, that's dead. Jason Jason Freed used talk about the one page business plan. I'm a big fan of that. But also like you gotta reevaluate like the clients we're serving, the services that we're offering, our pricing, our positioning, every so often, just like you would tell your clients to do. So yeah, I love that. Makes perfect sense.
Audrey Kwan (24:36.012)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (24:52.158)
let me throw a couple of ra rapid fire questions at you to get a little bit a little bit more experience out of you and help people get to know you better. So what's something that you do daily that drives this you like this success forward for you?
Audrey Kwan (25:04.696)
Consistency. I think the one thing is consistency. So what that means is if I am locked onto something, like for example, agency together is our community, and we have 50 members inside agency together, it didn't just build itself overnight, it's consistently talking to people, consistently
Building relationships, consistently hearing what agency owners need and building those things into our community so people feel taken care of, right? I think that for any business owner, whether you're an agency owner, whether you're a small business operator, sometimes it may seem like people are overnight successes, but they're rarely, rarely, rarely ever are. It's about being consistent.
in in one thing and being very focused. And so the past year and a half, two years now, I've been really focused on building a space where agency owners can come and connect and collaborate and build referral ready relationships. And so that consistency has helped us really grow agency together.
Steve Guberman (26:08.216)
I love that. Yeah. Consistency is key. What's a piece of business advice that you think is totally overrated?
Audrey Kwan (26:15.428)
that's a fully loaded question. What's a business advice that I think is overrated? Balance. I think yeah, I think I think finding balance is overrated. I I don't like hear me out, okay? I think that we have and choose sprints in our business. And when we're choosing a sprint in our business,
it's hard to find balance. So I'll give you an example. in in in what I recommend to agency owners, there's four quarters in a month and in a month, there's four quarters in a year. And when you're small, when you're not a big agency and you're small, you can't do all the things. Like you you can't you can't work on all the different aspects in your business, right? You gotta choose in a quarter what sprint you wanna make, right? And focus on that sprint.
And when you're focusing on a sprint, you can't balance everything else. Cause if you try to balance everything else, rather than getting something completed, like for example, if you're choosing systems as a sprint in this quarter, rather than getting those systems completed, if you try to balance like all the other things in your business, nothing truly gets finished. And at the end of the quarter, you just feel like I didn't get very far. Right. So when you're a small agency owner, I truly believe that it's not about balancing everything, it really is about choosing a sprint.
And knowing that that's a choice you made and committing to it so that at the end of the quarter you can just check that thing right off and move into your next sprint. And that's how true progress is made.
Steve Guberman (27:53.122)
Love that. Okay. and finally, what's an invaluable piece of business advice that you could tell your younger self?
Audrey Kwan (27:59.927)
my goodness. I'm gonna think back to when we had our agency. the advice that I would tell myself is
The work that you're doing right now is important, but it isn't surgery. It isn't you're not a surgeon, and that at the end of the day, no one's gonna die. So no one's gonna die. And why would I tell myself that is I would then be able to give myself permission to take time off. So
I used to like have this death grip around the work we were doing. Death grip meant that I felt like if I let go of the wheel, then like all my clients would literally either disappear or like the the work that we were doing would go to for the lack of a better word, SHIT. So I won't swear, but yeah, it it would literally go to SHIT, right? And so I just felt like the I felt like the work that I was doing was so important that if I let go of the wheel, things would die.
Right? Like people with people
feeling and that's not true. And I think in the first few years that we were in business, it took me like three years to take a vacation. Three years to take a vacation because I really felt that if I let go everything would just go to go to go to the ends, right? Anyhow, so I think the piece of advice I would say is this the work that we do as marketers, yes, there's important outcomes there, but I think it's really important that we step back and take a breath and take time for ourselves as well to
Audrey Kwan (29:39.094)
We can get cook so caught up in the work that we forget that we need our own white space in order to be creative. And marketing at the end of the day is about creativity because being able to connect dots, like that's what we do as marketers. We're connecting dots. We're looking at like how do we get to Zed by connecting A, B, C, and D. And that takes your brain. That takes white space. And if you don't give yourself that, if you don't take a breather and realize that, you know, if you don't carve that space out for you.
Steve Guberman (30:00.654)
Mm-hmm.
Audrey Kwan (30:08.982)
It's actually like it's what's the word I'm looking for? It it's it's de yeah, it's depleting, right? It's not yeah, it's depleting. And so that's what I would say. if there's a piece of advice that I would give to my younger self.
Steve Guberman (30:15.116)
Detrimental.
Steve Guberman (30:24.744)
Awesome. Audrey Quan, thank you so much for your time today, your experience, your wisdom, the community you're building, everything that you're contributing to our industry and I guess the greater whole of the world. So thank you for being you. Thanks for being here.
Audrey Kwan (30:36.483)
Thank you. Thanks, Steve.