Running an agency, regardless of the type, requires grit, determination, some serious smarts and of course, persistence. Without these ingredients, you will do well to survive, let alone thrive. But what if your ambitions are loftier than simply survival or running a lifestyle business? What if you want to grow your agency and achieve some scale so that you can exit with a high valuation?  That's a challenge that a lot of agency owners tackle and with varying degrees of success.

Invariably there are a few “holiday” months out of every year where business slows and you have a chance to catch your breath. 

There are countless articles, blogs and podcasts decrying the importance of sales and marketing team alignment, and the negative impact on revenues when these efforts aren’t aligned. Misalignment between sales and marketing can cost companies 10% or more of annual revenue.

This is one myth that may be tough to bust. Consulting inherently does not scale. It’s a one to one ratio. But like all good business models, consultancies can EVOLVE. As much as I’ve loved working solo, I also really love collaboration.

I’m often asked how to create more diverse sales teams and frequently hear from hiring managers lamenting the lack of female sales talent applying for their positions. Although sales has traditionally been perceived as a male-dominated profession, in truth, there are MANY female sales leaders— your job posting just likely isn’t appealing to them.

A few weeks ago, a Twitter connection of mine posted that she’d been at a Venture Capital event and one of the VC’s on a panel discussion openly stated that he didn’t invest in founders over the age of 40 because they “don’t have the stamina.” As you can imagine, that set the “twittersphere” on fire.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of co-presenting with Steve Mast, the Chief Innovation Officer of Methodify, on the subject of ResearchTech and how it fits into the MarTech stack. If you're looking for ways to future proof (and recession proof!) your business, this is a can't miss. Why?

Although we like to think of starting a business as an intentional practice, for many founders, it’s quite the opposite. Often times, founders fall into a new business idea and excitedly plow ahead with it, taking on business partners or key employees and verbally agreeing to sort out the legal and financial partnership components somewhere down the line. Unfortunately, these types of loose business agreements often wreak havoc on partnerships. Why? Because, as a wise business advisor once told me, “money makes people do crazy shit.” Learn from my mistakes... get your business and partnership structure documented - in writing.

I launched my first business, OTX, in June of 2000. As it turns out, nearly the worst time to start a business, as in 2001 the “dot com” bubble burst. Fortunately, we had a diverse client base and a technology platform that was literally revolutionizing the way movie studios and CPG firms conducted research, and we not only survived the recession, we thrived. In 2003, OTX was ranked the fastest growing research company in the world. But it wasn’t just a strong product and good fortune.

So it’s been said that marketing is like sex… everyone thinks they’re good at it. I can assure you, at least when it comes to marketing, everyone is not.