Agency Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of strategic planning for 2026. As they near the end of 2025, they emphasize the need for agencies to set themselves apart and adapt to the evolving landscape, particularly through the effective use of AI. Despite ongoing economic challenges, they highlight the potential for AI to enhance both efficiency and strategic thinking. Chip and Gini also stress the importance of refining the ideal client profile and taking calculated risks. They share their personal experiences with using AI to assist in planning and decision-making processes, pointing out both the benefits and limitations of current AI technology. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “I do think more than ever, continuing forward on the path that you’re on for the vast majority of agencies is not a good idea. I think most agencies require at least some modest course correction and some more than that.” Gini Dietrich: “Really think about how you can set yourself apart and get in front of prospects now and in January so that you can be doing the things that will help you scale and grow and be sustainable for the future. And some of it’s not gonna be fun.” Chip Griffin: “I think really refining that ideal client profile is something that most of us ought to be taking a very close look at for 2026 in our planning process.” Gini Dietrich: “Be willing to try some things and take some risks and see what works and see what doesn’t work, and then go move on to what works and try again.” Resources The Ragan article regarding upskilling and improving AI skills Related Planning for agency growth Using the AIM-GET Framework to drive your annual planning How to involve your team in annual planning for your agency and its clients Look to your track record as you define your agency's ideal client View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m, I’m flipping through the calendar here, you know, ’cause I still have a paper calendar. Of course. I mean, who doesn’t? Gini Dietrich: Of course. Right. Chip Griffin: And it looks like we’re almost to the end of 2025. Gini Dietrich: We, we are. Which is crazy. Crazy. Chip Griffin: Which, which means that 2026 is right around the corner. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes it is. Chip Griffin: And what do we usually do near the end of each year? Gini Dietrich: We plan for the following next year. Yeah. Chip Griffin: And, and we have an episode talking about that. So when we have no other good ideas to bring to the table, we turn to the trusted proven stuff from the past Gini Dietrich: 2026. I mean, we could talk about 2026 trends. We could talk about 2026 AI things, but I think planning for our business growth is good. Chip Griffin: Yeah. That all goes into planning, right? So, I, and, you know, I, I’m, as long as we don’t do predictions, I’m fine. I hate predictions. Gini Dietrich: Oh, shoot. Let’s do predictions next week then. Chip Griffin: No, no, no predictions. No, that’s, that drives me up a wall. Gini Dietrich: Note to self. Note to self. Chip Griffin: And I, and I know we are just, you know, probably days away from the flood of Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: Articles and Yep. And podcast episodes and videos with everybody making their predictions for the year ahead. Yep. Just stop it. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: So my prediction is we will see lots of predictions. Gini Dietrich: That is a good prediction. I think you’re probably going to be right. Chip Griffin: It seems pretty likely. Gini Dietrich: I’d bet on it in fact. Yeah. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alright, so as we start thinking about 2026 planning, let’s look at it for through the, the lens of, of what, what we might do differently in thinking about 2026 than we typically do. Right? Because we, there’s plenty in our archive where people can go back and listen to us generally talk about planning. I’m sure we’ll touch on some of that in the next 20 minutes. I don’t wanna disappoint listeners. We, we will, you know, reach back to the things that we’ve talked about before, but I think it’s helpful to, to think about, you know, what’s, what’s different about 2026, and I think you’ve already hinted at one of the key things. Gini Dietrich: Oh, AI for sure. Yeah. I saw a really interesting post on LinkedIn from Parry Headrick who was talking about how he used to work for Shift and he was the VP of the San Francisco office, I think, and he said, you know, this was during the recession and I was… Anybody who was in business during the recession knows all of your business went away. It was not a fun time to be in business at all. And he talked about how he went to the office every single day for months on end, and he made cold calls to tech firms and he, he would say, we can do like a PR plan for you, a PR 101 like, and he said one out of every 100 calls accepted the offer. And then they went all out and created a really strategic, as much as it could be, plan for these companies. And gave it to them for free so that they had, they could generate some business. And he said that that was one of the things that kept the office going during that time and how miserable it was. Like he talked about it was boiling the frog, like it was miserable and it was not enjoyable. It’s not why he was doing that job, but they had to keep the office open. And I think that, I read that and I thought, you know, that’s really interesting as we think about 2026 because the last couple of years for agencies have been miserable. We have been slowly boiling the frog for sure. And you know, I have a lot of friends who have laid people off, some have gone out of business, some haven’t gone outta business, but don’t have any clients. Like, it has been rough. And I’m not sure that 26 is going to be much better. So I think one of the things that I will be advising people is, and, and for us too, is really think about how you can set yourself apart and get in front of prospects now and in January so that you can be doing the things that will help you scale and grow and be sustainable for the future. And some of it’s not gonna be fun. It’s not. Chip Griffin: Well, you’ve, uh, certainly taken this on a depressing turn here. Gini Dietrich: I mean, we can talk about AI too, but Chip Griffin: I mean No, I mean, we can, we can talk about how miserable and awful things are for everybody. Uh, that’s, Gini Dietrich: it’s been rough. It’s not like it hasn’t been rainbows and unicorns. It hasn’t. Chip Griffin: No, it, it has, it has not been rainbows and unicorns. But I, but I would also, I would, I would push back a bit. I, I don’t think we’re as bad as ’08 or ’09, or back in the early two thousands. I don’t think it’s, it is not as widespread as it was back then. I’m certainly in the agencies that I’m talking with, seeing a lot of agencies that are struggling, most, not catastrophically, most just kind of, you know, sort of malaise is, is the word I would use. Yeah. It’s good for it. And there are still some that are actually doing quite well and, and even growing. So that, to me, that is a little bit different than what we’ve seen in, you know, in  08 or ’09, or during the pandemic. Certainly. You know, where it was pretty much… I guess even in the pandemic, we had pockets, right? The, the digital firms did well because everybody had to transition from doing things in person to doing things electronically. But it, it’s just… so, I, I think we’re in that general period of malaise, you know, sort of in, in my mind, I’m old enough, I, I think Jimmy Carter, right? You know, you just sort of think, ehhh, you know, and, and how America of the late ’70’s was. And so there’s some of that, at least within the economy and, and certainly in, in the agency space. So I think that that part of the, the challenge here is that it is not as simple an explanation as to how you get out of it. Right. I mean, back in ’08, ’09, it’s like, okay, well the economy just has to come forward. And in this case, part of it’s the economy, but part of it is the, the shifting nature of the relationships between agencies and brands, and other organizations. And so I, I, I think that one of the reasons why some agencies are struggling is because they’re not taking a fresh look. At what they do, how they fit into that picture. And I think there needs to be a lot more creative thinking. And I think AI is a big driver of it, not necessarily in the, in the way that people think, though I don’t, I don’t see AI as taking away agency work. Mm-hmm. I see it as agencies just haven’t figured out how to capitalize on it effectively. And, I think that there is tremendous opportunity for those agencies who are willing to adapt their service offerings with and without AI. And moving forward in a way where they’ll leave behind a lot of of other agencies that are more committed to just plodding forward and doing the same old, same old, and, you know, sprinkling in a little bit of AI here and there. Gini Dietrich: I read a really interesting article a couple of weeks ago and I’ll see if I can find it so Jen can include it in the show notes. I’m sure it’s in my history somewhere, but it talked about how, you know, we’ve seen all of these layoffs at all these large companies in the last couple of months, you know, thousands and thousands of people. And they’re telling, most of these companies are telling the teams that remain. There are two things that you need to focus on: upskilling. So, you know, using AI to help improve you, you know, understanding your own professional development, taking charge of new professional development, new skills. And the other piece is really using AI to help improve your, the work that you’re doing to make you more productive. And it went on to say. If you’re an agency that can help with one of those two things, or both of those things, you’re gonna be in better shape than an agency who does new media news releases and news conferences, and you know, social media. So if you can think about how you can provide professional development or help an organization implement AI from a marketing and communications perspective, you’re gonna be a lot further ahead than those that can’t do that. So I think that goes back to really thinking about how to freshen the services that you provide in a way that keeps up with what’s happening in the world. Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, look, I think that’s absolutely a piece of it, but I think a piece of it is also figuring out, you know, how can you use AI to help you do different things that are not necessarily even explicitly AI related. Or made more efficient by AI or it, I, I think it’s just a, it’s a opportunity to take a very fresh look at how we do everything. And, and I think we need to be careful, not just us as agencies, but also on the brand side. We need to be careful about how much we believe AI itself is changing things or can change things. And, and I, I saw in the last couple of days, a video that our friend Chris Penn put out, where he talked about how you need to change your vocabulary to get the most out of the various generative AI platforms. And I don’t disagree with what he’s saying. You do need to adapt your language to those models so that you get the results you want. But, but the flip side of that is, to me, that says AI has not come nearly as far as we think because we shouldn’t have to change for AI to be responsive to us. Right. Right. True AI would be adapting to us instead. And, and so we’re not quite there yet. And, and the progress has been absolutely amazing. I’ve, every time I try out the latest version of a model, I find new things that it can do and continue to get more and more impressed. But I also have ongoing frustrations with them. In part because of this vocabulary issue, but in part because, you know, we’re still, we’re still overestimating what the, the technology can do for us today as far as allowing us to, to replace work hours, et cetera. And so I see many brands laying off marketing and communications people thinking, well, we’ll have fewer people, but AI will help them do the same amount. Nope. And AI certainly makes you more efficient, but not, not that efficient. Gini Dietrich: Not that efficient. No. And you still need somebody with a brain to prompt it and ensure that it’s not hallucinating and ensure that it’s the right information. And that it’s been edited. Like you still need humans for those things. Does it help you get a start? For sure. But you still need the human beings to do the work. And make sure that it’s accurate because what it pumps out on first try, I mean, my favorite response is meh. I just write MEH meh, and it goes, okay, lemme try again. And then I write, meh. It tries again. Finally. I’m like, okay, that’s halfway decent. Chip Griffin: Well, that, that’s better. My habit is to actually get into arguments with it, which… Really serves no good purpose, but I just, I get, I get, I get frustrated when I explicitly ask it to do something and it doesn’t, Gini Dietrich: it doesn’t, right. Chip Griffin: And I’ll be like, well, why didn’t you do what? Yeah. Oh no, you’re right. I should have done that. Yes, because I specifically for it, right? Like, please help me, Gini Dietrich: please write a thousand words and it gives you 300. And you’re like, Hmm, right. Just do what thousand words. Chip Griffin: Just do what I ask, you know? Or, you know, please make the logo smaller in this image. And it doesn’t change it. No, don’t do that to me, that’s just, it’s very frustrating. Gini Dietrich: It’s very frustrating. I agree. Chip Griffin: But I think, you know, we need to be thinking how we can leverage some of these tools to help us adapt our service offerings. And I was, I was talking with someone recently who, they had shifted a, a process from humans to AI recently. And they were running into issues because it was some data analysis that was being done and, and it turned out that the numbers were wildly different between the humans and the AI. And so the first instinct was that the AI was wrong. But in fact, upon further review, it turned out that the AI was too good. And it was being in incredibly consistent in the way that it was doing the task. Ah, whereas humans. Sure. Inevitably we get distracted, we make a mistake, we, we hit the wrong key. You know, I mean, there’s all sorts of things that can lead to this, but because the AI was more consistent and the volume of data and such being analyzed by the humans and the AI was substantial, it, it made a real difference because the AI was actually better. And so, but to me that’s an opportunity. You’ve got a short term problem that you gotta deal with that, you know, you’ve been generating these historical reports that don’t look quite right now. But there’s a real opportunity there because you can actually improve the quality of what you’re doing, along with the quantity, along with reducing the, the labor hours involved and that sort of thing. So we need to be looking at, at how we can take that and take it to the next level, not just how can we use AI to do first drafts so that we only have to edit and so therefore we save, you know, 30% of our time or something like that. There’s, we have to be thinking much, much more creatively if we’re gonna be successful going forward. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I mean, I’m sure I’ve shared this before, but some of the work that we’ve done in my business this year, I’m not sure we could have done it without AI in the, in two years ago, like some of the work that clients have asked us to do. I’m not sure that we would’ve been capable of doing it without AI. So it, it does have the ability to make you more efficient for sure, but it also helps you think more strategically. And to your point, like, bringing in the, the consistency piece of it so that, you know, maybe the, the way that you reported on results in the past isn’t fully accurate, but now it’s more accurate. Like those kinds of things I think it has helped immensely with, and you know, I can think of at least three situations where I’ve been in a meeting with like big, big, big, big executives and they’ve thrown something out. Do you think your team can do this? And I’ve gone, sure. And then we come back and, you know, as a team, work on it and, and prompt AI. And it’s helped us get to where we need to be. And I don’t think we could have done that on our own two years ago. For sure. Chip Griffin: So, you know, we’ve been talking a bunch about how AI is impacting our businesses, but let’s talk a minute about how AI impacts the planning process itself. And so, you know, my question to you would be, as you’re doing your own 2026 planning with your team, are you using AI to facilitate that process at all? Gini Dietrich: Some of it, I would say I have a co CEO, GPT that I built. So it sits as my Co CEO and sometimes I just vent to it. It makes me feel better, but sometimes it will say things like it will point out things that I didn’t think of. And so, you know, when we, especially right now, ’cause we’re working on cash flow projections for next year with our CFO and I’ve, I’ve put in like… Not actual numbers, but percentages to, and said like, can you help me figure out if these are our goals, what we’re going need to do? What software do we need? What team members are we gonna have to add? Like that kind of stuff. And it help, it’s helping me and our CFO think through all of those different scenarios for sure. We haven’t gotten into like the nitty gritty planning yet because our 2025 plan is rolling over into Q1 a little bit. So we’re, we’re about a quarter behind from that perspective. But, from a cashflow perspective, it’s helping a ton and it’s helped me see things that I wouldn’t have seen on my own. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And and I think that’s a, that’s a real benefit that we ought to be looking at when we’re doing the planning process is using AI, not necessarily to give us all the answers, but to help us understand what else we should be looking at. So I love using AI to, to, to give it a list of questions that I may have about something and say, what, what other questions should I be asking? What other data points should I be looking at? Or putting in some raw data and saying, okay, you know, what are the gaps here? What, what should I be looking to… What additional data should I be looking for? Or how can I analyze this in a different way? So I think in the planning process, there’s a lot of ways that we can use the AI to help us. I think we just need to be careful about using it to give us the answers and instead help it to guide the conversations for sure. Yeah. That we’re having with our teams and with our clients, because it will inevitably help us find things that we are overlooking. And maybe we would still get to it halfway through the brainstorming session or the, the strategy meeting or whatever. But if we know it in advance, you know, it helps us prepare better. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I do think, you know, to your point about the, the data and it being consistent, I think it does look at things more holistically and how, and I mean, it will say to me, have you thought about this or have you thought about that? Or, you know. Here’s an opportunity for you. Like with the PESO model certification in universities, we had an idea of how we were going to approach it in ’26 ’cause the certification is being completely revamped because of AI. And it actually gave me a couple of ideas that I was like… Huh, I hadn’t even thought about that. So like providing curriculum and grading rubric and things like that, that helps professors that I hadn’t even, ’cause I just don’t have that kind of experience. Right. But it helps me think through some of those kinds of things. So I think you’re right. And you know, I love the idea of, of a list of questions and asking what you haven’t thought of. I’ll put in and say, you know, we’re looking to do this, this, and this, and here’s what we’re thinking. What are we missing? And it, you know, it does come back with some ideas. Sometimes it comes back with things you’ve thought about and you’ve dismissed, and sometimes it comes back with things that you’re like, Hmm, okay, let’s, let’s explore that. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I mean it, there’s, it’s not a replacement for human judgment. You still need to look at it and say, oh, yeah, that does make sense, that it’s something we look at. But, but my experience is more often than not, it does come up with things that, you know, that given the right amount of time I would have thought of, but Sure. You know, it, it’s, it’s, it’s good to have it reinforced that, it’s good to have it, you know, bubble it up higher on my list so that, again, I, I’m not finding it out, you know, halfway through the meeting when the light bulb goes off and it’s like, oh, right, I forgot about this. We should be, we should be looking at that. Right. You know, but I, I think this is the, the planning process is, is an opportunity for you as well to be thinking about challenging your own assumptions. And, and I do think more than ever continuing forward on the path that you’re on for the vast majority of agencies is not a good idea. I think most agencies require at least some modest course correction and some more than that. And so I think that we’ve already talked about, you know, what kind of services you can deliver and those kinds of things. But I think the other thing we all ought to be looking at in 2026 is the definition of our ideal client. Because, because we do need to understand better how our clients of today are being impacted by the economy, by AI, by all of the social change that’s going on. And understanding how is that impacting who we’re targeting, how we’re targeting them, what kinds of engagements we’re, we’re trying to set up with. And so I, I think really refining that ideal client profile is something that most of us ought to be taking a very close look at for 2026 in our planning process. Gini Dietrich: One hundred percent. I could not agree more. And you know, I’m a big, big, big fan of really understanding at a macro level what’s going on so that we know how it affects our businesses. And I think that the more that you can do that and understand how everything that’s going on in the world is going to affect your agency and you know, the sustainability and stability of it, I think are, is really, really important. And being willing to try some things and take some risks and see what works and see what doesn’t work, and then go move on to what works and try again. Chip Griffin: Right. And, and you need to, to look at the data that you’ve got in front of you, not data from three to five years ago, right? But, but data from 2025. And so whether you’ve had a great 2025, a mediocre 2025, or an awful 2025, look at what the data is telling you. And look at where you’ve had success. Success in terms of where you’ve had the best results for clients, which we often overlook. We, we often look at just, you know, what we’ve been able to sell, but you need to see what is producing results for clients. You do need to understand what you’re selling, where those leads came from, and, and look at those recent trends and lean into what’s working. And again, that doesn’t matter whether you’ve had a good year or a bad year. You still wanna lean into what you know is working today because it is a, a very different environment than it was 3 years ago, 10 years ago, and and beyond. So you need to be relying on that kind of analysis if you wanna make smarter decisions in your planning process. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you’re right, like this is different than 2008, 2009, and 2020. It’s, it’s different. So be willing to take some risk. It’s uncomfortable for sure. Chip Griffin: You and I both love risk, so we’re always gonna preach risk. Calculated risk, not just reckless risk. Gini Dietrich: Calculated risk.Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Please be calculated. Chip Griffin: Yes, have a reason for what you’re doing, and have a reason to believe that there’s a decent chance of success. Don’t just blindly walk out there and say, Hey, let’s try crossing the street now without looking and see what happens. That’s not the kind of risk we want you to take. Gini Dietrich: Please don’t do that. Please do not do that. Please, please do not do that. Chip Griffin: So with that, if you’re, if you’re listening and you’re driving or something, still pay attention ’cause we’re gonna wrap up now. Keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open. If you, if you wanna listen to this again, wait. You, you can go back to the link. There’s resources that’ll be there. There’s the transcript there, all those things. So stay safe. Yes, yes. However you’re listening to us. And with that, that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And it depends.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complexities of hiring in growing agencies. They highlight the challenges of finding skilled, reliable employees who align with agency values. Sharing personal experiences, Gini explains the pitfalls of hasty hiring and the benefits of thorough vetting and cultural fit. They stress the importance of a structured hiring process, including clear job roles, career paths, and appropriate compensation. They also underscore the value of meaningful interviews, proper candidate evaluations, and treating the hiring process as the start of a long-term relationship. Lastly, Chip and Gini emphasize learning from past mistakes to improve hiring effectiveness and employee retention. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “When we talk about retaining employees, it goes back to how the interviews went.” Gini Dietrich: “You’re gonna be working with this person eight hours a day. You should have a real meaningful conversation with them. Don’t ask if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” Chip Griffin: “If you’re going to have members of your team interviewing, you need to make sure that you’re educating them on how to do it well. And how to do it without causing problems.” Gini Dietrich: “They say, hire slowly and fire fast for a reason, because you have to be really meticulous about who you hire. So that they do last. So they are a culture fit, so they don’t miss deadlines, so that they are getting the work done that you need done.” Related How to onboard new agency employees Get over your fear of hiring employees Hiring the best employees for your agency How to hire agency employees Setting honest expectations for your agency employees from the start Focus on agency employee retention View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, a few weeks ago, I think I fired you. Today, you’re hired, Gini Dietrich: You keep playing with my emotions. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I’m fired. I don’t get paid. Now you’re rehiring me. I don’t know what to do. Chip Griffin: Yeah, it’s difficult. Anyway. It is what it is. But no, we are gonna talk about hiring today because we are, you know, we can’t just talk about all the bad things. So, we’ll, we’ll spend some time talking about something that is overall more positive. Because if we’re hiring, hopefully that means that we are growing, or at least we have the need for additional resources, even if it’s replacing someone who has left. But it is something that is very challenging, so it can create its own problems along the way if you don’t do it right. So this is, something that comes from one of our favorite topic inspiration sources. Reddit. I know it’s a place that you live and breathe. Gini Dietrich: And by favorite, we’re using quotes “favorite”, scares the crap outta me. But ok. Chip Griffin: You are on Reddit all day every day. Just kind of combing around to see what conversations you can jump into. But this is one that was on there, probably a while ago honestly, it’s in our topic document. We didn’t date it, so I, I can’t tell you how long ago it was, but, what it says is, hiring the right people is harder than it looks. Finding skilled, reliable people who align with your values is a challenge. Early on, I rushed hires and paid for it in missed deadlines and miscommunication. Now I take more time to vet people and focus on cultural fit as much as skills. So I thought it would be helpful for us to have a conversation around how we approach the hiring process. How do we find the right fits? How do we vet those fits? And how do we frankly think about going from hiring them to, to beginning to on onboard them. We’re not gonna talk about the full onboarding process, but just sort of, you know, that, that evolution of saying, Hey, I need this role. Where do we go from there? Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s, it’s funny you say that this is our topic today. ’cause just the other day I was thinking about some of the very early hires I made that didn’t work out. And all of the mistakes I made in, in hiring them. And I will say that one of the biggest mistakes that I make is I meet somebody online who has the right skillset from a paper perspective, resume perspective, and I just hire them. I’m like, oh yeah, you, you look like you can do the job. And we may have a conversation, but there’s no, like, thought about it. There’s no interviewing for skills. It’s more just like a, a conversation to see if we, we might be able to work together. And every time I have done that, it has not worked out. So earlier this year I hired a chief learning officer to help with like certification and, you know, all the professional development things we do on the PESO model front. And about three or four months in, we both realized that, that that while she can do that job and she’s great at that job, she would be more valuable as a chief operating officer. So we switched her over. And let me tell you, being professionalized on the hiring front is phenomenal. I mean, she has set up interview guides, so like if you are an assistant account executive, and this would be somebody that you report to maybe two or three levels up, and we’re having you interview, you have a set of questions. If you’re the direct report, you have a set of questions. So we, like, she’s created all this. She’s created salary bands and like, you know, a career path for everybody where from where they start and she’s done, she’s done it in such a way that it isn’t bloat, but it’s just kind of professionalized the way that we do things. And you don’t have to hire a chief operating officer to do this, like I know you, you like to talk. Patrick is your go-to person from an HR perspective, someone like Patrick can help create these things so that you can professionalize it because as they say, hire slowly and fire fast. That quote is there for a reason, because you have to be really meticulous about who you hire. So that they do last. So they are a culture fit, so they don’t miss deadlines so that they are getting the, the work done that you need done and you’re not being, like, I have been in, in the last 20 years of just hiring people I like. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I, I mean, I think that, you know, you’ve touched on some important things here and, and you do have to have some sort of a process in place. It doesn’t need to turn you do into a bureaucratic circus, Gini Dietrich: You do, right. Chip Griffin: But at the same time, you need to have a process. And, and it really, to me, starts with being clear about what it is that you need. And who it is that you’re trying to hire. And, and too often when we’re trying to hire, it’s either because someone has left or because we’ve got a new client. And so our, our mindset is we need to get someone in here quick because we’ve gotta relieve this pain and this pressure. But that often leads to some of those bad decisions because you’re not really evaluating. Not even just the individual, but the role. Mm-hmm. And you need to think through, you know, what do you actually need at any given point in time? And it’s one of the reasons why I am a very strong advocate of only hiring, particularly in small agencies, only hiring one person at a time, one role at a time. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes. Chip Griffin: Because every time you add someone new to the mix, it changes a little bit what you think you might need in the next one. And if you hire two people simultaneously, it increases the odds that you don’t actually have the right mix of talent on board. So you’ve gotta be crystal clear with yourself about what you’re looking for, but to your point, you also need to have a process in place that helps to understand what are our salary bands, what are our titles? How does this fit in? What is their growth path? Because those are questions you will get during the interview process. And if you’re not clear about those things going in, you will either overpay or underpay or assign the wrong title. Or frankly, get the wrong person because you’re not thinking about it in the big picture. So put the thought process in upfront, and that is the, to me, the first step in making sure that you make as good a decision as possible. Accepting that frankly, a lot of hiring decisions are gonna be wrong. Right? Even of course, even, even the, of course, even the best organizations, of course with the, with robust HR teams and, and talent evaluation, they still have a lot of misfires, so you can’t beat yourself up over those. But you’ve gotta increase your odds by having the right thought process and structural process in place. Gini Dietrich: One of the things that, you know, early on I would do when I didn’t have a team who could interview people, I would ask my business coach, or I would ask, you know, friends that were in the industry, other agency owners, if they would participate in some interviewing, just to kind of get me out of the Gosh, I really like this person. I think we’ll work well together. And, rather than, gosh, I really like this person and I think they can do the job right. So just having different outside perspective helped me when I didn’t have a team that could also do the interviewing. So I think, you know, doing that kind of stuff too helps. And I also think that, you know, I, one of the biggest mistakes, and you touched on this that I’ve made, is not having that career path or clear career path. Because people come to work and even though you’re an entrepreneur and you’re the agency owner, and you kind of know in your head how things work, they need to know that because this is their career that you’re talking about. So they need to know that if I wanna be promoted in 6 months, or 12 months or 18 months or whatever it happens to be, these are the things that I need to achieve so that they’re working towards something, not waiting for the annual review and saying, am I up for a promotion? What does that look like? Do I get a raise? Like, so having those kinds of things I think is incredibly important upfront so that you know, this is what we expect, this is how you’ll get to the next step, and you can be very clear about that. Chip Griffin: Yeah, because it, it is a question that you absolutely will get. I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years. I continue to, to do interviews for clients, and I can tell you that you get a lot of those kinds of questions where people want to understand what their career path is. The other one they ask a lot is, what does a typical day look like? Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: You’ve gotta have the answers for those questions as best you can, and, and you need to be honest with them where you don’t know. So don’t, don’t, you know, blow smoke and, and Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: You know, give them an answer if you don’t have one. If, if the honest answer is, I don’t know. Tell them that, but then also explain how you think about it or how you would go about it, or the kinds of things that, that might be included so that you can paint some kind of a picture there. Because it’s, it is important for people to evaluate it. And frankly, we look at these things as, as evaluating the talent for us. But they’re also evaluating us. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Chip Griffin: And, and so you also need to make sure that in the process you’re giving them plenty of time to ask questions. In fact, I usually start by letting them ask questions for two reasons. One is because it helps them to get the information that they need to evaluate it. But second, you learn as much from the questions they ask as anything else. And to me, a red flag is when they have no questions at all. Gini Dietrich: No questions. Yeah. Chip Griffin: Because if they have no questions at all, it probably means they did no research. They’re probably not all that interested. They’re just trying to get a job of some kind. It doesn’t, it doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re a bad fit. Some people just freeze up because they’re, you know, that’s, that’s not a traditional approach to interviews. To start by saying, what questions do you have of me? Right. By the way, introduce yourself first. Talk a little bit about the business and the role. I mean, don’t just, you know, say hello. What questions do you have? Gini Dietrich: Hello. What do you have? What questions can I answer? Chip Griffin: But, but honestly, I, I almost always will ask people what questions they have before I ask my first question. We just do the intros and then start with that, because you learn from that. And it, it also helps them get onto a more comfortable spot. And so you can steer the, the conversation, I think, more effectively that way. Gini Dietrich: One of my biggest pet peeves is, you know, now that we have a, a team who does the interviews, if the candidate gets to me, that means they’re one of the finalists, right? And I will say, what questions do you have of me? And they will say, and this happens more often than not. Well, I kind of already asked my all my other question, my questions from everybody else. So ask them again. Right? Make sure you get the same answer like. Right. Yeah, because that will, as I know we’re not talking, we’re not talking to candidates right now, but that will tell you as much if there’s, the answers are different than anything else. So that is also a red flag. Which brings me to, we actually created a list of red flags, and we’re going through the A process right now ’cause we’re hiring and our HR director is doing pre-screens, phone screens, and one of the red flags is Are you able to work with within bureaucracy and lots of change and indecisiveness and you know. And one, one of the people that’s interviewing said, I just don’t like bureaucracy. I don’t like lots of change. I don’t like indecisiveness, I’m not. And she was like, no, like, because we have our list of red flags. So it’s, it’s an easy way also to sort of get yourself out of the, gosh, I really like this person. I’d like to work with them. If you have that list of red flags that you will allow you to objectively say, probably not the right fit for this job. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and the more that you do of this, the more easily you can come up with those things that just, that it, they’re the indication that this may not be the best fit. Yeah. And I always encourage probing just to make sure that, and I prefer to think of ’em as orange flags rather than red flags most of the time. Because most of the time it’s more the accumulation of those things than, than a single one that Gini Dietrich: fair, fair, Chip Griffin: that says, okay, no, this isn’t the right fit. But I also like to probe. And so, you know, in an example like that, I might say, well, well why does that bother you? Why is that a problem? And just kind of see, Gini Dietrich: yeah. Chip Griffin: You know, what their, what their root thinking is, because I mean, chances are it’s not gonna change anything, but it’s always interesting to find out why. I think the other thing, and, and you touched on this in, in, you know, having a, a, an interview guide and all of that, if you’re going to have members of your team interviewing, you need to make sure that you’re educating them on how to do it well. And how to do it without causing problems. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: And I think I’ve shared this on the podcast before. Yes. But I have seen so many egregious questions in interviews Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: Over the years that create substantial legal and regulatory issues. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: Please, please, please train your juniors. Frankly, some of you probably need some training yourselves. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: On how to do this, Gini Dietrich: I was just gonna say yes. Yes. Chip Griffin: In a way that’s not causing problems. Yes. Because the, I mean, the questions that I’ve seen asked in interviews are just off the charts and, and, and so blatantly inappropriate. Gini Dietrich: Do you have some examples? Chip Griffin: Focus on, and, and, and the other thing is focus on questions that, that actually might reveal something that’s useful to you. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: You are not, this is not Google. You’re not out there trying to ask, you know, weird mind game questions. Ask straightforward questions. I, I mean, ’cause the other thing Gini Dietrich: if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, in addition to the inappropriate questions, you just get these dumb ones, right? Where someone, someone read an article and they’re like, oh, you learn so much if you ask, what kind of tree would you be? Really, you just look crazy as an interviewer. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: You’ll look like you’ve lost your mind. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Just don’t do it. Have a real conversation. Treat them like a professional. Treat them with respect. Treat them like you would a prospect. Don’t sit there and, and try to play gotcha games. It’s not a quiz show. It’s not. If you want to go on a quiz show and, and you wanna run your own quiz show, fine. Do that. Your interview subjects, that’s not what it’s for. Don’t ask them in Google Analytics, where do you go to do this? Come on, seriously, just knock it off. Gini Dietrich: That’s funny. Chip Griffin: And if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna try to apply tests to people, you gotta pay them. Gini Dietrich: I totally 100% agree with that. Chip Griffin: But you can’t, Gini Dietrich: yes. Chip Griffin: You can’t say, I need you to write a plan for me. Gini Dietrich: No. Chip Griffin: Or write a press release or something like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Particularly if it’s for an actual client you have Correct. And you might actually use it. That’s just wrong. That’s, and I see that way too often. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Where someone says, well, I need to evaluate you. I need you to, to do this. On the technical side, I’ve seen people ask to be written to write all sorts of code. Why? Gini Dietrich: Bad idea. I, you know what, actually Reddit is full of, of those like, so I’m interviewing for this job and they asked me to put together a 12 month plan complete with deck and strategy and blah, blah, blah. Is that normal? And I’m always like, no? Chip Griffin: No, Gini Dietrich: don’t do it. I understand the hiring market is tough right now, but no. Chip Griffin: It’s just bizarre. I mean, honestly, I, I would be suspicious of anybody who could put together that kind of a plan based on, you know, 10 minutes of conversation. Gini Dietrich: Right, right, right. Chip Griffin: I mean, and that’s the other thing. You have to be realistic about what kinds of answers you can get from people in these short windows of time. And so it really is… it’s not necessarily about whether you like them, but it’s, it’s trying to get to understand how they think, how they approach things. You can get those big picture senses off of these conversations, but the, the more granular you get with your question, the less likely it is to be a reliable indicator. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: And, and you need to, to again, treat it like a real conversation. So to the extent you have interview guides. Please use them. Just look through them and, and use it as, as a, a general format for the questions you might ask. Please do not do as, as. When I used to advise members of Congress and I prepared questions for them for hearings. Some of them would sit there and ask question one, question two, question three. They wouldn’t even listen to what the, the answer was from the witness at the hearing. They wouldn’t listen to what their colleagues had asked. So I, there were any number of situations where a member would read my question. The member previous to them had asked the exact same question, but they weren’t bothering to listen. Or they asked question one, and they move immediately to question number two, even though the person actually answered question number two as part of their response to question number one. Use your brain. Have a meaningful conversation. Do not walk through your, these are the 10 questions I always ask on interviews and just march through them Gini Dietrich: right Chip Griffin: in forced order. That doesn’t make any sense. You, you need to, to have a real meaningful conversation with someone if you wanna evaluate them properly. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You’re gonna be working with this person eight hours a day. You should have a real meaningful conversation with them. This, that’s ludicrous. Chip Griffin: Alright, so you, so we’ve, we’ve figured out what we need. We’ve done the interviews. So now how do we pick, we, you know, we’ve got, I mean, let’s say we’ve got a couple of finalists. They’re both in our view, viable finalists. They’re, they’re, they both could do the job. What do you weigh most heavily when you’re evaluating one versus the other? How, how do you make that difficult decision? Gini Dietrich: I’m the wrong person to ask that question ’cause it is based on whether or not I like you and that’s probably not the right response. Chip Griffin: I mean the, there has to be an element of that, particularly in a small agency. Right. You know, you Yeah. If you just, if if you, if you don’t get the right vibe off of someone and you’re like, ah, this just doesn’t… listen to yourself. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Right. If, if you don’t enjoy having the conversations with that person during the interview process, Gini Dietrich: it’s not gonna get better. Chip Griffin: And maybe you say, well, but they’re, they have all the skills. They have all the connections. They know what they’re doing. Oh, it’d make my life so easy. Listen to yourself there. And that doesn’t mean that you have to have that, you know, you need to hire people that you want to go out and have a beer with after work or something like that. But, you know, you’ve gotta feel like, I could talk to this person Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: An hour or two a day and I, I wouldn’t lose my mind. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Don’t ever say they’ve got so much talent. I’m gonna ignore that. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Never, because I, the way I think about it is, and the same thing with clients, I would say it will, it gets to the point that I’m gonna end up canceling meetings with this person or with this client. If the answer is yes, then it’s not the right fit. Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, and, and the flip side is true too. Going to your point very early in this conversation, if you, if you are enjoying your conversation with that person, don’t overlook the fact that they don’t actually have the skills Yeah. That match up. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, they are under, it will bite you, underqualified or overqualified for the role. They still need to be a fit for the role. No matter how much you enjoy uhhuh your conversations with them or how smart you think they are, Uhhuh, that they may be a good fit for your organization at some point in some role, but it may not be the one you’re hiring for now. Mm-hmm. So make sure that you’re clear with yourself and don’t talk yourself into something. I, I see this a lot where people will get through the hiring process and they find someone that they really like and they’re like, well, they’re not really a fit for this role, but I could see them doing this or that. It’s okay to be flexible, but make sure that whatever this or that is, is really something you need. And you’re not talking yourself into an additional expenditure or putting yourself in a position where, yes, you’ve got that person, but now you still have to hire for this other role. You, you may make things more difficult for yourself in that. So make sure that you’re always going back to what did you say you needed? And if we’re deviating from that, why? And is it, is it a sound business case for making that decision? Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. Learn from me. Don’t make those mistakes. It costs a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of angst. It burns, some bridges. Learn from me. Chip Griffin: And, and also throughout the interview process, and I think we’ve talked about this on the, the show in the past before start thinking about those interview conversations, the hiring conversation where you’re making the offer. Think about all of those as part of the onboarding process. Because it really is a seamless transition or should be a seamless transition into the onboarding and ultimately retention. I mean, when, when we talk about retaining employees, it goes back to how the interviews went. Absolutely. The questions you asked, the way you handled yourself, all of that impacts things that will happen 6, 12, 18 months down the road or even more. Yeah. And so you need to be mindful of that and thinking about how would this person perceive the questions we ask, the process we follow, are we frankly canceling a lot of times on them during the interview process. You need to treat them with respect, if you want to be treated with respect, if you want to build a lasting relationship. So think about all of that at every step of the hiring process, from that first interview, to the last interview, to the offer, et cetera. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely, yes. It’s very, very, very important for you to be organized and prepared. Hire slowly. Those will be the things that save you from a hiring perspective. And like I said, learn from me and don’t always hire just people you like. Chip Griffin: There you go. But don’t hire people you dislike either. Gini Dietrich: So well, sure. But they also have to have the skills to do a good job. Chip Griffin: All right, well I guess with that, we’ll let you keep your job for now, so Gini Dietrich: Well thanks. Thanks. I appreciate it. Chip Griffin: On that note, we will draw this episode to a close. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich, Chip Griffin: and it depends.

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