Agency Leadership Podcast

You built an agency you’re proud of. So why does your website still feature that glowing tribute to someone you wouldn’t recommend today, or explain services you stopped offering three years ago? In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the unsexy but critical task of auditing your agency’s website content. They share practical approaches for identifying what needs updating, what deserves deletion, and how to prioritize your efforts when you’re staring down hundreds (or thousands) of outdated pages. The conversation covers everything from quick wins—like updating your homepage and key pages—to strategic decisions about high-traffic content that no longer serves your business. Gini shares her process for using tools like Screaming Frog to audit content systematically, while Chip emphasizes the importance of focusing on human users rather than chasing every algorithm change. They also dive into the balance between refreshing old content and creating new material, with specific guidance on when each approach makes sense. The episode wraps with a reminder that consistency matters more than perfection—especially when AI is increasingly using your bio and content to determine whether to recommend you. If your website is starting to feel like a liability rather than an asset, this episode offers a manageable roadmap to get it back on track without turning it into a year-long project. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “First and foremost, focus on the end user’s experience. And only after that, think about, okay, are there tweaks or additions I could make in order to help the search engines or the AI spiders or that kind of thing?” Gini Dietrich: “I would rather have accurate numbers so I know exactly what my pipeline looks like, my lead generation looks like, what my lead nurturing looks like, and be able to work it backwards.” Chip Griffin: “If you’re getting a lot of traffic to a page that either is not as relevant as it should be or not as accurate as it should be given the way the world has changed, you know, those are ones that you want to address.” Gini Dietrich: “AI notices inconsistencies. So if you are inconsistent across different websites, social media, all the places that you are online, you are not going to show up in AI answers no matter how good your content is.” Turn ideas into action Audit your homepage today. Open your website and read your homepage copy with fresh eyes—does it accurately reflect who you serve, what you do, and where your agency stands today? If not, block two hours this week to rewrite it. This is your most important page and the fastest way to stop misrepresenting your business. Check Google Analytics for your top 20 pages. Identify which pages drive the most traffic, then ask yourself if each one still serves your business or if you’re just attracting irrelevant visitors. Kill off pages that generate traffic but don’t support your current positioning—inflated vanity metrics aren’t worth the confusion. Ensure bio consistency across platforms. Compare your bio on your website, LinkedIn, and other platforms where you appear. Make them consistent (accounting for character limits) so AI can confidently present you as an option when people search for expertise in your area. Related Real talk about agency websites How to think about your agency's website View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m old. Gini Dietrich: Yes, you are. Chip Griffin: But you know what else is old? Gini Dietrich: What else? Chip Griffin: Some of the content on my website. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, sure. Mine too. Yeah. Chip Griffin: It’s, it’s one of the perils of having been around for a while. Gini Dietrich: Yes, indeed. Chip Griffin: Both as a human, as a business. And so we have a lot of content out there on the website that maybe isn’t as current as we’d like it to be. Some of it I haven’t looked at in many years, so I don’t even know if it’s up to date or not. Gini Dietrich: Sure. Chip Griffin: I’m sure that many of our listeners have content on their website or maybe entire websites that are old and out of date. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: So my question to you is, how should we be thinking about this kind of, how do we deal with this problem? Or we, we can’t just spend, I mean, I, I don’t know about you, but my website’s got over a thousand different pieces of content on it. Oh yeah. Now I think most of our listeners probably don’t have websites with quite that much content on it, but some do, and even if you’ve only got a couple hundred, you know, that’s still a substantial body of content that you need to audit in some fashion. So what, what do you do about that? Gini Dietrich: You know, it’s funny, this conversation is happening right now because about a week ago, right after the holidays, I got an email from a friend that said, Hey, uh, I don’t know if you know this or not, but you have a blog post from, from 13 years ago, literally 13 years ago, praising Elon Musk. And I was like, well, let’s delete that! But like, I don’t know how she found that. She must have been searching on the site for something and found it. Right. So I think it’s important to do an audit and I did delete it. I moved it to the trash. But, I think it is important to do an audit. We have a client that said to us, we don’t think we need new content. We have plenty. And we went in and we’re like, okay, great. Let’s do an audit and see. And we audited it and they do have plenty of content, but the most recent is two and a half years old. So one of the things that we’re working on with them right now, well, twofold. One is going through the audit that we did to see what needs to stay with an update, a refresh, and what should be deleted. There are lots of, there’s lot, there’s lots of content on their site. And actually this will appeal to many of you listeners too. There’s content on their website that has some great SEO value. You know, showing up first in Google results and things like that. So you don’t wanna get rid of that content, but it probably needs a good update. It probably needs to be refreshed. It probably needs new quotes, new experts, new expertise, new statistics, whatever it happens to be. So that’s what I would do. It’s pretty easy. We use, Screaming Frog to do the audit, so it’ll, it will look at your entire website and then give you an Excel list of all of your links, and then you can go and you can tell it I want dates and topic and all that kind of stuff. And you can go through that fairly easily to say, this is old, we don’t need that. Move that to a different tab. This is good stuff. We don’t wanna lose it. And then I would compare that to what you’re keep, I would compare what you’re keeping to do a Google search. Are you show, are those links showing up in Google? And I would also ask AI. Are you showing, is AI showing that content in its answers. So you probably, I would venture to guess, like you and me, we, it would be a really big undertaking ’cause we have years and years of content. But for most agency owners, I would guess it’s probably a, I dunno… And you can use AI to help you, but it’s probably a two or three hour thing that you can split up over several weeks, right? To get it done. But 100% you should be, you should have an up update up to date website overall, and you should be updating content so that it’s refreshed, not necessarily the URL, but updating the content inside the article or the blog post or the page or whatever it happens to be. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, I think the advice to sort of just kind of, you know, go through a list of it is a really good starting point. Whether you use some third party tool, or frankly, if your website isn’t too huge, if you just go into WordPress and start scrolling back through the pages and posts. Mm-hmm. And just looking at the headlines, it at least, you know, things that are obviously in need of help will jump out at you. Yeah. Or you know, that you praise somebody that doesn’t make sense or whatever. And, and we have to keep in mind that, that sometimes that old content might be a year old, it might be 10 years old, right? It might still need some sort of an updating. The other thing that’s, that’s often helpful is just to go into, you know, something simple like your Google Analytics and just look at, you know, the top 20, 30, 40 pages in terms of traffic and just ask, are all of these pages the way I still want to present myself in whatever the current year is that you’re listening to us? Because, you know, that can be a really helpful way of prioritizing what you wanna address, what you wanna update. And particularly if you’re getting a lot of traffic to a page that either is not as relevant as it should be or not as accurate as it should be given the, the way the world has changed. You know, those are ones that you want to address. I, to me, one of the interesting cases is, you know what, and I’ve seen this a lot, and I, some of the organizations I’ve worked with have had this issue where you’ve got a page that gets a ton of traffic, but it’s frankly totally irrelevant to what they do today. Right. It’s still, it’s still an accurate bit of content, which is why it keeps getting traffic, you know, because it’s answering whatever question the searcher may have had, but it doesn’t really benefit the organization other than it does produce a fair amount of inbound traffic. So, to me, those are interesting cases. Trying to figure out what you do with those. And, if you talk to different SEO experts, you sometimes hear different bits of advice on this, right? Because some are like, well, you know, you, you’re still getting people clicking over to your site, and that’s a good signal for the search engines, so that’s good. The problem is if the signal is that you’re relevant for something that you really aren’t relevant for. Right. So, doesn’t really help you. My general inclination is if it’s completely irrelevant to what you do today, I would kill it off and sacrifice the traffic. But that’s, that’s my perspective on that. No, I totally agree with that. Either way you should make a conscious decision about it. Gini Dietrich: I totally agree with that because I think you’re right. If it’s not some, if it’s irrelevant, if you’re bringing irrelevant traffic to your website, your numbers are inflated. So I would rather have accurate numbers so I know exactly what my pipeline looks like, my lead generation looks like, what my lead nurturing looks like, and be able to work it backwards. Right. So I completely agree with you and like I said, I killed that article from 13 years ago. Because that’s not how I feel about that man anymore. So, yeah. At all. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Well, for, for many years on my personal blog, the highest trafficked post was one, was sort of a throwaway post I did on a camera backpack, that I got like 20 years ago. And it just, it scored, it turned out it was a popular model of the backpack, and so it got a ton of traffic from people who were considering buying it. Obviously that didn’t help me at all. Gini Dietrich: Not at all. Right. Chip Griffin: Because that, I mean, you know, I didn’t pitch camera backpacks or anything like that, you know, I didn’t sell ’em, I didn’t even have an affiliate link in or anything like that. So what, you know, what was the value of it? Pretty much nothing. You know, it felt nice to see all the spikes in traffic that it generated. Sure. Of course. But yeah. But it wasn’t particularly useful, so, and those are the kinds of things that, that many of us may, you know, maybe we just had a comment on our blog about some story of the day. And it just took off and for whatever reason still sticks around. But it’s not really what our agency is about, so doesn’t really help. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I would really look at, I mean, some of your ideas, especially if you don’t have a ton of content like we do going, just going through WordPress and looking to see. I would start with the content on your website specifically, what’s on your homepage? Does it represent who you are and what you stand for today? Does it accurately reflect where you are today? I would venture to guess the answer for most of us is no. I would start there at least with the homepage and your top three or four pages, so probably your services page, probably your about us page. Maybe a resources page, depending on, again, look at your Google Analytics. Then once you’ve done that, then I would definitely go through WordPress and go through any content that you have, podcasts, recordings, videos, blog posts, whatever it happens to be. Go through all of those and then divide and conquer and say, yeah, we’re gonna have to update these. It may take me all year, but I’m gonna do one a week and I’m gonna update one a week. And it suddenly, you’re taking small bites of the elephant and you can get it done by year’s end. Chip Griffin: I love your advice to look at the homepage and other key pages before worrying about, you know, old blog posts and that kind of thing, because many, many agencies neglect their websites. Until they decide all of a sudden, this is how I’m gonna get new business. And so then they over invest in time and money Yes. In their websites. Yes. So it, it, it does seem to be a story of extremes most of the time, but, but looking at that homepage of your website and making sure that it accurately reflects the business that you are: who you serve, what you do, and that it is very crystal clear about those things on your homepage. Very first step. Do not pass go. Do not do anything else. Just get that done first. Then I would say, look at the about page and make sure that it accurately reflects who you and your team are. Make sure that the right people are there. Make sure that your bio is accurate and up to date. Make sure that your photo is up to date and have a photo, by the way, because people like to deal with other people. Yep. And as someone who does professional headshots for people on the side, I gotta tell you, you gotta have something that’s within the last five years at least. I mean, if I put up a photo on the website of me with hair, that’s just, that’s not, that doesn’t make any sense. And yet I see plenty of people, Gini Dietrich: no, Chip Griffin: who have photos on their websites. And then I meet them and I’m like, this is not even in the ballpark. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, you’re right. The other thing I will say to that, and this is incredibly important, is that AI notices inconsistencies. So if you are inconsistent across different, the websites, social media, all the places that you are online, you are not going to show up in AI answers no matter how good your content is. So when you’re doing that audit, I would also audit your bio. Your bio that’s on the website compared to what it’s on LinkedIn compared to what it is on all the other social media platforms. If you have YouTube or a podcast platform, compare it to there. If you have a newsletter, compare it to there. Like ensure that it is the exact same bio, not, not, little changes based on the platform. I mean, you’ll have to make it smaller for Twitter than you would for LinkedIn, right? But it has to be consistent because if it’s not, AI gets confused and doesn’t know what to do, and so it just doesn’t present you as an option. So as you’re doing that audit, I would ensure that the bio, your own bio and then the bios of your key leadership or key team members are consistent across every platform on the internet, because that’s incredibly important with AI today. Chip Griffin: Yes. At the same time, what I would say to you is AI and SEO are very important. More important are the humans who actually visit your website. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: And so there’s lots of advice out there, including what we’re talking about here that will help you from an AI and SEO standpoint. However, it should never, ever, ever be at the expense of the actual user’s experience. Gini Dietrich: No, never. Right. Chip Griffin: And increasingly, I’m seeing websites that are being tailored for how they think that AI will be reading and indexing their sites. And so, for example, they shift almost entirely to a Q&A format because AI, generally speaking, loves the Q&A format in order to stock the answers that it gives to people. However, that’s not always the best user experience. Sometimes you need to present things in more of a compelling story like way. And trust me, the AI will figure it out. It may not be as great at it today. It may prefer the Q, but it’s going to improve over time. And it’s the same thing as for years, people would chase the latest algorithm change at Google. And that’s fantastic until they change it in three months or six months. Right. And so what are you gonna do? Just keep updating your website? Well, if you’re an SEO agency, you love that, right? Because. You know, you can just tell the clients, well, you know the latest version, now you gotta do this. So you remember all that work we did in January? It’s June now. I’ll do it again. We’re gonna redo all of that for you, right? I mean, it’s a great full employment act for SEO experts. However, it is not generally a good user experience, nor frankly, a particularly good use of resources. So first and foremost, focus on the end user’s experience. And only after that, think about, okay. Are there tweaks or additions I could make in order to help the search engines or the AI spiders or that kind of thing? Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think the point you make about how Google updated updates it algorithm like real often and that you are trying to keep up is, is ludicrous, but it’s something that we’ve always been aware of and I think the strategy has not changed. If you always write, produce, not just write, but create content that’s compelling to a human. The algorithms and the AI are going to love it so that doesn’t matter. Are there things you can do to help it and AI find you? Sure you can do Q&A’s, you can do the, but that we do that stuff and this is gonna get techy, but we do that stuff on no follow sites, so it doesn’t show up in Google. It doesn’t show up in our navigation. It’s only there for the AI bots, right? So there are things that you could do for sure. But if you always put the human beings first, it’s going to work no matter what happens with AI, and no matter what happens with the algorithms. Google came out, gosh, several years ago now, and said, if you’re focused on expertise, experience, authority, and trust, those are the, those are how we’re using, that’s how we’re floating stuff to the top. So I think that’s really good advice because that is always going to A, make your content different, and B, make it valuable to humans. So if you’re always demonstrating your expertise that nobody else has and your experience that nobody else has, that will build authority and trust in both places. Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, the irony is that all of the experts will help you to chase the algorithms and the technology, but the reality is that all of the search engines and all of the AI engines, they’re all chasing the user. All they’re trying to do is try to deliver what a real person wants. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And so it’s ironic that, that we set them aside, the humans aside to chase the technology when the technology is chasing the people. So it’s kind of a weird circle and I’ve consistently maintained for 20 plus years. If you focus on the user, you’ll get to the right place. You may not be there today. And, and it, it’s gonna ebb and flow over time as algorithms and technology changes. But chase the user because that’s how you sell your business. That’s how you find new clients and that’s how you keep people happy. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s, yes. Focus on the humans first. That’s always been the advice. That strategy has not changed. The tools change, the tactics change, the execution changes, but the strategy remains the same. Chip Griffin: So let’s say, you know, you’re, you’ve gone through this audit on your website. You’ve chucked out the things like the praise of Elon Musk that you don’t want on there anymore. You’ve gotten rid of the content that’s no longer relevant to the business that you are today. So now you’re left with some things that you could update, you know, maybe you could strengthen them. They’re not obviously wrong. They’re still pretty good. How do you decide where you want to invest your energy as far as which of these do you update? Which of those do you flesh out and make bigger deals? Because I think that’s where the real challenge comes in. You know, do you, are you better off updating old content or are you better off creating new content? Gini Dietrich: I think it depends, which is the tagline to this podcast, of course, but, it depends on a few things. One, if you, if there’s older content that you can refresh and update with minimal resources, like it’s just a five or 10 minute, gosh, this needs to change, this needs to change, and then I republish it and it’s showing up in Google results. I think it’s probably worth doing it. Obviously if it doesn’t support or reflect where you are right now, I would not worry about it. But if there are things where you have some SEO value or AI is using it to bring real humans to your website based on the questions they’re ans they’re asking and it’s accurate, then I would take a few minutes to update it. And like I said, maybe you, you create a list of things that you need to do and you just check one off a week. Right? And then I would focus my efforts on new stuff. So where are we now? What are we thinking? How are we? How have we evolved? What kinds of things are we offering to the industry? That kind of stuff. So I would first focus on the stuff that you can repurpose because it’s easier and it’s a smaller lift, and you still have the value of SEO from that perspective, and then focus on the new. But like I said, if your website in general, your homepage, your about us page are not updated, I would start there. Chip Griffin: And I think it’s important that you, as you’re looking at the old content, that you’re thinking about refreshing that, that you don’t look at it through the lens of I could make this perfect if I spent some more time on it. It really, you have to see that there’s some, that the outcome for the user, again, going back to the person on the other end, is meaningfully different because of the additional work that you’ve put in. I mean, if it’s just simply that it’s phrased better, it’s organized, neater. It’s, you know, a little bit clearer that that’s probably not enough for me. Right. But if you’re able to, you know, things have changed between then and now as far as either what’s going on in the world, what’s out there, what your knowledge is, and you can, you can make it 50% better. Okay. Now you’re talking about something that, that may be worth the investment of time and energy, but if it’s, you know, if you’re just, you know, kind of polishing. That generally isn’t gonna pay off. Gini Dietrich: Totally agree with it. Yep. Totally agree. Yeah. If it’s new, like if it’s your thinking has evolved and it supports that and you just need to polish that piece or you know, like… We are constantly evolving the PESO model. And so I’m always looking at that content to say, oh gosh, that doesn’t represent where it is anymore. Right? Do I wanna put a date on this or a year in the content so that anybody who visits it understands that this is three years old. Do I wanna delete it? Like, so I, you know, I’m constantly. Our marketing team and I are constantly looking at those kinds of things, so I totally agree. If it’s just a polish, I wouldn’t spend the time. But if it’s evolved thinking, if it’s new services, if it’s new products, if it’s new IP, if it’s, you know, those kinds of things, then I would definitely include it. Chip Griffin: Absolutely. Well, hopefully we’ve given people some good ideas so that they can take a fresh look at their website as we start the year. And figure out, you know, what they might wanna tweak, improve, get rid of, hide from, any of those things. And it, it doesn’t have to be a giant project as you suggested. No. It can be the kind of thing where you chip away at one piece of content a week or something like that and you’ll see a meaningful difference over the course of time. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yep. Get it done. Get that homepage updated. Chip Griffin: So with that, we will draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich, Chip Griffin: and it does depend.

As agency owners settle into 2026, it’s easy to operate on autopilot—chasing the next tactic without reconnecting with what made the business work in the first place. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case for looking backward before charging forward. Chip admits his first agency started because “consultant” sounded better than “unemployed.” But the real question isn’t just why you started—it’s why you decided to keep building. That motivation should be informing your strategy today. Gini shares how she once believed she wanted a large agency with hundreds of employees and global clients. When she hit 30+ people, she realized she’d built something she didn’t enjoy leading. She was buried in HR issues instead of doing the work that energized her. The Great Recession forced a reset, and she restructured the business around her strengths. Her advice: figure out what brings you joy in the business, and protect time to do more of it. Otherwise, you risk drifting into micromanagement or burnout. The episode also digs into practical growth tactics from the early days that still work. Gini recalls how she built her pipeline by developing relationships with business development leads at large agencies. When prospects came in below their fee threshold, they’d refer the work her way—a principle that remains just as relevant today. Both hosts encourage owners to revisit their “things I’d never do” list from when they started. It’s worth checking whether you’ve quietly drifted into those same patterns over time. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “Agency owners often ask me, what should I do next? And the answer is very different depending on what you’re trying to accomplish with the business.” Gini Dietrich: “We say this to clients all the time, go back to the basics. It works. And it works for your agency, too.” Chip Griffin: “You need to do what’s right for you. And so, I think that the key to that is really going back to your roots, understanding what motivated you to get started, what drove that success in the early days.” Gini Dietrich: “You want to focus on the things that you are great at, and the things that make you the happiest, and the things that are most motivating to you, because that’s how your business will grow.” Turn Ideas Into Action Write down why you started your agency and what drove your early success. Block 30 minutes to identify patterns from those early days that you could leverage again for growth or business development today. Identify one thing that energizes you most about the work—then carve out time to do more of it. Even if it’s behind the scenes (like strategic brainstorming or quarterly client reviews), injecting that spark back into your role helps prevent burnout. Make a quick list of “things I swore I’d never do” when you started. Check whether you’ve drifted into any of those patterns on inertia—and decide if it’s a learned lesson or a habit worth breaking. Related Do you remember why you started your agency? Why one-size-fits-all advice doesn't work for agencies 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 am Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m thinking way, way back, way back decades now to why I started my agency. Gini Dietrich: Oooh. Decades, huh? Chip Griffin: And I can’t remember ’cause I’m too old now, so. No, Gini Dietrich: you can too remember. Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, the honest answer is that I started my first agency was because I was unemployed. And it was better to describe myself as a consultant than unemployed. Yeah. Sure. And then than accidentally started accumulating business. Yeah. But I, but I do think it, it is a helpful exercise for us to go back and, and think about why we started the businesses or, or maybe not, in some cases, like mine, because I was unemployed, is not the greatest explanation. So you know more why did I decide to, to, to build it into an actual business. Gini Dietrich: Why? To keep going. Yeah. I think that’s good, especially as we’re, we’re thinking about starting out the new year and remind ourselves, you know, of the reasons that we started this. Some of us do it because we’re, we’re unemployed. Some of us did it because we found a better, we, we think we had a better way of doing things. Some of us did it because we have a problem with authority. Some of us did it ’cause we’d make terrible employees. I mean, there are lots of different reasons, but I think reaching back into our archives in our brains and thinking about why we did it or why we, I think that you’re right, why we continue to do it is a, is a really good exercise. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I, and, and I’ve said over and over again over the years that, that I think too many agencies operate on inertia, as opposed to any kind of a, a fundamental strategy. And so, you know, it’s very easy to say as, as I’m sure many people ask you as they do me, well, what’s the, what’s my next step? Here’s where my agency is now, what, what should I do next? And the answer is very different depending on what you’re trying to accomplish with the business. So trying to think back to those early days and what motivated you to start the business. Evaluate it because it, that may have changed, right? You, you may have started it because it served a particular need in the moment, and maybe it’s different today, but thinking about that and thinking about what you really want from the business is usually a better way to come up with strategic decisions than it is to say, well, what do other agencies like mine do when they get to this stage of growth or to this challenge? It’s, you really need to to match it up because otherwise, what’s the point of taking on all of that risk and stress of being a business owner? Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I mean, a really good example of that is I really thought I wanted to build a great big agency with hundreds of employees and, and clients around the globe and all of the, all of the things. And as I started to grow and we got to about 30 ish, 33, 32 people, I realized that’s not what I wanna do. Right. It was not enjoyable. I had built a company that I was not thriving in, that I didn’t enjoy leading. You know, I was dealing mostly with HR issues and not doing the work. And so the, the Great Recession did afford me the opportunity, unfortunately and fortunately to kind of take a step back and, and think about what kind of business do I want to have? And what kind of business do I want to lead? And while we’re back up to that same size, it’s a different structured business that allows me to focus in on the things that I do best and do the things that I enjoy versus HR ’cause that is not something I enjoy at all. Chip Griffin: I, I think I’ve yet to meet an owner who likes, enjoys doing HR or accounting or those sorts of things. Not fun. There are some who do it well. But don’t enjoy it. But I, I don’t think I’ve found any that actually enjoy doing it. So, but, but I think that, you know, as you think back to those early days and you think about what motivated you, it can often help you to figure out, you know, what is, what is that spark that you need in the business for you to either continue enjoying it for a longer period of time or bring back some of that, that joy that you had in those early days. Because I know a lot of agency owners these days are, are frustrated and, you know, trying to figure out how to change things for the better. And I think part of the way you inform yourself of that is by thinking back to those early motivations and figuring out how you can inject more of that into your business today. Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s really important to do that. And I think there, you know, for me personally, I get really passionate and enjoy my job when I’m learning and doing new things. So artificial intelligence, of course, has been a great big thing for me because I’ve really enjoyed learning it and understanding it and implementing it into my business and then taking it to clients. You know, last month we launched the PESO operating system, AI edition, where the AI prompts you instead of you prompting it. So it will say, what are your business objectives? What are you trying to achieve? What are your audiences? What are your messaging? And then it builds a PESO program for you that’s fully integrated versus you saying I need you to act like a marketing director who can, who understands PESO and can build this and this. It’s that. So I like, those are the kinds of things that really get me excited. And building those kinds of things gets me excited and motivated. So it’s, it’s easy because I understand that about myself. It drives my team crazy ’cause they’re like, oh, she’s got something new. Or my, their favorite thing is, I had an idea. And they’re like, oh no, no, not again. But that’s what keeps me, yeah, that’s what keeps me motivated. So finding a way to understand what brings you joy in the business, I think is incredibly important. So that without exhausting your team, of course, but doing it in a way that keeps you motivated and, and not burned out. Chip Griffin: Yeah. One of the things that always used to, to drive my teams nuts was I would say, you know, over the weekend I was playing with this new thing. And, and you could just see the looks on their faces and they’re like, oh, this is a lot more work for me now. Gini Dietrich: This is gonna be fun. Yep. Chip Griffin: This is, yep. Yep. They, they never seemed to appreciate it the way that I had hoped they would when I came to them. Correct. With these, these brilliant brainstorms of mine. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: I, and I think as, as you know, founders of agencies, most of us come in with some sort of that. Idea that, that we want to be creative or strategic or those kinds of things. And as we end up in more of a management role, we have less and less opportunities to do it. So I, I think that, that rather than giving up on that dream, we need to figure out how we can sprinkle enough of that in there to keep ourselves motivated. We can’t give up the, the management piece. We can’t give up the business development piece. Many of us would like to. But the, the reality is that, unless you’ve built a fairly large agency, you just don’t have the ability to pull yourself out of that, as a solo owner. But it doesn’t mean that you have to give up on those things entirely. You can carve out a piece of time to work on that, and if you are structuring your role in such a way that you’re enjoying what you’re doing, it also means that you’re frankly less likely to be doing the, the, the bad things that founders of businesses can do, which is micromanagement and tinkering with things that you don’t really belong in because you, because you’re not occupying yourself with the things that really motivate you. And instead, you’re continuing to try to do every aspect of the business. And that’s where you start to, to run into team morale problems quite often. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years is that, yes, I can do the work, and yes, I can probably do it pretty well, but is it really something that I should be focused on? And if not, is it something that I can pay an expert to do because in the long run, it’ll cost me less money, less time, less resources, all of the things. And I know as small agency owners, it’s really hard to say, gosh, I’m gonna have to spend $2000 or $3,000 a month on an expert. When in fact it might save you, you know, 15 or 20 grand on the backend. So I think you have to think about these things as investments in your business and investments in your time so that you can focus on the things that, that you are great at and the things that make you the happiest and the things that are most motivating to you, because that’s how your business will grow. Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And if, if that happens to be being creative and strategic, then, then you can, you shouldn’t be doing it day to day in all likelihood for clients. Sure. But you should find ways to do it either as part of, you know, quarterly or annual client reviews. Or internal brainstorming sessions that you’re engaging in. There’s a lot of things you can do behind the scenes to be useful and, and to, to exercise those muscles in a way that that gives you satisfaction. But doesn’t put you on the front lines so that you’re, you know, now the, the one that the, the client decides they’re gonna call every time they’ve got an issue. Because that, that ends up eating up a lot of your time in a way that probably you’re not going to enjoy. So sometimes it’s doing things behind the scenes that gets you the, the most value, or doing annual in person with the client. But they understand it’s special that you’re here, this is not. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This is not something they can or should expect every week. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, I, I know I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but we do quarterly planning with our clients. We do a quarterly look back, and then we, you know, say, okay, based on metrics and data and all that and your priorities, here’s what we’re suggesting for quarter two or in the next quarter. And that has afforded many opportunities. A, for me to, to work in my where I’m, where I’m strong, but it also almost always gets us more money. So when you’re, when agency owners are like, oh, should I do a cost of living raise every year? Should I increase by 10 or 15% every year? That kind of goes away because you are getting new projects every quarter based on the the plan and the strategic strategy and creativity that you’re providing to the clients every quarter, because they’re like, oh gosh, yeah, we should actually do that. And some, and sometimes they’ll say, we don’t have extra budget. Can we move some things around? Which is okay, but most of the time they’ll say, you know, we, we have a little extra budget. Let’s focus on doing that. We have to launch a new website. Here’s some extra budget for that. We have to do a series of webinars to maintain our CEUs. Let’s here’s a little extra budget for that. So there are things and opportunities for you to, for lack of a better term, term upsell when you’re doing these quarterly meetings versus waiting for the annual. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and so, you know, finding a way to, to inject yourself in those things is a valuable exercise. Absolutely. From that, look back to the early days. But the other thing that that can be helpful in looking back to your early days of your agency is, you know, what helps drive your early success? Because a lot of times when we’re trying to find solutions to our current growth issues, we can find clues in some of those early days and mm-hmm. A lot of that, you know, in the early days of, of most agencies, it may be that low hanging fruit from personal networks and things like that. But there are usually other patterns that you might be able to see there that might help you to understand what are, what are the basics that you need to go back to? How do you, how do you employ some of those rather than, than focusing on, you know, all of the fancy new things that you see, you know, some, you know, genius podcast hosts talking about as far as how to grow an agency and instead say, Hey, this is what worked for me. Yep. Because you may find something that works again today. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we say this to clients all the time, but going back to the basics. It works. And it works for you too, so absolutely you should think about those kinds of things. Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, you didn’t get here by accident. Well, maybe you got, maybe it’s a little bit of an accident sometimes that happens. Maybe, yeah. Some of it. But, if you’ve had any longevity at all, even a few years of longevity as an agency owner, there are patterns that you can find usually that started in those early days. That you can lean into for understanding and rather than trying to do something wild and different, focus on the things that you know, you’ve proved can work for your business. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. One of the things, if I were to dig back into the archives, one of the things that worked extremely well for us is I had developed relationships with people who did business development at the large agencies, and what I found is that if they had an RFP or a current client or a prospect come in and say, we only have a quarter of a million dollars to spend. They’re not even gonna look at that. And so they started just referring that business to us, which is how I grew the business. Mm-hmm. So if I think about that now, how could we replicate that kind of, you know, pipeline development? It was extremely effective. And I, I gift that to all the listeners too. Like there are larger agencies in all of your cities that they have a certain threshold, and if any something comes in below that, they are happy to refer business. So there is, there is one way for you to start thinking about how am I going to, you know, keep myself motivated? How am I gonna keep my pipeline full? How am I gonna keep cash coming in? That’s one of the things that you can think about. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and thinking those things through. I mean, sometimes it’s not a one for one where you did exactly the same way you did it originally, but you take that nugget of an idea. And you know, things like, finding other people who can refer you business that’s not quite a fit for, for them, but might be for you. It’s a good reminder to be out there and having conversations with your peers. With people even that you might perceive sometimes as competitors, because there are often opportunities. In the work that I do with agencies, it’s not uncommon for some of the other consultants in the space to refer clients to me that are a better fit for my background and the kinds of agencies that I work with and vice versa. Because you know, we all have our specialties. And as an agency you have your specialties, so it is very common for many agencies to have grown this way. So certainly something to be looking at today, particularly if you’re struggling to find that new business in 2026. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think I really love the advice of thinking back to how you got to where you are and some of the things that you did, and going back to basics a little bit, because those are the things that are going to continue to work. And to your point, maybe tweak a little bit to make a more, be more effective in ’26. Chip Griffin: I mean, it also puts you in the right mindset, I think, because if you’re thinking back to those early stages, that tends to be when many agencies have the most growth, when things are most exciting. And so if you can try to bring back even a sprinkling of that, that can be really helpful. Particularly when times are tougher, or you’re looking for the inspiration to take things to the next level or whatever challenge you may be facing today, those lessons can be extremely valuable and also motivating at the same time. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. I used to, I used to get mad at companies that would hire big PR firms for like brand awareness and, you know, sending news releases and they didn’t get any coverage. They didn’t get any results. And I would get, I would get angry and I would call the company and be like, you’re so stupid. I would never do that today. But I had such a, I was just so naive and passionate about what we were doing, that it didn’t bother me to call and be like, we can do this significantly better for you. And in some cases they laughed and hung up on me. And in some cases, like we became agency of record. Like we took AOR away from Fleischman Hillard one year from a big, big company with a big, big company. And it was because I made a phone call where I was like, I can’t believe that you’re spending this kind of money and getting these kinds, these lackluster results. They were like, all right, let’s listen. I don’t think I would do that today, but it worked. Chip Griffin: Right. But, thinking back to those things can help you do two things. One is to think some of the positive things that you can do or the affirmative steps, right. That you can take. But the, but sometimes looking back to, to how you got started can also be reminders not to do certain things. Gini Dietrich: Sure, sure. Chip Griffin: So, particularly if you’ve started an agency and maybe you worked at an agency previously when you started, you probably had this laundry list of things. I would never do these things as an agency. And I, I think back to my first agency and some of the agencies that I had worked with previously, you know, did a lot of what I felt was nickel and diming of you in terms of back in the day charging you for faxes and photocopies. Sure. Yes. And all sorts of little expenses. And so, you know, I was committed back then to making sure that my invoices were always clean and simple and fixed, and I just worked in the cost of all of these things. Into my total cost of doing business so that I never had to aggravate a client. Fast forward to today. If I found myself doing that, I, by looking back, I would say, wait a minute. Let me think about that. Am I, am I being true to what my vision was of the business? And if not, is that because I’ve actually learned something and it does make sense to do what I thought was wrong back then. Because I mean, you can learn and grow. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sure. Or have you just fallen into the trap because you walked around and you saw other people doing it. So you said, well, I’m gonna start charging for faxes too. And if you’re charging for faxes in 2026, by the way, Gini Dietrich: we have a problem, but Chip Griffin: we have a huge problem because, what the heck are you using that fax machine for? Let alone that you’re charging for it. And by the way, where did you find a fax machine? Because I haven’t seen a fax machine in person in a really long time, except maybe like at the back of a doctor’s office. The, you know, Gini Dietrich: the bank and the doctor’s office. Yeah, I think that’s it. Chip Griffin: Well, I haven’t, I don’t, I kind, I haven’t been inside a bank in a long time, but Gini Dietrich: yeah, Chip Griffin: everything’s, everything’s electronic now. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. There’s no need for that. Chip Griffin: But yeah, think, think back to those, those motivations that you may have had that rather than I want to do this, it was, I never want to be the kind of agency that does this. Because it, it is really so easy to fall down those rabbit holes over time without even realizing that you’re just, you’re doing the same things that, that you didn’t ever want to see when you started your business. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think it’s so easy to sit on social media, and you’ll get served ads from experts who say this is the way that you should do things. And in some cases it might work. And in some cases you might be like, there’s no way. And I think it’s really easy to listen to somebody and say, yeah, but we went from $3 million in debt to making $3 million a day, like, you know, these wild claims. And then you kind of get sucked into that. I think if you’re really true to who you are and what kind of agency you want to build, that’s going to enable you to say, this just doesn’t feel right to me. I’m not, I’m just gonna… great if he’s really making $3 million a day, I need to just bypass this one. Chip Griffin: Because you need to do what’s right for you. And so, I think that the key to that is, is really going back to your roots, understanding what motivated you to get started, what drove that success in the early days. And by understanding the, the early months or years of your agency, the more that you can inform some of the decisions that you’re making going forward one way or the other. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Think about it. It’s a good way to start ’26. Chip Griffin: Nice positive way. We, we managed to get through an episode here without beating up on our listeners. We didn’t start the year on a negative note, did we? We started positive. We did. Think about, we think about what has worked for you previously. Yes. And do more of that. Do more. So we will do more of this on a future episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. But in the meantime, I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And it depends.

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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