Agency Forward

Chris DuBois (01:00.918)
So why do so many like female founders pull back when they feel like growth is near?

Sarah Still (01:11.986)
in their agency. Yeah, so a lot of factors go into this. And they're not all necessarily specific to women, but I think a lot of them are emphasized for women because we are responsible or at least feel responsible for so many things inside of our business and outside of our business. We've got parents that are aging that we have to take care of. We have children. We have partners. We have friendships. We have our own.

Chris DuBois (01:13.41)
Yes.

Sarah Still (01:42.27)
self-care and well-being and whether that be our health or know physically or mentally or All of the things that go into that all are very time intensive and I think there's a lot of guilt that women feel about the quality of performance that they put into every single one of those and so then when you're balancing that with a business and growing a team and servicing clients

A lot of times the concern is that the quality of the client experience and the team experience be maintained and fear that that won't happen if they continue growing.

Chris DuBois (02:19.662)
Mm hmm. This might be a loaded question for a podcast. Like, why is why is this different than than with men?

Sarah Still (02:30.184)
Well, okay.

Chris DuBois (02:32.204)
Yeah, here we go.

Sarah Still (02:33.728)
So I will give you a specific example first and then we can go general because I can't speak for everybody's situation. But 12 or so years ago when I was hired into a very, very small agency that had two male co-founders who had had no intention of growing an agency, but once they hired people who could put the structure in place, ended up with an agency.

You know, in over 11 years grew that to almost a $10 million agency. These were two men who not only had a leadership team of women who were not owners, but acted like owners. They also both had stay at home wives. So they didn't have to worry about meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, childcare, educational decisions, medical decisions. Not that they weren't involved. They both loved their

Family isn't their kids very much. One of them actually had eight kids. So it's not that he wasn't. Yes. And he coached. Yeah.

almost. Well, I mean, when you have eight kids, you end up having some extras, you know. So it's not that they weren't involved, but they didn't feel the weight. They could be 100 % engaged. And again, I don't want to take away from the fact that they still, and men in general still, if they're decent, you know, are thinking and caring, you know, obviously.

Chris DuBois (04:07.263)
qualifier.

Sarah Still (04:10.386)
not here to put boxes around people, thinking and caring about their spouse and their kids. And so when stuff is happening like health issues, that's not to say that's not a distraction to them growing their agency. But there's a lot more support that women either don't have because there's a lot of agency owners who are single moms. And so they don't have that partner. If they are married, that doesn't mean that person is

Chris DuBois (04:10.638)
Yep.

Sarah Still (04:40.198)
know, splitting responsibilities 50-50, or it might be that they're not able to if they're in a situation that doesn't have flexibility. So a lot of these things, I mean, it's not specific to the agency industry. It's just kind of society right now as we see it tends to lean heavier on women carrying some of those at-home responsibilities.

Chris DuBois (05:01.346)
Yeah. but we get to talk about the agency. So let's get into like the actual, how do you hit with female founder is starting to grow. They're starting to see success within their business. What are some of the things that they should be focused on initially to make sure that they can actually maintain this momentum as a continued to grow.

Sarah Still (05:23.166)
Yeah. So I was thinking about this earlier, actually. I think 60 % of it is mindset and understanding and having clarity in what they actually want because one person's version of success in their agency is not the same as another person's version of success in terms of number of clients, the size of their clients, the size of their team, the services that they're offering, the scope of services that they're offering.

So if they don't have clarity and don't have a clear vision of what they're trying to build, it's probably gonna be pretty chaotic no matter what. If their mindset is scarcity driven or fear based, that's gonna influence their agency and their success. And it doesn't mean they can't be successful, but it may mean that they never really feel stable or confident.

So a lot of it comes back to that. Can you say your question again? Cause I want to make sure I'm answering it fully. yeah. So mindset, clarity in their vision, making sure that the actions they're taking and the decisions that they're making align with the direction they want to go. they, if they're, you know, shiny object syndrome is a very real thing for the classic entrepreneur personality.

Chris DuBois (06:32.13)
What should they be focused on to maintain momentum?

Sarah Still (06:52.638)
So if they are constantly scattered and doing everything that they're, know, all the random things that get pitched to them through LinkedIn or, you know, conversations they're having, they may not make, you know, get the traction that they really want to see.

Chris DuBois (07:12.386)
Right. Yeah. Shiny object syndrome is very real. And it's one of my favorite channels in the dynamic agency community, just because it's like, love looking at the shiny objects like everybody else. I do.

Sarah Still (07:22.846)
Yeah, you probably provide a lot of the shiny objects. But then there's also the finance and operations side in terms of are we continually evaluating the progress that we're making? And are we making decisions that are grounded in our current financial capabilities and where we want to go?

Pretty amazing to me how many agency owners don't actually have visibility into their finances, whether that be in general or at a P &L level where it's actually structured in a way to give them information that can drive decision making.

Chris DuBois (08:06.882)
Yeah, that's like keep it. And we've talked this before, for the audience, the way I'm not sure why. me rephrase. Decisions are rarely easier with when you're just given time, like the actual resource needed is information. And I think a lot of what you do is go in and help facilitate the collection of that information by building systems. So now it's much easier for someone to be able to make a better, like more sound decision.

Sarah Still (08:09.408)
Mm-hmm.

Chris DuBois (08:36.362)
Faster even but the what why do it like I? Don't know the right way to phrase this quick is it like it feels common-sense go like hey collect the info right like

Sarah Still (08:48.032)
I think for one, it's overwhelming. Because well, and not just too much, but what is the important information? Because some of it, there's numbers and data and information. You could spend all your time organizing information, but is it actually helpful? Also money in general. There's a lot of mental stigma and emotional stigma around that for a lot of people, whether that be because of the way they were raised, the example they saw on their parents.

Chris DuBois (08:51.502)
just too much information.

Sarah Still (09:18.098)
a lot of emotional baggage that can be attached to that sometimes and so people avoid it. I don't know if this is gender specific, but I know a lot of women avoid that because the dynamic that they grew up in or that they experienced was not maybe an emotionally safe place to talk about money. And so then it's something that even though they know this is what they need to do for the health of their business, it feels, it's just...

It's cringy for them.

Chris DuBois (09:48.27)
Right. So one of the ways that they can get after the collection of information is just by delegating a lot of their responsibilities, right.

Sarah Still (09:59.7)
They can delegate the, yeah, from a system standpoint, they can delegate the collection, the, you know, how we put it together in a spreadsheet, how it's formatted, how it's presented. They can't delegate the, you know, the full analysis and the full decision-making. They can do that in partnership with somebody, but at end of the day, if they're not informed, it's, it's very risky because they may then make decisions that don't align with their capabilities.

Or they may say, you know, I'm ready for some kind of exit and they're actually not, you know, or they may be forced to exit because they didn't realize the financial situation they were in. So it's, cannot abdicate that responsibility as a leader.

Chris DuBois (10:50.446)
Yeah. And I should clarify part of my statement because there's someone from the army that's listening and they're going, I'm going to hear about it after you can't delegate responsibility, but you can delegate authority. And so you can give people the power to make certain decisions and all that, but it still rolls up to whoever the leader is to make the final decision by getting that information and doing it.

Sarah Still (11:10.336)
So if your team is large enough and you have layers in place and you've established clear standards and expectations, absolutely. As COO, I made a ton of financial decisions that I didn't get approval on. If anything, most financial decisions were rolled back to me for final approval. But that doesn't mean that that meant the owners could be unaware of the overall financial position of the company. And in fact, one of them

preferred not to sit in on the finance meetings and that ended up creating a lot of dysfunction between the owners because then he'd come back and be like, well, why was this decision made? Why was that decision made? And there was logic, but it didn't mean that he was aligned with it.

Chris DuBois (11:54.2)
How do you approach finding the right people to delegate to?

Sarah Still (12:02.016)
So finding as in hiring them or like once they're on your

Chris DuBois (12:06.71)
Even internally, right? Like we know we need to have certain tasks handed out. How do I make sure that this person can handle these tasks? And we're not going to struggle later.

Sarah Still (12:18.526)
Yeah, so there's a, well, probably a handful of factors I think that roll into this one is, are you setting them up for success with clear upfront expectations and standards? And here's how we do these things and here's the outcome that we're looking for. And the more context you can give them, the better result they'll give you because they understand how it's going to be used or what needs, you know, what the next steps are going to be. So that's really critical.

I am a big believer in very regular one-on-ones. So, you know, my controller, like we were meeting, if not weekly, bi-weekly, just depending maybe on our calendars, but I didn't want anybody in the company meeting less than bi-weekly with their direct report because sometimes there are things you just don't realize that they don't understand or they're struggling with or they, you know, and that gives you that opening.

for you to say, hey, what about this? Or them to say, hey, what about this? But then also, I am a big believer in process-driven accountability. So as the systems are put in place, everything should function and flow in a way that if something is not done correctly or done, I guess it'd be easier to talk about this with an example, but let's say finances. If you delegate to somebody certain types of

whether it be reporting or decision making even, still having touch points where things will get caught if it wasn't done correctly. I do not believe in babysitting or micromanaging. It's not my personality. I think we are all adults in agency world. And if somebody needs that kind of level of oversight, they're not the right fit for my team.

And I wouldn't trust somebody with that kind of authority.

Chris DuBois (14:16.782)
Yeah, probably not the right fit for agency life in general because the speed is a little fast and you need a babysit.

Sarah Still (14:19.085)
in Yes. But that's not to say there aren't that type of person out there in the agency world.

Chris DuBois (14:28.898)
Yeah. Is there an order to the systems that you would look at establishing? Like is there a systematic way to install systems? yeah, like a priority of functions.

Sarah Still (14:37.416)
Like, priority.

Yeah, so I mean, my background is in accounting. And so all of my operational decisions are grounded in the finances. that financial visibility would be a behind the scenes like this has to be a priority if it's not already. From a system standpoint, like overall looking at an agency client onboarding would be probably always number one, at least from a let's just take a look and make sure we've got the key points checked off.

because you've probably talked to so many people about the importance of client onboarding, but that is kind of make or break when it comes to the client relationship. So I always go back to the human experience. There's the founder experience, there's the team experience, and the client experience. So what processes have the biggest impact on those? Client onboarding has a huge impact on the client experience.

that the one-on-one check-ins, the quality of those, the relationship between people and their direct report, whether that be the founder, if they're a small team or if there's layers, that's a huge one from a team experience because if there's not a feedback loop that is safe,

then you have no way of knowing what all of the problems are in your agency. And then that's a huge risk because either you lose clients because you are unaware or you lose team members because you are unaware. So I guess essentially what I'm coming back to is everything that would feed into an employee satisfaction system.

Sarah Still (16:18.92)
And then from a founder perspective, you know, this is going to sound very, very basic, but time blocking. Like, you have strategic time? Do you have time to look at your finances? Do you have time to have these higher level conversations? Because if you're just in the weeds doing all of the day to day work, that's a pillar that's on its way to crumbling.

Chris DuBois (16:44.726)
Yeah. I mean, it sounds basic, but I'm sure 80 % of the audience does not have actual time blocking on their schedule. Like it was a, even a hard lesson learned for me when I was in my CEO role where it's like, just, Thursdays became no meeting days, like internal work. not like, unless you have to talk to someone, cause there's like, it's mission critical. Everybody's just put, put your heads down and get to work. Like whatever you need to do.

Sarah Still (16:52.308)
Yeah.

Sarah Still (17:02.079)
Yeah.

Sarah Still (17:08.704)
Yeah, I didn't do it honestly until we were about 60, 70 people big. I was like, like every free hour, I have to know exactly what I'm spending my time on. Otherwise, it's in Slack. there are so many, was in every client channel. I was in every internal channel and I don't, that was not a bad thing if I was disciplined with my time.

So when I had time blocks, I labeled on my calendar, this is the project I'm working on, this is the process, this is the thing, whatever it is. And then I had my recurring stuff. if I, you know, we had recurring executive meetings, executive level and agency level meetings, and then we had other meetings. And so I had prep blocks that were recurring alongside those because I became less effective as the leader if I was not prepared for those conversations.

Chris DuBois (18:04.526)
Right. Sharpening the X. Something that we had done in Slack, and this is like a super tactical thing. but when we were in Slack, in order to not be in every communication, cause we were like myself and the founder, we're in all the Slack channels. we not pay attention to them except for notifications that you could set. So if certain keywords were using conversation, then we would go check it out. And there are common words that our team could use in order to kind of

Sarah Still (18:06.272)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Still (18:33.332)
They knew.

Chris DuBois (18:33.454)
make sure that we're paying attention, but like the client wouldn't even notice necessarily.

Sarah Still (18:37.428)
Yeah, I'm super lucky because I read very, very quickly so I could skim a very long thread and get the gist of it and know like, do I need to insert any kind of, know, hey, let's make sure you're thinking about this or whatever. So I was fortunate on that regard. I do know people who it was just overwhelming. And at that point, you're like, okay, what is really critical for you? And one of the best, this is not something I would prioritize.

Chris DuBois (18:56.803)
Yeah.

Sarah Still (19:03.58)
at first, but it is something I would do pretty early for an agency if they don't have it as a problem solving process, which essentially wrapped in both the thought process. It was like a thought exercise that we go through any time, particularly client issues, but then also sometimes internal issues were raised so that the team was empowered to walk through this thought exercise. And then it also involved, like it was all embedded with an escalation.

Procedure so that I knew as it got to their director and then as it got to me It wasn't like we were just repeating repeating repeating wasting all of this time We had had where they're just having to fill in a new person every time all we had to do is go back We could see the whole conversation and we couldn't like it was all public because we we were big believers in Keep this in the main channel like we're not DMing about this stuff. So if it's there then

Chris DuBois (19:58.924)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Still (20:01.105)
I can be aware of it, but I'm not engaging in it and getting discipline as a leader. I'm not engaging in it until I'm called upon, because I want my team to handle it without me.

Chris DuBois (20:08.578)
Right. Yeah, that's a good approach. I had put a Sunday calendar block that had like the description for it was for a six inch putt, which is what we call these meetings where if the team needed something, they could just schedule one of these with me in certain windows. And, but they had to copy the description from that event and paste it into this new one and answer the questions. And usually just the process of answering these questions, they were like, I don't need a meeting. It's like,

Sarah Still (20:32.65)
Yeah.

Sarah Still (20:37.404)
Exactly. Exactly. And that's going back to your question about how do you, I forget how you said it, but basically how do you trust someone or empower someone to take authority? That was a huge part for me because I've learned that the way my brain works, and I'm a very much internal processor, so somebody on the outside may not realize how my brain works because I'm going through all of these thought processes before I ever say something out loud. So the more that I could...

Chris DuBois (20:38.318)
All right, we're good.

Chris DuBois (20:47.491)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Still (21:07.828)
be self-aware and then document how I'm thinking through this, then I could hand that to somebody and then they could take that over because they could walk through that. And I knew everything I would think about has been thought about.

Chris DuBois (21:21.934)
Do you ever do certain things like one of the recommendations I had for one founder was just to record himself doing everything so that he could hand that video now. Like it would take him a little longer for this iteration to like do the work himself, but he's talking through and explaining what he's doing as he's going. And now that video is just handed over to the rest of the team so they can create a process. They can follow the work and see all that. Do have any tricks that you're using like that to help make these systems actually flow?

Sarah Still (21:52.202)
So different people think differently.

Sarah Still (21:58.176)
Okay, let me think about this for a second. The reason I'm pausing is because I don't care to do that myself. And I think my struggle with it is because I'm such an internal thinker that to then, like it is a lot of work for me to then be like, what am I saying? am I thinking? And then I have to say it then I have to think about what I'm thinking next and then I have to say, it's a lot easier for me to sit down with a doc.

do it and actually write it out in steps, like write out my thought process. I think just because the way my brain works, that's easier. Now I know a lot of people that can like, go click and there's these softwares that'll record what you're doing and then make it transcript. Those are awesome. That's great. I don't think I am built for those, but I think people that can communicate in a way that does that, that's great. But I think either way, whatever tool or method you're using in order to scale, which I assume is what you're getting at,

We have to be able to get what's inside of our brain out and built into a system that people can then take and use without it being clunky and overdone.

Chris DuBois (23:06.85)
Right? Yeah, way less about the actual output, more about the outcome in this regard.

Sarah Still (23:11.646)
Yes. Yeah. And even if like, if you want a video output, which part of that might be the issue too. I don't care to watch a video. I, and again, I read very quickly. I, I consume and process that information very quickly. So I would rather have a resource I can go back to and read different people learn in different ways and retain information in different ways. So I think the more of the different like written video verbal, like the more things you can have the better so that everyone

can have the resource they need and in the best way they can use it.

Chris DuBois (23:46.53)
Let's say we do have good processes. Our agency is structured well, we're good, but now we're starting to find some challenges popping up. How do we know when we've outgrown our current systems?

Sarah Still (24:02.058)
This is why I love agency life, because there is always a problem and there is always something to solve. I mean, if you don't have an ops person. So if it feels like chaos, clue number one. Like, I don't think this is a hard thing to figure out. If stuff is breaking, if people are confused, if...

Chris DuBois (24:08.462)
It's always too many problems usually, yeah.

Chris DuBois (24:14.156)
Yeah, there you go.

Sarah Still (24:32.082)
you know, all the pains. If you're feeling pain, if you're feeling stress, then something's not working. doesn't, whether it's because you outgrew it or you didn't have it great in the first place. As we scaled from five people, 10 people, like one of the, one of, I saw a quote and I could not tell you who said it. I wish I could. And I saw this one, we were about 12 people big. So we were big enough that I knew it was true based on past experience.

And it really gave me a lot of peace for growing in the future. But it said every time you double your team size, you are going to have to completely revamp your systems and operations. And so since we had grown from five people to 12, I had already had to go through that. I had seen that. And then I just knew, OK, as we scale, now I'm going to stay on top of the evolution as things become obvious. But as we grow our team,

you end up adding new roles. You end up breaking apart. one person used to wear 15 hats and now we have three people each wearing five hats. So we have to break all of these things apart. know, so for me, a lot of it is not like, I don't know that it's about, this big flag that gets raised. this thing happened. So now we're going to have to redo it. It's more like, I saw a pain point. I saw a question that I think should never have to be asked again. How do we make sure it's always answered in the future?

I saw something break that should never break again. How do we make sure that doesn't break in the future? And then putting the solution in place.

Chris DuBois (26:01.518)
Right. Do you keep a log or something like in order to prioritize? Yeah. Like you, well, even as like problems are coming up and you're annotating, it's like just because you see the problem, you don't immediately go fix it. Right. Like we're, we're going to take some time.

Sarah Still (26:06.226)
I should have. I should have. like to prioritize like current action.

Sarah Still (26:17.534)
Yeah. yes. Yeah. When you said log, what I wish I had done was kept more of like a historical record. Here's all the things over 11 years and growing an agency to 10. Like I wish I had kept a log of all the things, but no, I had a tracker that I, it was a Google sheet. Like I had my own, I had to have my own place. I wasn't expecting anybody else to use what I used, but I needed it to work for me. And I,

Chris DuBois (26:25.004)
Yeah, right.

Sarah Still (26:45.088)
I listed every tiny thing. A Slack message would pop up and I'm like, that shouldn't have to happen. What do we need? And that goes back to another key principle that you didn't ask about, but I will share anyway. I always, always, always, if something breaks, process before person. is probably, like benefit of the doubt, 100 % of the time, this was probably a process problem, not a person problem. I fixed the process.

The pattern continues, okay, now it might be a person problem. Now we're gonna have conversations. But when people would come and say, hey, I really F this up and this thing happened and we spent this money out for the client. Now we're gonna have to credit like, okay, what happened? Why did it happen? How did it happen? Oh, we should have had these triggers in place. We should have had these tasks in place. But if we had all the things in place and someone came and said, I did that, like this thing happened. I'm like, you check the task.

Chris DuBois (27:41.964)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Still (27:42.388)
But you didn't do it. Now it's a person problem.

Chris DuBois (27:47.116)
Yeah, like the, the thinking behind it. Cause like often it also puts a, like the onus on the leadership to be able to say like, what could I have done for this not to have been a problem? And I think a lot of people are very quick to pass blame, but like it flips it, right?

Sarah Still (27:59.488)
Yes, 100%. I mean, I don't know how many agency employees listen to your podcast, but I guarantee you 90 plus percent, 95 plus, 99 plus percent of agency employees have worked for agencies where all of the responsibility is on them to do things well when they were not set up for success. They did not have

clear standards, clear expectations, clear process. And yet, and not to mention that, but then they get handed a client who probably was set up for false expectations in terms of the deliverables or the timing and things like that. And then the team's like, I don't know how to do this. don't like, is this even realistic? If so, how do we do this? And that is on leadership.

Chris DuBois (28:53.314)
Yep. If you could go into an agency and there's like one thing that you'd like immediate, you're to make sure it's fixed and working. And this might, you might just echo your answer from earlier. So I'm kind of hoping it's a different answer, but, yeah, if you just had to walk into an agency and you're like, this is the first, I'm going to make sure this thing is humming first, and then we can look at everything else. What's that first thing?

Sarah Still (29:19.434)
How old is the agency?

Chris DuBois (29:22.926)
Let's do some tiers. Let's say the agency is probably between 500 to a million in revenue. Six or 17 members, like short for the first one.

Sarah Still (29:33.994)
Okay, so they've been around probably three plus years. Two, yeah, two to three years.

Chris DuBois (29:36.322)
Couple years. Sure.

Sarah Still (29:46.516)
So as not to repeat anything I've already said, the biggest thing I would want to see on paper ideally and then be explained to how is this integrated into your process would be their culture values.

Chris DuBois (30:06.638)
Can you go a little deeper on that? Yeah. Let's pull a little more from there.

Sarah Still (30:07.166)
You make me. I'm like, are you tapping your head? So I don't think culture values are something that a company can establish in year one. I think an entrepreneur or a co-founder or founder should have a very good idea of non-negotiables. Like we value these things, we don't put up with these things. But when it comes to being very, very clear and specific about, you know, and I'm not talking about like

words. Like when I joined the agency I was with, had what they called culture values, which were three words for care, fun, constant improvement.

As we went along and hired people, what we realized was different people have different definitions of individual words. What does that mean to them in relation to agency life? Can you hear my printer going off?

Chris DuBois (31:05.304)
Just started, it's fine, it won't be picked up.

Sarah Still (31:07.016)
why it's doing that just out of nowhere

Chris DuBois (31:09.28)
Center. It knows we're podcasting.

Sarah Still (31:11.252)
Sorry. Different people have different definitions of individual words when it comes to agency life. like fun, which, this was around the time, you know, everyone Google, everybody's like ping pong tables and foosball table, like all the things that are fun. And we're like, wait, no, that's not what we mean.

Chris DuBois (31:13.006)
I'll leave this in the episode.

Sarah Still (31:33.588)
That's not what we mean at all. What we mean is we have fun solving problems and delivering results and doing the work that we come to do every day. We love it. We have so much fun doing this. That's what we mean by fun. But if you don't define it, it's not fair to expect people to just get that and to know. So then when they miss the mark in fulfilling that standard of your culture value, that's not their fault. That's your fault because you didn't tell them, you didn't explain it to them.

So I had been there about three years when we went through Traction and they have a section in the book that talks about defining your cultural values. And so we did, we took two days off site, me and the two co-founders. And the great thing about doing that a few years in is that you have history and you're like, ooh, we know we do not want these things and we know we want these things. So it's.

It's not that, on this day we are establishing this and this is set in stone from day one, like forever. It's not that it doesn't evolve. But I think you know when you picked the right ones when you don't really have to evolve. So for the next eight years, we didn't change anything. And it's not because we weren't like, the great thing to me, okay, I could talk about this all day long. The great thing to me about having those defined culture values was I was the person that everybody came to with all the problems.

And it was not just process problems. A lot of these were people problems. And so when I would then address it with people, a lot of times it would feel subjective, like this is opinion-based or you don't have the full context, which maybe I didn't. And so, okay, let's get the full picture. Is it process? But at the end of the day, when it came down to it actually being a people problem,

It's hard to really be consistent and clear if you don't have the same values you're coming back to over and over. As soon as we wrote those down, every single conversation I had, I was using that language. I was using those, this is how we do things. Like this is who we are. This is how we function. If this isn't how it was done, it doesn't align with how we do things. So we need to adjust. We need to figure out how to get this in alignment with the culture values. And it made it so much more objective.

Sarah Still (33:56.03)
And it put us on the same side. We all agreed, well, I will say, first year we had a lot of turnover because we had some people that self-selected out. These don't align with my own values, which is also the point of having them. Because then the whole hiring process became focused on having alignment with every new hire between what they value and how they naturally, what their attitude is, what their character is.

all of that measuring against our values. And so then when stuff would happen, we knew, hey, I value these values, you value these values, this didn't quite align. So how do we get on the same side again?

Chris DuBois (34:40.588)
Okay. I want to stay here for a second before we jump to the next size of agency. Cause I love that you were using your values to actually like make decisions. Like this, this is how we operate because a lot of the agencies I talked to, they just have words that don't mean really like putting integrity as a value. No business is going to put, Hey, we're not integrists. if the opposite. Right. Well, if.

Sarah Still (34:40.798)
Yeah.

Sarah Still (35:06.058)
don't have values. If you're not gonna do it, don't even have them.

Chris DuBois (35:10.326)
Exactly, and if the opposite can't be true, like no business would put that, then you're just stating what every other business is stating. So like you're not actually differentiating within your values and being able to say, no, no, this is how we do it. You're just saying this is how people should do it, like in general, like this is business.

Sarah Still (35:25.696)
Well, again, it's vague. If you're just going to use buzzwords like that, nobody actually knows what you mean by that. it's so much you lose so much trust because when you choose words like that, like even between two co-founders, their definition of the word integrity could mean different things in terms of actual behavior and actual decisions and actual things that they say or do in individual situations. So then as a team,

watching their leaders and saying, I thought our value was integrity, but you just did that. And that doesn't seem like integrity to me. And so then, or vice versa, they see this team member do something and they don't get in trouble for it. And they're like, that doesn't align. but I got in trouble for this thing that I thought did align. now it did, like, you just opened the door for so much drama, really.

Chris DuBois (36:21.25)
Yeah. If anyone's looking for, for a side gig, know a tech company that just paid over 30 K for someone to make a six deck slideshow on, their values for them. Like ask some questions and present it. And it took them like over a month. I'm just mind blown. Like, I thought we could figure that out for ourselves. Yeah. But so

Sarah Still (36:43.52)
I mean, it's hard to believe they will stay consistent with it if somebody else wrote it for them. But going back to the point that you just made, that was another, so there was the handling people side that I found culture values to be so helpful with. The other thing was it did make my decision making so much more black and white, especially when it came down to how are we gonna handle this client situation or how are we gonna handle this business situation? Because when you have,

Chris DuBois (36:46.658)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Still (37:09.472)
And we had 17, like at the end of the day, we still had three categories, care, fun, and constant improvement, but we had 17 statements that defined what they were. And I could, it wasn't like, could I, could I stand there and list all 17 to you? Like I could probably come close. That wasn't the point though. The point was situationally, I knew this one, this one, and this one informed the decision I'm making. So I don't have to have a question. I know this is how we handle things.

Chris DuBois (37:37.966)
All right, so let's move to say three to five mil agencies. What would the first thing like system that you'd look at fixing and making sure is established.

Sarah Still (37:47.178)
I would say, if they're not a startup, would say culture across the board. Across the board.

Chris DuBois (37:50.968)
Cross the board. That's the first thing you're gonna, even like $10 million agency. It's like, so.

Sarah Still (37:56.832)
especially the bigger they are, the more important it is because now you have levels of leadership. At a $10 million agency, I am not everybody's direct report anymore. We got to 30 people and I had to start putting a layer in because I can't do one-on-ones. I couldn't even do biweekly one-on-ones with them anymore because now I can't effectively support them. So as you put layers in,

Chris DuBois (38:01.88)
Yeah.

Chris DuBois (38:13.686)
in between.

Sarah Still (38:26.834)
If you don't have that clarity around your values and your decision making, you could have a mess in this pocket, in this pocket. You just don't even know. And again, that is on top of the priorities I listed earlier. Financial visibility would be from a practical standpoint. Yes, that would be here.

Chris DuBois (38:44.526)
So, yeah, maybe that should be the better question for how I phrase it. Let's assume that they've solved for the culture piece as a smaller agency. Now at three to five, culture's good. What would you say is the?

Sarah Still (39:02.218)
So culture, finances.

Let's see.

Sarah Still (39:12.574)
and we're saying 20 people-ish at that size, I'd be looking at like capacity planning and pipeline. So you've got two sides of the same coin. you have the lead flow to sustain, and it's not even about sustaining growth, because maybe you don't really want to push for growth, but we know there's going to be turn. It's just inevitable. And at this point, there are so many other factors that didn't.

used to be a factor 10 years ago, five years ago. So you have to be able to solve for that. Otherwise now you're having to affect people's lives in ways that you're responsible for. that, okay, that's another tangent, but you're responsible for these people. You've made a commitment to them. And so if you don't maintain your pipeline, you're failing in your commitment and responsibility to your team.

Chris DuBois (39:59.138)
Yeah. Yep.

Sarah Still (40:07.764)
So that's one side the coin. The other side of coin is the capacity side because if you are not, and it goes hand in hand with efficiency, I suppose, in terms of your processes, because if you are not either consistently increasing your efficiency or maintaining your capacity to handle the load that your pipeline you're bringing in, your team is going to get burnout and that's going to affect your client experience, your team experience, you're going to lose people. And if it matters, which it does to me,

You're just further continuing that negative perception of the agency industry and agency leadership. So that's a big side. But then also, if we're bringing in leads, are we hiring in time for people to be equipped to service them?

Chris DuBois (40:55.502)
All right, so with that, I think we start winding down here. got two more questions for you. The first being, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?

Sarah Still (41:05.632)
If I have to pick just one, I'm gonna say Radical Candor by Kim Scott.

Chris DuBois (41:08.194)
Just one.

Yeah, that's a one. Let's come up a couple of times. What about it? Do you enjoy?

Sarah Still (41:17.962)
So I read it, I mean, it's probably been a decade and it revolutionized my leadership and not because it was so different from my instinct, but it gave me so many practical examples of ways that I hadn't even realized or considered that I could communicate or could support my team with communication. And then being aware of other people's communication styles and be like,

that's actually not super helpful. Maybe let's consider how we're doing that. And then it really informs those culture values and expectations. Like how do we communicate here? How do we treat people here? How do we handle situations?

Chris DuBois (42:03.246)
What I love about books like that, where you're, you're already like having the ideas, but then you read it in a different way and stuff. It's like, you're almost given permission to like, can do this. And it's just like everything it, it opens doors way faster.

Sarah Still (42:11.476)
Yes. Yes.

That is exactly how that book felt. I was like, I don't feel like I necessarily got some kind of big, my gosh, I had never thought of that before. But, and her stories were just incredible because of her experience being in three completely different cultures between Apple, Google, and was it Microsoft? Facebook. It was Facebook, Apple, and Google she was at. And hearing the stories about the three different cultures and how these principles

supported her experience as a leader at all of them. That was great. I want to say one more though.

Chris DuBois (42:52.334)
I was actually looking for Radical Candor, but have a... Fierce Conversations is back here. Radical Candor is somewhere else. alright, what's the second one?

Sarah Still (42:58.184)
That mind like

Yeah, minor down on that bottom. Okay, the second one you probably haven't heard as much of, but I think this is so, so important just for humans, but especially also for agency owners. It's called Letting Go, the Art of Surrender. And it is so helpful. I think this is everybody, but anybody that has traumas or past toxic experiences, like for

for myself, especially when you become an entrepreneur or are an entrepreneur, because it has been mind blowing to me how much all of the crap inside of me has to be dealt with for me to be successful as an entrepreneur. I have to deal with it. And there were things that I didn't even know were blocking me up. And there were ways of handling that that were actually so easy. I just had no, not only did I either have no idea, but I was actually afraid of doing them.

because I thought they would be painful and then they weren't. And it was so, it's, mean, it's the baggage just like melts away. And that book is not necessarily my favorite, like reading experience, just it's kind of an older style of writing, but the content is so worth it.

Chris DuBois (44:20.45)
I've got currently 13 years of experience in the army so that I'm sure it should be as influenced in some things.

Sarah Still (44:26.324)
Yes, yes, you should read it. is, if you, anybody who is, the way I read is I'm always looking for application and I'm like trying to apply it immediately. So that book took me a while to get through, but it was, it was life changing, really. Yeah.

Chris DuBois (44:43.81)
Awesome. It is now added to the list. Last question, where can people find you?

Sarah Still (44:50.4)
They can find me on LinkedIn, Sarah Still, or vividimpactpartners.com, or email, guess, sarah at vividimpactpartners.com. Sorry, it's a long.

Chris DuBois (45:04.225)
No, we'll have all those in the show notes to make everyone's life a little easier. All right, Sarah, thank you for joining.

Sarah Still (45:09.95)
Yeah, thanks for having me.