Welcome & Speaker Introduction welcome welcome everyone Welcome back Um we have already had some great sessions today and we’re about to continue it So uh gather on back Uh we’ll we’ll get started here Uh thank you so much to all the guests um who have been here so far Uh I am Elizabeth Luhan I am the co-founder of Vinrock Media and just like you all I am working to integrate AI into my agency and so I so appreciate everything that we’ve we’ve learned so far and I’m excited for this next topic So we are going to look at the new agency model AI automation and strategic partnerships for 2025 and beyond And we’re going to learn about that from Tim Kilroy Tim is an agency growth architect who helps agency founders transform their toughest challenges into scalable growth So um Tim welcome We are very excited to hear from you There you are Tim Welcome Welcome We’re so excited to hear from you about this this new agency model and how is changing I’m not gonna make it up as we go along It’s gonna be awesome And uh by the way all of you people that like you in the the word search you were just making up names like there were you were just throwing together letters It’s not those aren’t real All right So you ready to rock let’s do it Okay All right I’m gonna see if I can share my screen here [Music] Here we go All right that’s not working Let’s try this again Here we go We’ll do it this way Oh right Fine Okay here we go You all see that that’s exciting There we go All right so we’re talking about a brand new agency model right this is like the world is weird So what are we going to cover today we’re going to cover who the hell am I uh the fact that we’ve been here before kind of the way What the New Agency Model Covers things are changing the impact your actual new way of thinking and then the actual expression of what an agency looks like in this age of AI Now first of all let’s start with who am I uh so I’ve been doing stuff in digital marketing since 1997 which means yes I am really freaking old Um but that actually gives me really good perspective for this Uh what I do with agencies I’ve consulted with over 300 of them Uh I’ve got a bunch of various programs from GTMOS which helps you generate a consistent lead flow to Gen Plus which actually helps you generate real social authority and then fire yourself from sales where we get sales off of the founders’s plate But let’s jump in right now and let’s talk about this So we’ve all we’ve been here before sort of So you most of you were probably too young to remember you know exactly when the internet started and that was it was a long time ago I mean I’m old enough to have actually used a typewriter to type things but that’s crazy Uh but I think the the the Then vs. Now: Tech Disruptions in Perspective real the real change the real techn technological change started when you know the internet was here and that was going to kill everything It was going to just kill everything that you could imagine There was going to be no more books no more print There’d be no more billboards Everything would be digital Well we are now roughly 40 years into the internet and that didn’t happen yet There are more books published in the last year than there ever had been before Wizzywig website editors were going to kill developers That didn’t happen There are more developers than ever before XML and Python and machine learning was going to make everything simple and really easy And guess what that didn’t happen either So there have been these sort of existential threats and sort of enormous sea changes before and honestly sometimes the hype runs hotter than the reality Now I really think that this time AI is different it And I really do think it is because it’s a completely brand new way of of operating But what does it really change let’s really think about that for a minute What AI Changes—and What It Doesn’t All of us in one way or another are involved with marketing Even if you are a someone who spends their life down deep inside of of databases moving things with Python you are impacting the outcome which is fundamentally a marketing message So the impact the idea that we are actually creating and displaying messages that are moving and have impact on many that hasn’t changed AI might be really great at a bunch of stuff You know it’s really good at analyzing data It’s really good at brainstorming It’s really good at coming up with a bunch of ideas that are at this point kind of average But it doesn’t replace the fundamental thing that all agencies regardless of what channel you manage or regardless of where you sit in an agency our entire idea our entire reason for being is to create a message that has a meaning to create symbols that have meanings to create images movies pages all of those things We are imbuing them with meaning so that they will be moving for somebody that they will convince somebody to do something that we need them to do or want them to do So AI doesn’t change that messaging in any that that mission in any meaningful way It just gives us a com It gives us a different tool set And with that tool set change with that sort of media change this becomes much more of a management issue for your agency than it does a technology issue for your agency And I know that’s weird because it’s so easy now Anybody can build an agent Like I built an agent and I have negative tech skills you know i built an agent that that sort of takes a conversation and turns it into a blog post to a LinkedIn post into a you know to a video script Like cool nifty Like that was fun and exciting but that isn’t like that’s not the promise of AI Democratizing the ability to make an agent is not the promise of AI The promise of AI will allow us to do things at a an incredibly a much faster much more complete way But again right now AI is not a technology challenge that we need that we are facing What we are doing is we are thinking about how to manage this new technology So our goal is to build our experiences build our agency experiences around this new AI Is a Management Challenge, Not a Tech One technology not to feel like we have to create this technology What we really think about is AI is now a force multiplier It’s not magic right it does not do stuff that has not here to fork been possible right now What it does is it does things a lot faster which makes things feel possible that previously didn’t feel possible but it isn’t These are things that have previously been possible They were just really really flipping hard So AI now allows hard things to become easy That doesn’t change the fact that we need to do those things And so that does not change the outcome of what you were trying to create as an agency You are trying to create revenue experiences and acceleration for your clients AI does not change that message that mission It just changes the way we do it So some of the the things that are are incredible here are AI makes analyzing data so much easier That is really exciting because you can take complex data or sort of unstructured data and do cool stuff with it that you probably couldn’t do otherwise That is amazing because AI’s Strengths: Speed, Strategy, and Relevance one of the most important things that an agency can do is feed good data back to its to their clients if you’re especially if you’re on the performance marketing side And if you can leverage AI to actually get a more complete picture of performance or traffic or customer databases whatever All of those things are so helpful because they allow you their predictive their their their predictive capabilities allow you to actually create more strategy and we can also iterate constantly Nothing ever has to be seen of as done because we can really change out variables thousands of times in a very short period of time So this actually has fundamental impact and unlocks so much for so many agencies CRO copy design development all of that stuff is going to start to be able to scale without any real human limitations which is really really super interesting We don’t really know what that looks like ever in the history of humanity So being able to scale one person’s idea significantly beyond their capabilities is really incredible And for the marketing community one of the things that is really really amazing is that AI will allow us to bring relevance at scale And the thing that consumers are looking for or business partners or people or prospects they’re always looking for relevance And that is something that is dramatically different The fact that that becomes we are able to create relevance at scale in a way that has never been done before that changes who you are as an agency That changes your opportunity Doesn’t change what you’re doing necessarily but it does change the opportunity All right So what can AI do now there’s now I know that that there’s a lot of super technical people here and there’s all sorts of amazing stuff that I don’t understand But if we think about this from an agency management perspective what can AI do it can make you faster right so it can increase your ability to serve more clients That’s great But we don’t necessarily just want to be faster We also want to be better So we want to make sure that we that we’re leveraging AI to make our work more complete doing more research providing more data Those things are incredibly important AI is a great brainstorm partner and this is where your innate creativity comes into play because AI can expand on that and amplify your creativity and start to put together things that you may not have thought of yourself But I think the way that the way that AI is most useful right now is it challenges your thinking if you use it appropriately If you’re just using chat GPT ask it why you shouldn’t do this thing or why this is wrong or what’s a better idea And if you instill that challenge thinking into your organization AI is a really really incredibly powerful tool to accelerate your development as as somebody who can accomplish that mission as an organization that can accomplish that mission And one of the other cool things that AI does and this is sort of a very softer this is a this is soft but it’s real You can make your team feel like they are capable of amazing things They always have been capable of amazing things but now you’re giving them tool sets to make them more amazing And if you can help them feel like they are living in the future and doing things that they could not possibly have done What AI Can’t Replace: Strategy, Trust, and Leadership previously in their careers they’re going to love you for it So weirdly enough AI can make your team happier because you can give them work that is more rewarding That is such an unbelievable advantage to AI And this is something that you must really think about as you are building your way forward in this new world because you still need a team in order to get great things done What are things that AI can’t do it cannot become your strategist It will tell you that it can and someday it might be able to but it can’t AI is never ever going to tell you what to do It’s only going to try to be helpful to do the things that it thinks you want it to tell you about because it’s got that sort of sycophantic element to it So it cannot become your strategist You are still the driver of strategy You are still the driver of direction You were you have to define the mission of your agency and your client engagements so that you have a clear direction so you can organize your actions to accomplish it AI is I’m going to say something that’s pretty controversial AI from a management perspective from a leadership from a I run the organization or I run a team or I run my client engagements AI is never going to be able to think more completely about the human experience than you can It might be able to crunch more data and come up with more options but AI cannot think better than you can just provide you with an infinite number of options for you to choose from And so we are still in charge of how we are acting AI will never make your clients happy It might drive better results It might give them more information It might make reporting really easy but it will never make them trust you more It will never make them more loyal to you It will never make them value your services more That’s entirely on you and your team And finally and arguably the most important thing from an agency perspective AI cannot give your team a direction and AI cannot give your team authority to make choices on their own AI is never going to replace agency leadership team leadership or individual leadership And so these are the things AI is going to inform all of the choices that you make It will not replace or or guide you to a choice That’s still on you And so as we move forward with AI being able to do more things more easily and more quickly you have to sharpen your skills as a leader and you have to sharpen your skills as a client partner Those are the things that you need to work on as an agency because the ability to create great work that is actually the the value of that over time will diminish because the floor you know the the the version of work that is good enough sort of rises for like everybody will be able to meet that at some point in the future But being able to lead your team and clients that is what your agency really that’s what you do as an agency leader and leading your clients to the results that they want and need through the application of great strategy and great execution Those are the things that AI cannot replace From Full-Service to Partner-Powered Agencies All right So agencies are being disrupted I mean they aren’t really being disrupted Sorry Now I don’t know that that Mark Zuckerberg recently in strategy that um that honestly that he sees Meta as just plugging into your your client’s back end and doing all their advertising for them and they just connect and pull money out It all works magically Well that might happen someday I don’t know But that doesn’t actually disrupt the idea of an agency because Mark Zuckerberg is only thinking about meta properties There’s other properties there’s other ways to engage with customers So the agency is not being disrupted it’s just being reconfigured So here’s a couple of agency truths Number one if you want to go fast go alone So if you want to build something we need something quick and dirty go ahead build an agent yourself If you need something that’s really good and sustainable you need more human brains thinking about it So even though we do have the rise of small teams generating extraordinary amounts of revenue that small team they’re still they’re still a tribe So and we may in fact see you know companies that are just one person and a bunch of agents maybe I don’t know But in order to be a sustainable thriving enterprise that provides value above and beyond execution and data analysis you’re going to need more people You’re going to need people to go with you Number two and this is something that is so hard for agencies just accept it right this second You can’t be good at everything and you shouldn’t try And not being good at everything we’re going to get into this a little more deeply The fact that you can’t be good at everything is the thing that frees you to reconfigure yourself in a new way And finally you don’t need to build AI stuff yourself If you want to and you’ve got the skills to do so awesome Go ahead and do it But every platform you work with every tool you work with every interface you work with will have some sort of AI built in So you don’t need to know how to build it You just need to know how to use it All right So let’s jump into this whole idea of if you want to go fast go alone If you want to go farm build a tribe Now this is sort of age-old wisdom Um you know I apparently has come came from an African proverb I’m not sure But let’s let’s be real The agency of record model and you guys like that died years ago There are still some that still some large actually I don’t know if only a handful of brands that I can think of actually have an agency of record which means that they basically run everything through one agency That just isn’t the case today brands have a portfolio of agencies and data providers and in-house providers both small and large brands by the way So your goal and it doesn’t matter what service you are providing If you are in fact building sites and building digital experiences you still need to connect to different data sets different marketing teams and different perspectives And so every single aspect of what we do as agencies is connected to somebody else It may just be a client It may be a client and a contractor It may be a client a contractor and an agent but we are all connected to something else And why that is beautiful is that you are now supported by these connections You’re not tethered to them You are supported And just like in this bicycle pelaton having a bunch of people working with you means that you don’t have to face the headwinds all yourself At some point if you were this guy in the black shirt who’s in in a head and you are building the website as soon as we need to connect a data set to it and we were working with somebody who owns that data set they suddenly jump into the lead and we get to slipstream for a while So you don’t have to do everything yourself And that’s a beautiful thing because the world is just super complex There’s just too much for any one brain or one account team or one agency to manage And you might be so great at one thing but then you kind of slow down on something else You know for instance my last agency we were so freaking good at paid search We were just we were we were outrageously good at it And we were really good at creating collectionbased landing pages for for marketers with big cataloges We were fantastic at both those things And then we started doing meta ads They were Facebook ads back then And we were okay at them but we weren’t as good at them as they were as we were at paid search We just weren’t Like I didn’t get it Our team didn’t get it We didn’t have the creative team like we didn’t we were not as good at it And I learned after cross-selling paid social services into multiple clients that it doesn’t matter how good your original service is If your secondary service is a noticeable step down you start to lose tr your your client starts to lose trust in you And the agency client relationship is only based on trust It’s not based on result sets by the way because result sets are kind of funible Like you can get great result sets from a bunch of people you really get that longlasting successful partnership with a client because of trust And so if you try to represent yourself as something that you’re great at everything everybody knows you’re lying You I mean you might not know you’re lying but everyone else does And so lean into what you are great at and certainly try to become great at other things but you don’t have to be great at everything because being great at everything means that you’re just pretty good at a bunch of stuff Because every one of these platforms every kind of marketing media every kind of site type every kind of design type has its Focus on Strengths, Partner for the Rest own cadence and language and insight And you can’t be as good at all of them as you want So don’t try Lean into what you were great at And I’ll explain to you in just a few slides how we actually leverage that to make the whole agency confilration better And yes confration means catch on fire So but we’re going to make that better So finally you don’t need to build AI You’re not Sam Alman You’re not Elon Musk Like you don’t need to build this stuff What you need to do is be aware of it and really start to think about AI like electricity Like you don’t have to know how the difference between alternating current and direct current and 240 volts versus 120 volts or whatever like you or the or impedance or ohms or you know resistance or capacitors You don’t need to know any of that stuff You just need to know this is a tool What can I do with it where do I plug AI into what I know how to do so that it makes it better or different or more efficient and there’s such a real real real try there There’s real emphasis right now on trying to build something yourself via extraordinary agents and and you know make.com workflows and Zapier MCP and all that sort of stuff and it’s entire like it’s so exciting because you can do stuff that you couldn’t do before I want you to approach that carefully because it is a distraction You know I know that I know of agencies that have built their own email sending platforms They’re not as good as Claio I have worked with agencies who have built their own uh you know their their own um their own analytics dashboards analytics collection um uh devices They’re not as good as things that are commercially available And so be careful of bespoke because it’s possible Only make something bespoke if you cannot find it anywhere else Otherwise just figure out where you need to plug in All right Now that we’ve talked about this the fact that you know you need a tribe you need partners and you also need to understand where your advantage is what you’re great at And you know that it’s probably only under extraordinary circumstances that you should create something new something that’s never Plug Into AI, Don’t Rebuild It From Scratch been developed before And this is the old model of the agency world We would try to envelop our clients needs inside of an agency Every single thing that they would need for development or for marketing or for retention we try to like circle it in into a single into a inside of a single offering And you know that has worked pretty well You know most most dev agencies when they’re building websites just like they work with WordPress and they or whatever and you know and they build something for that client and that’s okay But the issue comes up when we end up with this idea that there are more integrations more data fluidity and more emergent opportunities than ever before And so we can’t likely encompass everything that a client needs inside of a single service The new model looks something like this There’s client needs and it gets assisted by two three four maybe five agency services different services different agencies You might have a you know you might have a design agency who’s coming up with branding and concept You might The New Agency Architecture (Collaboration-Centric) have a dev agency who’s actually creating sites You might have a UIUIX agency who comes in and and goes through the user journey You might have a marketing agency that uh you know that that that wants to you know customize pages You might have a retention agency that wants to bring all loyalty data you know into every experience that the client has And these are things that need collaboration cooperation And you also need to work with the client team because so many clients today are keeping some portion of marketing inhouse some portion of development some portion of content And so we can no longer wrap the agency in a sorry the client in a circle We have to realize that we are only we are connected to the client and we need to engage with other folks And what really makes this different and this is this is really challenging because most agencies just want to do stuff They want to execute their process to create the results that they know that they can create And there really has been the idea that you should be good at a single thing right you should be you know you should be good at social advertising you should be good at paid search or you should be good at development or you should be good at copy And those things are still true as we talked about You need to know what you are great at But so many agencies today only look at what their cl you know what their platform the the relationship between maybe a client and a platform and they’re optimizing that relationship And what they are missing is the fact that in today’s world since data is cheaper and easier to analyze creative is cheaper to create and iterate dynamic content is actually easier now than ever before All of these things influence what you do inside of whatever channel or construct you are managing And so your goal as an agency no longer is to come up with the most effective Facebook marketing or Facebook ads marketing campaign Your job is to understand how that face that a really wellexecuted meta ads campaign impacts the entire business of your clients And so your idea even if you even if you are just building the most simple Shopify site your uh quite honestly your your entire focus isn’t just on making the site good It needs to be on making your client great And so you will have to extend and expand your thinking to accommodate the needs and inputs of other folks And this is an an enormous management problem because suddenly you need to add other inputs into your way of thinking because your agency is going to be expected to generate other outputs It might be a data stream that informs uh you know that informs uh you know a customer data platform It might be uh it might be a user experience that informs uh you know that that informs retention activity All of these things are interconnected So we can no longer think about ourselves as a singleointed entity We are in fact this brand new thing as we create you know as we create the architecture to drive our clients success We’re at we’re actually the head of a staff of all of these people of all of these entities and it could be two partners or it could be a hundred Who knows but the but the way that you leverage this as an agency owner or as an agency leader is that in order to generate this Become the Strategic Architect for Clients to generate this this aggregation of talent thinking and experience You have the opportunity to come in strategically and leverage the people that you know the business data experiential connections that you have made to bring an entire solution to your client and you can set yourself up as the architect You are bringing the blueprint of how all of these things work together and you and your network amplify each other’s expertise and you create mutually beneficial relationships and what I mean by mutually beneficial so if you are a site developer and you know you really ought to be connecting with people who are doing SEO and who are doing paid advertising because you can smart You you know you can build in what they need for success into your site design So they help you improve your product and you are delivering to them a site that will impact their their work as well And you will also have the opportunity to do some sort of revenue share or referral sharing And it is really important in this idea of leverage is that you talk to your partners about the fact that this needs to be mutually beneficial This cannot be where you are architecting something and consistently referring work out It needs to work both ways And so you’re going to have to be picky about who’s in your network because that has to be the standard And there’s a lot of people in this world who don’t think that way But the great thing is right now is your key to driving incredible success with your clients isn’t the people that you’ve been able to hire I mean they help with the stuff that you do better than anyone else But to amplify that success it’s who you can bring to the table and who can fit into the architecture that you set up Strategic partnerships are your tribe They are the thing that makes your value bigger and they are you are able to build around the mission not just who’s in your org chart And this is something that I really want you to think about is that that knowledge the things that you know how to do and the things that other people know how to do multiplied by AI multiplied by the quality of your of your curated network your trusted network that equals massive impact And your partner network takes a cognitive load off of you because you don’t need to know every last thing about this channel that you don’t use yourself You can bring this partner in They get to be the expert The fact that you brought the expert in looks really great for you and the fact that you had already accounted for them in your architecture of success Well that is defining the value that makes you irreplaceable And we’ve really changed from this idea of a hierarchical org chart where you know we’ve got these departments and all that sort of stuff to this idea that we From Hierarchies to AI-Connected Networks are a network that communicates and grow and it’s amplified by using AI to recognize patterns to aggregate data to iterate creative to create new experiences that can be shared amongst the network So I want you to be really thinking this way You’re no longer just an agency You are a completeworked hub of intelligence And that my friends is exactly today’s agency model It’s a huge management and approach challenge It isn’t a technical challenge And that’s it Tim Thank you That was wonderful I I got a ton of nuggets and a and also this really good um vision This actually puts a name to some changes that I’ve been seeing happen in my agency Uh and so it’s really nice now to to have a framework around it and know it’s not something to resist but something to lean into Yeah Yeah You know really the like the thing the and the reason why people have always thought like I can’t have I can’t work with another agencies They’re going to steal my business Well if you’re really great at what you do they aren’t going to steal your business And your client is going to love you if you bring in somebody who is great at a thing that you’re just good at Right Right That’s Yes That’s that kind of abundance mindset Exactly Yeah so critical because the the the cost of of quality execution is is will be dropping quickly Yeah Uh we have a couple questions in the chat So we’ve got about 10 15 minutes here for questions I have a list of 10 questions but I’m going to go to a couple that are here in the chat real quick so we can uh do those and then I’m going to try to get to mine as well So first Michelle here just asked “How do we go about vetting partner fir firms to ensure that they perform at the caliber that we want for to match our brand and our reputation?” Um just the same way that you would create you know you you would vet a new hire you’re going to want to vet a new partner Talk to them you know like don’t go find them at the last minute Make proactive networking and partnership part of your business development strategy You know creating great partners is just as important as getting new clients And so carve out part of your week get to know them meet them talk to their clients And a great place to a great place to to start is with the agencies that already work with your existing clients because you can talk to your client like “Hey I’m thinking like are these guys awesome or what?” That’s great That’s great And Nicholas also mentioned he usually looks at live met metrics as opposed to PowerPoints Um so you can see uh exactly what’s going on I have a question um about budget impact how we’re and it has to do with this abundance idea and uh working with other partners Are we going to see that now because in order to to really excel as a business our clients need to have multiple agencies involved right are are we going to need to start saying “Hey our our budget threshold is higher maybe for their total spend because you can’t get by with just one little marketing agency contract or or what are you seeing more likely to be happening in terms of um budget sizes that agencies need to be looking at that their clients have available?” So that’s a by the way it’s a great question Um so if you are putting yourself in a strategic position and especially if you’re if you are a if you’re working in some kind of of media or acquisition agency you really need to be thinking okay all of the channels that you know that that your client is engaging with like you should have a reasonably good sense And just asking your client by the way is a really good way just to find out how much are they spending And then you should you know okay I’m going to say something controversial here but since we all know that attribution is totally fake and not real and it’s like may might be directionally correct I don’t know But you have to talk to your client You don’t have to insist on it but you should say to them “Hey you should be budget fluid.” So that your marketing budget moves according to where the opportunity is And that ne shouldn’t necessarily by the way impact the that that shouldn’t impact the fees that they would pay So if let’s let’s imagine that you know you’re great at meta ads and you’ve got somebody else who’s graded search ads and the total budget’s $100,000 a month and right now they’re spending 70 on meta and 30 on search but then meta you know stops what flows down and you know they take away $20,000 worth of media like they shouldn’t necessarily like knock down your fee structure Right And so you know so and I and and I do think that that you know the the variable compensation um is is probably a the variable compensation is is should be a you know a minor part of everybody’s um pricing strategy Okay So you should have another element that is kind of being paid for this management relationship strategy element of things as opposed to managing ad spend or something Yes Because because you know right now like that that sort of relationship management strategy you know big thinking piece everyone gives that away for free right they just you know they think it’s what you have to do in order to get the opportunity to manage the budget And you know that’s that’s less true now because frankly campaign management is is complex still but it’s a whole lot easier than it used to be And it’s going to continue to get easier because no platform wants you effing around with their stuff So as you so it sounds a bit more like um this consultation element strategic consultation and leadership element is Developing Strategic Thinking in Your Team going to come to the forefront for agencies How do you scale that from a staffing perspective like I understand that if you’re a soloreneur but right how do we make our people that we used to just have writing blog articles now become these these masterminds well first of all they don’t have to be masterminds right because you can ask chat GP There’s a lot of repeating patterns here right so you’re going to see you like you’re going to get the you’re going to see the issues and be able to recognize a framework And so the advantage is that and this is like an agency by agency advantage is that it’s going to be your framework for creating these strategic solutions and about which partners and when to bring them in and so your PE you know the person who who used to write blogs well they may not be able to do that but also chat GPT already took their job so they’re you know they’re they’re they’re they’re plumbers now and making a lot more money Um uh but I think that but it really is this idea that that the execution pieces are still super important but they aren’t in fact the most important thing because the cost of execution is declining And how do we navigate that with our clients in terms of how much transparency is there about what AI is doing what I’m doing uh how do we talk about our value differently you know yeah So so uh you should be fully transparent about about about about what you were doing You don’t have to be terribly transparent about how you were doing it But so as a for instance like you know we should be spending more on meta You know some your client’s going to say okay why like do you have to tell them that you put in two years worth of performance data into chat GPT to get this thing out no But you can say hey listen you know we’ve been tracking this and here are the here’s the results set So they don’t need to know how you’re making the sausage They just care that it tastes good And and by the way using AI is like it is no less valid than using formulas in Google Sheets right it’s the same thing you know it is using it’s using the a tool to accomplish a goal And so AI does not cheapen your work It actually allows you to think about the work that you ought to do rather than the work that needs to get done [Music] So as we’re becoming it’s becoming more and more important um like the trust that you talked about right um and the leadership skills and the man not just the doing right but the overseeing and the strategy um to to an agency owner who’s like “Geez I just was really good at getting people the best cost per click and that was that was kind of it and I don’t know how like I don’t feel like I’m a leader I don’t feel like I’m a strategist.” What should they be doing to to kind of make that transition into the strategic mindset the leadership mindset um uh read Extreme Ownership by Jaco Willink That’s really good That sort of helps you think about it Um talk to other agency owners that who who might be a little bit further along especially those who are no longer involved in delivery because what’s really cuckoo is as an agency owner your job is not to do the stuff your job is to create teams and processes that does the stuff and so you know your job as CEO is to run the organization not do the stuff um you can also um you can hire people like me and what as a coach is that what you’re saying like finding finding coaches and mentors right and also there’s there’s um there’s a bunch of great newsletters of my newsletter and community agency inner circle that’s really good I I I write it so I think it’s good But there’s also there’s also a like a bunch of great um newsletters Um Peter Kang from Barrel Holdings he writes a great a great newsletter every week called Consume Consumed Um you know so there’s a lot of people putting out incredible thought leadership that isn’t going to tell you exactly how to execute but it is going to show you what you need to learn Final Takeaways & Book Recommendations Great Well Tim this has been really incredibly uh helpful to me and I’m sure to all of the agencies that are here in the chat Um and in and in the session Um are there any things that I didn’t ask you that you feel like you want to be sure that that you kind of pull out a little bit more for people that you I think the the like the big thing is just remember that your job as an agency leader Oh Uh the name of the book uh it’s called Extreme Ownership by Joo Willink Um and by the way I would suggest you and Jaco Willink is a a former Navy Seal who now runs a leadership company And I would suggest getting the audio book because his voice is so like they talk about fighting in Fallujah and they talk like this and it feels like it right there It’s amazing But uh that that I think is a is a really good book Yeah another book that I would really uh recommend is uh is Dare to Lead by Bnee Brown She is just about the most emotionally smart leader that I have ever encountered But those two books those two books will help you understand how to find leadership in yourself and what other people need in order to be led And I’ll I’ll put those right here So that’s great And I the amazing that in you know you think you’re coming into an AI conference and you’re like we’re going to learn all about the tech and what we’re learning about is uh the human skills right these soft skills are becoming more and more important as the tech becomes more and more capable Um that’s a yeah a really helpful takeaway for me Yeah and that’s and know that’s completely different when I when I was asked to come here that I did not think that I was going to be speaking about this Well I I thought it was really helpful and it was so clear Um so Tim again thank you Thank you a million times for all your insight today Um next we’re going to we have just a minute or two So if anyone needs to go grab a water take a quick break you’ve just got one or two minutes uh to go do that And then when we come back uh Brent is going to host us again Uh and I believe that our topic is from spray and prey to strategic growth How AI agents are powering accountbased marketing for agencies And that’s with our guest Christian Bach So again um thank you Tim Thanks guys You can find me at timkillroy.com where I’m all over LinkedIn Feel free to connect Love to talk to you And also if you want to check out the agency inner circle there’ll be there’ll be an episode out There will be an edition out this afternoon Is that right i might I haven’t written it yet so I might even write it about this Who knows we might be in it All right Well I know I’m going to go there I’m going to sign up for that right now Um and again thank you I’ll check out that agency Inner Circle Thank you Tim Thanks guys