10 Essential Habits for Running a Successful Agency

Sei-Wook Kim (00:03.816) On today's episode, we'll be reviewing 10 habits that we believe are essential to running a successful agency. We'll reflect on how they've helped our businesses and how we've come to implement them. Plus, we'll share a few bonus habits. Peter Kang (00:41.179) Okay, so this is an exciting one for us because this is part of why we started the website agencyhabits.com and also even this podcast — we believe a lot of what makes agencies successful are not just one-off big actions, but consistent activities that we do over and over again that compound over a long period of time. That's why we talk about habits a lot. When we think about businesses and business success, having these habits in place is essential. We can dive in. This is available on the website at agencyhabits.com. It's called The List and we have 10 of these. But we want to go into each one more in depth and talk about why they're so important to us, and also shed a little light on how these came to be and how they've evolved in our businesses over time. We can start with the first one: after action reviews. After a project — or maybe once a quarter if there's a retainer engagement — just getting together with the team and having a debrief of what went well, what didn't go so well, and what can we improve and do better in the future. Being able to document these things and then share them with the entire team has been super essential to just getting better. We talk about continuous improvement, and this is a habit that's not always been easy to do consistently, but when it's dialed in and it happens, it just unlocks so much learning. What do you remember from how this evolved for us in the past? Sei-Wook Kim (02:35.517) Yeah, over the years it was always nice to have this debrief meeting. But the second that we became really diligent about scheduling them before the project was finished — having the time for the team allocated to sit down and talk about the project — it really helped give some closure to a project that may have been going on for quite some time. Or for retainers, which don't naturally have a conclusion sometimes and just keep going, having a frequency where you can get together as a team and talk about the account just helps give everyone a voice on how things are going or not. Peter Kang (03:20.399) Yeah, one of the things that became incredibly helpful was sometimes you have different team members working on different projects, and we'd either read the notes from these debriefs if we weren't there or sometimes we'd attend them as the principals. One of the things we'd see is that sometimes there are recurring issues that happen over and over again across projects — things that seem to always be tripping up the team in one way or another. As leaders, we can see opportunities to develop better SOPs and encourage people to improve the processes and systems that can help them avoid these same mistakes over and over again. Initially, when these were being done in a vacuum, that didn't quite happen. But once we started formalizing more of a team share, we started to see more of the patterns. That was a big unlock for us. Sei-Wook Kim (04:29.536) Yeah, and the structure really helps with that. We start by setting the framework — what is the project that we just completed, some of the top-line financials for that — and then having each person on the project team go around and answer the questions: what went well, what didn't go well, what can we do to improve? Giving a voice to everybody on the team really helps surface things that may have been missed by different disciplines. Peter Kang (04:58.169) Yeah. You're going to take this next one. Sei-Wook Kim (05:01.878) Sure. The next one is having a weekly business development meeting. This is getting relevant team members together — specifically from the business development team or other people who work on business at the company, whether that's just a few people or others — and really going through and checking in on all of the opportunities, both with new business as well as existing clients, and aligning on what the status is, what the next step is for each opportunity. If there are any updates that need to happen in the CRM around when we think the project is going to close or when it's going to start, if the value has changed — really just aligning as a team on the current state of new business across the company. Peter Kang (05:53.229) Yeah, this was one of the most critical meetings within the agency, because first you get a sense of pipeline — what's coming down the line in terms of work that's going to keep the team utilized. And the other piece is just thinking about how everyone is identifying these opportunities and how we can win the project, whether it's involving XYZ team members and putting together certain kinds of presentations, having certain kinds of conversations with the client. And then it's an opportunity to strategize too, because some opportunities aren't a straight proposal but maybe more of an in-depth discovery and audit before getting to a deeper proposal. I always thought this was a great space every week to strategize and come up with a game plan going into these opportunities. Sei-Wook Kim (06:55.787) And related to the last habit we talked about, there's also a good opportunity to talk about the losses. If we didn't win something, why didn't we win it? What's our general takeaway from that whole process? And the same thing for wins — if we won something, what were the things that contributed to that? Peter Kang (07:19.223) Yeah, there's always a little space for some debriefing on how we're doing with each deal. That was always helpful. Okay, moving on — the monthly team meeting. The way we looked at this is just having some kind of monthly gathering with the entire agency. Usually the structure would be sharing some important news, celebrating wins, maybe highlighting some launches, and then highlighting any commendable performance within the team. I remember we went through many iterations of this. When we were all working in person in our New York City office it was great — just have everyone in our largest conference room, prepare the presentation, and you could feel the energy of it. Some meetings were super energetic and it was great to feel everyone pat each other on the back and celebrate the wins. And then as we moved more to a remote setup, you put even more effort into the visuals of the presentations and some more prep work to make sure people are engaged. One of the things I've seen over the years is that in the past, when we were less organized about this, it'd be just myself and you last minute slapping it together and presenting it. But as we got better, more people in our respective agencies got involved in these presentations — different departments contributing, different leaders, as well as individual contributors taking on a couple slides to talk about projects and work they've done. You can really put care into it, do it well, and make it an engaging session. It's a nice way to keep everyone aligned and in the loop about the momentum of the agency, what's going on, and what things to focus on. Sei-Wook Kim (09:23.762) Yeah, this is always a fun meeting. Like you mentioned, you could be in Slack and people could be sharing project launches and things that are happening. But in the course of a day, people might miss a message. It's really nice to have the time where everyone's together and you're really celebrating it — even going a little more in depth than a Slack message could cover. Yeah, this is really a fun meeting. Cool. The next is weekly outreach emails. This is a habit where you send out an email — or it could be a LinkedIn message or some kind of outreach — to somebody from the past. It could be an old client, another agency operator you haven't talked to in a while, an old friend, or even a cold email to somebody you've never spoken to before but would love to work with. This is a habit that we started years ago and started with two contacts a week, went up to five contacts, to 10 contacts. The point is less the number but the consistency — not missing a week — because the effort really compounds over time. There are weeks that you're just slammed and it's the last thing you want to do, but you'll thank yourself months and years down the line that you put in the consistent work to reach out to people. Peter Kang (11:02.47) Yeah, we often call this the multi-million dollar habit because sometimes the right outreach email at the right time can just unlock incredible opportunities. That's happened to us at really interesting moments. There were times when pipeline was incredibly dry and we were probably not too far off from having to make some deep cuts to the agency. And then we just kept this habit up, and all of a sudden there's a huge opportunity that comes through at the right time to help us. It's less about the number, but the number did help. Starting with two was good because we were probably overwhelmed and not at our best with time management — just two is enough to get something going. I do remember we did a little ramp-up one time where we were like, all right, do four for a month, then six, then eight, and we even went up to 12 and beyond. But that was a little too much, so we scaled it back. Ten is doable — that's two per day on a weekday. Just do it. It's eating your veggies, it's doing your pushups — just sending out two emails to people you might know. Even after stepping back from the day-to-day at the agency, we still do this, and I don't think it's something we'll ever stop doing. Peter Kang (12:45.268) Okay. The next one is the monthly newsletter email. This is where the agency builds a list — mostly consisting first of clients, then friends, other agencies, partner agencies, maybe some tech platform partners, advisors, and anybody else who's been an advocate and referred to the agency. This is a way, if you think about the weekly outreach email as a one-to-one interaction where you're sending a custom bespoke message to each person, this is a way to do that more at scale. For Barrel, this list is probably three to four thousand people deep. The bar doesn't have to be that high — if you can send one a month, that is enough. The things we typically cover are what projects we've launched, what thought leadership we've published, and we try to make this as sustainable as possible. Just like any other habit, what's important is that we're able to continue doing it month after month. This doesn't always immediately drive results, but it plays a role in helping the agency be top of mind to the right people. When the time is right, you're there to remind them that you're a viable option for an opportunity. This is a good one that we've been able to keep up for a long time. Sei-Wook Kim (14:26.409) Yeah, and one thing that we do in these emails is acknowledging the people that helped us — the friends, advisors, referrers, people we may have met through one of those weekly outreach contacts or just people in our network. This is a space to give props and shout outs to those people. Peter Kang (14:46.633) Yeah, and that's an interesting point because we've evolved. I remember at one point we only sent emails showcasing recent work, and then over time we layered in another email that talked more about the news, some thought leadership, conferences we'd be attending, and then of course the thank yous, the shout outs, the referrers. Start monthly, but then if you can, you can increase the frequency for more touches to stay top of mind. Sei-Wook Kim (15:22.234) Sounds good. The next habit is having a weekly client account check-in. This is typically a conference call with all the account managers or people who manage the client relationships at the agency, and going through every single active client to get a handle on how things are going. Depending on the nature of who's in the room, it could cover anything from the financial state of each account to specific projects that are going well or could be going sideways. You're really trying to anticipate and head off any client issues on the horizon or surface new opportunities. The benefit here is that all the account managers are in a room together, caring about accounts they're not even involved in — so they can glean insights and get ideas for their own accounts. Peter Kang (16:26.37) Yeah, this is clutch. First of all, it gives agency leaders a good pulse check on a week-to-week basis. And there's sometimes another opportunity, just like the business development meeting, to put pattern-matching skills to use. Some of these issues — especially if you've run the business a long time — may be new to the account managers, but as the agency leader you might have seen a version of this in the past. You can almost help anticipate it: hey, just so you know, in the past when such a situation happened, this is how we handled it. You can give that insight to help account managers navigate the issue. It's such a great preventative measure for de-escalating things that might be brewing, and also for sniffing out opportunities — because even with these client account check-ins, there are things that can actually lead to opportunities that then flip into the business development side of things. Okay, the quarterly business review. The QBR may not be applicable to every client — it really depends on the types of clients you have. Typically for our largest or most impactful clients, by revenue size or depth of work or whatever it might be, and also just for the potential to build the relationship, QBRs are a great habit and tool for building the relationship further with the client. This typically takes the form of a meeting set before or shortly after a new quarter starts. The structure can vary, but one of the things we've done is first have a review of all the work done the previous quarter, talk about the impact, and then really focus on discovery — getting the client talking about their business, what's been happening on their end, what they have planned for the upcoming quarter and beyond. It doesn't have to be specifically related to the work your agency is doing, but it can give more color and context on where their business is going and how you might fit into that. The productive output of this could be a roadmap or some kind of alignment on priorities to be worked on together for the upcoming months. This is extremely powerful — in some ways it's a business development tool because it can unlock a lot more work, and it's a retention tool because if you have a retainer, this gives you a chance to really make good use of that retainer and deliver productive work. The QBR is super powerful. It takes work, but it's worth it if you can execute it well. Sei-Wook Kim (19:43.03) Yeah, definitely. You might be meeting with the same client every single week, but the tone of this is having the space to talk and think on a longer time horizon than the week-to-week tasks that are happening with the work. And one byproduct of putting together a report of the work you've done over the past quarter — oftentimes these people share it with their managers and show the impact of their own contributions to their company. So it's a win-win for them as well. The next is what we call minding the bottom. This habit is about performance management at your company — identifying and thinking about underperformers in the business. This cadence could be quarterly or annually, depending on team size and the overall culture. It's more an exercise of getting together with the key leaders and identifying who they feel are the lowest performers. It doesn't necessarily mean that any immediate action needs to be taken, but if you can come to some consensus and figure out whether action is needed — should we go through a performance improvement plan for this person, or do we need to take steps to transition them out of the business — this is helpful to do as an exercise. We would do it quarterly as a leadership team to just think about the business, and whether or not we took action was something we decided at that point. Peter Kang (21:34.769) Yeah, this came about for us from a very specific perspective. When you have underperforming people — especially really underperforming people who may be unreliable with meeting deadlines, don't communicate well, or do things that might be a bit destructive to the rest of the team — they drag the entire culture down. If you think about culture as the things you tolerate and don't tolerate within the business, it's a clear red flag if you're allowing underperformers to continue as is. This habit is really an opportunity to have that conversation — it's a tough conversation, but within leadership it's important to ask: are there people who are underperforming, and why? Usually people talk. If you have superstars, they're going to be the first to highlight it — maybe not directly, but even indirectly they'll hint that there are people here who aren't being held accountable and aren't doing what they're supposed to do. As leaders, it's really important to take a hard look and think about how to mitigate this. Is there a performance improvement plan that needs to be put into play? Is there a clear way to transition this employee out? It's tough, and a lot of people avoid it. When you do avoid it, that's when your culture really suffers and you end up losing your best people. This is one of the most important things leaders can do, but also one of the hardest. Peter Kang (23:28.027) Okay, let's go to client feedback surveys — the ninth one. Going in tandem with after action reviews, this is on the client side. Whereas the after action review is more of the team weighing in on how things went, this is reaching out to clients and getting their input: how did this project go, or how is our relationship going? It's an opportunity to ask them about the agency's quality of work, the level of service, the communication — whether it's responsive enough or clear — and also just the impact and value of the work. Is the pricing right? Are you getting the value you thought you would? It doesn't have to be crazy complicated. We tried NPS in the past, but we wanted a bit more detail, so it's helped to have more questions in these surveys. The opportunity to get feedback is valuable — it could be tough, but it's information for the leadership team to align on, learn from, and find ways to improve the offering or how they're servicing clients. I remember you put together a few of these in the past. Sei-Wook Kim (25:02.614) Yeah, we've gone through many evolutions on this. Like you mentioned with NPS, where you try to put a number on it and see the trend — oftentimes a gap with that is if you don't have a complete data set, the numbers get very skewed very quickly. So if it's more qualitative than quantitative, it actually gives you more context that you can take action on without needing 100% participation, because realistically some people may not respond to the surveys. Peter Kang (25:40.047) Yeah, it's very hard to get every client to fill out all these surveys. It's still worthwhile to do, even if the participation rate isn't complete. Sei-Wook Kim (25:58.305) All right, number 10 — having annual and quarterly goals and priorities. This is really just setting aside the time each quarter and each year to set goals, typically things like revenue, profit, or new business targets, and really thinking about the priorities for that upcoming period, whether it's the next quarter or the next year. Part of that is reflecting on what happened in the past quarter or past year, and what do we need to change in the business to move the needle towards the new goals. Peter Kang (26:40.181) Yeah, and this is pretty simple — not every agency does this. When you set a goal, sometimes it could be an incremental one where you're hoping to grow 15 to 20%, and if you can continue that, it could compound nicely. Or it could be a very aggressive growth goal — hey, this year we're taking a leap, we need to grow 100%. What this habit forces you to do as a team is work backwards and ask: how are we getting there? What do we need to do in order to hit that mark by the end? Even within the quarter, if you want to end it with a certain amount of revenue or new business booked, you've got to have a plan for generating the leads, generating the meetings, and having a certain close rate at a certain contract value to hit that goal. This exercise forces you to do that versus just going into it freestyle. This is one of those things you just have to make time for every quarter. Sei-Wook Kim (28:01.876) Yeah, oftentimes you'll start with the annual goal and a quarter goes by and you're either way off track or on track. You may need to think about whether the next quarter's goal is realistic based on that performance — do we need to increase our performance or targets to make up for underperformance, or are we heading in a much faster direction and need to re-forecast how the next few quarters are going to go? The frequency is really helpful — doing this more than once a year makes a big difference. Peter Kang (28:34.765) Yeah, absolutely. Things change and you've got to adjust as necessary. Okay, so those are the 10 essential ones listed on the website, but we have a few bonus ones. Sei-Wook, you want to share a bonus one you have in mind? Sei-Wook Kim (28:55.22) Yeah, one is around reviewing finances on a weekly basis at least. This is more for leadership teams, CEOs, people who may be one step removed from the day-to-day transactional aspect of accounting. This kind of meeting is typically reviewing what invoices are going to be issued in the upcoming week or two, what some of the big payables going out in the next week or two are, and really getting a handle on the cash position of the business and making decisions based on that. Whether it's realizing, hey, XYZ client hasn't paid us for 60 days and we need to take some action — and hopefully it doesn't go as far as 60 days and you've taken action before then — it's really the cadence to make sure you don't get too far behind on understanding where you are financially. Peter Kang (30:03.093) Right. Yeah, that's a really good one. I'll share another bonus one. You can think about this as maybe a couple of related habits. There's this idea of reviewing your org chart, which I think is a helpful exercise to do every quarter at least. You look at how the organization is structured, who's in what roles. This could actually be related to minding the bottom too, because you're looking at different underperformance happening maybe across the company. But when you review the org chart, the other opportunity is to look for either gaps you need to fill or ways you can level up. This could be identifying some responsibility or tasks that are falling on a particular person who should actually be focused on something else — maybe this is a new role that needs to be created. Reviewing the org chart can create the opportunities for different roles to emerge. And somebody might be in line for a promotion because they're showing a lot of initiative and it feels like they've outgrown their role. So there's opportunity to move people up. There are also ways to think about: we have a gap here, this capability is pretty weak, we really need to fill it with a person who has these capabilities. That's where the other bonus habit — always be recruiting — comes in. Once you identify a gap and think, we need to find somebody, or maybe you have somebody who's being overwhelmed in a particular role and needs some redundancy, that's another gap as well. The always-be-recruiting habit is about finding time, having a way — for smaller agencies it's definitely going to fall on the agency leader versus having a dedicated talent acquisition team. It might be as simple as making sure the job posts are up or having some way for applicants to flow in, and then making time to either review applications or book interviews. Great if you can delegate some of the application reviewing, but it's still worthwhile to spend some time — especially for higher-up roles — interviewing proactively. You might not always be filling an immediately active role, but just to get ahead of it, meet people, talk to them, get a sense of their experience. I can't tell you how many times myself and some of our agency leaders have taken time to talk to somebody about a role only to find: hey, I've been thinking about this all wrong — it's actually a different kind of role and we need to evolve it. That's always a good practice. Sei-Wook Kim (33:12.271) Yeah, one more bonus is thinking about having a space for reviewing utilization and forecasting on your team, especially when you have a lot of full-time resources. First, making sure you have targets for each team member and looking at how you're tracking that — and each company is slightly different, whether you do hourly time tracking or resourcing in a different way that reflects a team member's capacity and what they're assigned to. But really having that discipline to understand: do we have the right amount of work for the team we have currently? Utilization is typically a backwards-looking metric, but the better you can get at forecasting — what does the next week, two, three, four look like — the more you can map it out and really decide, to Peter's last point, whether you need to be recruiting, or whether you should have been recruiting because you need a new team member in the next week or two. Or do we really need to fill the pipeline because we have a big gap in our team coming up shortly? Having that view and as much as possible an accurate picture of the future is definitely helpful. Peter Kang (34:36.565) Yeah, I love how these all go hand in hand. Forecasting is the activity and utilization is almost like the score on the scoreboard — did you forecast right and put the right people in there? This has been great. The 10 essential habits are on the website for anyone to review, and some of these have extra articles you can go deeper into. I do feel like there's an opportunity for us to go even deeper with a finance and business ops focused list of habits, so that's something we can work on in the future. We love this topic and we hope you all take away some good lessons and value from this. Thank you. Sei-Wook Kim (35:25.777) Thanks.