Welcome to 2026! Hopefully you had some time with family and friends mixed in with a bit of quiet.
It’s those moments of quiet that I want to focus on in this newsletter. You may have used that time to let your mind wander and be creative.
Perhaps you had a big idea or two for the year ahead.
I’ll explore this topic later in the newsletter, but before that let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us in the first week of the new year.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Weekly Roundup
Below are some articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that we came across during the past week or so that provide useful perspective and information for PR and marketing agency owners. While we don’t necessarily endorse all of the views expressed in these links, we think they are worth your time.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Articles & Blog Posts
- Q&A: AI, Founders in New Biz, Failed Service Offerings, Narrowing an ICP (Punctuation)
- How Retirement Led to the PESO Model® (Spin Sucks)
- Dashboard reporting: How to build & optimize dashboards that deliver insights (AgencyAnalytics)
- Making your 2026 plans inevitable. (Anchor Advisors)
Podcast Episodes
- The PESO Model® in 2026: Evolved, Operational, and Built for AI (Spin Sucks)
- Advance Your Agency’s Operational Maturity, with Harv Nagra (The Innovative Agency)
- The Problem of Mechanistic Thinking (2Bobs)
- How to Improve Handoffs from Sales to Delivery, with Kristen Kelly (The Agency Profit Podcast)
- The Power of Purpose-Driven Branding with Cat Holt (Solo PR Pro)
- The Big Themes from 2025. (The Digital Agency Growth Podcast)
- Sharon Toerek, Legal and Creative – The Legal Blind Spots Costing Agencies Millions (Agency Bytes)
Video
- “How do we make our work process less boring?” (The Sutter Company)
AI in focus
- Reddit, AI, and the New Rules of Communication (For Immediate Release)
What’s your big idea for 2026?
If you’re like many agency owners, you probably had at least a few moments over the past couple of weeks where you stepped away from the daily grind and let your mind wander to bigger possibilities for your business.
Maybe you had a flash of inspiration about a new service offering while sitting by the fireplace. Or perhaps you realized you need to fundamentally restructure your role in the agency while watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.
These “big thoughts” are valuable. The problem is that most of them never make it past the idea stage.
You come back to the office, get immediately pulled into client emergencies and team needs, and that brilliant idea gets filed away in the mental folder labeled “someday/maybe.” Before you know it, it’s December and you’re having the same thoughts all over again.
This year needs to be different.
Your big idea for 2026 – whether it’s launching a podcast, pivoting to a new niche, restructuring your service model, or taking some time off – deserves more than a passing thought. It deserves a plan.
And more importantly, it deserves your commitment to actually execute on that plan.
Start by getting specific about what you really want to achieve. “Growing the agency” isn’t a big idea – it’s a vague aspiration.
“Launching a specialized AI implementation service for healthcare nonprofits” is a big idea.
“Working less” isn’t actionable, but “reducing my client-facing hours from 25 to 15 per week by June” gives you something concrete to build around.
The more specific you can be about your vision, the easier it becomes to create a roadmap to get there.
Once you’ve defined your big idea, the next step is breaking it down into manageable phases. What needs to happen in Q1 to move this forward? What about Q2? You don’t need to have every detail mapped out for the entire year, but you should have enough clarity on the next 90 days that you can start taking action immediately.
This is where most agency owners stumble – they try to eat the elephant whole instead of one bite at a time.
Then comes the critical part: protecting time to actually work on this initiative.
Your big idea will never happen if you only work on it when you have “free time” – because you’ll never have free time. You need to schedule it.
Block time on your calendar every week dedicated specifically to this project. Treat it with the same importance you would a client meeting, because in reality, this is a meeting with the most important client you have: yourself.
Remember, you took on all the risk and stress of agency ownership to build something meaningful that serves your goals and makes you happy. Your big idea for 2026 is part of that vision. It’s not selfish to prioritize it – it’s essential.
When you grow and transform your business in ways that align with your ambition, everybody wins: you, your team, and your clients.
So what’s your big idea for 2026? And more importantly, what are you going to do about it this month?
