I’m turning the tables on you a little bit this week. I want to hear from you.
Don’t worry, I’ll still share some of my own thoughts, but I’m really interested in learning from all of you agency owners.
I want to know how you are personally using AI today. What kinds of tasks? What tools? What’s working — and what isn’t?
Just email me or post on LinkedIn and tag me — or send a carrier pigeon if you prefer!
I’ll share some of the best ideas I hear along with the trends I’m seeing among agency owners in a future newsletter.
In the meantime, I’ll give a sneak peek at some of what I’m doing with AI right now a bit later in this edition, but first let’s see what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest from SAGA
SAVING YOU FROM YOURSELF. Agency owners can often become a bottleneck, and your team isn’t likely to call you on it, because they know who signs the paycheck. In the latest Agency Leadership Podcast episode, Chip and Gini dig into how you can build accountability as the owner — whether it’s OKRs that show up in red, or a peer network or formal coaching, you need to find a system that works for you.
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
Here’s what caught my eye this week:
NEW BUSINESS, QUALIFYING, AND NOT STALLING — Lee McKnight Jr. at RSW/US looks at three reasons agency new business efforts keep stalling, and some of it comes down to consistency rather than strategy. The For Immediate Release podcast takes on whether misinformation is biased against you, important to think about if you’re doing any kind of reputation or communications work for clients navigating that terrain. And Blair Enns asks who’s actually doing the qualifying in a new business conversation, making you rethink whether you’re a vendor or an expert.
SYSTEMS, NOT CAMPAIGNS — Spin Sucks gives us two pieces this week. Gini’s podcast uses Peppa Pig to make the point that most agencies are running campaigns when they should be building systems, and Travis Claytor’s blog post follows up with the first question every integrated campaign should answer. That Solo Life chimes in with what filmmakers know about marketing that most business owners never learn, useful if you’ve been thinking about your marketing as a series of one-off efforts.
GROWTH WITHOUT BREAKING THINGS — Agency Bytes features Juliana Marulanda of Scaletime on why you can’t scale chaos — the systems have to come before the growth, not after. Karl Sakas has a practical piece on how to add services without becoming the bottleneck, the trap a lot of owner-led agencies fall into when they try to expand. And on The Innovative Agency, Sharon Toerek hosts Martin Calvert on building a global growth playbook for agencies thinking beyond their home market.
EXITS, OFFERS, AND PAYING ATTENTION — David C. Baker makes the case that potential acquirers are worth paying attention to even when you’re not actively looking to sell. If things are going well, you may have some leverage in the conversation. And Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors writes about what gratitude actually does for your performance.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
How do you use AI today?
We all have a lot to learn from each other about AI. There are plenty of innovative ideas and approaches that many of us haven’t thought of yet, so let’s start sharing some of them. It doesn’t need to be detailed or fancy — just send along a few bullets.
To get you started, here are a few of the things I’m using AI for:
- Writing: I was skeptical at first, but I spent a lot of time training Claude to learn my writing style. Sometimes I use it for a first draft from some recorded audio ramblings or quick typed notes, but more often I create a really rough draft and ask for polishing. From what I have seen, the writing process is one of the most common things agency owners are using AI for right now.
- Research: There are all sorts of research tasks that I find AI good for, but one I want to highlight is researching best practices on a particular task or topic. I find it especially helpful on fast-moving things — like social platform algorithms — because you can force some deep dives that get updated with the most current advice.
- Strategy: I still hear people saying that AI is great for writing and research, but the difference we all provide is in the form of strategic insight. Hogwash. Most of the latest LLM models are pretty good at formulating basic strategy — and with a bit of collaboration and pushing can help you craft really sophisticated approaches.
- Devil’s advocate: Most of us could use someone to push back on us a bit. As owners, it’s hard to find employees who will confidently poke holes in their thinking. AI is great for this. It helps me think of things I would have missed and challenges my assumptions — backed by facts and clear reasoning.
- Design: Even though I’m a solid photographer, I’m a mediocre designer. AI has helped me do much better with everything from article images (that I typically create with ChatGPT or Gemini) to social media posts to landing pages and even full website layouts. These tools are improving every week, and the ability they’re giving all of us to create more compelling visual content is significant.
- Interactive tools: I started writing computer code in the early 1980s. Back then, programs were saved on cassette tapes (seriously!). So I am on the more technical side, but I have been using AI to create interactive tools for myself and others without writing a single line of code. I’ve also collaborated with people who have no programming skills and have built phenomenal applications.
Hopefully that six-pack of usage gives you some ideas of your own, as well as a starting point for telling me how you’re using AI.
I’m looking forward to sharing some of the best insights with all of you, so feel free to forward this to other agency owners so we can cast the widest net possible for fresh thinking and innovative approaches.
