You never miss a client deadline. But that business development plan you committed to six months ago? Still waiting to be written.
You’d never let an employee blow off important tasks without addressing it, but you give yourself a pass on networking, strategic planning, and your own professional development without a second thought.
The problem isn’t that you don’t know what you should be doing. It’s that when you’re the boss, there’s nobody checking on whether you actually did it.
This week I want to talk about owner accountability and what actually works to make sure you follow through on commitments to yourself and your business.
But first let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest from SAGA
WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FROM YOUR AGENCY? Most agency owners say they want more — more profit, more time, more freedom. The problem is that “more” isn’t a destination. Without a clear definition of success, you end up optimizing for someone else’s version of it. I created the TMRW framework — Time, Meaning, Rewards, and Work — as a way to define what ownership should actually give you before you make another big decision about growth or direction.
WHAT IS YOUR AGENCY ACTUALLY WORTH? This is one of the questions agency owners most often get wrong either because they are misinformed or because their books don’t reflect the reality that an acquirer sees. If you’ve ever wondered how buyers actually look at your business, this post breaks down the key factors that drive agency valuation, including what most owners consistently overestimate.
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
This week’s overarching theme is misalignment: strategy that doesn’t match execution, pricing that doesn’t reflect value, owners who won’t let go of sales, and agencies watching their own dysfunction unfold in slow motion without stopping it. The common thread? Knowing what’s wrong and continuing to do it anyway.
WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK:
MISALIGNMENT KILLS EVERYTHING — Spin Sucks publishes a eulogy: RIP to content that died because of misaligned strategy. Even the best content goes nowhere when it’s not connected to actual business objectives. Their podcast explains how Shared and Paid Media make the PESO Model Operating System move—showing what alignment actually looks like when channels work together instead of in isolation.
THE SALES HANDOFF PROBLEM — RSW/US shares a letter of love from Mark about getting to close, capturing the frustration of sales processes that almost work. The Digital Agency Growth Podcast tackles why the best agency salesperson might not be the owner with Lori Cox. And Agency Bytes features Cameron Herold on the COO mindset agencies need now—because you can’t scale if you won’t let go of the work only you think you can do.
THE NUMBERS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER — David C. Baker at Punctuation breaks down SDE vs. EBITDA—and why understanding the difference matters whether you’re selling now or five years from now. Meanwhile, Anchor Advisors describes watching a train wreck in slow motion, that sinking feeling when you see the collision coming but can’t (or won’t) stop it. The connection? Both pieces are about recognizing what’s real versus what you want to be true about your business finances and the direction you’re headed.
PRICING PSYCHOLOGY MEETS REALITY — 2Bobs asks whether you’re using pricing as decoy or anchor, examining the psychology behind how prospects evaluate your offerings. The Innovative Agency features Jonathan Stark on pricing for outcomes, not hours, making the business case for value-based pricing that most agencies talk about but few actually implement. Both pieces push on the same nerve: are you charging for what you deliver or just for how long it takes?
ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME — Solo PR Pro covers navigating public information campaigns and crisis comms with Cyndee Woolley, offering practical guidance for high-stakes communication. And For Immediate Release warns about the attack of the AI agent, exploring what happens when AI moves from tool to autonomous actor in client work.
THE BOTTOM LINE — The train wrecks most agencies are watching in slow motion aren’t caused by market conditions, bad luck, or tough clients. They’re caused by misalignment between what you know you should do and what you actually do—whether that’s pricing, sales, strategy, or understanding which financial metrics matter when someone asks to buy your business.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Who holds you accountable when you’re the boss?
You’re great at accountability when it comes to your clients. Deadlines get met. Deliverables get produced. Promises are kept.
You’re probably pretty good at holding your team accountable too. You may have systems for tracking project progress, regular check-ins to ensure things stay on track, and conversations when commitments aren’t met.
But when it comes to holding yourself accountable? That’s when the going gets tough.
The strategic planning you committed to doing quarterly? It’s been six months. The networking plan you outlined? Still waiting. The business development activities you know you need to prioritize? They keep getting pushed aside for “urgent” client work.
This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a structural one.
Why self-accountability is so hard
When you make a commitment to a client, the consequences of not following through are immediate. They get frustrated. They might leave. They definitely don’t pay you for work you didn’t do.
When you make a commitment to yourself about growing your business? The consequences are less immediate. Maybe your pipeline dries up in three months. Maybe you miss your growth targets for the year. Maybe nothing bad happens at all this quarter.
Your brain treats these two scenarios completely differently. The client deadline triggers urgency. The commitment to yourself feels optional.
And when you’re tired, overwhelmed, or behind on client work (in other words, all the time) the strategic work that only benefits your business gets pushed aside. Every time.
Can you hold yourself accountable?
Yes, but it requires specific conditions that most owners don’t naturally create.
For self-accountability to work, you need to actively track what you’re committing to and have a clear, visible way of seeing when you’ve missed deadlines or dropped commitments. Not a vague sense that you “should be doing more networking.” A specific log showing that you committed to five outreach calls per week and you’ve done two in the past month.
This might look like a simple spreadsheet where you log your business development hours weekly. Or a project management system where you treat your agency’s strategic initiatives like client projects with real deadlines. Or a calendar-based system where you block specific time for strategic work and track how often you actually use that time as planned.
The key is making your failures visible to yourself in a way that creates genuine discomfort. If you can ignore missed commitments or rationalize them away, self-accountability won’t work for you.
For most owners, it doesn’t. But if you can make the systems work for yourself, go for it.
Creating external accountability
If self-accountability isn’t cutting it, you need to create external structure. Someone or something that makes NOT following through harder than just doing the work (or at least more uncomfortable).
Before you pick a mechanism, ask yourself: what has worked for you before?
Think back to other times in your life when you actually followed through consistently. Was it because you didn’t want to disappoint a coach or mentor? Because you were competitive with peers? Because you had a partner who would call you out? Because you had formal reviews with consequences?
Whatever worked then is probably what will work now.
Different mechanisms for different people
Peer groups work well if you’re competitive or care about how you’re perceived by equals. Organizations like Vistage (that Gini talks about on our podcast periodically) provide regular meetings where you report on progress. Informal mastermind groups with other owners serve the same function. The accountability comes from knowing you’ll face these people again in 30 or 90 days and need to explain what you’ve accomplished.
Coaches or advisors work if you’ve found someone you respect who will actually call you out when you’re making excuses. The key is picking someone who won’t let you off the hook and who you can’t easily dismiss. You’re paying them specifically to hold you accountable, which changes the dynamic.
Business partners can provide daily accountability since you’re working together. But this only works if it is truly a two-way street. Otherwise resentment builds when one partner feels like they’re pushing harder.
Family members can work if they understand your business well enough to ask good questions and you genuinely don’t want to disappoint them. This is tricky because they often don’t want to be the “bad guy,” and you might dismiss their input as not understanding the business.
Formal structures like advisory boards can work when you take them seriously, but most of the ones I have seen in the agency world are more performative — you just report good news and avoid the hard conversations. And the advisory board members have no real incentive or obligation to do more than that.
Start simple and specific
Don’t try to create accountability for everything at once. Pick one area where you keep dropping the ball (business development, strategic planning, financial reviews, whatever matters most right now).
Then pick one accountability mechanism and commit to trying it for at least six months to a year. That’s the minimum timeline to see if it actually changes your behavior.
You might think a peer group sounds nice, but if you never want to disappoint your spouse, telling them your weekly business development goals might be more effective even if it feels awkward. The question isn’t what sounds good, it’s what will actually make you show up differently.
Over time, you might develop multiple accountability mechanisms for different parts of your business. But start with one commitment and one solution.
Make it work
Whatever mechanism you choose, you need clear, measurable commitments. Not “I’ll do more networking” but “I’ll have three substantive conversations with potential referral sources each week.”
Track your follow-through visibly. Whether that’s reporting to your peer group, reviewing metrics with your coach, or just marking off completed tasks on a shared calendar with your partner, you need to see when you’re meeting commitments and when you’re not.
And be honest about whether it’s working. If you’ve tried something for a year and you’re still not following through, that mechanism isn’t right for you. Try something else.
The only approach that definitely won’t work is continuing to tell yourself you just need more discipline while nothing changes.
