We can’t control the external. As agency owners, know that clients are going to have cash flow issues and fire you. There’s going to be a new VP of marketing, and they’re going to fire you. They’re going to get a new creative director, and they’re going to fire you. You can’t necessarily control that.
When change happens, the very first thing you should think about is, “Is this internal, or is this external?” That works on a personal level and on an agency level. “Is this something we screwed up? Is this something that we should have done better? Or is it something else?”
If you break it down into these simple elements, “Is it us or not us?” the world becomes a lot simpler. You don’t have to worry about Facebook and Apple fighting over privacy and what that’s doing to your Facebook ad results. You can’t do anything about that, so that’s external.
You just control your actions. If you’re an agency owner, what you really need to think about is, “Where are the places that we are not as good as we want to be, and how do we mitigate those downsides? Where are the places where we are really good, and how do we maximize those?” That’s all you need to think about in order to grow your agency.
Where do we suck? Where are we awesome? What’s next? It’s pretty simple, hard but simple.