Business Development

A subject that irks me is when I meet an agency owner, someone who is in the business of selling their expertise, and they complain about the feast or famine nature of the business. That’s understandable, but my pet peeve is when they also exhibit a scarcity mentality. These agency owners complain about the revenue roller coaster. Sure, I...

If you are not ready to write a book, are you ready to write a metaphor on a cocktail napkin? In the words of Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting, “A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.” The problem is to stop trying for cleverness and start looking for a simple metaphor. Just like...

Your mother was right: handwritten thank-you notes and small tokens of appreciation do impress others with your thoughtfulness, and that is just good business advice too. After spending 20 years in the corporate world and 10 more years as a services business owner, author Jamie Shibley believes the key to accelerating business growth and...

For more than four decades in Hollywood, I’ve devoted my career to a single pursuit: understanding what makes stories emotionally compelling—and how those stories can change lives. As a coach, teacher, and author, everything I do centers on helping people tell better stories, whether they’re crafting a screenplay or delivering a keynote speech....

My first book wasn’t supposed to change the trajectory of my business—or my life. It was meant to help my clients. What I didn’t fully anticipate was how powerful a book could be as a business asset. That first book quickly became more than thought leadership—it became leverage. I could directly attribute new business to it, including a $40,000...

Serial entrepreneur and author James Kademan is challenging agency owners to rethink their growth trajectories for 2026. In a recent interview on Agency Rainmaker TV with host Henry DeVries, Kademan, founder of Draw In Customers Business Coaching and Calls On Call, outlined a strategic framework that moves beyond traditional lead generation....

Smart agency owners and strategic consultants leverage their books with gratitude for more referrals. Referrals make a difference. You want to be the person they refer others to. Lacking that attitude of gratitude may be causing you to lose out on right-fit C-suite clients. “If you deal with CEOs and other C-suite people, a sophisticated and...

In an era defined by big data, real-time metrics, and AI-driven insights, business leaders often assume that spreadsheets and charts are the ultimate drivers of decision-making. We lean hard on analytics and dashboards, believing that the person with the most data wins. But here’s the thing. Across boardrooms and conference stages, it’s still...

More than 400 agency owners and senior leaders are expected to gather in Denver this spring for the annual Build a Better Agency Summit (BABA). Hosted by the Agency Management Institute (AMI), the summit will run May 18-20, at the Westin Denver Downtown. The summit's goal is to focus on the topics required to make an...