EP 420: Setting realistic budget and growth goals for 2024 with Drew McLellan

Many agency owners want to see 20% growth (or more) year over year while staying profitable. This goal isn’t entirely unrealistic, but the bigger you get, the harder it is to maintain such impressive numbers if you’re not investing resources in the right things to support that growth.

For this week’s solocast, I have some homework for you to do to help you see if you’re prepared to meet your growth goals in 2024. Don’t worry; we will do it together while I walk you through how to crunch the numbers step-by-step.

If you want to follow along, grab your P&L statement and our growth goal worksheet linked below, and get ready to do some math. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a much clearer picture of where your agency is at financially and what level of growth you can support next year based on the numbers we calculate today.

For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more.

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

In This Episode:

• The basics of staying at 20% profit while doubling in size
• The mistakes we often make when setting end-of-year growth goals
• How to set a healthy growth goal based on your agency stats
• Why attrition affects your growth goal, and how much
• Emphasizing the role AEs play in growing clients
• What your agency needs if you plan to grow more than 15% year over year
• Which tough decisions agency owners need to make to hit growth goals
• The importance of niching down to boost growth