356. Breaking the Growth Bottleneck, with Shauna Nuckles

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: The Innovative Agency is a podcast designed to help marketing agency leaders answer the question, what's next in their industry? If you're looking for actionable ideas about how to operate and grow innovative agencies, you've come to the right place. Let's get into the show.

Speaker A: Welcome back to the Innovative Agency, everybody. Good to be with you again. Sharon Torick here. And welcome. Coming off the heels of a lot of conference travel, it's conference season. As we're sitting down, about to have this conversation with today's guest, and just saw today's guest at a live conference. And so she's been on the road to meeting and greeting. And I want to really share some of her wisdom with you today about what's keeping you from growing in whatever way you define that for your agency, for yourself, for your teams. And so here to help us walk through all that is, uh, someone who I really admire for her expertise. I've had chances to have conversations with her that have been relevant even to my own business. And so Shauna Knuckles is the CEO and the founder of Advocation. And first of all, Shauna, thank you. I really appreciate you being here today.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Speaker A: Yeah, me too. I definitely am. So let's set the stage for a minute. Talk about what Advocation does and how it collaborates with agencies. What kind of things do you help them with?

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. So the company I run is called Advocation, as you mentioned. We are an operations and growth consultancy that specializes specifically in the agency business model. And we've carved out this unique niche even within that, uh, where the majority of our clients who come to us are looking to exit the founder in some way, shape or form. So there's, as we all know, a traditional exit where someone wants to sell the firm or set up their leadership team to take over over a certain period of time. But there are also different types of exits that we focus on exiting a, uh, founder from client work so that they can focus on growing the exiting from this portion of the business so they can set up a sister business, something of that way shape or form where they want to retire. And they're looking for what their exit strategy is there. And we do that really in two ways. The first is operationalizing the business, and we have a framework and methodology that we use to bring that to life. And then secondarily, really looking at how we increase what we call enterprise value of the agency so that it is worth more when being evaluated from an M and a perspective, but also worth more to the founder who's running it day to day as well.

Speaker A: Got, uh, it. I love that. And um, I love that focus within a focus because I think operations is such a broad topic in the agency space. There's so many facets to what an agency does every day, even if it's a small, a very small agency. And so I think it's good to be as crystal clear as you are about what part of that you sort of hone your energy on. I want to start the conversation is, let's say I'm an agency owner and I'm not ready quite to think about exiting per se, but I don't have my arms around what scale or growth means to me. You've written some really great content about how to figure out what, what success means to you as an agency owner versus just growth for the sake of growth. And so I guess my first question would be, how do you know when you go into an agency and interview the leadership team or just the owner, how do you know when this is truly a, uh, leader problem or an actual structure or operational issue within the agency that's holding it back from getting to fulfill its potential?

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think we've worked with a firm where it hasn't been a little bit of both. And uh, the. We see the patterns that arise most commonly at different inflection points inside of an agency. There tends to be a, uh, really similar path or patterns or bottlenecks that show up from going to usually about your first 500k. That's one inflection point. And then we see another inflection point that happens between around 501.5, 1.5 and then 3, and then usually it goes 3 to 10 million. That tends to be the next inflection point that we commonly see. It looks a little different for every agency at those different stages. It allows us to however, kind of know where to look first in terms of, well, what might some of the challenges be? And so we never see an agency where they get to, we come in and they get to that certain revenue level and they're just good until they scale until the end of time. Right. There are just. With the complexities of running a, uh, professional services company, there are complexities that arise as you add more people to that. But the first place that we often look in, a really simple question that we ask is, if we doubled your clients tomorrow, could you handle it? And if not, what would break? And the very few firms can say that they are confident that they could double their business tomorrow and just looking at where structurally the business would start to bottleneck, or you wouldn't have clarity with the right team members, or you don't have the right team members on the team your current team is at bandwidth, but you're not sure why. Those are some of the really common areas that we look at a process and structural place. Specifically, we start with three foundational pillars that are centered on do you have your services tight and aligned? Are they right fit for the market? Are they priced appropriately? Are they positioned well so that they can be. You can sell them effectively to your current client base. And then we look at your team. Do you have the right team for today and then the right team for the next iteration of your business? And then what is the financial model that makes all of that work from a margin perspective, from a revenue pipeline perspective? And that that tends to be the three pillars that really hold up what a scalable agency can look like. And that just varies over time depending on the size and revenue stage that you're at.

Speaker A: So as the owner of a professional services firm, it's not an agency, but this resonates with me so much. And I guess what I want to ask you is that knowing you see a little bit and probably just about every one of those pillars that needs work attention, how often is it that really it's the leader or the owner who's got to do some foundational work, as I call it, between their own ears first before they're ready to actually ask these questions. Because some of them are. Can be exhausting, right. Having to, uh. I mean. Cause you're. You're talking about looking at your marketing, looking at your production, looking at your operations top down. And it's a lot. And so you've got to be in, I feel like the right headspace. So talk about that and how you help owners who either, I don't know, maybe you tell them they're not ready and you come back later, or maybe you coach them through what's holding them back. But how often do you see that actually holding the agency back from getting to its next level, if you will? I like to call it.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's common. And I, I don't think anyone who is in our audience is surprised to hear that. But, um, we often hear from the agencies that we work with that our strategy sessions feel like therapy sessions because they're able to share with folks who actually understand what they're going through, all of the nuance in detail. And I don't think we've worked with a founder where there isn't some type of mindset or shift that has to happen there alongside doing the structural and foundational work. Something that's really common that I do think surprises people in the fact that we work with high performers, right? Like we're working with agency owners who are ambitious and want to scale, grow their team, be the best in their industry. And with that comes a layer and level of perfectionism that is, takes time to unwind and change your mindset around. Because when you have that mentality of, well, everything has to be perfect and I have to hold on to X, Y and Z, it slows down delegation, it slows down iterative progress. And it also can make it really challenging for agency owners to trust that other folks on their team can do the work that they do and do it even better oftentimes. So that tends to be a really common theme that we see with agencies where there has to be a little bit of a level set in, uh, that perfectionist mindset. Particularly if you're at a point where you're building a layer of leadership where you're not just delegating tasks and outcomes, but you're delegating true ownership. Because ownership at that level is often someone's going to do it different than you are, someone's going to take a different path than you will. But if you want to really expand, usually it happens around that, uh, two and a half, $3 million mark where you're coming really up against the edges, where the founder truly just doesn't have the capacity, no matter how effective, efficient and perfect their systems are, to own every element of the business. And so transferring that ownership, you really have to have almost like an ego death of you're not the center of the business anymore and start creating those spokes of true leadership and ownership inside of the firm.

Speaker A: Do you encounter owner leaders who can't break through to that next level because they're not, they don't really know what they personally want out of the business. Whether what that, you know, personally, professionally, financially. They just, they can't articulate what they want really what, what the ideal state actually is for them.

Speaker B: Individually, I would say yes. And what I actually think is happening underneath is there is not knowing what you want. But I think that they either don't think that what they want is possible or they don't think that what they want looks the way it should. Uh, on paper, we have worked with plenty of agencies where ultimately they want to make a certain amount of money and have A certain lifestyle, and they think that the only path to get there is through scaling through to a certain size. That couldn't be more untrue now than it has ever been. We are at the point where a $1 million a professional services firm with one person, maybe one person, an assistant is possible. We're seeing that in our client base, right? And so there is that rethinking of what success looks like to the outside world. And I do think that that has become easier, especially in the post Covid world where it's not necessary as m much to have a fancy office or a huge team. They're seeing the benefits of working with remote teams, nimble teams, boutique teams. So that ego piece of having the big fancy business has really shifted quite a bit. And I see that continuing to change over the next several months and years as our landscape evolves with AI. But I, I more so see folks having to be honest with themselves about what it is they really want and then working through maybe a plan that doesn't look as traditional as what we've seen all of those success stories out there so that they can have the life, the income and the lifestyle they, they want without growing to be what has historically been successful in the agency world.

Speaker A: That's interesting. Do you think they're benchmarking themselves against like the other independent agencies they read about in the trade press, or do you think, uh, where do you think that comes from after you've talked to

Speaker B: so many of these folks? I think it comes from the typical. Well, we see what these firms in our market are doing, or we just saw this firm get purchased by a big player. And so that's what we need to work towards. Or I worked at a firm who that firm did X, Y and Z. So that's what I'm trying to do. And the blueprint really has evolved to be much more diverse. And also, uh, social media, right. People seeing what other agency owners or business owners are doing. So they think they need to post 100 pieces of content a day on social media and speak on stages and grow their team so that they have a, um, C suite of eight people and a team of a hundred. Right. Like that tends to be the picture of success that often gets painted. But we see so many founders who maybe have that big shiny business and they're paying themselves a third a half of someone who's running a much more modest business that looks different on paper. So I think it is to that point of being honest with yourself of what you really want at the End of the day. And how are you willing to make trade offs to get to that?

Speaker A: Marc? That's fair. You have some different points of view about. Let's say we're in the right ahead space, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: We're open to being non traditional where we understand what success means for us as an owner leader of our agency. You and I have. I've been privileged to have some conversations with you about productization in a professional services firm. And I know that you probably have a strong point of view about how does an agency. Let me set it up this way. This is a poor way of asking a question for a lawyer. Might almost need more coffee. What I want to know is how do you know whether an agency has opportunities that are lower hanging fruit with productization, with specialization in niching or with going horizontal, for example, with one specific skill that they can really compete in in the marketplace, how do you help sort of wade through? Because uh, those have operational consequences. Right. And profit consequences for the business. So how. What are some clues there? What based on what you've seen in all the agencies that you've poured through?

Speaker B: Yeah. So productization of services is another niche area that we've carved out for ourselves. And a reason why a lot of firms come to us is helping them think through and strategize how to productize their services. And throughout the last several years that has looked far down, but we've gone through different iterations of what works in terms of a productized service, in terms of revenue and marketing and fitting it in with the overall uh, service suite of the firm. All the way from most folks, I think when they hear productizing they think a course or an ebook or something that they can have passive income around. Right. We hear that a lot when folks come to us. We're seeing that demand and opportunity get contract a bit this year over the last six months or so. Because information is infinitely accessible. And not just information, but templates and how TOS and um, diy. So the fact that insight and information is really at um, at our fingertips now we're seeing more so the opportunity be around productizing and operationalizing your approach and your methodology. So going to your area of specialty to intellectual property and really thinking through well, what is our unique approach to solving a specific problem. And uh, to your point about what the opportunity is for specific firms, I really think that it is centered on that. Right now we're seeing this commoditization of execution happen where clients coming to agencies historically who want content written or execution on marketing deliverables or social posts or even creative output that is really being commoditized in their eyes, whether that's true or not. Because we've had a lot of discussions with agencies around the quality of output from AI uh, around content and creative and campaigns, et cetera. But in the client's eyes that's being commoditized right now. And so what they're really looking for in their agency partners are outcome based engagements. So they're coming to you to say, well I'm an E commerce brand and I'm looking to achieve this with my website. Can you help me achieve this roas with my ad spend or we're looking to launch in the marketplace and we want a PR campaign that does X. So really thinking through the your methodology and approach, we use the word framework internally quite often with our clients to develop what is a consistent diagnosis and then thinking pattern for not just you as the founder but your team to follow a process in order to get a consistent outcome. So I think that that is a big area for uh, productization and positioning of services. Right now the other big, big opportunity we're seeing is around the reporting of results. So now with the access to more data and information we're able to engineer endless insights as well. And I think there are certain industries, PR being one, if got lots of experience there, where data hasn't been as easily accessible to show the real benefit of a partnership with you. And so we're seeing firms start to engineer their own automations and agents in order to pull analytics and insights in a very custom way so that they can integrate that as part of their service and really uh, baking that into the retention of a client as well. Kind of having that continuous proof point that they are on the right track, they're making progress to the outcomes that matter. Those at this current moment in time are the biggest opportunities we're seeing for the productization of services is around the UM framework, the methodology and then also the reporting piece as well.

Speaker A: I'm so glad you laid it out because that was one of the key trends that you sort of outlined that you're seeing in agencies right now. Yeah, and I think that what's hopeful to me about that is that it's an opportunity for an agency of any size and scale. And um, anybody who listens to the show every once in a while often enough knows that I love insights, advice, tips, whatever that are scalable at any size for an independent agency. And you've just laid out two approaches that are not dependent upon headcount really, or revenue size to start with to actually launch or expand. Right. When you get into an agency and start looking under the hood to figure out how to help the owner plan their exit or, or uh, or uh, get from X to Y to Z. What are some clues. We've already talked about clues that it might be the owner themselves. What are some clues that it's the pipeline or the clients they're working with versus internal operations of the agency itself. How do you know, how do you know where to focus first, I guess is a better way to put it. Because there's so many things, there's so many corners. Right. To have. Intuitive. So how do you know what are some clues that it's your marketing or it's your sales or it's your people or it's your, your operational systems.

Speaker B: Yeah. So we go through a very thorough audit process when we work with clients. First we have about a hundred markers of scalability that we look at under those three pillars. And then also through the lens of revenue growth pipeline in overall people, culture and team and leadership. And when we're looking specifically at pipeline and revenue, we're looking for the. A few things first and foremost, particularly if we're productizing a service, is do you have a client profile or typology that we can find? That tends to be the biggest bottleneck for firms who are looking to increase growth and scale is not even necessarily not having a niche, but not having a client profile that we can position to create an outreach campaign for really create scalable business development around. And what that might look like is, well, we're a social media firm, so we do social media for everyone. And that tends to be very challenging to scale outside of individual founder. Right. Because they're going to meet people at events or get referrals or really kind of just shake the trees and make it rain from their personal network. But if we're able to have a uh, client profile where we can create thought leadership campaigns or establish a personal brand around solving problems for that specific typology or ads or speaking at conferences, it creates a uh, revenue pipeline that is a lot stickier. And we see that as a common missing component for agencies at all sizes, all the way up to multiple seven figures to just starting out, that makes it really hard to scale revenue.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: The other thing that we see is their services are not sticky. And so we're very much of the mindset of really thinking through a customer journey so that you're not just signing a client once, but you're inspiring them to stay and then expand their total contract value. So a tactic and a strategy that we really think through with our, the firms that we work with are what's the bridge that you can create in order to get a client in the door and get them a win so that you can then bridge to uh, a recurring service. So that might be an audit, it might be a one time campaign, it might be a six month start to a retainer, something that gets them in the door, builds trust and then creates that leapfrog effect where they then want to stick around and stay. And we're seeing a trend right now where we have a lot of deal flow that we see uh, with our clients that we work with and on an ongoing basis, millions of dollars in like deal flow that we're seeing on a quarterly basis. And we see what clients say yes to and what they say no to and what the objections are. And there are a lot of objections right now to the traditional long term retainer. No matter the size, no matter the, the volume. People are being asked by their leadership, CFOs, CEOs to push back on price to start with projects, to ask the question if AI can do what the agency does. And so that tactic of having a bridge so that you can showcase a, uh, win and build trust so that they feel comfortable moving into the next stage with you, is a strategy that we're seeing work really well from a business development perspective and a sales and revenue boost right now.

Speaker A: Got it. And then. All right, so then turning into the people corner, what are some of the biggest clues that you've either got the roles scoped incorrectly or you have the wrong people in those roles.

Speaker B: In an agency, it really comes down to the level of documentation and the level of accountability that you're currently holding in the firm. Those tend to be the first two areas where the roles on the team aren't actually clear. So you may have 10, 15, 20 or two people inside of the firm and everybody does everything. And when everybody does everything, sometimes it's necessary at a certain size, everybody wears multiple hats. But then no one is accountable for specific outcomes. And so we really look at what is driving the firm forward. Where is our revenue coming from, where are the leaks operationally? And in which roles do those responsibilities sit? And oftentimes there are little pieces of duct tape just uh, throughout the entire company that the founder is the thing that's holding all of these different pieces together. And so the lack of clarity tends to be the biggest thing. And we'll often have conversations internally with leadership or individual contributors to just ask, how, what's your day to day like? Where do you feel confused? And we'll see patterns arise in these discussions throughout that firm and that piece of, well, I'm not really sure whose job it is to do X, Y and Z, so I do it, but sometimes this person does it. And with that lack of clarity, it becomes really challenging for people to just get up and go. That lack of clarity in the best case scenario just creates unnecessary friction. In the worst case scenario, it is the thing that really burns people out because they don't know what success looks like. They don't know what their job is, they don't know if they're doing a good job, they don't know why this certain thing is being asked of them. So in the worst case scenario, it is a top contributor to why people underperform and why they leave. And then, uh.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker B: The other piece that we often see is there's no way to consistently hold people accountable. So you send people tasks or you delegate projects and responsibilities. And there is a real lack of accountability that comes from often the leader. But in people managers too, we're not really taught how to effectively hold people accountable. And I also think with a lot of the leaders that we see and work with, they don't reserve enough bandwidth for themselves to actually hold people accountable. Right. Because if you assign something to a, uh, team member, you as the leader are responsible for helping ensure that it's delivered up to your standards, on time, up to the client's standards, that they understand the context. And only when they do that consistently can you fully let go and then look at handing off the next thing. And usually we see that gap from a, uh, senior leadership standpoint, that they really just don't reserve enough bandwidth for themselves to effectively hold people accountable. And they don't have a rubric for how to do that.

Speaker A: You're hitting me right between the eyes on so many levels. I don't know if you can sense that through the screens here, but. Right. That is so true. And as a business scales, as an agency scales and gets busier, you just focus on what's next in front of you. It's just a natural human reaction to keeping forward motion or at least the perception of it. And so, and not only that, but accountability is, it's tricky, it's hard for. It's a humanly, it's, it's challenging for some leaders. I think part of that is one of those between the Ear things from the leader's perspective. Right. They may not have reserved enough bandwidth or they just may be not able to overcome their discomfort at those conversations.

Speaker B: Right. It is challenging to have a, uh, conversation around lack of performance and lack of results. And if you don't have the pieces to help you stand that up. Right. It's really hard to hold someone accountable if their job's not clear. Right. It's hard to inspire high performance if you don't know where the company is being pointed. So the having those baseline foundational pieces in place make it a lot easier so that you then can practice the skill of management and leadership. Because otherwise you're really sitting in just a, uh, chaos storm and trying to keep yourself centered so you can just have an effective conversation. But having an effective conversation again and again and again and again gets harder when you don't have those clarity markers and the foundational pieces in place so that it is consistent and not just reliable on your leadership team being excellent all the time. Right. There's that having to get over the perfectionism piece where the company can't just continue to run by one select person or a few select people by being incredible heroes every single day.

Speaker A: So, and that's a great segue into, all right, let's assume that the leader has the right perspective and let's assume that they're able to overcome that discomfort obstacle of accountability with people and people are right and basically in the right places. How do you know? What are some of the big clues? That it's your method, it's your process or your systems that just either you've outgrown them or, or they were insufficient in the first place. And it isn't that it's people, it's that it's process that's preventing you from getting to that next level.

Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the biggest clues that we look for is could you, anyone I'm sitting down with, from an account coordinator all the way to your C suite team, tell me what your process is in conversation and have it be the same each time and you get the same outcome. Because what we often see is even if even the most perfect, detailed, documented process, if there is not an understanding from the team around why we're doing that and what we're hoping to achieve, things go off the rails and people really start to make their own modifications to the process or it's too cumbersome. So let me teach you my way to do it in really just that simple understanding of is everyone on the same page about what the process is. And is it simple? And we come into firms and see documented process that are just so complicated that they're going to be challenging for anyone to actually follow the process without having an SOP up in front of them and referring back to it every single time. That's not. We don't want that. Right. If that's the case, we really need to think about how we simplify things. But that tends to be a really good clue. Is, is it simple and does everyone communicate about the process in the same way and is it understood from every level in your company the same, in the same manner? The other thing that we really see is a, uh, complete disconnect between process, client experience and revenue. Because ultimately m, the process should serve the purpose of the company. Right. And the company's purpose is we drive revenue by providing an experience for the client. So if we have a process that is disconnected from what our client experience should be, or we want it to be, or we haven't thought through that piece, that should be the anchor. Right. So when we have a service suite that makes sense for our goals and the industry in which we work, and then we also have a client experience that inspires clients to stay, that gets results that should drive our, uh, process. And so we, we often see firms do it the other way, where they create all of this. Well, here's all of the steps for us to do this specific thing. And that specific thing is what the client is paying us for. But really they've not completely thought through how they are achieving results for their clients and what outcomes they're providing and then what that experience looks like and feels like to the client. And that is what really should influence process and not the other way around.

Speaker A: So really reverse engineering it from the customer experience all the way back down to the process, which is, you're right. It's the exact opposite of how we create process to the extent we create them at all. They're a hypothesis. Right. They start out as an idea or an experiment about how something might work, and then we try it out and we refine. But if we think back from a successful client experience and everything that went right and why it went right and capture that, then our odds of replicating it are higher, is what I'm hearing from you.

Speaker B: Yeah, and this is probably a very unpopular or uncommon thing for an operations person to say, but I think people focus process too, too much on not making mistakes and getting things exactly right, as opposed to we're trying to achieve an outcome and the granularity of details that we often see. It's not just agencies, it's just a common thing that companies do when it comes to documenting and creating processes. They're so focused on the details that they get lost in the weeds from the bigger picture. And that really is where we come in and help create that translation layer from the founder's vision and where the company is going and how we create process and structure in a way that meets that instead of has such a huge gap between the finite, very intricate details in the way we want to show up and serve clients.

Speaker A: I love that because that is the whole point at the end of the day, right. Not to just create them for their own sakes. Or it's. It takes me back to my days of studying for the bar exam where you memorized and then immediately disregarded and forgot 90% of what you learned up to that test because it wasn't going to be relevant to your experience being a practicing lawyer after got your license.

Speaker B: That's a great example. That's a great example. Yeah. We don't want to just forget the process because then to your point, it doesn't mean anything. Right. Way we do our jobs. Right. Right.

Speaker A: So this has been such an awesome tour through the typical agency and where to look for the gems. And I guess what I'd like to leave everybody with is your point of view, Shauna, on what are the opportunities you're seeing now for agencies to scale or be more adaptable to owner exit, whatever that means that you maybe wouldn't have been excited about or have seen as uh, beacons, if you will, like a few years ago. What are the exciting opportunities on the horizon given where we are early 2026?

Speaker B: Yeah, the biggest thing that I think is exciting is the level of impact that the agencies can have without headcount and that I've always loved that as a perspective in the agency world because I very much believe that you can do great work and have a great lifestyle as a founder and provide an excellent place to work for your team without being a um, 50, 100, 200 person firm. And now that is even more accessible and on a grander scale. Not exaggerating when we're, when I say we're seeing solopreneur million dollar agencies and I think that that will continue to be more common. And even if that's not your desire to be a solopreneur and just make as much revenue as possible, really thinking through how you can use technology to allow everyone on your team to have greater impact, I know, there's a lot of fear around, well, how is AI going to impact our industry and jobs and so forth? And the firms that we see winning the most right now are really thinking about how you can use technology to make your people even more effective. And while we're seeing the price compression is happening everywhere, clients want more for less. That's been going on for as long as I've been in the agency. Ever.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Even more so now. And really being able to be in a position where we actually can do more for less. And it's not coming at, uh, the sacrifice of paying yourself, paying your team, it's coming through. A smart use of technology I think is a really exciting place to be as an agency owner and also as a client of an agency for really just leaning in and solving problems together that really matter. So that's where I think is the most exciting place that we're seeing for the next, uh, several months or the, the short term horizon is leveraging technology for impact.

Speaker A: I love it. Because if you're already small, then you're not facing the same headwinds that Amazon or any of the big consulting firms are facing. You don't have to figure out how to repurpose or train thousands and thousands of workers. What you can focus on instead is doubling your revenue, maybe without adding any more people at all. That's just one possibility. But I have been thinking a lot about this lately and I'm feeling very validated by what you just said because this has been on my mind a lot, that there's a world of opportunity, especially for small independent agencies, to just do more with what they already have instead of having to worry about replacing Headcount or, I mean, and they may have to do that, right? Or retrain people who, you know, just are not up for this next wave of what technology is going to mean for, for agencies. But I'm glad you share that, that optimism and that point of view because this has been on my mind a lot lately individually and I feel the same as you do. I really do agree with that perspective though. This has been amazing. Where can people reach out, Shauna, to find, uh, out more about what you and your company can do for them and maybe to learn a little bit more about the work that you do for agencies as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. We have our website, which is advocationsystem.com and I'm on LinkedIn under my name, Shauna Knuckles. Those are probably the two best places. Love connecting with folks there. If you are in the Austin area in Texas or anywhere in Texas. We're also making an effort this year to be in person person as much as possible. So always love the opportunity to meet up with agency folks, attend events anywhere locally and would love to connect.

Speaker A: Amazing. And if you ever have the opportunity to hear Shauna give a workshop or present in person, you should absolutely take advantage of that because she's brilliant and, um, you've just gotten to spend about 40 minutes with her. So, Shauna, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: That is very sweet of you. Thank you for having me. It has been a pleasure. I love talking, uh, about strategy and digging in. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker A: Awesome. All right, everyone, thanks for joining us. We will see you all on the next episode. And until then, everybody stay well.

Speaker B: The Legal and Creative Agency Protection System is a legal toolkit designed to help busy agency leaders manage legal issues like client contact contracts, freelancer relationships, intellectual property, social media compliance, and more. Get resources and helpful content about agency legal issues now@agencylegalprotection.com youm've been listening to the Innovative Agency hosted by Sharon Torick. Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time,