Creating a Culture with Your Team and Clients

In this episode of Agency Journey, John Politksy shares growing his agency WeSpeak Easy and creating a healthy agency culture.

Here are the main takeaways from this interview:

Hire and Fire with Your Company in Mind

Firing is something that can be difficult to do at first. If you grow to like an employee or client that isn’t the best fit for your company or mission, it won’t be easy to let them go. However, it’s best to fire sooner rather than later.

Running an agency, you need to ensure that the business is thriving, and if a team member is holding you back, you need to do the hard thing.

The company itself and your goals, and the entire team are what you should be focusing on.

This also includes working with clients.

Don’t be afraid to fire clients who aren’t fitted for you.

If they’re driving you nuts, wasting your time, or causing problems for your team, you need to think about what’s best for your company and fire them…

Letting go of a client or employee will free up resources to work on getting your best-fit clients and team members.

Curate Talent

John focuses on promoting talent from within the company. They enter the agency and grow from within. WeSpeak Easy invests time and money in making it work for them. Employees rise through different levels of the company.

This keeps the culture tight-knit, as nearly everyone has gone through similar experiences and knows the WeSpeak Easy way.

By promoting from within and promoting your company values, you’ll be able to build a strong agency culture.

Have Real Relationships

It can be easy when building your agency to focus on getting the client in a position like you or getting a client or team members enough to get the work done. However, what sets apart an experience for a client or an employee is the relationship.

The WeSpeak Easy team regularly has optional activities (like baking cookies) for the whole team to spend time with each other outside the office.

Real relationships with your team and clients aren’t forced.

Over-communicate, build on common grounds, and respect, and learn to work with different personality types. Focusing on creating deeper connections will create a culture that others hate to leave.

Have a Process for Your Culture

Talking about culture and how it should be is easy. But at the end of the day, as a business, it’s also important to have a process to create this culture.

This means working with team members and checking in to help them reach their personal goals. Regular reviews to learn how you can make the environment better for them. Check-ups to make sure work is getting done and that your team isn’t overworked and loves where they are.

It would be best if you put in work and processes to be able to do this as your agency grows.

If you’re interested in contacting John, you can reach on Twitter or LinkedIn.