Beyond the Billable Hour: How AI Is Making Time & Materials Irrelevant

Episode Transcript
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Brian Kessman (00:00):
Billing by the hour never reflected value

(00:03):
and it rewards inefficiencyand penalizes innovation.
There's an agency that we workedwith, we moved from charging
hours for both their strategyservices, packaged that with
their design services, theywere able to sell that back to
the same clients and they soldit at a 66% higher price point.

Galen Low (00:21):
Is AI the nail in the coffin for
a billable hours model?

It absolutely is.

Galen Low (00:31):
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withthe Digital Project Manager.
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you wanna hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
Alright, today we're talkingabout whether billing by the

(00:51):
hour is being made irrelevantby AI and what agencies should
be doing about it to focus onthe value being created rather
than the time being spent.
With me today is Brian Kessman,founder of Lodestar Agency
Consulting, where he helpsindependent agencies and
multinational networks movetheir firms beyond billable
hours and commoditized services.

(01:11):
He works with leadership teamsto reposition their expertise,
productize their value andprice based on impact building
scalable, high margin models,centered on client outcomes.
Brian, thanks for beingback with me today.

Oh, it was my pleasure.
Thanks for having me back.
This is always a lot of fun.

Galen Low (01:28):
I always love having you on the show.
You've been doing suchinteresting stuff lately.
You and I, we've beencollaborating for years and
what is happening right nowis just so of the essence.
I teed it up at the top, butmy community is buzzing about
this idea of what becomesof time and materials, what
becomes of billable hoursin a world where AI is
getting things done faster.

(01:49):
It's not the only question.
I know that some of the workthat you've been doing to work
on different pricing models.
In some ways predated thesort of big wave of AI that
we're dealing with right now.
I thought I would just divein with the hot question and
for me, like I personallyhave had some issues with
time and materials contractsand like the whole billable
hours model because there'snever any incentive for

(02:11):
my teams to work faster.
Either they lie on theirtime sheet 'cause they got
something done faster and thenwe still wanna bill for the
whatever, 5, 10, 15, 40 hoursthat we said it would take.
Or they're just billing theirtime as less time being spent,
and then they're getting thewhip because they're like how
come you're not billing out asmuch as we thought you would?
So my hot question is this,is ai the nail in the coffin

(02:34):
for a billable hours model?

It absolutely is.
It's not that AI is actuallybreaking the model that
we've all been using, right?
That model is workingexactly as it was designed.
It's just not built to capturethe strategic value that
agencies are actually providing.
And so what we're seeingis what AI has done is to
make that misalignment justimpossible to ignore any
longer, impossible to tolerate.

(02:58):
Billing by the hour hasreally never reflected how
clients perceive value anyway.
And it rewards inefficiencyand penalizes innovation
completely misses the impactthat great agencies deliver.
It's just that it's the wrongmodel and AI has really exposed
just how outdated it really is.
But I gotta say, the shiftisn't just about changing our

(03:22):
revenue model, essentially.
It's about changing whatwe sell, how we sell it,
and how we deliver it.
Ultimately it's how we scalethe value that we create.
And that's what I'm excitedto dig into with you today.

Galen Low (03:34):
Awesome.
Yeah, I love that.
And like the quintessentialbillable hour for
me is like lawyers.
And for some reason thatvalue makes sense 'cause
I'm like, I have no ideawhere the law might take me.
I'm in your hands, right?
I trust you.
The value for me is thatyou'll take the time and your
knowledge of the law to helpme navigate towards my goal.
And I'm not like nickel I meanI personally am not the person

(03:56):
like, show me the time sheet.
Yes.
Show me the half hour youspent where you drafted
this paperwork is typicallynot how I look at it.
Whereas agency, it's been thatmodel where it's almost been
just convenient because I thinkit started that way, right?
Where it's we're notsure what we want.
We trust you bill us by thehour and let's like try and
stay within this budget.
And now it's likefar more scrutinized.

(04:18):
I think folks do it becauseit's easier in theory, right?
You get paid for everyhour of work that you do
and it's not like superhigh margin stuff, but at
least you're like covered.
So in some ways it's seenas less risky than like a
fixed price engagement wherelike an agency would have
to manage the profitabilitywithin that fixed amount.

(04:38):
But I guess it begsthe question, which is
beyond fixed price andlike time and materials.
What is the alternative?
Are we talking aboutvalue-based pricing or are we
talking about another modelthat might make more sense?
Where do we go from thesemodels that we've been
like sitting on restingour laurels on for years?

Yeah.
The hourly model has beeneasy and convenient for sure.
It hasn't really forcedagencies on a large scale to
rethink their value, right?
We've seen a lot of comfortaround defining our value
based on the billable hour,but we need to go past that.
And we've seen leadingagencies shift their models
well before ai and they'vebeen, doing extremely well

(05:18):
by pricing their impact.
Now we're just seeingthere's no choice.
Everybody has to go in thisdirection unless they want to
compete on price, and that'snot a winning situation.
So you asked if value-basedpricing is the way forward
and it's part of it, butthe deeper shift is really
moving from selling timeto selling solutions.
And that's so that value-basedpricing can actually make sense.

(05:38):
There are multiple pricingmodels actually that
align with this approach.
We see fixed fee, performancebased subscriptions,
even licensing ip.
And I think of these all asvalue aligned pricing models
because the goal isn't tochange how we charge, but
to better reflect the valuethat we're actually creating.
But there's a catch to use anyof these models effectively.

(05:59):
You have to first reimaginehow your agency creates
and delivers value.
Because if you're still sellingcapabilities and activities,
then you're right back inthe conversation about time
and effort, and that's whatreally drags you into those.
Conversations that are aboutcomparing you to competitors
or having to negotiate andyou're seen as a commodity.
So if what you sell canjust be easily compared

(06:22):
to what other firms offer,then you're always gonna be
fighting for your margins.
And that's why that real shiftisn't just about pricing.
It's also about a couplekey things, how you
position your firm, howyou package your value, how
you deliver your expertise.
That's exactly what the agencyvalue model is designed to
address, which is, I knowsomething we're gonna talk

(06:42):
about, but before we get intothat I just want to hear what
are you seeing or hearing fromyour audience related to this.

Galen Low (06:48):
So like the reason why a lot of the time material
stuff is in contention rightnow, it's causing some anxiety
in my community is because ofexactly what you said, it sounds
like a race to the bottom.
So now there's like differentmargins you can play with.
And again, not just ai, butnearshoring offshoring, like
the labor costs can go downand therefore the rate that
you bill at can go down.

(07:08):
And all of theagencies who aren't.
Taking advantage of that ortheir, maybe their thing is
yeah, we're all local, we'rea local boutique agency.
We all live in this city,suddenly they are twice the
price of someone who is likeoutsourcing or leveraging ai.
And I think the argumentis, okay, some of this, the
race to the bottom stuff,you mentioned at the top,
like the commodificationof like digital services is

(07:32):
basically it's changing thecompetitive model to just be
like the lowest price, right?
And that's like the onlyway you can survive.
And then there's a lot offolks that are trying to.
Not necessarily reimaginetheir value, but add value.
I see a lot of smaller agenciesarcing towards, oh, we also,
maybe they were mostly likea dev build shop, right?

(07:52):
Maybe they're mostlydevelopers and some designers
and they're like, okay, wewanna, we should do strategy
'cause that's more valuable.
We should have thatas an offering.
Which as you can imagine islike standing up a whole new
offering with like staff.
You don't have thatis, it's risky.
It's not overnight.
It takes a lot.
I like what you're sayingthough, because it's
the first step is not tochange your pricing model.
The first step is to rethink thevalue you're already delivering.

(08:15):
And I think that's like amessage that I think a lot of
folks that I talk to need tohear because the competition
is not about, oh, the valuethat you're delivering
isn't good enough anymore.
It's just that theway it's perceived.
Can either go two directions,either it's like very
commodified and it should onlycost $5 because I can get that,

(08:35):
or I can build it, using anAI tool, or I can get Wix or
like I don't need to pay thatmuch for my website all the
way to the other side, which isokay, we do all these things.
It's an all in onesort of package.
That cohesion between value isthe thing that makes it cost
a lot of money, and they'rehanging their hat on that.
I like what you're saying aboutthe solutions and the outcomes,
I come from a bit of a businessdevelopment side too, where I'm

(08:56):
like, that requires the wholepitch has to be different.
The whole value propositionhas to be different.
Like the way we talk aboutour work has to be different
and then the engagementmodel can be different.

Yeah, you're a hundred percent right.
There are agencies thatare doing great work out
there, but their model,their revenue model, the way
they talk about themselves,they're really undervaluing.
What they can do, andclients are just not seeing
them for all their worth.
And so that's whatthis is about.
It's making that shift firstbecause you can't just go and
price the same work that isperceived as low value all of a

(09:26):
sudden at a higher price point.
It's just that agencieshave been underselling
themselves for too long.
So first we need to correctthat, and then we can
actually build on that andthen achieve better pricing.

Galen Low (09:38):
Do you have any like examples out in the wild
that you can talk us throughjust to see how maybe that
transition went and what thesort of pricing model looks
like now for an organizationthat you've worked with?

At a high level, I'll describe, there's a model
that we recommend most often.
It's a tiered fixed pricingmodel for what we'd refer to
as a productized solution.
And so if you imagine each tieris designed and priced based
on the value that the tiercreates, not effort at all.
Not time.
Certainly we use time tounderstand our costs, but

(10:08):
that's not what we're pricing.
And so if you were imagine asan example, a brand strategy
program that has three tiers.
One is focused on helpingyour client first achieve a
foundational level of clarityon their target market.
The next tier would besomething more in depth,
positioning, the positioningstrategy around that.
And then we go to the third,which would be all of what

(10:32):
I just said, plus includingthe go to market strategy
and activities behind that.
So with that, each oneleads, you can imagine the
different set of outcomesbehind each of those tiers.
But I also, I need to say thatthis example's pretty simplistic
just to make the point of howto structure the offerings.
But we do need to push past anysort of thinking about existing

(10:53):
services, 'cause that's whatI'm describing, the traditional
brand strategy type of service.
What we actually need to dois not start from a place
of services, but start fromthe problem that you're
solving for your client.
There's more to that.
I wanna unpack that it's yourbest fit client, not just
for any client, but who arethe clients that value your
expertise the most, thatgain the greatest benefit and

(11:15):
impact from your services,because you're gonna be
able to hone in on theirproblems better than others.
And so when you can thenextract what are the high value
problems of those best fitclients, that's the next step.
Again, not any problem, butthe problems that live at the
higher ends of the value chain.
'cause we do wanna elevateagencies away from execution
and production as we seethat being taken over either

(11:37):
by in-house teams or ai.
So what are thosehigh value problems of
your best fit clients?
And at that point we cannow think what is the most
ideal solution that we candesign to solve that problem?
And yes, we'll pull fromour existing services, but
what else can we do thatwe are uniquely qualified?
To develop on top of existingservices, and that leads us

(12:00):
to how do we leverage ai?
We haven't done that.
This is the opportunity to buildeither proprietary products or
a hybrid of a people poweredand AI powered type of offering.
And so that's where we canthen start to innovate and then
differentiate through thesesolutions and then finally put
it into the tiers and frame itwith the proper value and so on.

Galen Low (12:18):
You tapped into the big thing that I was thinking
of, which is like for someagencies I've worked for in
the past who I won't name.
It's exactly as you described.
They understand the servicethey provide, but they
didn't really understand theproblem they were solving.
And sometimes a businessmodel is like more clients
from anywhere, right?
The sort of maybe ageographic like back in the
early two thousands, right?
You could dominate a region.

(12:39):
You could be like, we dideveryone's website from
like the pizza place to thepolitical party, to this
industrial manufacturingcompany, all in this city.
And they come to usbecause we're local.
And then.
We didn't really developthat depth of understanding
of the problem.
Whereas, I've been talkingwith more agencies lately that
are more industry aligned.
They go very narrow intotheir niche because they

(13:00):
can understand the problem.
They have confidence that theyunderstand what those problems
are with their best fit clients.
They understand theirclients' business in enough
depth, and they have enoughconfidence that they understand
that's part of their pitch.
And they can go, wereally understand.
Orthodontics.
We really understandreal estate.
We really understand real estatein this particular market,
and developing the expertiseof the client business, not

(13:22):
necessarily the expertise.
In tandem, with the expertisethat you offer as an
agency, but fundamentally,those are your tools.
To build the house, not likeputting your tools out on
loan for in an hourly rate.

And so you're touching on the next evolution
of the the next patternand positioning that we're
seeing across agencies.
Normally agencies willhave positioned either
with a category focus ora service specialization.
We focus only, we're a digitalagency for B2B brands, right?
So that's the combinationof both of those and that
was always strongest whenyou'd go into a pitch.

(13:56):
If you can combine botha category focus and
service specialization,you're in a great spot.
But now most of the industryis caught up, right?
Many agencies have at leastone or perhaps both of those
types of specializations.
And so we need to go deeper thanthat just to stay competitive or
ahead of the competition, right?
So what we wanna do isgo a level deeper based

(14:17):
on the category andservice specialization.
Again, what are now thoseproblems that we can solve
better than other firms?
And what are the outcomes thatwe can produce consistently
because of how we work,the actual methodology,
our philosophies, or ratherthe productized solutions
that we've developed.
And then we can show our proofthat the proof points, the case

(14:37):
studies, the stories that buildsthe overall value framework
that you use to communicateto clients, to the market.

Galen Low (14:45):
Does this tie into, 'cause I've been seeing some of
your posts lately, and I thinkthere was you had a piece in
adage mentioning and you calledit out earlier, that your agency
value model, does that tie in?
And if so, can you break downwhat it is and like why it
matters for agencies right now?

So it's not just a pricing model.
It is a full framework for howagencies, again, create package
price and deliver their value,but it's meant to help them
do that in a scalable way.
And as you said, it's theagency value model, and there's
two connected systems thatmake up the entire model.
One is the value creationsystem, which if you think about
this, it's more about how youdefine what your agency does

(15:23):
differently and better thanother options out there that
your clients have available.
It's where you start to designyour structured solutions that
reflect your expertise, whichis comes from your positioning.
And those solutions are purposebuilt to solve, again, those
high value client problems,which leads into then the
second part of the system, whichis the value capture system.
And that's how do you scopeand deliver and price that

(15:45):
value consistently in away that's scalable and we
can maintain profitability.
And so you're, how do youcreate and capture value?
So within that, under those twosystems, there's four, I refer
to 'em as four levers that youcan use to fine tune the model.
And so I touched on someof these already, right?
Positioning is the firstone, positioning what

(16:06):
your unique value is.
You build on that.
Then with productizing thatvalue into structured solutions.
And then you're preparingyour people as the third
step to make sure they areprepared to confidently
speak to and sell and deliverthat value, because that's.
One of the breaking pointswe see people fall back on
old habits of talking aboutcosts and time and so on.

(16:27):
And then finally, thefourth lever is pricing.
Pricing based on outcomes orimpact, not effort, right?
But so many conversations todaythat I have with agencies,
this starts with pricing.
We need help with pricing,and we need to introduce the
model so that we can see areall the other pieces aligned
so that you can effectivelyprice 'em the way that you want.
And so that's howthis model helps.
It's really meant for thecurrent marketplace, right?

(16:50):
That's really drivenby AI and automation.
And so of course, time-basedapproaches don't work.
And so this helps to shift awayfrom that, from selling time
to selling outcomes, makingsure all the right pieces
are in place first before youattempt that, and then you
can start to scale your value.

Galen Low (17:07):
I like it as like a sort of transformation
process, right?
You need to go throughthese things in order to
benefit on the other side.
To play the devil's advocate.
Some of our listeners mightbe thinking that sounds like
brand strategy and positioningplus fixed price model.
Ultimately, it's still likethis, you get this price tag.
Maybe there's different tiers,but functionally, my project

(17:28):
manager audience are like, okay,we still have to manage time as
our margin within this product.
Is that true?
What makes it more productizedthan just a fixed fee
prepackaged offering?

It comes down to the difference between what I've
heard as productizing servicesversus productizing value.
I think that's thestarting place for the
answer to your question.
I think when you think aboutproductizing services, you can
think of taking all the existingservices you already do today
and just thinking how do webundle them and then we put a
price tag on that so that we'renot pricing any one of them,
but it's now it's a package.

(18:00):
And that's great.
And there are a lot of firms.
Companies, even outsideof agencies that have
been doing this for ages.
And then there's the otherside, productizing value,
which goes to what I wassharing earlier, rethinking
what that value actually is.
It's not the services thatthe other example was.
Certainly clients arebuying those services.
But what they're really buyingis a solution to a problem.

(18:22):
And so that's adifferent starting point.
We start again from theplace of the problem that
we need to solve and themost ideal solution, and
we think very differentlyabout how we can solve it.
And then from therewe frame it around the
value of that solution.
Whereas in the other example,if you're productizing services.
It's largely, in most cases,still based on time, still

(18:42):
based on effort to deliverthose services as opposed to the
impact of a problem, which isthe starting point for the other
example that I'm giving you,which is where we play, right?
Productizing value.
And it's really importantto think about that.
A lot of agencies that wespeak with that have attempted
this before we get a chance totalk, they see partway through
our engagements, there'sthis aha moment that happens

(19:03):
and they're like, oh, I seewhere we were going wrong.
Because we were alwayscoming at it from a place of.
Our inputs, the process,the phases of our work, the
deliverables, the actualcapabilities and services.
And we were alwaysstuck in the same.
We just felt like we weren'tgetting to that next level.
And so when you can startfrom a different place and
it's actually one of thehardest steps is really
defining those problems you'reuniquely qualified to solve.

(19:26):
There are so many pieces thatneed to be connected to lead
up to the ability to do that.
And when you do, then youcan design some pretty
compelling solutions.
We could talk about the resultswe've seen, in our clients'
work, but in all that, but Ijust wanted to pause there.
I think that answersyour question.

Galen Low (19:43):
Oh, a hundred percent.
No, it absolutely does becausethe scrutiny becomes different.
Scrutiny is not about gettingit done, getting the things
done that we said we'd do.
It's scrutinizing the impact.
That's actually what the sortof client scrutiny becomes, and
that's what's different thanstandard fixed price stuff.
Like here's the list ofstuff that you said you'd
deliver, and did I getit or did I not get it?
You haven't deliveredthat last one.

(20:04):
I don't care if you're at budgetright now, but I still want that
one more thing, whether or notit's gonna change my business.
Versus, Hey, I'm seeingimpact and value coming
outta the work being done,whatever that work is.
You guys clearly understoodhow to solve my problem
and I'm measuring it now.
I'm feeling thebenefits already.
And I don't know if this iswhat you meant when you were
talking about tiered earlier,but there's like almost these

(20:26):
stages of benefit too, right?
Like not just doing onebig whole, yeah, this is
our one mega product andprobably it's gonna solve
your problem at the end, andif not, we have your money.
The, Hey, let's get youto a stage where you are
getting value and you areexperiencing the impact.
And then let's go to thatnext thing, and then let's
go to that next thing.
And I've been hearing theword speed to value a lot

(20:47):
lately, but yeah, let'sgetting to that impact sooner.
Not having a big sort ofmonolithic project or monolithic
offering, but let's get youto let's solve that problem.
Let's put the bandage on thewound and then let's figure
out like where to go next.
You're gonna startfeeling better right away.

Yeah.
There are so many great thingsabout what you said there.
I want to touch on a few ofthem and just build So one
thing, even before what youhad just said, you started
talking about client focus.
What are clients focusedon in more of a service
based type of model?
They're focused on theservice and when are they
getting that next thing.
And so when we see agenciestry and shift away from
billable hours, one of thefirst places they go is
to price a deliverable.

(21:22):
We'll stop pricing hoursand we'll use a fixed
fee for deliverable.
And now we'll sell that.
But if the rest of the model'snot in place, it's just
basically you're changingyour billing methods, your
invoicing, your contract,but nothing else has changed.
So one, you have all of thesestill remaining internal
chaos and operationalchallenges internally that
we see in so many agencies.
And two, there's not enoughproof to have a conversation

(21:44):
with procurement or any pricedriven buyer that proves.
You can solve this problembetter than other firms because
really as they ask questionsand dig deeper, you look
just like any other agency.
So we do need to stillchange that model.
But in terms of where itkeeps clients focused,
you're absolutely right.
If you're selling a deliverable,then a client is focused on when
am I getting that deliverable?
Is that deliverable done?

(22:05):
Is it complete towhat I was expecting?
If you're selling a retaineror agency of record type
relationships, which wedon't see many of today,
but they're still out there.
Then what you're reallyselling is access, or at
least that's where you'repointing client focus.
If I have you as my agencyof record, I need to be able
to access you for, and itdoes tie to hours of course,
but it's on demand, right?

(22:26):
And so that's whatthey're focused on.
When you say we're sellingsolutions that starts the
client's focus and keepsit maintained on a problem
that's going to be solved.
And that's what everybodyshould be focused on.
'cause that's whatthey've always been
buying is the solution totheir business problem.
So that's why we see thisas the most effective ways

(22:46):
for agency to truly selland scale their value.
Because what we're reallytalking about is transformation
work for agencies and that'swhat they've always been doing.
Getting clients from a currentstate to a better future state,
and what better way to do thatthan saying there's a problem
blocking you from getting there.
We have that solution.
That's what we sell.
Here's our expertise andhow we do it, and so on.

Galen Low (23:05):
I like the sort of transformation theme because
A, I think that is what alot of projects are these
days, arguably always, right?
That we're trying to explorea way to change something to
either do business better orserve our customers better.
There's some kind oftransformation that takes place.
But I also like this idea thatlike agencies themselves need

(23:26):
to undergo a transformation.
They have to go through almosttheir own process, right?
They're telling theirclient, no, you gotta go.
We gotta start with discovery.
We have to do this.
That technical audit, we'vegotta do these things.
This is our process.
And then, that whole like eatingyour own dog food thing, right?
It's okay, but when it comesto our agency, we're just
gonna try different things,oh, we're gonna respond to this
RFP with this kind of valueprop and see how that goes.

(23:48):
We're gonna go to thesenetworking events and
drop off some business.
And when there's a lead,we'll make this shoe fit.
I think that's like the currentstate of the economy right
now too, where like you said,there's not a lot of sort of
these retainer models anymore.
Cashflow is becoming anintensely challenging thing
to manage and a lot of theclients that are walking in
the door that probably aren'tbest fit clients, but they're

(24:10):
the ones walking through thedoor are like, I only have
$10,000 to do that $75,000project you just proposed.
Would you take the 10?
And some agencies might have to.
I'm not saying do that entirescope for $10,000 instead of
$75,000, but they're like,okay, we need cash flow
to keep our people workingand having livelihoods

(24:30):
and we have to follow thisrace down to the bottom.
But what I like hearing isthat they probably do have
a lot of superhero powersin their category and in
their service offering.
They can lean into as long asthey're sitting down, taking the
time to reframe the value thatthey deliver and how they sell
that and how they promise it.
You said the word proof earlier,and I don't know if this is what

(24:52):
you meant, but I was like, yeah,how can you, after you've done
time, materials, or even justlike fixed price, like services
engagements, how can you deliverthe proof that you can solve
the problem that you havesolved the problem in the past?
I go to like case studies,but I almost go to like
measurement as well.
And maybe we can get therelike a little bit later too

(25:12):
in terms of like how do youbecome the agency that's
accountable for the impact?
Whereas normally it's kindalike job done, you kinda
walk away and go to thenext client, next project.
We don't know if it hadthe impact and frankly
no one's really held ourfeet to the fire there.
But I think that would be likethe sort of the other bit.
But I wondered if firstwe can go into the
transformation bit because.

(25:34):
There's always friction, anagency of any size, arguably
an organization of any sizeto get everyone rallied
around that kind of change.
And I know a lot of agencies,like you've probably worked
with agencies who, you mentionedabout the epiphany point, right?
In other words, thereis friction and it was
hard to get up the hill.
And then you get to thisepiphany point, you're
like, I get it now.
And then it's all likesmooth sailing from there.

(25:54):
But what is some of the frictionthat you run into with agencies?
Are there different likelevels of transformation?
Are there maybe four stages oftransforming away from billable
hours, a little four stepprogram that kind of makes it
easier for agencies to digestwhile also still doing business?

So certainly there are
friction points we see.
Some of the most common ones,and I'll just touch on 'em
quickly, is that leadershipbelieves in value based or
value aligned pricing, butyet client facing teams are
still defaulting to timeestimates or scope changes.
Or if scopes are still builtaround highly customized
deliverables, and most scopesin the firm are custom.

(26:32):
That makes scalabilityalmost impossible, right?
So there's not reallyrepeatable structure
there for that to happen.
Or if sales and account teamsare still speaking the language
of hours and cost and effort andservice, not value or expertise,
then things will fall apartwhen you have that client you
mentioned that says, I only have10,000 for that $40,000 project.
What we're talking aboutis confidence going into a

(26:53):
negotiation situation andbelieving that what you're
selling is actually worth that40,000 to begin with and not
budging or finding anotherway to solve the problem.
But for a $10,000 budget,because you're the expert, you
should be able to do that tosome level, or at least that
person needs to respect yourexpertise and find that money
if they wanna work with you tosolve that problem otherwise.

(27:15):
It's always a businessdecision, right?
We never want to turn awaymoney, but at sometimes it's
also the opportunity cost.
If you accept one thatintroduces chaos and
customization again, right?
And then you are startingto burn out people when you
can have that next greatopportunity walking in the door.
And so what we see is when allthe pieces are in place, right?
Your positioning is clear.
You know who you're for and whoyou're not, for what you do and

(27:37):
what you don't do, all of that.
You have your prototypesolutions, you have all
of the other pieces.
And you're priced appropriately.
You attract theright clients, right?
You attract more of thoseright clients or those clients
that come to you that maynot be the perfect client.
They start to see it yourway, and it's a lot easier
to navigate them to the rightway to approach this and
at the right price point.
And I've heard many firms saythey somehow magically find

(27:59):
the dollars to do it the rightway as after they have this
conversation with their clients.
So all that aside, let'stalk about the shift that
has to happen internally.
So there are four shiftsthat we talk about a lot.
And so the first is thephilosophical shift.
And so it's reallyabout mindset.
And some of the tensions Idescribed before are based on
not having that right mindset.

(28:20):
And so we need to redefine andwe've touched on this, what your
agency actually sells, or moreaccurately what your clients
are really buying from you.
I think I said some ofthis, that they're not
buying strategy in mediaor creative reproduction
and they never were.
Despite what we see on so manyagency websites for years, what
clients are actually buyingagain, is that solution to a

(28:40):
problem or a desired outcome,A new capability that you're
gonna build for them or givethem the knowledge to gain.
So it's really ultimatelytying to the positioning
piece and it's taking thatstand and saying, this is,
these are the problems weare uniquely qualified to
solve based on our strengths.
This is who we are as an agency.
So that's the first shiftand it's really foundational
to everything else.

(29:01):
But does that line up withsome of the challenges
in the industry whenthat's not in place?

Galen Low (29:05):
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, like I see thatas being like where the
friction is because of that.
Like I think that knowingwho we're for and knowing
who we're not for islike super sound advice.
Then that temptation ofthere's money on the table
is like always a bit ofthat, like retrograde.
It's that thing that'salways gonna pull folks back.
There's almost like a disciplineto it, but I like what you said

(29:27):
about confidence in negotiationbecause I think that's
ultimately what it comes downto, where it's are you confident
enough to say that, listen,I can turn this one away.
This is gonna cost us money.
It's like an opportunitycost, and it'll also, this
is not our best fit client.
I just need to have confidencein the fact that how we've
positioned ourselves, we'vemade the right decisions, that

(29:47):
there is a better fit clientcoming our way that we can chase
down and frankly not wait forpeople to walk through the door.
Go you know who to go afterand it's going to be, I
was gonna say lucrative.
Lucrative isn't reallythe word, but Yeah.
Like a good, healthy clientrelationship for your agency.
That's a really interestingone, but that's where I see
a lot of people struggle.
'cause they're like, butthis person has $10,000.

(30:09):
And you're like, yeah,but it's gonna cost you
$40,000 to get the job done.
It's a very hard shift toget into that discipline.

So that confidence builds
over time, right?
Even right after a positioningengagement with an agency.
It's not a, an instant flipof the switch where all of a
sudden you have your best fitclients knocking at your door.
And so it takes time.
You have to build the rightcollateral and the momentum
to start to attract them.
And sure, so you still haveother clients knocking and
you just decide when is it theright time to start saying no to
clients that aren't a good fit?

(30:37):
And you'll know because youhave enough business from
your right fit clients.
And you become more comfortableand confident in that way.
So it does take time.
And we're also not saying,you fire the bad clients
that aren't a good fit.
You still work with them.
You maintain that businessuntil they decide to leave you.
'cause eventuallythey will, right?
That it's notgonna last forever.
All the while you're buildingup your pipeline of your best
fit clients and eventuallythat shift happens naturally,

(30:59):
but you can move into.
The next part of thetransformation, which helps
put you in an even better spot.
And so you want me to,I can dive into that.
Yeah, let's go.
So that's really, it'sabout a strategic shift
and in other words, howyou package your offerings.
I've called it productizingvalue, I think earlier.
And so as an agency thatwent through this recently

(31:19):
said, you helped us useproductization as a strategy
when we had been thinkingabout it all along as a tactic.
And that goes to thepoint earlier about
productizing services,not productizing value.
And so let me unpackthat a bit because this
is exactly what we do isproductization as a strategy.
It's an advantage thatyou gain when you start to
structure your unique valueas these defined solutions.

(31:42):
You're building up yourcredibility as the expert
in this defined space, andyou design those solutions
to move clients across anecosystem of offerings.
Not just through one-offprojects, which is one of the
challenges you were describingbefore, in fact, even the
$10,000 project example, right?
That's a one-off project, nota solution to the overarching
problem, whatever thatmay be in this big example

(32:04):
we've been talking about.
But the point is, this is howwe create revenue continuity,
even inside a project-basedmodel, which is how many
firms are operating today.
Because what you're doing whenyou are so focused on a, on
your right fit audience andthe problems they need solved.
Then you can design solutionsfor the first problem.
They're gonna experience leadingto the second one that you know

(32:25):
they're gonna hit, that youalready have a solution to solve
that for them before they evenknow they're gonna need it.
And you create this ecosystemof these solutions for the
related sets of problemsthat these clients have.
Now you're ready tohave that conversation.
The first conversation, youcan show them the ecosystem,
and this is the place thatyou play as the expert.

(32:45):
You already know where they'regoing to go on their journey,
and you have solutionsfor all of it, and you're
quickly becoming a strategicpartner, a strategic ally
for them, and that there'sa lot of value in that.
And so what you do is youstart to grow your overall
client lifetime value withthese clients because you
have one solution leadingto the next and to the next.
All the while, you're alsodifferentiating your agency from

(33:06):
the others that don't do this.
In a way that'shighly defensible.
And so when the solutionsare also built on that
positioning, now you can alsoprice higher for these as well.
And less pushback, verydifferent conversation to have.
So that's a strategic shift.
There's two other shifts.
I'll be a little quicker Ithink on these, but certainly
one is operational becausenow how do we deliver all this

(33:27):
value we've been talking about?
And so what we need to dois train teams to speak to
and sell this value, to havethat confidence, as you said.
But we also.
We need to figure out how do wecreate leaner team structures?
We need to move awayfrom bloated teams that
we've seen in agencies.
You get in a room, a meetingfor a project, you have
20 or more people in theroom, five or so don't even
know why they're there, andeveryone's billing by the hour.

(33:50):
And so what we need to movetowards is lean, creative
product teams, is how I referto them, and leveraging agile
workflows and repeatableways of working, built on the
frameworks from the solutions.
And because your offeringsare now so well structured.
You can also start to applyAI and automation in the
right places because youhave this repeatability,

(34:12):
and we're not talking aboutcookie cutter work product.
We're talking about repeatable,underlying processes and
frameworks that help you createbetter work to carve out the
space and time for you to havethe all the time you needed
for strategic thinking orfor production or creative.
Because you can't reallyautomate if there's
still operational chaos.
How do you automate that?

(34:32):
How do you apply AIin a repeatable way?
And we see that still with a lotof firms, so we need to do that.
And then finally, howdo we measure our value?
I know you wanted to talkabout this and actually
there's a couple dimensionsto this, but I'll start here.
Where we need to first redefinewhat success looks like.
So how do you measureperformance if we're not looking
at billable hours, right?

(34:53):
We're moving away from aculture of utilization.
To a more of a cultureof accountability.
Have we delivered thevalue that we said?
And so the results, when weknow we're doing it right, when
the model's working, we see theadjusted gross income per FTE
of a firm dramatically increase.
We look at the margin persolution that you're offering.
'cause these arerepeatable solutions.

(35:15):
You can do that.
There's not custom engagementsto the same degree as before.
Or you look at margin perteam, because the creative
product teams I mentionedare typically fixed teams.
They stay together to delivera related set of solutions.
We look at clientlifetime value.
We look at how long it takesto close deals, because
deals tend to close faster.
With this model, we look atpercentage of recurring revenue

(35:35):
that you're able to carve out.
Most firms, they start at zero.
When we work together and westart to build up to a greater
percentage, we're aiming for atleast 30% as the low goal there.
And then.
Most importantly though, isclient outcomes achieved?
Did we deliver whatwe said we would?
By the time that we said,did we solve the problem?
Did we hit a meaningfulbusiness goal?

(35:56):
Did we leave themwith a new capability?
And so that's how we know whenthe model's working, 'cause
you're measuring value andyou see that value increasing
in all the areas I mentioned.

Galen Low (36:05):
Requires some access to their side of measurement
as well, like the client side.

So a lot of the metrics that I shared
are more agency performing,how do we measure our
agency's performance?
But you're absolutely right.
For the latter part, right?
For the outcomes wedeliver those, yes.
But that's not alwaysavailable to you.
That goes to value-basedpricing and why that's a
challenge sometimes, right?
Do we know how much valuewe're actually creating for
the client, or do we haveaccess to their metrics?

(36:30):
Do the clients even havethe right tools in place?
Are they allowed toshare that with us?
So there's a lot ofmoving parts on that side.
We don't always have accessto that information, and we
don't always have the rightpeople in the room to make
the decisions, to give usaccess to that information.
So again, a lot of challenges.
So what we see in and adviseis rather than, so two ways
to create value-based pricing.
One is we co-create or definewhat value means with our

(36:55):
clients, with the right peoplein the room to create what
we call a scope of valueinstead of a scope of work.
And we do that in the formof a success workshop at
the beginning of a project.
And so the agencies thathave done this, they call
it their own thing, but it'sthe same type of process.
We have the right players inthe room to make the decisions
about different types of pricingmodels that we can use in this

(37:17):
work, and getting access tothe right tools in the metrics.
And if we know that there aregaps in the metrics and what
they can and can't track, thenthat informs just how we're
gonna structure that agreement.
We're in a much better placeto now have a true value-based
agreement with our client.
The other way to create avalue-based agreement is more
of, I usually refer to it aseither estimated value or sort

(37:38):
of assumed value, where youdon't have the same luxury
of having this conversation.
You don't have those metrics.
So based on your expertisein your area of focus and
knowing the value of yoursolution and past case
studies and the benefitsit's provided to clients.
Make an estimate of what's therange of value for this client
and you price based on that.

(37:59):
It might be completely off base.
It may not be over time.
You get much better at this, butyou also have to consider what's
the client's situation, right?
What's their sense of urgency?
Are you the only one that theyknow that offers what you do?
All these other thingsplay into your pricing
leverage and how to price.
Then of course we use the threedifferent tiers, which increases
your odds of closing the dealrather than losing to a price.

(38:21):
'cause instead of a yes noanswer to a single price, it's
which option is right for you.
And you can always, say wehave some add-ons to customize.
If it's not exactly what you'relooking for, we can adjust
some of these options anyway.
That's the way to do it.

Galen Low (38:33):
What I really like about this is that the
model is almost based more onlike strategic partnership.
It's like a partnership, likea longer term partnership
with your clients.
Coming back to that like sortof retainer relationship, the
reason why a retainer modelwas attractive in the first
place is was 'cause for atleast in my experience was
you understand our business,you're deepening your
understanding of our business.
And yeah, we want to be ableto call on you, whenever we

(38:55):
need your services, we're gonnatreat you like one of the team.
But really the valueis that you get us.
And this kind of is, as youmentioned, not the same as a
retainer model, it's more basedon like impact and value, but it
really creates that partnership.
From the get go, and that'spart of what the value is.
Not how fast can you createa wire frame, but how likely

(39:16):
is it that you are going tocreate a wire frame that really
connects with our customer andour strategy and our target
market and what we wanna dowith the experience on, a
website or what have you.
Therefore it's not really,the scrutiny isn't about how
long is that gonna take you?
It's a, okay, how are you goingto make sure that it's a fit for

(39:37):
what we wanna do for a strategy?
Prove to me that youunderstand what the mission
is, what our problem is,and how you can solve it.
Which I mean, I don'tknow, maybe that's like an
opportune time for me toask, the elephant in the
room question, which is like.
Where's the projectmanager in all of this?
Because normally we'relike, oh, did we deliver
the thing on time?
I guess we're done.
And there has been all thisdialogue, especially from the

(39:58):
Project Management Instituteand others, about how we
need to be accountable forthe value that we deliver.
We are valuedelivery specialists.
We are not just hit the irontriangle, deliver what's on the
checklist, and then move on.
But I think the bigquestion is cool.
What does that look like?
Not everyone has reallypainted a clear picture
of how a project managermight go about supporting a

(40:20):
value-based model when we'vejust been trained to make sure
deliverables happen on time.

Yeah, a hundred percent.
This is one of the pieces Iwas most excited to chat with
you about because obviouslyyou know, you, I know your
audience and I come from aproject management background
going back many years.
So it's never been a projectmanager's job in my eyes
to just manage schedules,tasks and utilization
and all of that, right?
It's always been aboutleading the team toward

(40:48):
the successful project.
And now in some firms we usedto define success as well.
Is it on time and on budget?
And what our client's happy.
But in this model, we're lookingmore sharply at the outcome.
Did we produce the outcome?
And that's what it needsto be about, right?
We need to.
Project managers need to seethemselves less as the task
managers, and many alreadyhave evolved well past that,

(41:11):
and we need to move into thespace of being outcome leaders.
And so how do we leadthe team toward that?
And so in this model, it's somuch less about how busy are we?
Did we track all of ourtime in order to know
who's actually productive?
Time sheets have nevertold us who's productive.
They just tell us someonetracked this many hours, we
don't know what was actuallyproduced in that time.

(41:31):
And we need to measurehow valuable we are, but
not necessarily at theindividual level, at the
team level, because we'reall working together.
We're all sharing theaccountability of producing
that outcome and getting at theindividual level can be helpful
if the individual wants tolearn, how can I work better?
But we're not trying toreally scrutinize anyone's

(41:52):
hours on a project.
What we're trying to dois make sure that the team
is happy with how they'reworking and they're working
as a highly effective team.
If somebody's dropping theball they're gonna hear about
it or somebody's gonna hearabout it, but we don't need
a time sheet to tell us that.
And so we really wanna look atthese metrics at the team level
because that's the unit of valueor the system that's pushing

(42:13):
out the value for the firm.
So it shifts the role of a PMif for PMs that haven't already
made this shift, I think youcall it value managers, right?
And so that's ultimatelywhat it's guiding
delivery around outcomes.
Clarity and client impactinstead of the time and budget.
And there are metrics thatthey can use to help them do
this too, but that mindsetshift has to come first.

Galen Low (42:35):
Yeah.
It's almost the sametransformation, right?
The philosophicaltransformation, the strategic
transformation and alongwith measurement as well.
I really like that,and I agree with you.
I think a lot of, folkshave moved beyond that
idea that a project managerjust, is a task manager.
I think that actually paintsa clear picture of how you
can like use value as a lensto look at the quality of

(42:58):
work being done as a team,not necessarily these like
individual parts that hopefullywill come together and add up
to the outcome that we want.
And I think we've all had thoseprojects where we're like,
okay, we have this deliverableand we're supposed to do it.
We're just not sure if it'sgonna is it even useful?
What are they gonna do with it?
I guess we should still deliverit because we're supposed to.
The flip side of that is listen,we're supposed to do this.

(43:20):
I don't think you need it.
It's not gonna have the va,this is gonna have more value.
Can we shift into this model, orcan we do this approach instead?
Because we understand theproblem we're trying to solve,
not because we understandthe scope of work document
that's sitting on our desk.

Yes, because the client didn't buy
those deliverables andis not checking boxes to
say, I need this and this.
They need the result.
And if you're the expert andyou know how to get to that
result and you're seeing aneed to change course, then
the client should be readyto trust that if you set up,
if a whole model's in place.
You've set up that trustwith the client and so on.
Absolutely.
Yeah.

Galen Low (43:50):
Maybe I'll round out with this, 'cause we talked
you mentioned earlier, right?
Like kind of results andI think folks listening,
they're like, okay Brian,that's all fine and good.
Yeah, we can go on thistransformation journey.
It's not gonna be easy.
And we'll have to like reallyhave a deep thought about who
we're for and who we're notfor, and how we position our
value, how we go after businessand how we manage the work.
But.
Is it going to make adifference to, our livelihoods

(44:11):
as, staff within an agency?
Or is it going tohelp agencies grow?
What are the kind of resultsthat you've seen just at a high
level after adopting this model?

Yeah it happens in at least two
buckets, financial andcultural for the firm.
So the firms that do adoptthis model, they typically
quickly see, they see their.
A GI per FDE start togrow two to three times
from where they started.
They get stronger margins,they get longer and more
valuable client relationshipsout of this because they're

(44:42):
delivering outcomes clientsactually care about, right?
It's not about checkingthe boxes for activities or
hours or even deliverablesin certain cases.
There's an agency that weworked with that shifted just
one of their core offerings.
We started with a pilotfor them, just a pilot
productized offering, andso we moved from charging.
Hours for both their strategyservices and by doing that,

(45:04):
it was, they were alreadyundervalued terribly because
they were selling it thesame way as execution.
And we packaged that withtheir design services, which
they were seeing clients weretaking in-house, or AI was
really making it hard to chargeas they would for design.
So when we combine the twoto solve a very specific
problem and frame the valuewith what clients really
cared about, which was alsospeed of delivery and so on.

(45:25):
They were able to sell thatback to the same clients
that they had bought thisfor years, individually as
capabilities, and they sold itat a 66% higher price point.
And because they had thesolution and were able to
create a repeatable system toget this work out the door,
just even in the proposal, ittook them two days instead of
a week to deliver the proposal,which was already some proof

(45:47):
of value or speed to value forthe client because they really
wanted to get their work done.
This particularfirm, their clients.
The speed was most importantto them because of the size of
these engagements and the valuein the market, and then also
they can deliver much faster.
And so they freed up, theyestimated about 2000 hours
just for new biz efforts alone.
By reducing the proposaltime, they delivered the

(46:10):
value faster in terms of theengagement so they can deliver
more productized offeringswithin the same timeframe.
So generating more revenue.
What they calculated issomewhere between 600,000
to 1.5 million in new incomealone, just from remodeling
already existing services.
No new staff, no newclients, nothing.
Just what they already do.

(46:30):
That's one example, butthere are other examples
of just how quicklyagencies have seen value.
Just getting out thedoor from our program
one month into market.
Is usually within thatone month, they're able to
sell their first offering,usually at about 50% higher
than average deal value.
We have several case studies,but these are just some of them.

Galen Low (46:47):
And very impressive numbers.
There's also this likeunderlying this thread of
steel and you've mentionedit a couple times with
like lean creative teams.
I know a lot of businesses Yeah,they're looking, it is natural
to look at revenue per FTE.
You were talking abouta case study where they
hadn't changed the staff.
And we're still able togrow their revenue, grow
their business, evenfrom existing clients.

(47:09):
But does, has maybechanged the future.
Here's what I'm thinking becauseI'm like, okay, if I was to
start an agency from scratchtoday, who would I hire and
would I hire a bunch of, lowercost sort of specialists in
the service that they offer?
Or would I invest in oneor two people who are like.

(47:30):
Domain and category expertswho are on side with the
productization who don't reallywanna do heavily customized
things, something that we canautomate and use AI to support.
And maybe they've got, a setof AI tools or agents that
are helping produce the workbecause the value is not how
fast can I draw a button ona page, or, how fast can I
type code into a machine?

(47:51):
But it's like, how well doI understand the problem
that I'm meant to solve?
And then do you see this asagencies getting smaller and
the project's moving fasterbecause the billing model is
not about hours and there'sless bloat you can move quicker?
Or is it the same model thatwe've been seeing, just a
different positioning inthe marketplace, different

(48:11):
pricing, different way ofmanaging and leading the work?

I think it, it could be all those things,
depending on the business.
I think it's certainly firmsthat still want to play
in the execution space.
And wanna leverageAI to do that.
Just need to do itbetter than others can.
And we see some there's afirm Silverside ai, they do
an innovation lab and theyplay largely in the execution
space, also strategy and so on.

(48:34):
But yeah, so there arefirms that are really owning
the AI execution space andthey're doing amazing things.
We see examples litteredthroughout LinkedIn all
the time of these reallygreat creative examples.
So that's one place.
That's one answer.
And we see other firms thatare climbing the value chain,
they're trying to get away fromthe execution or in, in the way
that we advise is bundling theexecution under the umbrella of

(48:57):
a strategic outcome that takesa slice of all of their services
just to, to solve that problemand produce that outcome.
You're still in execution land.
It's just combinedas a larger solution.
So it's not price sensitiveanymore, and you still need
to do that work, of course,to help your clients with.
The activation side of things.
So that's one way.
In terms of talent or size offirms, I think it certainly

(49:19):
can be smaller firms if we wantit to be, because, and when
we have repeatable solutions,everything's documented,
or at least should be.
It's easier to document becauseit's, everything's not custom.
And by the way, we canstill do custom work.
We just better becharging a premium for it.
But the repeatability aspect,you can document that easily.
You can use AI to automatemuch more easily in that

(49:42):
model, and in that way, youcan onboard people much faster.
You don't have to rely onsenior talent as much in that
case because the learningcurve is shorter and you're not
relying on one or just a fewexperts in the firm because now
everybody knows how to do this.
On top of that, they also caninvest their time in making
these solutions better, right?

(50:03):
They can really craftsomething that is much better
than where they started withthese solutions is when the
team's dedicated to thatand the documentation's
there and experimentationis allowed and all of that.
So then it's up to the firm.
Do we wanna just stay oursize or do we want to.
Deliver more of ourcreative solutions and
then we expand from there.
Absolutely.

(50:23):
So it, it's really the businessdecision at that point, and you
can always expand into othermarkets as well, delivering
the same solutions for a newspace, or focusing on a new
problem in the same space,or just trying to create
another model like this fora whole new category and for
a whole new set of problems.
So there's always thoseexpansion opportunities, but
once you've created this model,you know how to replicate it.

Galen Low (50:45):
It's so funny because it never occurred
to me until just that verymoment, like we talked about
productization and it's like arepackaging, but like actually
the folks within that kindof become product owners.
What you're saying abouttweaking and expanding the
market and it's what canwe do with this product?
Not, how fast can I type,remove a mouse, but what
can I do with this offeringthat delivers value?
How can I change it?

(51:06):
How can I tweak it?
And that's what thecraft becomes more than
the actual execution.
Like you said, the learningcurve is different.
You might not need thehyper senior people.
Yeah, it's a veryinteresting landscape.
It's an interestingway of looking at it.
And I like your other pointabout the fact that, part of
it is yeah, deciding who arewe for and who are we not for?
But the other side is true.
There's people lookingfor different things.
There's folks who are like,give me the AI agent agency.

(51:28):
I don't even wannadeal with a human.
That's fine.
The, I'll do the self-checkouteven though I know there's
a human or the people whoare like no, I'm gonna go,
I'm gonna go to the bankteller rather than the atm.
I really want someone to like.
Co-create with me andhelp solve a problem.
The market is not justa flat monolithic buyer.
There are people who wantdifferent things and want
different interactions withtheir agency and different

(51:49):
models to purchase value sothat they can have continuous
problem solving capability.

Yeah, absolutely.
But I will say there's also awhole nother level of agency,
which are the ones that arechanging their business model
completely in terms of whatthey're building with ai.
Even beyond the services justdone a little differently.
These are proprietary AItools or platforms and so
on, and so that's a wholenother level that we'll see.
The majority of agencies,I think start to go into,

(52:16):
we just see some leadersout there already with ai
sentiment analysis tools thatthey're selling for part of
the fixed fee brand strategysprints bundled into that.
Content models, ai, augmentedcontent models, certainly
other types of tools thatthey're licensing for
recurring revenue and so on.

Galen Low (52:33):
Fits that value model.
You mentioned earlier, youmentioned subscriptions
and licensing, andI was like, really?
How's that gonna work?
And now I'm like,oh, okay, I get it.

Yeah.
So when we talk aboutproductizing value, it's
another reason why we don'tsay productizing services
because that implies people.
We're productizing value.
That could be software, itcould be people, it could be a
hybrid, it could be whatever.
We're justproductizing value, so.

Galen Low (52:54):
That's super interesting.
Very interesting.
Brian, you mentioned it earlier,people can reach out to you.
How can people reach outand learn more about what
you do and see how this canfit within their agency?

Check out our website
lodestaragencyconsulting.com.
We have a newsletter there ifyou go to the blog section.
But I'd say if you actuallywanna go further than that
and evaluate how well your ownagency's value model is set up
to do what we've been talkingabout, create and capture value.
There's a free onlineassessment, which will have
a linked on our website.
12 questions less than threeminutes to complete, and

(53:25):
you'll get some detailedadvice back and then of
course, find me on LinkedIn.

Galen Low (53:28):
Amazing.
Yes, I will include all thoselinks in the show notes.
Brian, thank you so muchfor spending the time.
It's always a pleasurehaving you on the show.

Same here.
Thanks so much, Galen.
This was fun.

Galen Low (53:37):
Alright folks, there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective.
Head over tothedpm.com/membership
to learn more.
And if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
Until next time,thanks for listening.

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