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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

What is happening?

Chip Griffin: That effect really only works if you’re watching this.

Gini Dietrich: I don’t know what just happened.

Chip Griffin: I, I slid off screen. I went MIA.

Gini Dietrich: Oh my gosh. So I don’t even, that was, that was, I think, the best, the best intro we’ve ever had. You just left the screen. And even though I knew what the topic was, I was like, what is happening right now?

Chip Griffin: So it’s just, it’s my way of encouraging listeners to become viewers because. It just, it completely loses the impact of, if you only listened to that portion of it. I, I don’t know how much impact you have, but from watching it either, but, you know, at least it’s, at least you understand what’s going on.

Gini Dietrich: He literally just left the screen.

Chip Griffin: I left the screen. But no, we are, we are, we were inspired by a Reddit post and we haven’t gone to the Reddit well for quite some time.

Gini Dietrich: We haven’t, no. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: So we decided to go back to Reddit and see what people were talking about. And so there is a relatively recent thread there where an agency employee says the principle of their firm has gone completely MIA, leaving them to do all of the work and feeling abandoned by the owner.

That seems like a worthy topic to be discussing.

Gini Dietrich: I feel like the answer is don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t ghost your business or your employees.

Chip Griffin: Don’t ghost your business. And here we go, we’re done. Thanks for listening.

Gini Dietrich: The end. Don’t do that.

Chip Griffin: No, but I, I think it’s, it is, as owners, we sometimes overlook how our actions can be perceived by those who work for us.

So it’s, it’s not necessarily being completely MIA, which obviously we would discourage. But your general availability, for example, can play into your team’s perceptions or your client’s perceptions of what your business is like. Absolutely, and we all, we certainly encourage owners to take all of the, the freedom that comes with being a business owner, don’t just take on all of the risk and stress.

And so you need to have flexibility. And you shouldn’t feel compelled to, to necessarily, you know, work 9 to 5 every day exactly. You should absolutely build some flexibility in to what you do because that is honestly one of the perks of being an owner. and absolutely, increasingly a perk of being an employee these days.

But, you know, that’s a conversation for a separate day. You know, so, but we also have to be mindful of how this can be perceived, particularly by our team members, but also our clients.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think you, you’re absolutely right, like taking advantage of the flexibility that you can build in for yourself is one of those things.

And I think there are lots of agency owners who do things like maybe they’re giving back to the industry by teaching, or perhaps they’re volunteering for PRSA or IABC or one of those, right? Or, you know, doing something like that that may be tangentially related to what we do, but not taking, taking you away from the business.

And I think that those are things are good. I think that you absolutely, those are things that you’re passionate about, that you should absolutely be doing those things. But not at the expense of the business or, or of your employees. Because if, if your employees are feeling like they’re running the agency and they can’t get you to make decisions or to have one-to-ones or be present, that’s a problem.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look, I mean, this is something that I have struggled with a lot over the years. Not because I just go off and sit in the mountains and, you know, hike and relax and all that kind of stuff. It’s, it’s because I’ve often been running more than one business. Mm-hmm. And so, inevitably one of them will typically get busier than another.

And so those involved in the ones that are less busy at the moment may feel abandoned at times, by me. And so I, it’s something I’ve had to be particularly aware of and making sure that, that I’m safeguarding against being too absent from a particular business. Sometimes you’ve got a business in, in my case, I would’ve, businesses that were running really well and smoothly and the team was executing and so I didn’t feel like I needed to be there.

But the perception can be very different from the team side, right? Where they feel like, well, why are you ignoring us? Right? And the answer might be, because you’re doing such a great job, I don’t really need, I don’t need, yeah. To be there and I’m not adding the value. But unless you’re communicating that to them, they don’t know that.

So I think there’s, there’s two things you need to be mindful of here. One is the perception, and two is your communication strategy around what you’re doing. If it’s industry events and things like that that are causing you to be absent, make sure that the team understands why and how that fits into the, the bigger picture. Because that makes it easier for them to understand and less likely for them to think, oh, well, Chip’s just on another junket.

Here he goes, you know, he, he’s off to San Diego or Miami and you know, it’s the middle of the winter. Of course he is. Why not? And, and, those are things that are, that are important to factor in because it can have a meaningful impact on your team’s performance.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I was on book tour both times, I was absent from the business every week.

I mean, one, I think 2014 I traveled 50 weeks out of the year. So it was extremely hard for me to be on book tour and speaking and business development while also running the business. And my employees. I am fairly confident, felt the, felt the brunt of that. And I don’t think I probably handled it the best way either.

I probably shouldn’t have taken on that much travel. It helped the business grow significantly for sure, because I was also doing business development as part of it, but they definitely felt abandoned in that they were running the agency in my absence. And that I was just off traveling the world and having a great time and Right.

That was th