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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am delighted to have with me David C. Baker of Punctuation. He is perhaps the longest serving agency advisor out there and a guy who’s got lots of great content that he puts out on a regular basis, newsletter, podcast.

He’s got books to his name. He is going to provide some great information and insight for you today. I know that for sure. Welcome to the show, David.

David C. Baker: Thank you. Longest serving. That’s like code for old.

Chip Griffin: Hey, you know, as I always tell people, you know, the reason why I can give advice now is because I’m bald, right?

David C. Baker: Yeah, right. Yeah, no, thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. I’ve known of you for many, many years. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken on the phone, but we’ve exchanged emails, multiple times. So I appreciate the chance to be on your podcast.

Chip Griffin: I am glad to have you here. And all of that wisdom that you’ve accumulated over the years is not just from actually advising, but you also, are like I am a data nerd.

You’ve done a lot of research. You’ve accumulated a lot of data. And so I, I really like that. And I think that will be something that’s useful to the audience here. But is there anything that you’d like to add about yourself that might be useful to listeners before we jump in?

David C. Baker: Oh, I think, no, I think that covers it.

I write, I’m sort of an author who also does other things. People know me more probably by the podcast I do with Blair – 2Bobs or the writing the weekly emails. But I think of myself as sort of an author who also tries to step into other roles like consulting. But most people have heard of me. So.

Yeah, that’s all boring. I’m good.

Chip Griffin: Perfect. I mean, one of the things that I enjoy particularly about the newsletter is you’re sort of a provocateur. And so I’m going to ask you to be a provocateur today and suggest, you know, what is it that agencies in particular could be doing better today that would, that would make them a better positioned for 2025 and beyond?

What is the, what is the key thing that you’re seeing today that they just need to be thinking about?

David C. Baker: Yeah, I suspect that people listening to that question are thinking that I’m going to say AI and that AI to me is way down the list. I, and I actually think that their, the quality of their work is plenty good enough.

I, if there’s one thing I could change by waving a magic wand over the industry, it’s to run their businesses better. And that’s sort of how I’ve committed my business life. What I’ve committed to helping them with. It’s running their business better. You know, I, the focus seems to be on raising the quality of the work and so on, which I think is important.

It obviously we have to keep up with all of that stuff. But just the basic nuts and bolts of understanding people and processes and structure and pricing and financial performance. And because so many of these folks never received any training on that in school. They were trained on the craft, which they’re more than good enough at.

And then the rest of it, they either picked up because they grew up in an entrepreneurial family. May not have had anything to do with this industry, but an entrepreneurial family, or they work for somebody else and they absorb the good and the bad things that they saw and then emulated in the principle.

So just running businesses well. Now, having said that, I think we’re probably, I don’t know for sure if this is the case, but I’d say we’re better at running our businesses than we ever have been, but it also feels to me like it’s sort of the exception rather than the rule. And I’d like that to be better because we live in a, when I look at not just 2025, but 2024, we live in a very chaotic world with all kinds of pressures.

And it’s so easy just to be frozen. In fact, I was, I was programming an event we’re going to be doing. And I stepped back from it. I looked over at the topics that I’d chosen and asked people to speak on. And I was just kind of amazed at how many of them were about leadership and coaching and mentoring.

And then I realized, oh, like, yeah, we need a lot of that right now. We live in a world that’s pretty uncertain and it’s difficult to lead in that sort of a world. So I would focus not on the craft. I would focus on running their businesses well.

Chip Griffin: I think that’s great insight. I mean, I’m sure as I do, you often go into an agency and they don’t have even regularly reliable financial reporting that they’re doing. oftentimes I, I’ll ask for a P& L and either get none or get something that is not even close to accurate.

David C. Baker: Yeah. Or what is a P& L? The question.

Chip Griffin: What is a P& L? Right. Right. So, you know, if you’re an agency owner, apart from hiring someone like you or me to help them along, you know, what, what would you advise them to do in order to start to run their businesses better?

David C. Baker: Probably the best thing they could do would be to network with other principals. And be transparent with each other. And I think that’s something that we’re also pretty good at. We just don’t take enough advantage of that. So yeah, you could hire somebody like you or me, but you could get free stuff by just being very transparent, finding other people running firms