Do you have trust issues?

If you own an agency long enough, there's a good chance you'll feel burned by a prospect, client, or employee. Or perhaps all three.

In my conversations with agency owners, I frequently hear some variation of "I don't trust them to..." or "I don't trust that..."

When you lack trust in someone or something, you need to resolve those questions of trust before you deal with other aspects of the relationship.

And if you find yourself with lack of trust feelings regularly, it may be a sign of a larger problem.

I'll explore this more later in this week's newsletter, but first let's look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.

— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder

Weekly Roundup

Below are some articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that we came across during the past week or so that provide useful perspective and information for PR and marketing agency owners. While we don’t necessarily endorse all of the views expressed in these links, we think they are worth your time.

— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager

Latest from SAGA

• Communicating in the face of chaos, confusion, and conflict (featuring Karen Swim) (Chats with Chip)
• What freelancers should know before they become agency owners (Agency Leadership Podcast)

Articles & Blog Posts

• Simple Ideas on How to Increase Rates Without Losing Clients (Upsourced)
• Doomscrolling won't help, but this info will... (Bureau of Digital)
• In Celebration of the Messy Middle (Anchor Advisors)
• What Are Data-Driven Marketing Insights? And How To Find Them (AgencyAnalytics)
• It’s All Interconnected, But Start Somewhere (Punctuation)
• Life after selling your agency: What’s next? (Sakas and Company)

Podcast Episodes

• The Guide to Creating and Protecting Your Intellectual Property (Spin Sucks)
• Return-to-Office-Obsessed Execs Are Minimizing the Employee Voice (For Immediate Release)
• Podcast Marketing Secrets, with Tom Schwab (The Innovative Agency)
• Confidence, Capability and Why PR Needs More Collaboration (That Solo Life)
• Hustle Detox: Scaling from Seven to Eight Figures with James P. Friel (The Digital Agency Show)
• Visual Client Communication @ Building SaaS in an Agency, with Mikael Dia (The Agency Profit Podcast)

Videos

• Does Billing Hourly Limit Profitability??(Bureau of Digital)
• AMI webinar Strategic Email For Growth?(Agency Management Institute)

AI in focus

• AI and Data-Driven Marketing: Scaling Business Growth With Irina Papuc?(The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast)
• Boosting Agency Efficiency with the Help of AI Integration with Manish Dudharejia?(Smart Agency Masterclass)

Do you have trust issues?

If you feel like you can't trust an employee, prospect, or client, you need to address the issue immediately.

Without resolving questions of trust, your efforts to address other aspects of the relationship are unlikely to succeed.

Trust is as essential to business relationships as it is to personal ones.

You need to start by examining the root cause of your lack of trust in that specific instance.

Has this individual already done something that showed them to be truly untrustworthy?

Or are you simply afraid that they might?

If someone has violated your trust already, that's a deeper hole to climb out of. And they certainly have a burden to demonstrate that they learned from the episode.

Of course, that means that you need to have communicated about the broken trust. You can't expect them to change if you haven't raised the issue.

On the other hand, if you're simply afraid that they might do something to violate your trust, then you need to explore what is giving you that feeling.

Are there specific red flags from the individual that cause you concern? Or have you been burned in similar situations before and just worry that history might repeat itself.

You should also dig into whether your issue is truly lack of trust or rather a lack of confidence in an outcome.

The first is a fundamental problem with the relationship, while the latter is one of the challenges of running your own business.

If you find that you have actual trust concerns on a regular basis, you need to look for patterns that you can address.

Are you surrounding yourself with the wrong clients, prospects, and employees?

Have you been burned so often you can't help but react to every tiny sign that trust might be violated?

Are your trust issues really just a sign that you fear your lack of ability to control specific details like how a job is done or what decisions a client might make?

If we want to grow our businesses, we need to be able to trust in the people we work with and for.

We need to be able to let go of every detail and have reasonable confidence in the outcomes that those around us will produce.

Don't let trust issues hold back your growth. Explore them. Understand them. And address them head on.

Webinar: Grow your agency without selling

Many – if not most – agency owners get into the business because they enjoy the creative side, not because they want to be selling. But if you think about agency business development as sales, then you may be going about things the wrong way.

In our next webinar, Chip Griffin will walk you through how you should be thinking about agency business development and the steps to take to grow without being a salesperson.

To join us for?Grow your agency without selling?at 1 PM ET on Thursday, March 6,?register here.