Ways to win: building a firm for healthy sustainability

Agency Health Podcast

Welcome to the Agency Health Podcast, where we dig deeper into key agency topics – the what, why, and how – mining actionable insights to help build a better firm.
This episode is part of a mini-series on beginning with the end in mind. As we’ll find, building for your exit from the start helps create a thriving agency that delivers great value for you, your team, and your clients.
In this episode, I’m talking to Shaun Tyndall of Inclind about how to play the long game well. Very few agencies pass the 25-year milestone, but Shaun and his team have developed a few ways to keep a good thing going.
Shaun started Inclind right out of college, and the agency has reinvented itself multiple times since. Shaun has valuable insights to share about beginning with the end in mind, exit options and legacy, and what keeps his enthusiasm strong.
Key Insights:

• If you’re running a healthy agency doing meaningful work with people (clients and team) you enjoy, there’s no pressure to chase a short-term exit.
• A focus on solving complex problems for larger and more complex organizations makes your expertise harder to replace by another agency or by clients’ in-house teams. It also keeps things interesting and rewarding!
• Build long-term client relationships by helping them advance their most important business goals and metrics. This approach aligns you with long-term value creation (increasing LTV and retainer revenue) and builds mutual success and sustainability.
• It’s much easier to keep a great client than to make a new one. Invest in these relationships, look out for their best interest, and continue to evolve your capabilities to serve the needs of your best clients as they change.
• Stop and think: how would you approach your firm differently if you wanted to be leading it happily still in 25 years? A long-term, even multi-generational perspective on building a firm and creating wealth can be an inspiring contrast to the pressure to grow fast and sell.

References:

• Learn more about Inclind

Coming up in this series on beginning with the end in mind are:

1. An agency coach and founder with 2 successful exits
2. A co-founder of multiple agencies and an agency holding company

If you have questions or comments about this episode, a topic you’d like covered, or an agency owner or relevant expert we should invite as a guest, we’d like to hear from you! Email [e-mail]
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Thank you for listening!

Kapitel

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Genesis of Inclind (during the .com boom) (00:01:45)

3. Beginning with the end in mind (00:05:31)

4. Building a healthy, sustainable agency (00:07:11)

5. Escaping feast or famine (00:09:07)

6. The value of narrow positioning (00:12:38)

7. Qualifying new customers (00:15:44)

8. How to think about team size and growth (00:17:57)

9. Exit thinking and strategy (00:20:36)

10. Who might enjoy playing the long game well? (00:25:01)

11. How Inclind is evolving (AI, automation, integration) (00:27:16)

12. How to build retainer revenue (00:29:43)

13. How to structure retainers (00:34:22)

14. What’s ahead for Inclind in 2025 (00:38:49)

15. Outro (00:40:50)