It’s easy to focus on what’s going wrong. I challenge you to flip that—take 15 minutes to reflect on what’s going great.
You don’t have many chances to “pause” your agency to reflect—take a few minutes now to make that list.
I bet it’s a lot more than you might think. Ask team members for ideas, too—the list might be several pages long.
You should do this because it’ll help you get through difficult times—you need the perspective.
Do a Debrief
Did you write an Advance Retrospective about where you’d be at this point? Now’s the time to compare goals to reality.
Either way, you can do a debrief on the past month, quarter, or year. As I shared about doing project debriefs, you’re asking only 3 simple questions:
- What worked?
- What didn’t work?
- What will I do differently next time?
Don’t skip over that first question—celebrate what worked!
Celebrating with My Clients
From my coaching and consulting work, here are some of my clients’ celebrations from the past 12 months:
- Created a team structure that will drive the agency forward.
- Landed their first six-figure client.
- Coached an employee on how to be a better project manager.
- Landed a speaking engagement at their client industry’s national conference.
- Finally made time for their agency’s own marketing—every month.
- Raised their rates while retaining their favorite clients.
- Started getting recurring revenue from clients, instead of one-off projects.
- Landed their first paid speaking engagement.
- Hired the employee that will help make them—as the agency owner—“needed but not necessary.”
- Fired the employee that had been dead weight for months.
- Avoided hiring a pathological liar as their new salesperson.
- Fired the client their employees dreaded working with.
- Collected $30K in past-due invoices.
- Planned a real vacation, as a test run for taking a longer sabbatical.
Question: What’s on your celebration list?
