Isn't Everything Tariffic?

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In This WTF Just Happened Episode...

• May You Live In Interesting Times

• Good Governance

• Creatigritility

• Ready to hire a robot?

• News & Notes

• Thanks to Our Sponsor

May You Live In Interesting Times

I was REAAAALLLYYY hoping that after several years of weirdness, 2025 was going to be the year for agencies to finally settle down and run boring businesses. But with OpenAI and others dropping some bombs last week (Inner Circle #50), things became a little spicy. And then the president (I don’t care if you are a fan or not - this isn’t about that) made some decisions that seriously impact just about everyone in the ad space.

No one knows what is going to happen next, if tariffs are here to stay, or if all trading partners negotiate new terms and things settle down quickly, or something else pops up (war with Iran? crackdown on dissent? inflation? unemployment spike? a golden age? WTF knows…?), but undeniably, recent political activity has made things even more uncertain.

Businesses and marketers HATE uncertainty. Sales forecasts & profit margins aren’t things that tolerate unknown variables very well…and, well, this is recent turmoil is kind of a doozy. Slow moving and budget crimping marketers are going to be slower and crimpier. So here are some things that you can do to navigate the un-navigable.

Good Governance

This is kind of an “always on” principle, but even moreso when things are uncertain. So here are a few rules of “good governance”:

1. Clarity Is Kindness: Being clear and intentional about what you are going to do, what you need to have done, what your expectations are, what the other person’s expectations are, etc. is being kind, but moreover, it is efficient. And efficiency is vital when uncertainty reigns. Wasted motions deplete resources & can cause you to loose focus.

2. Cash On Hand Is Important - Knowing How To Make More Cash Is Important-er: Cash in your bank account means two things…time & optionality. But uncertainty means that change is happening. Hoarding your cash might feel like the right thing to do when you don’t know what happens next. And it is…BUT you must be testing ways to adapt to new circumstances. So you need to be spending some money on innovation and testing. If your revenue spigot runs dry because you’ve pulled back and gone into stasis, the amount of cash in your bank account will seem a pittance. Even when things are uncertain, you need to be testing ways to grow.

3. Moderation Matters: When faced with stressful times, you might feel like trying every crazy thing that you can think of in order to hit a homerun so that you can end the uncertainty, or you may want to curl in a ball and do nothing. Both are wrong. You have to operate and try to grow. You have to be efficient and intentional with your motions. Don’t fire everybody. Don’t try to “AI” everything all at once. Don’t take big swings. But still swing. It’s the environment that is uncertain, not you. Think before you act. Plan for contingencies. Imagine what can go well, and plan your way around that which might fail. But action, with purpose, is essential.

4. Lead: Regardless if you have zero employees or 1000, you are the leader. Leaders do all sorts of things for their teams. Most of all, however, the best leaders clarify. They eliminate noise. They remove wrong targets. They shoo away irrelevant threats. They don’t diminish difficulties. They don’t put lipstick on a pig and demand all see it as beautiful. They clarify objectives. They clarify goals. They clarify situations. When uncertainty abounds, leaders lead. (And they ask for help…I’m here if you need help.)

5. Team ≠ Family: Your team may feel like a family. They may take care of and do without for one another. They may pick up the slack when they can. But your team is not a family. Your team is a team. And when the rules of the game change (104% tariffs on US-bound Chinese goods - oy!), you understand that the team may need to change its size or composition. Uncertainty forces choices like this all the time. Be compassionate, but remember your team is not a family. It’s a team.

Creatigritility

This is a word that I just made up by smashing together creativity, flexibility & grit. Because that is what it really takes to navigate the un-navigable.

All of the variables that impact your agency are different. Your thinking needs to change. You have to look at things creatively.

Because everything has changed, you may need to remove your ideas of how “things ought to work”. You may need to understand that you don’t understand. You have to become mentally fluid to adapt - you must be flexible.

Change is hard. Uncertainty is hard. Things that you can’t control or influence are hard. But you can be tough. You can have a long term vision and realize that this is just a blustery storm. You can see the difficulties ahead and decide, “Hell yeah!” (As an old mentor once told me, “If you have to eat shit, go grab a spoon and learn to love the flavor.”)

Creativity, flexibility & grit will get you through.

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News & Notes

Read This: Fellow agency consultant/advisor/coach Karl Sakas has a new book out - Calm The Chaos. At a breezy 107 pages, it gives your 10 simple, ready to execute ways to make your agency…calmer. Worth the time - nothing earth-shattering in here, but super, super practical. Everybody out to give it a read. (At Amazon, or Calm The Chaos)

Wanna Hang Out? On May 1, I’ll be part of agency consultant/advisor/coach Chris DuBois’ All In Agency Summit. Join me (and a bunch of other great folks) for a FREE virtual summit. I’m spending 30 minutes on LET’S FIX THIS F*CKER BEFORE IT BREAKS - Pre-mortems, post mortems & RACI Basically, I am gonna help you make planning and management WAAAAAY easier…. Register for the summit here.

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