Few conversations between agency and client are more difficult or uncomfortable than pricing discussions. Let’s face it—money talk is fraught with booby traps ...

In The Long and Winding Road, our late founder, Tony Mikes, shared his Six Agency Financial Rules. Since then, we’ve identified additional steps agency ...

The statistics are in: the average ad agency markup earned on an outside purchase is well below 20 percent. Fifteen years ago, it was closer ...

We heard an interesting fact from an agency principal not long ago. He said that his ad agency had been losing about $100,000 per ...

Here’s a war story. Two partners started an agency years ago. At the time, their lawyers and accountants told them to set a value ...

Now and then, I see an agency question on the Second Wind Forums that gives me pause. For instance, one agency asked for help assembling ...

Over the past decade—essentially, since the Great Recession—ad agencies and marketing firms have watched strategic relationships erode, procurement barriers arise between clients and ...

Moving marketing to in-house departments is a growing trend in the USA. Some of this is due to the rise of digital marketing and data ...

It is an industry truth: on average, 20 percent of the hours incurred on any project are ultimately not billable to the client—meaning you ...

Nathan Rothschild of the great European banking family is supposed to have said that “the time to buy is when there is blood in the ...

What’s the big deal about write-offs? No one sees them on the income statement, therefore, nothing to worry about. Right?

Every year, ad agencies ...

I visited an agency earlier this year and was intrigued by a comment the owner had made. 

“We don’t bother with client P&Ls ...

Assembly-line production and manufacturing automation spurred the consumer age as the industrial revolution unfolded, making it possible to mass-produce complex products. But not every “product ...

Following is a hard-learned, hard-earned summary from Second Wind to you; hard-learned after years of seeing agencies fail to mind the financial store, and hard-earned ...

In the halcyon days of the advertising business, when the economy was stable and we had yet to be swallowed up in the global competitive ...

How many ad agency owners have asked about the return on investment (ROI) on their accountants?

How many owners of agencies completely and implicitly trust ...

We’ve written frequently about managing and working with freelancers and independent contractors. But given some of the remarks tweeted around National Freelancers Day (June ...

I received a letter from a friend in the agency business in California.

“The client asked to see copies of all vendor invoices coming into ...

Many of you are married or in long-term relationships. Think about the last big fight you had with your spouse. We’d bet even money ...

Just when you think you’ve heard it all…

I’m a Gemini, so while I love good design, I can appreciate the more functional ...