Elite Entrepreneurs CEO Brett Gilliland Maps Out How Leadership Capacity Turns Demand Into Predictable Agency Growth

The transcript below has been edited lightly for clarity, speaker identification, and proper names. The audio remains the authoritative version of the conversation.

Stephen Woessner [00:00:08 – 00:00:54]
Over the past decade, we’ve hosted more than 1,200 conversations with CEOs,
bestselling authors, respected researchers, and agency leaders. And that body of work
has generated nearly 1 million podcast downloads and YouTube views from listeners
and viewers in more than 100 countries. 100 countries. And here’s the red thread
running through the insights we’ve collected. Agencies that have built an authority
position no longer struggle to be seen. Instead, they struggle to activate latent demand.
Agency leaders have said to us, is exactly where we’re sitting right now, authority
without demand. So welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast presented by Predictive
ROI.
Stephen Woessner [00:00:55 – 00:02:11]
Sparked by research from the Harvard Business Review, Edelman, Gallup, Agencycore,
all showing that trust has moved upstream. In today’s marketplace, authority earns
attention. Yes, but demand, demand is what turns attention into action. Each episode
deconstructs the science of demand from behavioral psychology, decision-making
research, and the cross-industry strategies behind why and how B2B buyers make their
decisions. We interviewed the world’s leading behavioral scientists, agency network
leaders, and strategists from industries far beyond ours, experts who are reshaping how
demand works. I’m your host, Steven Wessner, and in each episode, we’ll translate their
insights directly into the agency world. And these conversations are now being heard by
a community of over 30,000 agency owners and their teams. With me for today’s
episode is my longtime friend Brett Gilliland, founder and CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs.
Stephen Woessner [00:02:12 – 00:03:31]
Brett spent a decade helping Infusionsoft grow from $7 million a year to more than
$100 million in annual revenue. He helped shape the company’s purpose, its vision, its
values, its mission, strategic planning process, and leadership model. Today, Brett and
his team help owners of 7-figure companies build the leadership capacity required to
grow beyond the founder. Brett has joined me for several conversations across our
previous podcasts, but today I want to take us in a different direction. An agency may
initially create or architect the experience that wins the new business opportunity, or
the agency owner leads the strategy, builds the trust, protects the standard of
excellence, but then feels compelled to step in if things go sideways with a client.
Friends, being seen as an in-demand agency not only creates revenue opportunities for
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
3 of 45
your agency, demand also creates Expectations that your agency must be ready to
fulfill. So your leadership capacity has to be built before those expectations arrive. So
you’re ready to deliver an excellent experience over and over again for your clients.
Stephen Woessner [00:03:31 – 00:03:54]
So Brett and I are going to deconstruct what an agency leader must learn and
experience inside the room. How the leader brings that standard back to the agency
and what it takes to build a team capable of carrying that experience all the way
through your client relationships on your path to growing your agency.
Brett Gilliland [00:03:58 – 00:04:33]
We haven’t brought in the bicycle analogy yet, but basically we’re in a gear. We’re
perfectly designed to get yield from this bicycle in this gear. And we’ve, when we’re
pedaling at full capacity, And then we say, we want to get more out of this. So higher
goals, pedal harder. Anybody who’s been on a bicycle knows at some point you can’t
outpedal the constraints of— we’re back to physics. You can’t outphysics this thing. The
physics limit what’s possible in that bicycle until or unless we learn to shift the gear.
Stephen Woessner [00:04:36 – 00:04:49]
Brett, welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast. I am so over the moon excited about
our conversation and our time together and being able to have this opportunity to learn
from you again. I’m thrilled, my friend. Thank you.
Brett Gilliland [00:04:50 – 00:05:00]
Thank you, Stephen. Every chance I get to be across the microphone from Stephen
Westner, I count it a great day. So this is going to be so fun.
Stephen Woessner [00:05:00 – 00:06:01]
Well, you, you are very kind and, uh, I, I’m so excited. You, you just heard me, uh, live
tripping over some of my words because I just Like, I feel like I’m just so excited to get
into this conversation. So, so take us, take us behind, maybe take us behind the curtain,
if you will. There’s a company that looks super successful, sort of imaginary company. I
know it’s not imaginary in your world because you get to see behind the curtain with so
many companies. Everything looks great on the outside looking in, right? The sort of
the trappings of success are all there. Everything looks well put together, but there’s a
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
4 of 45
story behind that, right? The founders and the leaders of the team, they might be doing
all the right things, but then carrying that work all the way through, it’s the founders
and leaders who maybe step in if there’s a misstep or, you know, a client relationship is
going sideways. And so help us better understand why that happens.
Stephen Woessner [00:06:02 – 00:06:12]
Then we’re going to talk through some solutions about how to keep it from happening,
but how does it happen? And then what are some of the maybe cracks that you start to
see to even know that it’s happening?
Brett Gilliland [00:06:13 – 00:06:37]
All right. And I may ask you to redirect me here because my mind got stuck on
something you said right at the beginning of that. Okay. You said, you know, it looks
from the outside, it has all the trappings of success. Like it looks great from the outside.
And immediately my mind got stuck on, it’s never as good as it looks from the outside.
And it’s never as bad as it looks from the inside. Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:06:37 – 00:07:01]
That’s a truth that I hope every agency owner listening just, just, just feels a little bit of
relief about that. It’s like, yeah, it never really is as good as it looks from the outside.
And it never really is as bad as it feels from the inside or looks from the inside. So let’s
just, let’s start with that. Okay. Now let’s come back around to the question. that you
asked, which is great, but I want to make sure that I just get right on the fine point of it.
Stephen Woessner [00:07:02 – 00:07:49]
You know, it was when you said that, this is going to be a little bit of a parallel, but then
slightly different. A friend of mine many years ago, I was at his house and I was very
impressed with his business. Some in our audience probably know Cody Foster, who
runs Advises Excel, because I talk about him often. And I was so impressed by his
business. And at the time, I think they were doing $8 billion a year, clearly doing a few
things right. And all I could think about were the things behind the curtain at Predictive
that were not right. And he said to me, he goes, Steven, don’t make the mistake of
comparing your back of stage With my front of stage.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
5 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:07:50 – 00:07:50]
There it is.
Stephen Woessner [00:07:51 – 00:07:56]
And I’m like, oh, that’s the exact point. Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:07:56 – 00:08:13]
And, and we can’t help it because all we see is their front of stage, right? And all we
know is our back of stage. But, but you see, like, that’s not a good comparison. Okay. So
we got that. Thank you. Got that point across. Now, now let’s reel me back into the
heart of the question that you asked me.
Stephen Woessner [00:08:15 – 00:10:01]
So how does, how does that, how does that happen? How does the, or where does,
where does that start to, where does that start to break? And, and actually, let me
rewind a little bit and, and give a little bit more context. So we hear from or see
agencies Often where the founder started something really amazing, they have this
really incredible leadership team, and when they have this biz dev opportunity, it’s the
founder who talks a lot, maybe even through that sheer charisma helps win the
business, and maybe the leadership team is there being helpful too. And then when it
comes time to the execution, the, the client team is thinking, or excuse me, the, the
client that’s hiring that agency is thinking, wow, this is amazing and feeling really good
about that experience. But then, but then the actual experience of delivery and so forth
is incongruent with what they saw front of stage, then back of stage downstream, the
delivery feels incongruent with that. And, and I would argue, and maybe you’ll tell me
I’m wrong, I would argue that that’s, that that’s a leadership issue, that the agency is so
focused on building demand and we want them to be, we want them to be an indemand agency and then also have that leadership capability to be able to actually
deliver that downstream with a consistent experience for the client so that the
leadership team can continue to focus on building the business. But you also have to
have a capable bench.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
6 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:10:02 – 00:10:51]
Yeah. Well, we both know, and, and all our listeners know that how long it lasts when
the demand generation strong agency founder is out in front all the time, cranking,
cranking demand, but back of house is not ready to deliver an experience consistent
with that brand or those expectations being put out there. Right. We know that’s shortlived. We can have flash-in-the-pan moments of sales. We can bring in a lot of clients at
once, but we’re not, we’re never going to get to that level of predictable, consistent
growth, brand momentum. Like that’s not going to happen if what we deliver doesn’t
match what we’re selling. Right.
Brett Gilliland [00:10:51 – 00:11:35]
So that we all get that inherently. So now we’ve set up the problem. Let’s, let’s talk
about What do we do about that? Like, how do we create that consistency in our brand
between front of, front of stage, back of stage, or front of house, back of house? And I
think it’s a multifaceted conversation, right? But let’s, let’s talk about the leadership
piece of it. No, no business out there, marketing agency or otherwise, no business out
there is ever going to grow past the point of the leadership capability of that, of that
team. And, and you made reference to that. You said, I, I think this is a leadership issue,
and I’m agreeing completely.
Stephen Woessner [00:11:36 – 00:11:36]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:11:37 – 00:12:26]
It all starts with we have to be the leaders that our agency needs to go where we say
we want to go. And that’s that. Extends to a leadership team. If there’s, if there’s a
formal leadership team formed at this point in the agency’s development, then it
extends to that leadership team. And then it extends to the full team beyond that. So
it’s, it’s not just that it’s all on the agency owner, but at every level, we can’t outgrow
our combined capability. That’s, that’s kind of what we’re saying here. And that’s, that’s
both the front end and the back end, right? Like it doesn’t work if we haven’t built the
capability to deliver what we say we’re going to deliver.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
7 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:12:28 – 00:12:40]
So why don’t you, why don’t you steer even more pointedly where, like where you want
to go with that? Because I think, I think we’ve set it up well, but yeah. Yeah. Take me
where you want to go.
Stephen Woessner [00:12:42 – 00:12:51]
Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about the— see how casual I am with you? I just like tossed
my sweatshirt off to the—
Brett Gilliland [00:12:51 – 00:12:52]
It’s amazing. I like it.
Stephen Woessner [00:12:55 – 00:12:55]
And it’s—
Brett Gilliland [00:12:56 – 00:13:00]
it actually, your station is so exciting that you’re heating up over there.
Stephen Woessner [00:13:00 – 00:13:20]
I, I, I, I’m, I’m, I’m warmed up over here. Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, growing
past our capability. So what are some of the warning signs? Like, how does one know?
How does the founder know? How does that person’s leadership team know, if there is
one?
Brett Gilliland [00:13:20 – 00:13:20]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [00:13:21 – 00:13:37]
That, hey everybody, hey team, we’re starting to grow past our capability. What are
some of the warning signs, the cracks, the metrics, the whatevers that should be looked
at so they know? What are the signs?
Brett Gilliland [00:13:38 – 00:13:43]
So yeah, when the wheels start falling off, that might be a little too late.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
8 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:13:43 – 00:13:46]
Let’s go a little further upstream.
Brett Gilliland [00:13:46 – 00:14:06]
A little further upstream. Yeah. Before the wheels start falling off on this thing. Further
upstream, what we might hear is a little bit of, um, and, and, and we gotta be careful
as, as agency owners, sometimes we might hear complaints coming from the
production team, right? From the fulfillment team.
Stephen Woessner [00:14:06 – 00:14:06]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:14:07 – 00:14:36]
That, that things are starting to feel a little stretched over here. Um, sometimes those
are legitimate concerns. Other times it might be like, well, I got the wrong person over
there. But if you start to hear squeaks of the wheel that say, oh, I’m feeling a little
stretched. We might have a staffing or a, you know, a production capacity concern
starting to build.
Stephen Woessner [00:14:36 – 00:14:36]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [00:14:37 – 00:15:02]
Okay. Another way we hear that might be on the client side. And if you have great
clients who will talk to you, you might start hearing that here. You might begin to hear
them say things like, oh, we had a little issue. You know, and sometimes it’s a friend.
Like if my team had an issue delivering to you, Stephen, I would imagine you sending
me a note saying, hey, Brett, just FYI.
Stephen Woessner [00:15:02 – 00:15:03]
Yep.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
9 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:15:03 – 00:15:56]
I thought you’d like to know, right? This didn’t quite hit the standard that I’m used to
from you. You would tell me as a friend. You’re going to have some clients that are like
that. And if you, if you start to see that happening, every business Oh, let me say it a
different way. No business is perfect, right? There’s always going to be moments of
something dropping. Not always, but occasionally there’s going to be something that
happens like, oh, that’s not like us. But if you start to see that happening with more
frequency, there might be a problem brewing back here in the, in the team. If you
notice any sort of team dynamic shift, where that, that team used to hum along and hit
all its deliverables on time, and now they’re starting to slip with deliverables on time, or
maybe they’re missing on their scoping.
Brett Gilliland [00:15:56 – 00:16:00]
It’s like, whoa, we’re giving that away, or we’re losing money on that.
Stephen Woessner [00:16:00 – 00:16:01]
Mm-hmm.
Brett Gilliland [00:16:01 – 00:17:04]
You know, you start to see certain things pop up. Heaven forbid it, it shows up for you
first on the retention line, but if you, you know, you start seeing clients leave, All of
these things are signs and they show up in our dashboard. If we’ve built a good
dashboard for our business and we’re looking at it at the right frequency, we should
start to see indicators of these things. But if it’s still in the green, but just lower in the
green, and we start to ignore signs that are starting to come in, it starts to hit yellow
and then it starts to get red. And then all of a sudden we’re like, whoa, how did this
happen? But our dashboard, if it’s built well, and I don’t mean technologically, but if
we’re clear on the things that are indicators of organizational health, of client
happiness, and everything’s where it should be, then we’re good. But if we start to see
measures slipping there, those are all indicators. I don’t know, I might be talking too
much. I should slow down here for a second.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
10 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:17:04 – 00:17:32]
You’re not. This is great. And Okay, so let me run this by you. It’s, you know, having the
dashboard might be one thing or collection of things reporting across several things,
but then also having, so let’s say a culture, maybe a willingness to have difficult
conversations. Those aren’t always just great conversations. Sometimes they’re
dynamic, challenging conversations. We have to have the courage to have them, right?
Brett Gilliland [00:17:33 – 00:17:47]
Yeah. And I’m so glad that you said that. If your team doesn’t feel safe, Mm-hmm. To
raise issues, that’s a problem, right? But another mechanism that I didn’t bring up, I
brought up the, the team-level visibility, the dashboard piece.
Stephen Woessner [00:17:47 – 00:17:47]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:17:47 – 00:18:02]
But, but good leaders, good agency owners, Yeah. are gonna know that consistent oneon-ones, and, and I’m, I’m trying to mercifully use the word consistent instead of
weekly, which is what I really feel about it. Okay.
Stephen Woessner [00:18:02 – 00:18:04]
It’s, it’s what we usually do. Predictive. Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:18:04 – 00:18:23]
Weekly one-on-ones are essential for you to be tapped into those moments, right? To be
available for those moments, to create that safety so that your team member can say,
hey, by the way, Steven, something’s off here that I think you should know about.
Stephen Woessner [00:18:23 – 00:18:23]
Yeah.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
11 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:18:24 – 00:18:41]
Wouldn’t you like to have the kind of relationship and have a built-in weekly mechanism
where somebody can say something like that to you in a safe environment? instead of
waiting for it to all crash down and fall apart somewhere else. So we have the
dashboard for key business health metrics.
Stephen Woessner [00:18:41 – 00:18:41]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:18:41 – 00:19:11]
We have weekly one-on-ones with each of our direct reports to have a safe space for
them to voice things that might be happening. Hopefully we have enough of a
relationship or at least a reputation with clients that they would be sending in signals if
they’re starting to feel something’s off. But yeah, we should have multiple sources of
input that would give us a clue that things are happening that we don’t want to have
happen in our business.
Stephen Woessner [00:19:12 – 00:19:37]
Okay. I think we’re going to loop back to that, but I want to move forward one step and
then maybe we’ll come back a couple more pieces because I don’t know if this was just
recently, but As I was thinking about our conversation, I saw this quote from you. I hope
I got this right. And that is, the hustler has to give way to the CEO.
Brett Gilliland [00:19:39 – 00:19:40]
Hmm.
Stephen Woessner [00:19:40 – 00:20:08]
And so I think that there’s probably several different layers in there. One, and it might
sound obvious, oh, totally get that, but I think that there’s something to unpack in that
statement and also why You, like, what are you seeing that causes you to say that? And
then the things that roll up into that. And then I think we’re probably going to loop back
to maybe some of the things we just talked about before we move even further ahead.
But tell us a little bit more about sort of the origin story of that statement.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
12 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:20:08 – 00:21:09]
Yeah, I was actually at a— I was a guest on somebody else’s podcast and we were
riffing on this whole thing that what got you here won’t get you there, right? We
probably all heard that truth or some Sure. Derivative of it. But the, the, all the hustle
and grind and grit and tenacity and superhuman thing that the agency founder, the
agency owner did to get their agency off the ground, like that is, it’s, it’s still amazing
and we honor the heck out of it. And it’s the wrong, it’s the wrong playbook. It’s the
wrong motion for company building work that must follow if you want to continue to
scale that. That agency, right? So the initial get it off the ground requires a ton of
hustle. The next level of growth requires going from gritty, scrappy founder to capable
business building or company building, agency building CEO.
Stephen Woessner [00:21:10 – 00:21:10]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [00:21:10 – 00:21:18]
Right? Like, it’s just a different set of things. And so we can’t continue to hustle our way
there is the punchline on it.
Stephen Woessner [00:21:20 – 00:22:07]
You know, here’s what I love about what you’re talking about. One, of course, is truth.
And there’s lots of available data that we can observe to know that that’s true. And it’s
actually Einstein’s formula. And so one of my favorite books, this is, I know this is going
to sound totally nerdy, Uh, one of my favorite books is his book on, uh, relativity. And
there’s a formula on page 83, to be exact, uh, that talks— that breaks down the formula
of, um, of the amount of force that’s required to move an object into essentially
perpetual motion. So what we’re talking about here is really physics. We’re applying it
into a business application here.
Stephen Woessner [00:22:07 – 00:22:49]
But the reality is, is that the thought of, oh, it’s going to take X amount of energy,
hustle, to go from X to Y. Yes. And if we want to control that velocity to go from X to Y,
distance divided over— no, distance velocity is distance time over speed. No, time
divided by distance. Time equals distance divided by speed. Um, if we’re going to
shorten that path and we have to work harder to move it faster and all of those things
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
13 of 45
and whatnot. But the point is that formula applies no matter what the trajectory is of
the business. In every one of those instances, and we want it to go faster, then the
physics still applies.
Brett Gilliland [00:22:51 – 00:22:52]
The physics still apply.
Stephen Woessner [00:22:53 – 00:23:23]
You can’t get around it. It is a law of the universe. The business doesn’t just speed up on
its own because you got it to a certain point. No, you might get to a cruising altitude,
but the reality is that we know that that will start to drift and so forth if we don’t
maintain that speed, which requires a certain amount of energy. Just look at avionics.
It’s physics. And then if you’re going to push higher altitude, it requires more gas and all
the things, aerodynamics and all those things. It’s just the way that it is.
Stephen Woessner [00:23:23 – 00:23:25]
And so the same thing in business, right?
Brett Gilliland [00:23:26 – 00:23:55]
It’s just the way that it is. Steven, you’re a parent, so you’ll appreciate this. I have Uh,
young adults now, but as, as, I mean, he’s a teenager, he’s 18. He literally said to me
earlier, earlier this week, it was either yesterday or the day before, like, I’m gonna
change the, I’m gonna change the physics of that. Like, I can’t, I like, I’m scratching my
head. I’m like, so, you know, he’s always pushing back on what is, ’cause it, it just is
what is.
Stephen Woessner [00:23:56 – 00:23:56]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:23:56 – 00:24:02]
And as agency owners, sometimes we, we get into this teenage thinking of like, Oh, not
for me.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
14 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:24:02 – 00:24:02]
Right.
Brett Gilliland [00:24:02 – 00:24:15]
I’m good. I’m going to defy the odds, or I’m going to change the physics. I’m, I’m the
exception. Like, he wants to push against the rules to the point where he’s like, no, I’m
going to change the game, like the, the rules altogether.
Stephen Woessner [00:24:15 – 00:24:17]
I’m like, you can’t change gravity.
Brett Gilliland [00:24:18 – 00:24:37]
It, it just is. That’s the physics of it. But he wants to, and we do too, all the time. Agency
owners, business owners, we, we want to change Physics. We want to say, not for me.
Rules don’t apply here. And you could try that path, but the physics are the physics.
Stephen Woessner [00:24:38 – 00:25:09]
Hey friends, I hope you’re enjoying the discussion with Brett Gilleland. Holy bananas. He
is awesome. We’re going to take a quick break here. And when we come back, we’ll
continue our discussion around defying gravity with our ambition and setting impossible
goals. We’ll be right back after this short break. Holy bananas. I would like to share a
free resource my Predictive ROI team built for you based on the insights and wisdom
Brett Gilliland is sharing with you right now during this episode.
Stephen Woessner [00:25:09 – 00:26:04]
If you go to predictiveROI.com/leadership, you can download our free leadership
capacity scorecard. It’s 5 questions and will take you about 3 minutes. The scorecard
will show you exactly where your team can carry the expectations that your demand
creates, where the agency owner is still the safety net, and what leadership capacity
you need to strengthen in order to fully capitalize on the growth coming your way.
Again, that is predictiveROI.com/leadership to get your free scorecard. One of the books
that I read last year and really liked was The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
And I thought he made really compelling arguments about setting impossible goals
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
15 of 45
because then when you do that, your pathway toward the goal changes and so forth.
You start thinking about different things that you wouldn’t have thought about had you
not set an impossible goal.
Stephen Woessner [00:26:04 – 00:26:06]
All of those things make total sense.
Brett Gilliland [00:26:06 – 00:26:06]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [00:26:07 – 00:26:31]
But none of them are incongruent with Physics, with laws of the universe and force and
so forth. And I think that even though I’ve never interviewed Dr. Hardy, but I think he
would also then agree that if you create the impossible goal, the amount of effort and
so forth that is going to be required in order to achieve it is much more than just the
status quo.
Brett Gilliland [00:26:32 – 00:26:34]
It’ll be different than the previous goal, right?
Stephen Woessner [00:26:34 – 00:26:52]
Of course, it just has to be. It just has to be. Um, so when we think about the hustler
has to give way to the CEO, like conceptually, that makes sense that if, if we’re going to
scale the business because we’ve achieved this opportunity on the front end of the
business, we are now seen as an in-demand agency and yay for that.
Brett Gilliland [00:26:53 – 00:26:53]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [00:26:53 – 00:27:10]
How does that transition start? Uh, you know, beyond the recognition of the founder
and the leaders going, oh gosh, okay, we’re gonna have to do something different to
your point. We’re not gonna get to X by doing what we did in order to get to D. Yeah.
But how do they start to do that?
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
16 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:27:10 – 00:27:17]
Yeah. So, um, at, at Elite, we’ve created what we call our company building system.
Stephen Woessner [00:27:17 – 00:27:18]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:27:18 – 00:28:30]
But we teach 7-figure agencies how to do the company building work that will allow
them to grow past that, that stage that they’re at. and allow them to move from hustler
to CEO. So there’s known work is really what I want to say. There’s a known path and we
can get into it as much or as little as you’d like, but at the center of it, let’s at least start
with that. At the center of that is work that a lot of people either they discount or they
sort of go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve done that. And it’s It’s vision-setting work. It doesn’t
sound super exciting, or again, it’s underappreciated. From my perspective, I see a lot
of business owners, a lot of agencies who’ve done the work of getting clear on their
vision or on their values, but they haven’t— they don’t really know what it looks like to
multiply energy and results in their team by doing it really well, right? They sort of
approached it as a hustler instead of approached it as a visionary leader.
Brett Gilliland [00:28:31 – 00:28:49]
And so we teach people how to do this work starting with vision, but then there’s a
strategy system that we teach, a performance system, people system, leadership
system. So there are these supporting systems, but it all starts with getting this clarity
and this shared identity around vision.
Stephen Woessner [00:28:51 – 00:29:33]
Well, having, having been through that, I know it’s very valuable work. In the interest of
full transparency, friends, I should share that for years, you know, Brett has worked
alongside our team to help us, to help Predictive get to where we are today. And so I will
absolutely publicly give Brett and his team credit for putting us on the path to Uh, to
become first, to become a 7-figure business and then beyond. And now being on the
path, our, our next goal that we’re pursuing is to— oh my gosh, excuse me— to hit the
Inc. 5000 list. Such a big goal, I can’t even say the words. To hit the Inc. 5000 list.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
17 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:29:33 – 00:30:30]
Um, and, and I remember the visioning work. And then as you’re, as you’re describing
that, and, and you said something to the effect of— I’m, I’m probably paraphrasing here
— not the fun work or the exciting work, but very important work. I bumped into a
friend of mine a few weeks ago, and before she sold the business, she was on the front
end of this very large community that she had built from scratch. And 2 times a year,
they would hold and host big events, hundreds of people from all over the world, I think
14, 15 different countries. And one of the events was a sales and marketing event, and
then one of them was focused on the owner of the business, like leadership stuff, right?
And she said to me, she goes, far and away everyone wanted to go to the sales and
marketing event, and probably a third of the people wanted to go to the leadership
event.
Brett Gilliland [00:30:30 – 00:30:30]
Hmm.
Stephen Woessner [00:30:32 – 00:30:48]
And I’m like, that’s the juice. That’s it. I get the, I get the sales and marketing stuff
because that’s fun and exciting and creative and all of that, but it’s the leadership
piece. That’s the juice. That’s the muscle that keeps the business going. That’s what
keeps it healthy, right?
Brett Gilliland [00:30:48 – 00:31:19]
Well, we, we all go, we, we know intuitively that our business has to have revenue to
survive, right? The cash is king and that, that the lifeblood of the business is, is the
revenue and the profits. profitable revenue, let’s say. All of that’s absolutely true. But if
you turn your team on, like if you focus them on an objective of profitable revenue, that
is our goal. Anytime they’re invested, this is a Simon Sinek quote that you’ll love.
Stephen Woessner [00:31:19 – 00:31:19]
Hmm.
Brett Gilliland [00:31:19 – 00:31:26]
When people invest financially, they want a return. When people invest emotionally,
they want to contribute.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
18 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:31:27 – 00:31:27]
Ooh. Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:31:28 – 00:32:21]
Let’s think about that for a second in the context of what we’re just talking about. When
you put everybody’s energy focus on a financial goal, you’ve just set them up for a
transactional kind of relationship, right? It’s like, let’s, let’s go hit this number. And for
most of the team, that number represents in their minds, like, just more money for the
agency owner, right? Like, that’s really all we’re doing. But if you put them on
something that they’re passionate about, something they can invest in emotionally,
now they want to contribute. This is not just dollars for hours anymore. This is a cause
that I get to be a part of. You unlock something different completely. And so I agree with
your assessment, Steven, that most leaders get this backwards because marketing
Sorry, marketing and sales is like, oh, we gotta grow our revenue.
Brett Gilliland [00:32:21 – 00:32:45]
Absolutely, we gotta grow our revenue. But the leadership piece is the single biggest
gating factor to your business scaling. It, it, it just is. The— you can, you can have sales
and marketing, but if you don’t know how to build the whole thing, like we said before,
let’s say you have a very charismatic, business development strong agency owner and
they’re bringing in new clients, but But the back of the house is a mess.
Stephen Woessner [00:32:45 – 00:32:46]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [00:32:46 – 00:33:20]
Like, they’re just churning through. They’re stuck at the level— every business is, is, is
at the level that they’re designed to be at. They’re perfectly designed to get the results
they’re getting today, period. And so we have to be able to uplevel our company. We
got to build the company, uplevel the machine, however you want to think about it. if
we want to get different results. And it isn’t just the lever of sales and marketing that
makes that happen. We have to do company-building work, and it starts with visionary
leadership.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
19 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:33:22 – 00:33:30]
Say that line again because that’s so good when you said perfectly designed. Carry that
through again. I want to make sure our audience got that.
Brett Gilliland [00:33:30 – 00:33:53]
Yeah. And it’s actually a guy named Arthur Jones in my organizational behavior program
that I did in graduate school. Graduate school. I’m going to save you all 2 years of
graduate school. Okay? This is the meat. This is for 2 years of tuition. All businesses, all
organizations is what he said. Arthur Jones said, all organizations are perfectly designed
to get the results they get.
Brett Gilliland [00:33:54 – 00:34:27]
And I mean, master of the obvious, right? We get what we get because we’ve built what
we’ve built. So congratulations, every one of you, right? Pat yourself on the back. You’ve
built the perfect agency to get what you’re getting. And instead of— and what we do is
say, okay, well, with the agency I’ve built, we were able to deliver X revenue, Y profit,
you know, Z retention. Let’s just increase those numbers for next year as our goals.
Stephen Woessner [00:34:27 – 00:34:29]
We just need to hustle more, right?
Brett Gilliland [00:34:29 – 00:34:47]
We just gotta— we just pedal harder. We haven’t brought in the bicycle analogy yet, but
basically we’re in a gear, we’re perfectly designed to get yield from this bicycle in this
gear, and we’ve— when we’re pedaling at full capacity, and then we say, we want to
get more out of this.
Stephen Woessner [00:34:48 – 00:34:48]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:34:48 – 00:35:20]
So, higher goals, pedal harder. Anybody who’s been on a bicycle knows at some point
you can’t outpedal The constraints of— we’re back to physics. We’re back to physics,
Stephen. You can’t out-physics this thing. The physics limit what’s possible in that
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
20 of 45
bicycle until or unless we learn to shift the gear. Once we shift the gear, it’s like, oh,
new, new physics. Do it new. We’re tapping into a new law or new something here.
Brett Gilliland [00:35:20 – 00:36:05]
The physics have changed and now we can actually pedal less. And get more yield out
of that bicycle because we’ve shifted gears. And so that’s the company building work.
It’s like, it’s the gear shifting. And without that, the hustler eventually dies. You can
either choose to kill the hustler intentionally by shifting gears to company building
agency owner, or you can try to pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal until you finally
give up and say, I can’t do this anymore. And your agency’s either done or you sell it off
to some private equity roll-up or, you know, whatever. You don’t get the full value out of
it though, because you built it based on hustle, on your hustle, and now you’re gonna
be gone.
Brett Gilliland [00:36:06 – 00:36:12]
And, you know, at least an informed buyer would know a lot of the value’s just gone
away with the hustler.
Stephen Woessner [00:36:13 – 00:37:13]
You know, that’s interesting what you just mentioned right there, because That in and of
itself, for many in our audience who are thinking, gosh, at some point I would like to be
able to exit the business, but this leadership work, maybe it is not of particular interest
to them. It feels hard because it is, but the incentive is that it does make their business
more sellable. So they’re in, in, in, not every agency owner wants to be able to sell the
business, but for those who do, they’re going to put all of this effort on the front end to
try and close the gap between being admired and to being chosen. So making the
transformation into an in-demand agency, that’s awesome. And then being able to have
the leadership transformation, because then that gives them the ability to not only exit
because they’ve built strong, capable, smart leaders, And then though, it also makes
the business more valuable.
Brett Gilliland [00:37:14 – 00:37:46]
It does make the business more valuable. And I want to make, I want to make an
important point here. I’m not, you know, pro pump up the value so you can exit and ride
off into the sunset. Meaning that’s, that’s not my only focus. If, if agency owners have
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
21 of 45
that as their desire, great. What we’re talking about will help them do that in in a way
that’s better for them. But if they’re like, oh, I’m not looking to exit, so I don’t have to do
any of this work we’re talking about. Let me paint another picture for you.
Brett Gilliland [00:37:46 – 00:38:22]
One, the contrast is, you know, pedal, pedal, pedal, wearing myself out all the time, but
at least I get to keep doing this thing that I built. Like there’s this pride in creation, pride
in ownership, but it all comes back to me pedaling hard for a long time. I’ve just seen a
lot of agency owners wearing out and they’re like, I can’t do this, you know, indefinitely.
And so company building work also enables you to have the agency you always wanted
and, and the life that you wanted to build.
Stephen Woessner [00:38:22 – 00:38:22]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:38:22 – 00:39:13]
Right? So a lot of us tell ourselves, well, I’m gonna do this so that I can make a great
living, or I’m gonna do this so I can have the time that I want. And then as the agency
got bigger, because I didn’t do good company building work, maybe, you know, margins
started to fall or it got harder to keep, to attract and keep really great team members.
And so then I’m taking a lot of business problems home. More business, more problems,
right? The bigger the agency, the more problems. And now I’m having conversations
with my significant other or spouse about what’s going on at the office. I can’t even
leave it. Like, it’s just with me all the time. But if you do this company building work, it’s
like, oh, I can actually enjoy doing this.
Brett Gilliland [00:39:13 – 00:40:01]
And the team’s lit up and they enjoy working with each other and they enjoy the client
fulfillment. And I’m not saying all problems go away, right? We joked at the beginning
about how it’s never as good as it looks from the outside. So you’re still going to have
problems, but you can have them in a way that it’s just much more manageable, much
more enjoyable, much more harmonious with the life that you’re trying to build. So it’s
not all about the exit. It does help you to have a great exit if you do good company
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
22 of 45
building work. But if you plan to stick around, it’s about the enjoyment and the
fulfillment and the, you know, the other things you want in your life. And, and those,
that’s why you started it in the first place. So let’s get you what you want.
Stephen Woessner [00:40:02 – 00:40:42]
Amen to that. I was in a session years ago and, and somebody was advocating, going
back to your point about the, the weekly sort of cadence of, you know, mentorship oneon-ones. I do have a weekly mentorship With my direct reports. And I feel that that’s
important. I feel it’s important for me to check in. I feel it’s important for me to help
them think through difficult challenges and/or priorities. I feel it’s important for me to
show up in a way that I just listen sometimes. Sometimes somebody just needs to
dump their bucket without judgment.
Stephen Woessner [00:40:43 – 00:41:29]
Sometimes somebody needs a course correction. And I’m, and I’m, and I’m happy to
share that. Um, and, and I remember sharing that with someone that I do this weekly,
and that person said, why on earth? Like, that’s so much time. Like, why would you do
that? I’m like, I think of it as a little bit— and when I say parenting, I do not in any way,
shape, or form trying to say that my teammates are my children, and I’m not trying to
say that in the least little bit. What I am trying to draw a parallel of is that, like, when
you want to be a good parent, you invest the time with your kids. You invest in those
relationships. You invest in that. You don’t just naturally have great kids without
spending any time, at least from my point of view.
Stephen Woessner [00:41:30 – 00:42:04]
So I’m like, if I want to have amazing teammates, then that requires me giving of myself
to do that. And if I want to build our leadership capability here at Predictive ROI, then I
need to give of myself to do that. And it certainly does not mean that I’m a great leader
by any stretch of the imagination, but I am absolutely willing to invest the time. So, and
I think that those are some things that you’ve taught us along the path too, that you
have to be willing to do the company-building work. Otherwise, The physics just don’t
work.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
23 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:42:05 – 00:42:25]
Yeah, I, I don’t think it is overstating it at all to say that a weekly one-on-one
opportunity for your team member to have access to you is, is the best leadership ROI
time that you can spend. I don’t think it’s overstating.
Stephen Woessner [00:42:25 – 00:42:28]
Wow. Okay. Literally.
Brett Gilliland [00:42:29 – 00:43:31]
Like, where else are you gonna— where else are you gonna spend the time? Looking at
more reports, you know, looking at, you know, making more biz dev calls, you know,
like all the activities that we do. Think about all the activities that you do. What moves
the business more than the people in the business? I mean, the people— it’s what the
people in the business do that create the business. So where, where is the leverage
point? It’s, it’s in that time with those individuals, either getting more clear or building
them to be better at what they do, or just being a human being where they’re like,
okay, I feel I belong here still. What, what’s more important than those things? But we
write it off as like, but I’m busy and they’ll understand. I see them all the time. We talk
daily. You know, why do we need this dedicated time just for them? I’m too busy for
that.
Brett Gilliland [00:43:31 – 00:43:37]
They’re too busy for that. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to impose myself on them every
week, right?
Stephen Woessner [00:43:38 – 00:43:59]
This, this will, this will sound like I’m asking you for a little impromptu coaching session
here, uh, or, or maybe some, some personal validation because you’ve, uh, over the
years have provided me some Great coaching and insight. And inside those sessions,
here’s something I don’t do. I don’t decide for them.
Brett Gilliland [00:43:59 – 00:43:59]
Hmm.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
24 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:44:00 – 00:44:40]
Now, sometimes they will need a thinking partner and want to tussle, they want to
wrestle something and maybe think about it from a different lens or perspective or
whatever metaphor you want to use. And then they’ll say, So what should I do? And
then I’ll say, I don’t think that’s my decision to make. I think this is your lane and
whatever you choose to decide, I will support you and care about you and all of those
things, but this is your lane and happy to talk that through. But I think that this is your
decision to make. So you’re like, I’m—
Brett Gilliland [00:44:40 – 00:45:08]
You’re going to get validation. You’re getting validation from me. Stephen, uh, thank you
for being a model leader is what I’ll say. And let me make an important distinction.
When you, when you first said, I, I don’t decide for them, that’s an important, that’s an
important word in there, for them. I don’t decide for them. Sometimes the decision
actually is yours and they’re asking you for clarity on your decision in your domain.
Stephen Woessner [00:45:08 – 00:45:08]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:45:09 – 00:45:32]
So sometimes they’re like, okay, I need to know what your decision is about this thing.
It does belong to you as the CEO. What is that decision? That, that is yours. You need to
give them a clear answer on something that belongs to you. But if it’s in their domain,
anytime you decide for them, you are taking away future capability in your business.
Stephen Woessner [00:45:32 – 00:45:33]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:45:33 – 00:46:13]
Right? Think about it that way. Every time we can help somebody step up in their, in
their role, in their confidence, in their ability to produce future results, you’ve, that
you’ve, you’ve created value that just like ripples through time into the future, right?
Every, every leadership development investment you make has, has ongoing benefits
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
25 of 45
through the end of time for as long as they’re in that role or as long as they’re in your
company. Right? It leaves with them, but every time you increase their ability to do
something, you just got ROI on that for as long as they’re still with you.
Stephen Woessner [00:46:15 – 00:46:40]
Yeah. You’ve probably heard this quote attributed to a number of different people. I
know I have. I’ve heard it like Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, and it’s the, well, gosh,
Brett, if I invest in that person, if I invest in that leader and we invest X amount of
dollars in order to grow that person’s leadership capability, what if they leave? And then
the person, Jim Rohn, whoever, said, yeah, but what if they stay? Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:46:41 – 00:46:42]
What if you don’t train them and they stay?
Stephen Woessner [00:46:43 – 00:46:43]
Right.
Brett Gilliland [00:46:44 – 00:46:52]
Yeah. I love that idea. It’s absolutely true. So yeah, let’s triangulate on a few of these
ideas we’ve had.
Stephen Woessner [00:46:52 – 00:46:53]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:46:53 – 00:47:47]
Our leadership— sorry, our agency cannot outgrow our leadership. Okay. Principled.
Yeah. If we’re doing Newton’s laws here, here’s a A business performance truth, right?
All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get. So you have what
you have because you’ve built what you’ve built, right? And your company’s not gonna
outgrow your leadership is a companion principle to that. And by extension, and not just
your leadership as the agency owner, but your team’s capability, your company, your
agency is not gonna outgrow your team’s capability, period. So consistent focus on
developing those individuals is one way that we change future results.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
26 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:47:48 – 00:48:16]
And company building, so organization structure kind of stuff, we’ll call organization
development, is the other lever. One lever is individual or leadership development. One
lever is Company building, organization development kind of work. Those really are the
2 levers that you have to change the gear, to change the physics in your business. So
it’s not just about hustle.
Stephen Woessner [00:48:18 – 00:49:25]
That is so good. I love these 2 that I put into my notes, and I know there’s some things
that hang off of that, but we can’t outgrow Your leadership. One, or an agency cannot
outgrow their leadership. And then consistent focus on developing, um, you know,
individuals to change the future results. Expecting the same, you know, I think this is
often attributed to Einstein, expecting the same result over and over and over again by
putting in the same thing or whatever is just the definition of insanity. Or expecting a
different result from doing the same thing over and over again is the definition of
insanity. So let’s maybe transition a little bit more into the how, because the way that
we started learning these things— when I say we, I mean Eric, who you obviously know
well, one of my business partners. And I say one of my business partners because
Hannah Roth has since joined us, is an owner in the business, and I’m super excited for
you to— spent time with her.
Stephen Woessner [00:49:25 – 00:50:34]
But how we started learning this from you is by attending events. And so this is a little
bit of sort of a duality, kind of a dual question, if you will. So the first piece is, and we’ll
get to the second piece in a little bit, but the first piece is, why did you decide on
events? And I know that’s not your only delivery model, but why did you decide on
events as being sort of like the cornerstone of of being able to teach the methodology.
And then, and then the second thing is, you know, I’m going to encourage our audience
to not necessarily have live events, but to think strategically about what we talk about
here, about how you create an experience and whether that’s an in-person event or
something else. I want them to get intentional about creating that experience because
that’s a great way for them to immerse their audience, their clients and prospects and
so forth. in their methodology, the agency and so forth. So there’s a little bit of duality
here. So why, why did you decide on in-person live events as a way to champion what
you teach?
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
27 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:50:35 – 00:50:48]
Yeah. So for, for people to do something different or be different, it’s sometimes easier
to get that to happen if you extract them from their current reality.
Stephen Woessner [00:50:49 – 00:50:49]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:50:49 – 00:51:00]
Right. If they’re in their business, the day-to-day, the whirlwind is swirling. It’s really
hard to get them to do something different than what they know in that, in that
environment.
Stephen Woessner [00:51:00 – 00:51:00]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [00:51:01 – 00:51:40]
And so sometimes you got to pull them out of that. They— I’m not talking about this in
a manipulative way, right? But I’m just, I’m just saying for their, for their brains to
disconnect from the day-to-day, they need to get up out of their seat. go somewhere
else. It’s a reason we do annual or quarterly planning offsite, right? It’s like we go away
from the day-to-day chaos to get offsite. So, that’s a big benefit, a big reason as to why
we would say, hey, let’s put together an event. Let’s gather around these topics. And
so, that’s one reason. Another reason is the strength in numbers thing.
Brett Gilliland [00:51:40 – 00:52:02]
Which is not just a moral support thing, but also an idea, uh, an experience benefit from
peers, other people in the room. So when you, uh, and you’ve seen this with agency
owners, you, you have an isolated agency owner who’s as creative as they get, right?
They’re, they’re so good at what they do, but all they know is what they know and all
the experience they’ve had.
Stephen Woessner [00:52:03 – 00:52:03]
Yep.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
28 of 45
Brett Gilliland [00:52:03 – 00:53:17]
And then you put them in a room or in a setting With, I don’t know, 6 or 8 other agency
owners and magic happens. They’re like, oh, you, you have that experience too? You
felt that weight as well? Oh, that’s a great idea that you had. I, I could probably do
something like that in my agency. Right? So there is, there is, there’s real value in, in
the community or the gathering piece also. Um, and then I guess the last thing I would
say is The opportunity to invest as somebody who’s trying to provide this help to
people, the opportunity to invest in someone. I’m, you know, I’m especially excited
about a speaker we have coming up for an event in a couple months, man, Greg
McKeown. He wrote a book called Essentialism, another one called Effortless. He’s
working now on helping people truly understand one another because it has so much
impact in relationships and in business decisions and all this stuff where we’re making
decisions and we’re trying to build relationships based on understanding that
sometimes misses with one another.
Brett Gilliland [00:53:18 – 00:53:32]
And so he’s— anyway, Greg should speak at our event. And if I can invest one time in
somebody amazing and have it have impact on, you know, 100 agency owners at a
time.
Stephen Woessner [00:53:32 – 00:53:32]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [00:53:32 – 00:53:39]
That’s another reason that we do it is to like get the ROI from larger investments like
that.
Stephen Woessner [00:53:41 – 00:54:27]
Uh, an observation and a couple of follow-up questions to that. So Han and I, uh, just
recorded, uh, an episode. So friends, um, you’re listening to Brett, right now is episode
9. Um, in episode 8, we had a chance to sit down with Don Yeager and talk through, uh,
what he calls the business of storytelling. And, and he told a number of different stories
during that conversation. Amazing. And he started off the conversation telling a story
about when he was a kid and it was Thanksgiving dinner at his house and he was
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
29 of 45
watching his dad, who was a pastor and an amazing storyteller. And he was watching
how his dad delivered this and how everyone was like hanging on every word and, and
all of those.
Stephen Woessner [00:54:27 – 00:55:03]
And all of that, the story, the dinner, the everything was an experience. And, and I, and,
and as he’s describing it, like you can almost start to see it. And, and as I hear you say
that, where there’s a community that’s built, there’s collaboration, there’s some energy
in the room. Oh, you struggle with that too? Yeah, me too. You’re creating an
experience. And that’s not easy. You, you, you like have to orchestrate that or architect
it. There’s some choreography involved, however you want to describe it.
Stephen Woessner [00:55:04 – 00:55:19]
It’s not easy. You guys do it really, really well. But so I’m, I’m, I’m thinking that, that the
experience piece is maybe the red thread that kind of runs through all of this so that,
that they’re truly experiencing it. It’s not just learning it, but experiencing it. Would that,
would that be fair?
Brett Gilliland [00:55:20 – 00:55:39]
Yeah, absolutely. There’s something that takes learning from interesting information to
transformative experience, right? You, that experience word is more in the
transformation. It’s, it’s, it’s stickier. It’s deeper. It’s, it’s got more profound impact.
Stephen Woessner [00:55:40 – 00:55:40]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:55:40 – 00:56:22]
Because it happens, uh, it comes with emotional, right? There’s a, there’s an emotional
piece to it. I can listen to, uh, you know, any number of books. I love that I can just
listen to that while I work on the pool or the yard or the dishes or whatever. I can listen,
I can gain knowledge, but transformative experience is another level of engagement in
the learning process. It changes you when you have that emotional piece that through,
you know, well-crafted, well-designed, orchestrated, choreographed experiences can
create something beyond just learning the content.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
30 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:56:23 – 00:56:25]
Can we go back to physics for a second?
Brett Gilliland [00:56:25 – 00:56:25]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [00:56:26 – 00:56:55]
I completely muffed my, the formula for velocity about 20 minutes ago. Sorry,
everyone. What I meant to say was velocity is the distance over time, distance over
time. That’s, that’s the formula for calculating velocity. And so as I’m hearing you talk
about experience and, and, and I’m thinking of the distance, the distance the business
travels from point A to point B. This is where we are currently. We’re a 7-figure business.
We want to become 8.
Stephen Woessner [00:56:56 – 00:56:57]
That’s the distance.
Brett Gilliland [00:56:58 – 00:56:58]
Hmm.
Stephen Woessner [00:56:59 – 00:57:40]
Over time, how long does it take you to do that? Or do you ever? How long? Distance
over time. And then the velocity. So I’m thinking, so velocity, that is the definition or the
formula, distance over time. But so I’m hearing you talk about the experience of the
events and I’m like, okay, the events are creating velocity. The experience is creating
velocity. The transfer of knowledge in the room is creating velocity. The people that you
meet, the people you collaborate with, the people that you have dinner with, it might
be a next strategic partner. That is creating velocity to help you accomplish more
distance in less time.
Brett Gilliland [00:57:41 – 00:57:43]
And I’ll tell you another secret to why we do these events.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
31 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:57:44 – 00:57:44]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:57:45 – 00:57:51]
Um, because we always encourage business owners to bring their key people with
them.
Stephen Woessner [00:57:51 – 00:57:51]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [00:57:52 – 00:57:57]
Because what we’re talking about to do this company building work is a team sport. You
can’t go out.
Stephen Woessner [00:57:57 – 00:57:57]
Oh, that’s great.
Brett Gilliland [00:57:58 – 00:58:18]
You can’t go off on your own and figure this stuff out by yourself and then go back and
have it magically happen. Like, You have to co-create this with people. You gotta bring
them along or, or it just doesn’t work. And so when we bring those team members
along, they’re getting, they’re getting these transformative experiences as well.
Stephen Woessner [00:58:19 – 00:58:19]
Mm-hmm.
Brett Gilliland [00:58:20 – 00:58:43]
And it, and it translates way better back at the office, right? Back, back in the saddle
when now it’s not just the business owner who went to some great conference and
came back on fire and like everybody’s looking at ’em like, you’re a crazy person. Right.
But now we’ve got, we’ve got 2 or 3 of the key leaders who’ve had a transformative
experience together.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
32 of 45
Stephen Woessner [00:58:43 – 00:58:43]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [00:58:44 – 00:59:24]
Who are coming back to translate what they experienced to the agency. And, and that’s
where there’s a, a ton of real power. So we learned, hey, we gotta have these events,
not just for the, the agency owner, but for that key team member who’s been with me
from the start, or that key operations leader. Like, let’s, let’s invest in our leadership
capabilities so that tomorrow’s results can be better, right? We’re, we’re trying to shift
gears, and those, those experiences together are, are part of the magic that make that
way more, way more likely to happen back at the, back at the office.
Stephen Woessner [00:59:24 – 01:00:21]
So let’s, let’s peel that back a little bit too, and then we’ll get into some of the, the I’ll
loop back into the meta piece and see how that kind of fits again here after all this
context. But because you mentioned, you mentioned like stickier and deeper and so
forth. So, so let’s assume that an agency owner and that person’s leadership team, 2, 3
other members of the team, you know, happens to be our leadership team here at
Predictive ROI is also the ownership team, the 3 of us. And so let’s say that they were to
attend an event. Let’s say they were to attend one of your events. How do they, or how
would you recommend, or what is the best way for there to be the transfer of
knowledge? If it just lives in the 3, in our case, the 3, then we haven’t really deepened
our bench yet. You know, we’re working on demand. Yay, that’s great.
Stephen Woessner [01:00:21 – 01:00:33]
We’re no longer just admired, we’re being chosen. but then we got to deliver that
downstream. We got to deliver that experience. So how do we take all this knowledge
that we just absorbed and be able to then teach that to our team?
Brett Gilliland [01:00:34 – 01:00:41]
Yeah, I, I, every organization has to figure this out, but I’ll give a couple ideas. Hopefully
this is practical.
Stephen Woessner [01:00:42 – 01:00:42]
All right.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
33 of 45
Brett Gilliland [01:00:42 – 01:01:10]
Um, you know, one, one way to do this, it’s super practical is, hey everybody, As you
know, the 3 of us were out of the office for a couple days. We, we owe it to you to tell
you why we went and invested that time, right? So let’s share with you now some of the
key things that we took away from that, why we felt, felt like that was a good use of our
time. So there, there’s a little bit of reporting back.
Stephen Woessner [01:01:10 – 01:01:10]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [01:01:10 – 01:01:45]
That, that I think makes sense, whether it’s in a team meeting or all hands or whatever.
But then each of those leaders in, in their teams or in their individual one-on-one
conversations is going to take relevant pieces for that context, right? Whether that’s a
team setting or one-on-one. And, and we’re just going to, we’re going to share, we’re
going to pass on what was going on. That, all that sounds pretty generic. Let’s get, let’s
get a little tighter.
Stephen Woessner [01:01:46 – 01:01:46]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [01:01:46 – 01:02:48]
If the event was about sales and marketing, then let’s make sure that key things we
decided we are gonna do as a result of attending that event come back into our
planning process and that our, you know, sales and marketing people know what we’re
gonna do. Um, I would invite them into a conversation, not, not just tell them what
we’re doing as a result of going there. Right. That’s, that’s an important distinction. I
want to invite people into the conversation that opens now because we went to the
event. I don’t want to come back and say, here’s what we’re doing, you know, ABC as a
result of the event. If it, if it just happens to people, that won’t have nearly the effect
that it could have if you try to do a little bit of transfer of learning and invite them into a
conversation and set some goals together or decide what we’re going to move forward
with. But that’s the kind of thinking that you have to do is like, we can’t just let that sit
over there as an experience that a few of us had.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
34 of 45
Brett Gilliland [01:02:49 – 01:03:03]
We’ve got to figure out what are the best places, times, and ways to move forward with
anything that we learned over there. Not everything, with anything specific that we
think will have the biggest impact towards our stated objectives.
Stephen Woessner [01:03:04 – 01:03:46]
We run here still the the cadence of the monthly planning sessions. Well, we have a
weekly leadership team meeting. Once a month, we have our monthly planning
session. Once a quarter, we have our quarterly planning session. We do those as often
as we can in person, you know, because our team is spread across the country. But
there’s such value in that. And then as you were talking about, like, sort of the transfer
of knowledge, It made me actually think of a mistake that we’ve recently made. And,
you know, we’ve added a few teammates over the last, you know, X period of time, let’s
say within the last year or so.
Stephen Woessner [01:03:47 – 01:04:06]
And when I think about our vision and mission and values, one of our teammates said
to me the other day in mentorship, she was asking me about Predictive’s values and
she had seen them. Um, but she said, why wasn’t this part of my onboarding?
Brett Gilliland [01:04:06 – 01:04:07]
Hmm.
Stephen Woessner [01:04:07 – 01:04:35]
And I’m like, oh, and I got a little bit of a pit in my stomach. And because she’s now
working on the process of onboarding who our next strategist is going to be, she was
like, that should be part of it. I’m like, yes. And then not only, but then it was an
indicator of, wait a minute, it wasn’t part of her onboarding. And it was an indicator of
we have not been rinsing and repeating and talking about that on a consistent basis like
we used to.
Brett Gilliland [01:04:36 – 01:04:37]
Yeah.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
35 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:04:37 – 01:04:41]
And so I’m sharing that now as like a confessional to you of—
Brett Gilliland [01:04:42 – 01:04:43]
I accept your confession.
Stephen Woessner [01:04:45 – 01:04:55]
We learned it, we mastered it, and then we still obviously have room for improvement.
Brett Gilliland [01:04:55 – 01:04:56]
We let it slip some.
Stephen Woessner [01:04:56 – 01:04:57]
We let it slip.
Brett Gilliland [01:04:59 – 01:04:59]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [01:04:59 – 01:04:59]
Can I—
Brett Gilliland [01:04:59 – 01:05:04]
can we share another law of physics for in business? Here’s another one.
Stephen Woessner [01:05:04 – 01:05:04]
Okay.
Brett Gilliland [01:05:04 – 01:05:56]
You can call it the law of drift or, or getting off course or whatever. Human beings, all
human beings wander, get distracted, forget, right? This is just physics. It’s the law of
entropy in the universe. But for individuals, it’s wander, distraction, it’s forgetfulness.
And so our job is— our job, our number one job as leaders, per Jim Collins, is to set the
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
36 of 45
vision. I’m using the word set the vision as a shorthand for the clear and compelling
vision that, you know, he has a longer definition of it, but it’s this It’s this clarity and this
unifying thing that it’s our job.
Stephen Woessner [01:05:57 – 01:05:57]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [01:05:57 – 01:06:10]
And many of us do it. We, we get the team together, we get clear, and then we just,
okay, now let’s go. And time passes, days pass, weeks pass.
Stephen Woessner [01:06:10 – 01:06:10]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [01:06:10 – 01:06:49]
Months pass, and we start to wander and drift and forget and get distracted, right? All
of those Normal things. And our real job as leaders to set the vision is not a one-anddone thing. It’s ongoing. You alluded to it, but you triggered another pet passion of mine
to just be like, this is it, guys. This is it. And we think it’s just set the vision to the point
of paint on the wall or engravings in the stone or whatever, or tattoos on the forehead.
We got our values and it’s done. No, we’ve just begun.
Brett Gilliland [01:06:50 – 01:07:18]
It’s, it’s a constant thing that we have to do, and we do need to build it into our
onboarding process, and we do need to build it into our mentoring conversations and
our team meetings and our all-hands meetings. It needs to be ongoing. We walk it, we
talk it, we live it, we breathe it, we eat it. Like, it’s, it’s part of everything. Um, or it just
starts to lose its way and we have team members come to us later and say, how come
nobody told me about the values? Right?
Stephen Woessner [01:07:19 – 01:08:09]
Yeah. I, I, I love this, the wandering, the forgetting. I think it’s a, uh, going back to the,
uh, event piece, friends, which is, which is another, if you’re thinking of in, in this could
certainly be, uh, an event that you hold on Zoom. Inviting your clients and prospects to,
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
37 of 45
to come together and you are the glue that brings everyone together. You are the
commonality, you’re the common denominator, uh, following the math theme here.
You’re the common denominator that, that runs through that entire conversation,
bringing everyone together as a way to keep them from, uh, wandering and forgetting.
Um, as you were saying that, I, I know that you won’t mind, Brett, that I, that I go
biblical for a second. But I’m thinking of, you know, in the Old Testament when Moses
comes down from the mountain and he has the 10 Commandments.
Stephen Woessner [01:08:11 – 01:08:38]
Friends, they were written in stone for a reason. And so that they could be easy to be
referred to, that they were tangible, that whenever there was losing the way, and
clearly there was, but whenever there was losing the way, it was, what was number 6
again? And it was, and it was just there written in stone and then eventually carried
around in the Ark of the Covenant. It was, it was there to always keep the direction.
Brett Gilliland [01:08:39 – 01:08:39]
That’s right.
Stephen Woessner [01:08:39 – 01:09:08]
Right. And, and so because it is so easy to aimlessly wander, and so whether we’re
thinking about our clients, the prospects, and our audience, they need a constant
marination of how you can be helpful. Think about your team and growing the bench
and all of that. They need it too, as do we as leaders. We also need it, and we also need
to be taking in this constant stream to help us get better too. Otherwise, we just fall
into the status quo, using your word, drift.
Brett Gilliland [01:09:09 – 01:09:49]
Yeah. If any, you know, all of us people who get on airplanes and go places, we look at
the monitor on the back of the seat and we see, you know, let’s say, We’re flying from
Wisconsin to Arizona and, and there’s this beautiful smooth arc that’s drawn on the
screen, right? It’s just point A, point B, smooth as can be arc. If you actually had the
math in front of you of how much time the plane was off course versus the amount of
time that it was on course, you would see that it’s, it’s a constant, that the plane is
constantly drifting off course. Constantly.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
38 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:09:49 – 01:09:50]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [01:09:50 – 01:10:30]
With, with the pilot and the, you know, the autopilot capabilities of the plane, putting it
back, putting it back, putting it back. That, that is how it works. It’s the, it’s the putting
it back on track that allows us to go with confidence, leave, leave one airport and get to
the other one. It’s, it’s never, it’s never perfectly on track. It’s always going off track
and, and constantly bringing back. And that’s what, that’s what we’re doing with our
plane. Our, our agency is, is constantly being thrown in multiple directions. The forces
of nature are, are thrown in all, all directions.
Brett Gilliland [01:10:30 – 01:10:38]
And your job as a leader is to back to true north, right? Set the vision, set the vision.
And, and that’s what we have to be doing.
Stephen Woessner [01:10:40 – 01:11:08]
I think it was, I did this experiment once, maybe I heard this from you and, and I, tossed
it into the Google and it was like, I set a course for Seattle to New York City or
something like that. And so I think the scenario was, if the plane is 1% off without any
course correction, what is the final destination? And it was Washington, DC. A little off.
Yeah, a little bit. Right? And so it’s easy.
Brett Gilliland [01:11:08 – 01:11:08]
1 degree.
Stephen Woessner [01:11:09 – 01:11:23]
We’re done. Right? 1 degree. 1 degree, right? It was— it wasn’t a hard right turn. It was
1 degree, an imperceptible amount, an easy-to-miss amount, but yet a huge difference
in destination.
Brett Gilliland [01:11:24 – 01:11:24]
That’s right.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
39 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:11:25 – 01:11:47]
Right. Um, so you, you mentioned, um, Greg, and if you don’t mind me putting you on
the spot here, um, would you just give us a a quick summary of what you, Greg, and
whomever else might be teaching in the November event that you alluded to a few
minutes ago?
Brett Gilliland [01:11:47 – 01:12:35]
Sure, sure. And if it’s all right, yeah, I’m grateful that you’re willing to talk about our
November event. We’re super excited about it. I can tell you about some of the
sessions, but what I want to convey is whether it’s the November event or any of the
events that we put on, It’s, we’re always bringing hyper-relevant content to the, the
company building work that you need to be doing right now in your business, right? Like
that’s, that’s the overarching goal. We, we are very intentional with it. We are designing
it, we’re choreographing it, we’re, you know, we’re orchestrating it. And, uh, this is our, I
lose track a little bit. This is, this will be our 44th or 45th event, right? Like we’ve done
this.
Stephen Woessner [01:12:35 – 01:12:36]
Oh my. Wow.
Brett Gilliland [01:12:37 – 01:12:38]
Okay. Done this a lot.
Stephen Woessner [01:12:38 – 01:12:38]
Yeah.
Brett Gilliland [01:12:39 – 01:12:54]
Um, and, and we’ll continue to do it for the reasons we talked about before. So, but for
this, this event in particular, um, coincidentally, and I don’t know that you knew this,
Stephen, but the very first session is about this idea that the hustler has to die.
Stephen Woessner [01:12:55 – 01:12:56]
That’s— I did not know that.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
40 of 45
Brett Gilliland [01:12:56 – 01:13:37]
Okay. I, I didn’t think you did. So we’re, we’re trying to get ready. We’re trying to get
people ready for, for best 2027 that they can have, right? This is an end-of-year event
getting ready for the next year. So we’re bringing together all these sessions that are
hyper-relevant to a 7-figure agency trying to, trying to do more, trying not to just pedal
in the same gear, right? So the hustler has to die. That, that’s the essence of our kickoff
session. There’s a session about financial stuff. I know some of your agency owners are
better than that than others, but a lot of creatives aren’t, aren’t great at the nuts and
bolts of the math.
Stephen Woessner [01:13:38 – 01:13:38]
Yep.
Brett Gilliland [01:13:38 – 01:14:31]
And so we have a great lady coming in. Her name is Pam Jordan. She’s going to come in
and help workshop style. Hey, how can you do a little bit of planning financially next
year to help you in your forecasting to see where cash might be tight? So we got some
of that financial planning and execution stuff coming into this. Every event these days
has to have at least one AI session, right? So we have somebody who’s exceptional, not
at just AI and wowing you with how much they know about it, but in really practical,
hey, I’m one of you business owner kind of people. Let me show you ways that you can
use this right now to benefit your business. So we’ve got an AI session. Anyway, we
have a variety of sessions, but they’re all hyper-relevant to you having the best 2027
you can possibly have.
Brett Gilliland [01:14:31 – 01:15:03]
And we’re capping it off with Greg McKeown, who’s going to spend a whole 90 minutes
with us talking through something. He just got his PhD in, like, he went back to Oxford,
he got his PhD, and he decided that his next book and his whole next focus is around
people understanding one another better. He just, he looks out in the world at just a sea
of misunderstanding and a lot of problems everywhere because people can’t
communicate with one another. He’s like, what’s at the heart of this?
Stephen Woessner [01:15:03 – 01:15:03]
Mm-hmm.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
41 of 45
Brett Gilliland [01:15:03 – 01:15:19]
So he’s been, he’s been studying, he’s been working on it for at least 5 years now,
maybe, maybe 10 years. And he’s gonna bring all of that information into our
community and help us unpack What does real understanding of one another look like?
Stephen Woessner [01:15:19 – 01:15:33]
So good. Yeah. Sounds like it’s going to be, going to be an exceptional event. Uh, thank
you for letting me put you on the spot to share that because I didn’t ask you to like
rehearse that or anything. So, so thank you for allowing me to be impromptu.
Brett Gilliland [01:15:33 – 01:15:45]
You’re welcome. You’re welcome. And I should have said November 5th and 6th. It’s the
first Thursday and Friday in November, November 5th and 6th. You’ll learn about it on
our website, which is growwithelite.com.
Stephen Woessner [01:15:45 – 01:16:11]
And friends, I’ll be sure that we include a link in the show notes as well to make it super
easy for you to find. I love what you said at the beginning as you were giving that
overview there. You said, this is the company-building work you need to be doing right
now. And that’s awesome. So I know we need to come in for a landing.
Brett Gilliland [01:16:11 – 01:16:11]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [01:16:11 – 01:16:53]
You’ve given me 30 more minutes than I asked for, and I’m super grateful for that, my
friend. That’s very, very kind and generous of you. And friends, we’re going to say
goodbye to Brett here, but please stay with me because then we’re going to do the
debrief at the end here. So we’re going to say goodbye to Brett, and then I’m going to
come back with some of what I think are some of our biggest takeaways, or my biggest
takeaways. We’ll compare some notes and maybe yours will match up with mine. You’ll
have something different than what I have and vice versa. And of course, I’d love to
know what your takeaways were. But Brett, thank you so very much for sharing your
insights and wisdom and being so generous and transparent as you always are, my
friend.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
42 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:16:53 – 01:16:57]
That was really, really amazing. It was a delight to be able to learn from you today.
Brett Gilliland [01:16:58 – 01:17:05]
Well, it’s just 2 business physics geeks having a good old time. We could do it for hours
and hours, Steven. It was my pleasure, really.
Stephen Woessner [01:17:08 – 01:17:55]
Holy bananas, friends. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation with Brett as much as
I did. Candidly, I walked into our conversation, the conversation with Brett, thinking
about how an agency delivers the experience that its demand creates. And I walked out
of that conversation with Brett with a much sharper picture of the leadership capacity
required to deliver it. Consistently because predictable growth is not simply a biz dev
outcome. It is a leadership capacity outcome too. So I’m going to just take a couple of
minutes here and share the 4 biggest takeaways that I wrote down from my time with
Brett. So you can compare these takeaways against your notes.
Stephen Woessner [01:17:56 – 01:18:45]
So takeaway number 1, demand creates expectations. That your team must be ready to
fulfill. So your agency founder, the owner, maybe that’s you, may build the relationship.
You may lead the strategy and you may help create an exceptional experience during
the biz dev process. And that is awesome. But when your right fit prospect says yes,
that promise moves from the front of the stage to the back of your stage, and your
team now has to carry it through. Onboarding and delivery and communication in every
client handoff that is along the way. And Brett said it plainly, your agency is not going to
outgrow your team’s capability, period.
Stephen Woessner [01:18:46 – 01:19:20]
And he put a fine point on that and said, period. Yes, authority earns attention. The trust
bridge, your trust bridge builds belief. And demand moves your right-fit prospect to act.
But it’s your leadership capacity that fulfills the promises you’ve made. And that’s how
demand becomes predictable agency growth instead of a short burst of new business.
All right. So takeaway number 2, your agency is producing the results it was designed
to produce.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
43 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:19:21 – 01:20:12]
And Brad shared this like amazing principle that he learned from Arthur Jones. And so
I’m quoting Arthur Jones here. I’m quoting Brett and I guess Arthur Jones at the same
time. All organizations, or let’s translate that into the agency world, all agencies are
perfectly designed to get the results they get. Meaning your structure, leadership
rhythms, decision lanes, and team capability have been perfectly designed to produce
the results you’re currently getting. So if you want different results for your agency next
year, you need to build a different agency to produce them or different capability to
produce them. Pedaling harder, from Brett’s point of view, pedaling harder in the same
gear is not company building. It is more hustle inside the same design.
Stephen Woessner [01:20:13 – 01:21:11]
The agency owner who created the early growth through the grit and the tenacity must
become the CEO. They must now transition into the CEO seat. And the CEO is the one
who sets the vision, develops the leaders, builds the system, and changes the gears.
And that honors the hustle by building a company that is capable of carrying it forward.
All right, so takeaway number 3, leadership capacity grows When your people learn to
carry decisions, Brett taught me that we must become the leaders our agencies need to
reach the destinations we have set. That does not mean making every decision for your
team. When a decision belongs inside someone else’s lane and the founder takes it
back, the agency loses an opportunity to build future capability. Your teammate may.
Stephen Woessner [01:21:11 – 01:22:04]
need a thinking partner. Your teammate may need context or coaching or a clearer
boundary, but when the decision belongs to that person, let that person carry it. This is
why Brett places so much value on weekly one-on-ones. They create the space to
identify strain, sharpen judgment, build confidence, and develop the leaders the agency
will need next. Every strong decision creates capacity that then compounds into the
future, friends. Okay. And takeaway number 4, the experience has to transfer beyond
the people who were in the room. An event, a planning session, a book, or even the
conversation you and I are having right now may change how you see your agency.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
44 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:22:05 – 01:22:34]
But if those insights stay solely with the agency owner leadership team, the agency
does not change. The agency does not grow. So Brett described company building as a
team sport. The work has to be co-created. So when leaders return from a meaningful
experience, the next move is not to announce a list of directives. The next move is to
invite the team. Into the conversation. Share what you learned.
Stephen Woessner [01:22:35 – 01:23:16]
Choose what matters most. Connect it to your agency’s priorities. Then decide together
what will change. This is how information becomes an experience, and the experience
becomes team capability, and team capability turns demand into predictable growth.
So here’s my challenge to you. Before your next leadership team meeting, use the
leadership capacity scorecard that my predictive team and I built from Brett’s insights.
Again, you can find it at predictiveROI.com/leadership. Have each of your leaders score
your agency independently.
Stephen Woessner [01:23:16 – 01:23:39]
Do not compare notes until everyone is finished. It’s only going to take a few minutes.
Then put the scores side by side. Find the lowest scoring dimension. And choose one
change that your team will implement during the next 90 days. Clarify one decision
lane. Reinstated one weekly one-on-one. Add one early warning metric to the
dashboard.
Stephen Woessner [01:23:39 – 01:24:35]
One gap, one decision, one 30-day installation. Because an in-demand agency is not
only an agency where right-fit prospects are ready to choose you. It is an agency whose
team is also ready to deliver upon the expectations that demand creates. Build your
authority, strengthen your trust bridge, activate the latent demand, and build the
leadership capability and capacity to carry the promise all the way through. Friends, we
all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, and I am grateful that you chose to spend
some of your invaluable time with Brett and me today. Again, I hope that you found that
conversation with Brett as helpful. I hope it was as helpful to you as it was helpful and
insightful to me. I just really enjoyed the time with Brett.
IDA_Brett Gilliland_V01
45 of 45
Stephen Woessner [01:24:36 – 01:24:45]
He always helps me look through a new and expanded lens, and I hope that he did the
same for you. Until next week, onward with gusto.