Welcome to episode 152. I’m chatting again with my go-to guru for the now, next and future of the agency business model, Spencer Gallagher. Spencer has relaunched Bluehalo with a renewed focus on helping agencies and businesses transform with AI. Bluhalo is a business for the next decade, focused on supporting B2B organisations across three core pillars: People, Technology, and Asset Growth.
In this conversation, we really dig into what transforming with AI means in practice for you as an agency leader or account manager.
Here’s what we cover:
- Why so many agency services have matured and what that means for your positioning and growth
- How Spencer thinks about the "now, next and future" of agencies in an AI-driven world
- Why founders and leaders need to reconnect with their creative side and carve out proper thinking space if they want to reinvent their business
- The cultural shift required to build high-agency, growth-mindset teams that actually embrace AI rather than resist it
- How AI is likely to reshape agency structures - from headcount and roles to pricing, automation and the types of services clients will value most
- Practical examples of how tools and no-code platforms have gone from clunky to powerful in a very short space of time, and what that means for your IP
- Advice for agency leaders who know they need to speed up their adoption of AI, but feel their team is low-energy or stuck in old ways of working
- Guidance for account managers whose leaders are dragging their heels on AI, including how to use real client feedback to influence from the middle
- What Spencer is seeing in the M&A market for agencies, including what buyers now look for and why AI capability is increasingly on the checklist
Spencer has a rare mix of lived experience building and selling an agency, deep technical curiosity, and a very honest take on where agencies are kidding themselves about the future. I think you’ll come away with both a clearer sense of direction and some very practical ideas to take back to your team.
If you’d like to stay connected with Spencer's thinking, you can find him on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencergallagher/
and check out Bluehalo to see more of the work he’s doing to help agencies and businesses become truly AI-enabled. https://www.bluhalo.com/
And if you want to get a sense of where your own agency stands, you can assess your "AI readiness for client retention and growth" over on my website
https://www.accountmanagementskills.com
The quiz takes just a few minutes and you’ll receive a short report with suggestions for how you can start weaving AI into your client management workflow.
If you’re not already on my newsletter list and you’d like to hear about upcoming trainings, new podcast episodes and the latest shifts I’m seeing in agency account management and AI, you can also sign up there. That’s where I share practical tips, tools and examples you can use with your clients straight away.