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financial management

Client P&L vs. Billable Time Reporting; What is More Important and Why?

Vince Dong
4/25/2024


Time. Time. Time. As I gaze out the window in my office, I look back on the time-consuming events over the last 12 months. Our fourth and fifth grandchildren were ...

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Leveraging Earn-Outs as a Succession Strategy for Smaller Advertising Agency Owners

Laurie Mikes
3/8/2024


Succession planning is a crucial aspect of managing a business, and for smaller advertising agency owners, the challenge is often compounded by the unique dynamics of the industry. One increasingly ...

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It's An Easy Business

Second Wind
3/6/2024

Agency principals ask us all the time how to measure the financial success of their agencies. When we respond, many seem disappointed. "That's it?" they ask. "Those are all ...

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Revenue Recognition

Vince Dong
2/8/2024


What’s all this fuss about revenue recognition with agencies?  Isn’t revenue recognized when we just bill the client???

What do accountants know about financial reporting for advertising and ...

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Navigating Price Increases: Advice for Smaller Agencies

Laurie Mikes
2/8/2024


In the dynamic world of advertising, change is constant. As a small advertising agency, evolving with the times is essential to staying competitive and delivering competitive services. One aspect that ...

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Is There An Ideal Mix Of Accounts In Your Agency

Second Wind
2/9/2023

It’s a good question: most agencies have an account mix that is far from ideal. Frequently, a single account controls the life of any given agency—a “gorilla,” if ...

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Another Recession? How to Prepare for Hard Times

The "R-Word"

Jack Henke
8/2/2022

Recession. Many Second Wind members vividly remember “The Great Recession” from late 2007 until mid-2009. It is such a painful memory that the mere mention of the word “recession” is ...

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Open Books Test

Second Wind
9/6/2021

In our opinion, there was nothing more dreaded in college than the open book test. The prof could throw just about any kind of curveball question, and you would have ...

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What's the Plan? Agency Business Planning

Second Wind
1/19/2021

I remember well how, as each year waned, my agency would be immersed in a rush of activity: annual reports to assemble, catalogs to update, print ads to run for ...

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Watch Yourself…Hard Times Are Just Around The Corner

Second Wind
2/15/2017

Many smaller agencies and design studios tend to forget hard times when clients are active and billings are flowing. However, most long-term advertising agency people (and other business people) never ...

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The Peak of the Frenzy

Tony Mikes
1/12/2016

Our late founder, Tony Mikes, originally wrote this article in 1998… and it’s as if he wrote it last week. As he was fond of pointing out, business is ...

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