Your agency doesn't have a sales problem. It has a people problem. I spent 15+ years building teams, from scrappy startups, to scaling tech companies, to huge agencies like GroupM and WPP. Now, I give small agency owners the SOPs, frameworks, and hard truths they need to build high-performance cultures that run without them.
The TL;DR: You're My Holiday Present
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A bi-weekly roundup of everything TL;DR from the past year December 13 - December 26 A Brief Year In ReviewDon't forget to enter my end-of-year holiday Cliftonstrengths & 1-1 Giveaway! Contest ends on Monday the 29th. Enter now! The end of the year always puts me into a reflective mood, and out of all my content channels, this newsletter has always been the place I feel most present. The ritual of waking up early on a Friday, putting on vibe-y instrumental music, and setting the lights to "Moonlight" before translating ideas from my head into a mass email is both a meditative practice and a familiar habit built over six years. Looking back, I've used this reflective headspace this year to tell you how to do things:
It's been the first place that I would announce something:
I covered organizational leadership and management skills:
And I also penned TL;DRs on personal growth and development:
(isn't it funny that the personal growth ones are all about failures? 🤔🤔🤔) There's so much AI and entrepreneurial hype that the temptation to use this space as yet another lead gen, top-of-funnel, masturbatory thought leadership platform screams in my ear every other Friday. And yeah, I've not been perfect about giving this newsletter time to breathe. When I've felt under the gun, I've used AI to help me in all kinds of ways to write this missive, from topic ideas to rewording my rambling to catching that awkward typo. I've also tried to follow all kinds of advice to make a "better" newsletter; focus on pain points, deliver practical outcomes, build a flywheel with other social channels, blah blah blah. However, with five days left in the year, I feel less pressure to monetize and more room to reflect. I know that I'll continue this biweekly ritual into 2026. I know that I'll have busy weeks and bad ideas. I know that I'll write something really good, I'll write something you don't care for at all, and a whole load of mishmosh in the middle. At the end of the day, I write because I believe that you read. This year, I aggressively pruned this newsletter list from 9K subscribers down to 3.5K. I didn't like the idea that there was a large group of people who subscribed but never read (also, saving on email platform fees 🤑). You're not an invisible email on a list, but a real person who clicks (at least once every 90 days) and looks at pictures of my dog. Spoiler alert, I'm a real person too. As I'm planning out my 2026, I invite you to help shape this newsletter into something YOU look forward to every other Friday as much as I do. The threshold to suggest the next TL;DR topic is shockingly low. You can always email me with your thoughts, whether something you loved, hated, or would like to see. I squeal every time one of you writes back. So, let's keep it simple for 2026. Tell me what's on your mind. Tell me what's keeping you up at 2:00 AM. Or just tell me your dog’s name (I’ll probably like that best). For the both of us, may our next year be full of thrilling newsletters. A TL;DR from the CRORemember that the holidays are not about presents, but about giving presents to the snoots you care about. -Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer A TL;DR from the Archive: Getting Started With The CliftonStrengths Assessment For Marketing AgenciesAs a CliftonStrengths practitioner for over 15 years, I've found that the Cliftonstrengths Assessment is amazingly effective for small marketing agencies to help figure out who to hire, how to keep them, and how to deliver outsized high-quality results that makes clients think you’ve got dozens of team members when it’s really just one person performing at their best. Join me for a brief tour through these four strength domains to see how each can help your marketing agency blow the socks off clients and your own revenue projections.
I know why you really read this newsletter. Rocks and mushrooms. On the 'shroom front, I still have yet to see a flush from the wood I innoculated over the summer. Since it's 13 degrees today here in Boston, I'm thinking I'll have to wait until spring to see my little blue oysters pop out. Don't worry, you'll be the first to know when they start to peek. For rocks, I'm still tumbling the Labradorite and Obsidian in Rock Hudson and Rock Lobster. They should be headed to Stage Three this weekend and I'm very excited to see how the labradorite shines up. The last time I took them out, I lost faith in obsidian (it looked lame) and discovered how cool a well-tumbled labradorite could actually get. However, starting 2026 with some negativity blocking and self-discovery might be just what the woo-woo chakra doctor ordered. What's tickled my bones is that this holiday season, I noticed that many family members got rocks, geodes, and crystals as gifts (and it wasn't from me!). I swear, rocks are having a moment. If you want to start 2026 with a new hobby that your friends will tolerate your enthusiasm for, take some of that holiday money from Aunt Bethel and get tumbling. I prefer ordering my unpolished rocks and tumbling supplies from the Rock Shed. If you have a cool rock, send me a pic and I'll feature it in the next TL;DR. Thanks for being my reader (even if all you want is to read about mineral moon energy), Dan from Learn to Scale Opt-out from the newsletter | Unsubscribe from all emails | Update your Preferences | www.learntoscale.us, Boston, MA 02119 |
Dan Newman
Your agency doesn't have a sales problem. It has a people problem. I spent 15+ years building teams, from scrappy startups, to scaling tech companies, to huge agencies like GroupM and WPP. Now, I give small agency owners the SOPs, frameworks, and hard truths they need to build high-performance cultures that run without them.
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A bi-weekly roundup of people problems, explained through short-form video November 1 - November 14 Doomscroll Some Problems TL;DR- I launched a TikTok channel. I consider myself good at time and project management but I also know that I'm a meatbag in a capitalist society. Companies with more money than God have designed supercomputers and apps pointed directly at my brain, but I've taken steps to protect myself from their siren calls. One of those steps was installing an app blocker on my...