Zero to Global: How Amanda Lucey Built the Southeast's Fastest-Growing Female Agency

"If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Business is organic, and evolution is the only way forward."
-Amanda Lucey

In this episode, learn how Amanda has landed big-name clients like Coca-Cola, Ferrari, and Intercontinental Hotels by fostering a culture of innovation, curiosity, and strategic adaptability. Amanda Lucey is the owner of Atlanta’s oldest privately held marketing agency and one of the fastest-growing female agency leaders in the Southeast. She unpacks her unique approach to scaling businesses, retaining high-value clients, and using challenges as opportunities for growth.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, leader, or marketing professional, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways on thriving in dynamic times.

Key Points + Chapter Markers:

00:00 – Introduction (The Only Constant is Change)

04:03 – Building a Purpose-Driven Agency

08:16 – Aligning Leadership with Vision

12:29 – Client Acquisition and Retention Mastery

17:21 – Innovation as a Retention Strategy

24:02 – Lessons in Leadership and Crisis Management

30:53 – Introducing ‘Upheaval’

Connect with Amanda:

Book “Upheaval” - Amazon
Website -  https://amandalucey.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandalucey/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/amanda.r.lucey/

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About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction (The Only Constant is Change)
• 4:03 Building a Purpose-Driven Agency
• 8:16 Aligning Leadership with Vision
• 12:29 Client Acquisition and Retention Mastery
• 17:21 Innovation as a Retention Strategy
• 24:02 Lessons in Leadership and Crisis Management
• 30:53 Introducing ‘Upheaval’

Transcript

00:00

I often tell my team is the only constant is constant change. Business is living and organic and growing, then it's constantly changing and evolving. And so making sure people are comfortable with the idea of it's constantly changing, which means that, you know, if you're reporting to this person today, you might not be tomorrow, because if we're evolving as an organization and we're growing, then that means we're probably changing. And change is uncomfortable, as we know, for a lot of people, but it is the only constant in life.

00:28

We are constantly changing and growing. And so business is organic and they're evolving. And we have to make sure that we are thinking about things every day in a new way, because what got us here won't get us there. Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Let's get winning. Welcome back to The Takeover. If you're looking for strategies on how to grow fast, get

00:56

big budget clients and outlast your competition. You're going to love today's guest because she owns the oldest privately held company in Atlanta. Not only that, she's one of the fastest growing female agency owners in Atlanta and her clients range the gamut and have big names like Coca-Cola, Intercontinental Hotels, and Ferrari. So the reason why I'm excited to bring her is because we've talked before the show and I think you're gonna get a lot of valuable, actionable takeaways from today's.

01:26

episode. So welcome to the show, Amanda Lucy. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, first off, tell me just a little bit about that story. It's so intriguing. The oldest privately held company in Atlanta, a marketing company, Atlanta. Give us a story behind that. So I started my own business a little over 13 years ago, and we continue to scale and escalate our growth. And that became a lot of fun building teams and growing a business. And so in an effort to continue to grow, we actually acquired the partnership.

01:53

And it's been almost seven years now. And I actually knew the founder, David Arnold. When I was client side, the partnership was one of my agency partners. And so we were at lunch for one day. We started having a conversation. He said he was going to sell his business and I said, I'd like to buy it. And here we are. It's been a really fun ride and buying a business larger than your own company. There's a lot of learnings there. So it was an interesting adventure.

02:16

But we have grown and we've moved offices and we've expanded to other states and it's been a really fun journey. I know, because when I was talking to you yesterday, you were in Florida, now you're at your office in Atlanta. How many locations are you at? So we have two office locations. We have one in Atlanta and one in Naples, Florida. And then we have staff all over the East Coast. We have employees in Pennsylvania and Ohio and other states as well. That's all. Well, let me ask you this, because actually we had a guest on a while ago and she said...

02:43

Normal businesses, about 40% of businesses are owned by females. And I think, don't quote me on the stats, but I think it's something like 3% of agencies are owned by females. So I always love meeting somebody that is willing to completely go against what everybody else is doing. What made you want to get into and everybody listening, we're going to dive into the nitty gritty of how she's growing and scaling, but I'm really interested. What made you want to get into the agency world?

03:11

So it's fun because I actually have done a lot of different things. I've worked for the British embassy. I've worked for national government politics. I've worked for nonprofits. I've done a lot of things in my career, but I never worked in an agency. And I worked with a lot of agencies when I was client-side. And one of the challenges I felt with some agency partners was that, you know, it felt more like billable hours. It felt as if they were always trying to upsell. And perhaps sometimes even

03:36

constantly telling me what they thought that we needed. And whenever the board or the CEO would be telling me, no, this is what we should really have. And so I love the idea of a consultancy approach and really having an agency that was more of an anti-agency. So when I first started my company, we were more of a consultancy. And I didn't really aspire to be an agency owner at that time. I wanted to bring creative and communication solutions for business challenges. That was the goal.

04:03

And over time, obviously we've evolved to a really large agency in the southeast and continue to grow. But it's the idea that we can collaborate and come up with solutions to business challenges that really gets me excited. And I think that today you find a lot of agencies doing that, but 15, 20 years ago it was very different. And the Mad Men days of advertising are very old and antiquated and things have shifted. And so our consultancy approach, our name is...

04:33

just not what we put on our business cards. The partnership is truly how we operate. We work along with our partners and collaborate our kickoff meetings with our partners. We call our clients partners. For example, they're discovery sessions. We dive in and really identify what the business challenges are and how we can come up with creative and communication solutions for them. So it's a lot of fun, but that wasn't my original intent was to become an agency owner. It's happened over time. It's been an evolution.

05:02

how agencies were run the way you didn't like the way that it was run. And he thought, Hey, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And I, by the way, with the madman, I don't know how the heck they were drinking all day, because I mean, like it'll be Saturday and if, and if I, it's a brunch and I do a drink during lunchtime, I'm like taking a nap. So I don't know how those guys did all the cigarettes and all the whiskey. So I'm glad that you're not doing that. What, what I am curious about because

05:28

When you build a company, there's a lot of dynamics. There's getting the clients, there's fulfilling on the clients, there's building the team around it. I know you're writing a book that also touches a lot on crisis management. So, you know, growth brings kind of micro-crisises. I'm really curious, you having not only the experience growing a bigger agency, but also having an expertise in crisis management and all these different components. What is your mindset around?

05:57

growth. So you're looking, you're setting your one, three, five year goals for growth. How do you think about prioritizing, scaling a team? Like what are all the different dynamics to go through your head when you're letting those plans out? I appreciate you said mindset, because I think growth is all about mindset and having the right mindset and making sure that the leaders you have in place are also empowered to have the right mindset because it's important. We chat and joke a lot in our organization about either you're green and growing or you're ripe and rotting.

06:26

And it's true, you're either moving forward and growing, or you're not. In business, you have to constantly be growing. And there's some intention that's required around that. And so having a team that has the right mindset and is focused on what your strategy is, but also understanding when you need to pivot that strategy. We all learned that during COVID, how important it is to pivot. And it's absolutely critical. It's a big part of the book as well. And thinking about issues in crisis management, the ability to pivot, and having pathways to pivot and pre-pivot.

06:56

ways to ensure that you can pivot effectively as well. I'm doing this research on what were the most successful army leaders of human history. One of the common themes between all of the most successful armies in human history was speed and the ability to pivot, essentially the ability to adapt to new situations. It's interesting you say that because it's a similar theme to anybody that is, whether an army or a business is able to grow fast, is that ability to work

07:26

and make changes with speed, but also have adaptability. So you're saying really getting your leadership, not just yourself, but your leadership, making sure they're in the right mindset so that the organization is able to pivot and to move fast. That's right. And making sure that everyone understands what the score is. What are we doing and why? The why is so important. If people can really get behind a mission and a vision of organization and what the strategy is, if they know why and where we're going.

07:51

So we have quarterly staff meetings and everyone in our organization understands not just what our values are of our organization, but also what is our strategy, where are we headed, what kinds of work are we wanting to do, and what kinds of partners do we want to have in our portfolio, and just making sure that there's transparency there so everyone understands the why, they have the right mindset, and then they can really help us march forward towards our goals. And how do you get the leadership team bought into the vision?

08:16

Right. Because as leaders like John Maxwell talks about, we're able to see things that maybe the team doesn't see yet. And our job is to kind of get people bought into the vision and moving the vision. How do you when you're setting new vision, you're moving the vision. How do you get the leadership team and then the whole company on board with where you want to go? It's interesting as an entrepreneur, I think that's one of the most important things and also one of the hardest things to accomplish. And over the years, I've certainly failed at that at times where I didn't really take the time to pause.

08:44

and communicate the vision or communicate where we're headed and why. And we now do that in the interview process. When we're vetting candidates, we're looking for new hires, talking about where we're going in an organization, why, what kinds of work we're doing, the types of values we have as an organization and what we're looking to accomplish. We start that in the interview process because if your values don't align with the people you're bringing on your team, especially in a leadership role, it's just not going to be successful. So that's something that we're doing.

09:11

even when we're vetting candidates and when we're interviewing people to come and join our team. So step one, make sure that there's clear culture and that the people you're hiring, especially the leaders, are aligned with that culture. And then now when you're setting out and casting vision, that vision is always aligned with what the culture already is or the values already are. Yeah, that's right. And I think it starts with communicating the values. You can't over communicate your values. So we talk about in our organization, our values being purpose,

09:40

We do a lot of purpose driven work. We do a lot of work in healthcare. We're doing a lot of work in economic development space. We do a lot of work with nonprofits. That's something that having purpose in our work is really important to us. We talk a lot about passion. We don't hire anybody who's not passionate. We're in this business because we love what we do and it's important. And then partnership, we've talked a little bit about how we operate and how we work, but we talk about that in the interview process. We communicate that throughout onboarding and also when our team is here. And we just added a fourth P, progress that we always want to have for-

10:10

and progress. So we've created an AI committee in our business to make sure that we're integrating AI into what we're doing, that we're evolving. You talk about pivoting, you know, technology is constantly making us think about what's next and how we continue to integrate and come up with more efficient ways to work and utilize new technologies into our processes as well. And the funny thing is, is the fourth value you created there was the value in and of itself, you know, because you're progressing yourself.

10:37

No, it's interesting. One of our really important values is that is innovate to dominate. So it is constantly. I love what you were saying before, essentially, if you're not growing, you're dying. If you look at anything and, you know, got grasses either growing or dying, leaves are either growing or like all of, there's nothing that stays buoyant. Everything is moving one way or another. And so I love that you're, because there's so much happening right now with AI, with the trends that is incredible there. I mean, for our company, we do.

11:06

really high scale lead generation appointment setting. And there's a lot, obviously a lot shifting in the marketing space just all around. And if you stay in front of that, it really gives you a leverage and it gives you a big opportunities. But if you kind of, I don't know if it's gonna pan out, AI is gonna change everything and you either change with it and you reap the benefits or you will get left behind as it were. So I love that you're doing that. I'd love to shift into a little bit more of sales and marketing.

11:35

Let's talk about where do you go when you go out and you're getting clients or you mostly developing it from getting referrals from your current clients, growing current accounts? Do you have strategies that you've used to go out and get new accounts or how do you think around sales and marketing and really growing your revenues? So when you first become an entrepreneur, a lot of it becomes word of mouth and you kind of utilize that network you have, but obviously that's not sustainable growth long term. And so we were...

12:03

We were fortunate that we have been very successful in the campaigns and the work that we've done. And we've had a lot of referrals. And that obviously is very helpful. But sometimes you have to ask for referrals. And so working with our account managers, working with our team to ask, you know, are you happy with the work we've done? And people are saying, yes, can you give us a testimonial? Can you send us a referral? And you'd be surprised by just asking how many people will refer you and share their success.

12:29

and our success together with others so that we can make sure we're telling that story. It's kind of that old adage that Cobbler's children doesn't have shoes, you know, it's tough to market yourself sometimes when you're a small business and take the time to build those case studies, to tell your story and to really promote the work that you're doing. But we have done a better job the past two years of building a team that celebrates the successes and when our partners are winning, we're winning. And so telling those stories collaboratively, making sure that we're

12:58

stopping to build the case studies in real time. Two years ago, we started having a more thoughtful strategic approach of building a team that was going to focus on sharing our partner success stories, which are of course our success stories. And we have a strategy to make sure that we are building on case studies, that we're working on our lead gen, that we're having weekly pipeline meetings, and we're having more conversations on how we're going to promote our partner success, which is of course our success, so that we can generate

13:27

a healthier pipeline that has been very successful, but that's not something that happens overnight. Having a thoughtful sales strategy and making sure that you're taking a moment to celebrate your wins and sharing those stories takes time and it takes some thought as well. When you say sharing wins, because I mean, the accounts you're getting, you're not doing small projects. Like these are bigger projects. I mean, what's your normal sales cycle when you're bringing on a new client?

13:50

It really varies. It's tough to say normal, but we've had partners where we started the sales cycle and it took six months. It's taken a year sometimes. So sometimes it can be a really long process. Yeah. And I think that's what's really important. If you are selling mid-market, if you are selling enterprises, you've got to find the wins along the journey, right? You have to know what are the wins of, hey, we've got this many people in this stage of the pipeline, because just creating the wins when you bring a client on...

14:18

And when you have this longer sell cycle can be a little bit like not feel like you're progressing. So when you say celebrating the wins, when you're walking through, when you're thinking about growing the company and bringing people into your pipeline and expanding your partners, what are some of those wins for you that you look at?

14:34

Well, obviously, the first thing, and especially with creatives, they love winning awards. So it's always helpful to win awards. But I would say that the wins are when our partner has seen return on investment, when they've had growth, whether it's revenue growth, or they're trying to potentially get people to sign up for something, whatever the call to action is, and they've actually seen success, that's celebrating a win. Where we've had KPIs in place, and we've had some goals in place, and we've achieved those, that's a win. We oftentimes...

15:01

just move from one thing to a next, especially as a small business, and there's no shortage of work. So we're constantly moving to the next project and the next initiative. But I think it's important internally for our culture, for us to celebrate the wins, but it's also important to celebrate those wins with your clients, with your partners, and taking a moment to show the success and the work we've done together. I've worked in a lot of businesses where there is a investor component where you're obviously needing to kind of talk about what the ROI is. And sometimes,

15:31

don't always do that. And so I think it's important for us to approach this from a business perspective that we're looking at the ROI and we're actually trying to make sure we can really evaluate what that is. And now we have so many tools to measure that it really helps us tell a better story of how we're adding impact to their business. Yeah, which leads into the next question I have is about retention. When you think about fulfillment and retention, it sounds to me like you're very, very data driven where there has to be numbers, there has to be

15:59

goal KPI outcomes. When you think about fulfillment and retention, what are those key components maybe on the deliverability side and on the client experience side? What have you used to really retain and upsell clients over? I mean, they have the oldest privately held marketing agency in Atlanta, so you've probably figured out how to really retain and keep clients long-term. What does that look like? Not only have we kept them long-term, but sometimes things are projects and people come back.

16:29

It's really wonderful. We just recently announced that we are the AOR for the state roll and toll authority in the state of Georgia on Peach Pass. Well, we were the original agency that created the logo and did all the branding for Peach Pass. And now all these years later, decades later, they're coming back to us and we're now their AOR. So when you build meaningful relationships and you solve business challenges and you're a true partner, people return. It's so important.

16:56

people are always focused on the front door. They're focused on new business, new business, and how do we get new leads and how do we get new clients and new people in the front door. But it's equally important to focus on the back door. Who's leaving? Why are they leaving? Are they going to come back through the front door again? And that's a really important part of organic growth. It's not just about new business. It's about making sure that we're growing the business that we have and ideating.

17:21

A big part of our job as marketers is to make sure we're ideating and we're bringing new ideas and sometimes ideas they didn't ask for. But if you understand your partner's business, then you're really thinking about it all the time and you're ideating and bringing them new ideas and helping them make their job easier. Our job is to make our partner's jobs easier. And if we're doing that effectively, they're going to want to keep working with us.

17:45

So it's fun when you're actually thinking about all the businesses that you work with and their business challenges and how you can help them make their life better. And I think that's just a fun job to be in. It's like if you're making their job easier, you're bringing new ideas. I know for our companies, we don't just bring ideas about our area, but if we see other areas that we have ideas on, we'll share that with them. Now you have somebody that is like, okay, you're making my job easier.

18:12

You're bringing new ideas, you're pointing out things maybe I wouldn't have noticed before. Those are some of the key components for retention, you're saying. Hey there, make sure that you are staying on top of your game by following the show. Hit that subscribe button for the Takeover with Tim and Cindy wherever you are listening. Let's get winning together.

18:35

I think that's important. It's interesting thinking about making our jobs easier. A few years ago, you mentioned that we're really data-driven and we are. A few years ago, we were thinking about how much time we're investing in pulling analytics and pulling reports and looking at the Google analytics, looking at SEO, looking at SEM, looking at everything we're doing from a paid organic earned all of it, right? And we were spending a lot of time in a lot of dashboards and aggregating all of this and putting together PowerPoints. So we said, if we're going to spend all this time, why don't we develop a product?

19:02

And we did, and it's called partnership 360. And this dashboard brings in hundreds of API integrations to show you all of your data in one dashboard. And it's customizable so that brands can log in and they can see where they stand at any given moment during a campaign. And so it's thinking sometimes about how we can work smarter and not harder and do it on behalf of our partners. And so absolutely, I think that's a key component to retention is...

19:29

We talk about always on marketing, always be thinking about your partners and how you can support and help them and ask them questions. Be curious about their business because then you can be better informed on how you can actually help them and bring solutions. That's powerful. It makes me think of the concept behind Netflix, how they charge a subscription. They currently have enough video content in their database, I think, to watch shows for the next 50 years.

19:56

So why is it that they're constantly putting out new stuff? It's because when people are paying a retainer, when they're paying an ongoing fee, they want to see new value. And it sounds like you're creating just a constant, when they think of the partnership and Amanda's team, it seems like there is constant new value. And as your company's innovating, we actually are launching a new software that solves the similar problems for our clients. It's like.

20:22

As the client, they're paying you every month. They're not just seeing the old things they paid for, but they're also seeing, oh, Amanda and her team, they're updating, they're moving, they're innovating, they're bringing new ideas constantly. And I think that's really powerful. It's the same reason why, like I was saying, the platform Netflix, they gotta constantly keep putting stuff out. Even though they have, for 10 bucks a month or whatever, you have 50 years worth of content. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of value there, because originally you said,

20:51

I didn't like these agencies that kept just being about the upsell, the upsell, how can I get more money out of you? So you've done things differently, but you're also one of the fastest growing agencies in Atlanta. How do you think about upselling that client? When does that conversation happen? Do they just love you so much that they go, here's more money, or is there a conversation? How do you strategically grow an account over however many years? So one of the key components to our culture is staying curious.

21:20

And you've heard the tagline, stay thirsty, my friends. Well, stay curious, my friends. Stay curious. So this culture of curiosity and being curious and asking questions, it has to continue. From the very beginning, when you first start talking to a new lead, you ask lots of questions about their business. Why are they interested in talking to a marketing and PR agency? What are their pain points? You're asking lots of questions. The questions can't stop. To constantly be asking questions throughout the entire relationship.

21:48

Because that's what gives you the insights to come up with ideation, come up with new ideas, come up with opportunities for organic growth. And sell, you have to sell an idea, don't you? You have to sell a solution. You have to sell a product. You have to sell something. And in our situation, we do have a product that we're selling, but we also are selling our services. And so we can't sell services unless we have at the very, very foundation, a core relationship and we're staying curious about the business.

22:16

and how their business is evolving. What is their strategy? What are their goals? What are their pain points? And oftentimes we do that in the very beginning of a relationship. It's like dating, isn't it? You ask people all these questions about themselves. Do you stay curious about the people that you're interested in in your life, right? If you stay curious and you keep asking questions, it never gets boring. It's always interesting. You're always learning something new. So we really try to instill a culture of curiosity with our team and that...

22:45

extends to the relationships and the partners we have and then to the business that we have so that we're constantly growing. Yeah. It's curiosity being like, hey, what if we were to do this? You're creating new ideas, new avenues. I like that a lot. When you think of, you know, we've talked about a lot of the good things. What would you say has been some of, when we look at your growth, what has been some of the biggest challenges that you've had growing the company? What are you thinking about? Do we have enough time? I mean.

23:13

You know, like we could probably get off camera and talk about this. I'd grab Cindy and we'd have a conversation for the rest of the day. But what are some of those main challenges that you face that if Amanda, you could look back at your old self and say, Hey, I would have done this differently or I would have made this little tweak. What are some of those like key things that come to your mind? It's all about the people. The people are the foundation of the work.

23:35

And, you know, we're all human beings, so none of us are perfect. And I think that oftentimes we get really busy being busy. And so the people making sure that you have the right people, that they have the right resources, that they have the right onboarding and the training and all those things are so critical. You know, we've made so many mistakes like most entrepreneurs over the years and learned a ton and you learn by doing. And so I think having grace and continuing to give and understanding that there has to be a component of grace and then what we do.

24:02

And just being authentic and when you are making mistakes and you have made errors, being honest about that. We were so afraid to be vulnerable, especially leaders as business owners. And I think the authenticity is what people are craving now more than ever. So I've made lots of mistakes. I think that when you acquire a company, there are lots of key learnings. I mean, that could be a whole podcast in itself, but integrating and emerging teams, making sure you have the right structure.

24:30

I think oftentimes we think what worked a year ago is going to work today, or is going to work in six months. And if we're green and growing, that's just not the case. So we have to constantly be evaluating our processes, our staffing structure. Do we have the right people in the right positions? And I often tell my team is the only constant is constant change. Yes. Business is living and organic and growing, then it's constantly changing and evolving. And so making sure people are comfortable with the idea of it's constantly changing.

24:59

which means that, you know, if you're reporting to this person today, you might not be tomorrow because if we're evolving as an organization and we're growing, then that means we're probably changing and changes uncomfortable. As we know for a lot of people, but it is the only constant in life. We are constantly changing and growing. And so, uh, business is organic and they're evolving and we have to make sure that we are thinking about things every day in a new way, because, uh, what got us here won't get us there.

25:28

It's so funny because we're going through one of those times where we're looking at, well, everything that we spend, you got to be willing to take things that you've spent lots of time, money and energy to build that worked for you last year and let go of that emotional connection you have with those things and say, hey, this is no longer serving us. We've got to rebuild it, restructure it. But again, it's the most successful armies of human history and the most successful companies there are in the world.

25:58

have speed and adaptability. And I think that's one constant thing I keep hearing from you, Amanda, is the ability for you to be adaptable, for you to be creative, for you to think strategically, for you to bring fresh ideas to your company, to bring fresh vision to the team, to bring fresh ideas to the clients. I mean, if you hear this over and over again, everybody listening, I think that's one thing that sticks out to me a lot, is your ability to create a company and a culture that...

26:26

does that, that is able to do that and is able to pivot and is able to adjust and use the word being curious, being curious about the client. And I think that is the one thing that will, if you know that the only thing for certain is uncertainty, right, is the thing's going to change. If you, it sounds like you built a whole company culture and model around just that reality. And as entrepreneurs, really great at being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

26:55

right? Entrepreneurs are the ultimate risk takers, but our team might not be. And so we can't expect they're going to be comfortable with constant change. It makes people uncomfortable at times. And so I talk a little bit about how can you tell stories? We're storytellers, right? That we're in the business of storytelling. How can we tell stories to connect with our team to make them understand what that's like? And so I often tell stories about my daughter, she's almost eight at this point. And I remember early on when she was

27:25

Okay. Just when I thought I had it figured out, now she's in a new phase, right? Now she's eating a food that she didn't eat before. Now she's crawling and now she's walking and now she's changing. And then her teeth are falling out. Now this is happening. Kids are constantly growing and evolving and changing, aren't they? And we're trying to keep up. And so a lot of people can relate to that. They have a niece, a nephew, a sibling, their parent themselves. I've been on a weight loss journey and I've lost over a hundred pounds in six years. And I often tell that story and that journey and how it's...

27:51

a constant evolution and anyone who's ever been on any kind of journey like that can relate. So anytime as leaders, we can tell stories and connect with our teams because they can't identify and understand what it's like to be an entrepreneur. There's a reason that there's very few people who do that, right? And start business and grow businesses. It's a very small percentage of the population. So one of the key learnings and probably one of the mistakes I made early on.

28:18

You talked about things that, you know, I should have done differently. It's assuming people understood me right in my mindset and the way I do things. And you can't assume that people get it because they don't. Right. And that's the beauty of it is that it takes all different personality types and all different types of people to make this work. Something else that we do that I think makes us different for, especially for our size is that anyone who comes onto our team, we do personality assessments. So.

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We're using a disk assessment, but we're looking at a couple of different assessments to potentially integrate into our onboarding. And then we talk about it at staff meetings and how we're all very different and our work styles are different and embracing that again to make sure that we're kind of coming together as a team and understanding our differences actually make us stronger. It's so true. And I think about because we used to have a nice size office in Miami. Then when COVID hit, we went remote. We stayed remote.

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We have, we're very KPI driven, very organized, very, everybody knows what's their task, what's the outcome, what's the KPI metrics, successful or unsuccessful, they get bonuses as successful. And what we found is creating that kind of autonomy really attracts the right kind of talent. And really being able to create like that kind of environment where you understand, you know, some people work.

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they're more productive when they're doing their flow work in the morning. Some are more productive in the afternoon and understanding those different personalities and creating a culture where you can make sure that people are focusing on their best talents and focusing like on their, even like for us, we're really big on when's their best biology, when is their best energy for the day and giving them the flexibility to choose that allows you to attract a diverse pool of personalities.

30:04

that can come together unified, which creates a really, really, really unique strategies and ideas, especially if you stay curious. Whereas like you're saying early on, I was like, why can't everybody see the way things that I see things? And I would try to hire people the way that I saw things. And we would have the same problems over and over again, because we didn't have those different perspectives. And I think that's just so powerful.

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Do you talk about this at all in your book? What are some of the main things you talk about in your book? Because I really want to make sure you get a plug in for that, because I think people are going to really love to hear more from you. Thank you. So the book, I co-authored the book with the CEO of Naples Comprehensive Health, which is a hospital health care system in southwest Florida, Naples, Florida. And the book is a case study. It speaks to.

30:53

upheaval that we endured at that brand, but also everything we went through during COVID. So it starts with the journey of five years ago when we first started working with this partner and they were having an upheaval and really a crisis situation with their administration, which really was a lot of turmoil in the community. And it is a very specific book and case study to healthcare and how healthcare has changed forever coming out of COVID.

31:18

But there are lots of great nuggets of information on how to rebrand during challenging times. The do's and don'ts of rebranding, issues in crisis management, words to use, words to lose, toolkits on communications, best practices. And so we're the storytellers. There's dozens of stories in this book which are very inspiring and the frontline workers who were the heroes during this pandemic.

31:42

which truly really a testament to their amazing courage and everything they went through. But Paul Hilts, who is the co-author and the CEO of NCH, he speaks to how to build teams, the leadership, how we rebuilt their C-suite during COVID. So not only are we facing this uncertainty with this pandemic, but rebuilding an entire leadership team in a C-suite at a huge healthcare system while we were also rebranding. And how do you do that? So-

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that the book's about and there's lots of great leadership lessons and there's lots of great communications and brand strategy lessons. And it's called Upheaval. It's on order on pre-sale for Amazon, but also you can just go to amandalucie.com for more information. Awesome. And I think why people should read this too is because it's like, I think COVID was a wake up that, oh, we're kind of in times that can shift really fast. But you know, we're going to see AI shift things like that. And then we're going to see that...

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The tools that we don't know exist that AI is going to help us build that completely change the game again. My mind is the sales and marketing guys. When you start having AI that's running Zoom calls and you don't know if it's an AI bot you're talking to on Zoom. There's a lot of, and all the things we're not thinking of, that is where we're going to be talking about branding, crisis management, how do you change your leadership structure. I think there is, if you're dealing with some leadership shifts, if you're dealing with any kind of crisis in your business.

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definitely get the book, but I also think it's going to be a good book for you to read. If you're like just right now, because what is it they say? An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of prescription, right? So if you are dealing with something now, check out the book. And if you're not dealing with something right now, Amanda, you and I both know you're going to deal with something at one point or another. It's just a matter of time. So get that book, Amanda. This has been really, really awesome to have you on the show. And yeah, it's great to have you.

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One last question. Is there a way that people can best connect with you? Is there like LinkedIn? Are you on Instagram? Where's your best social media? So I'm on LinkedIn. AmandaLucy.com is my website and you can connect with me there too. And I look forward to hearing from some of your listeners and thank you so much for your time today. This has been fun. Thank you. Yeah, it's been awesome, Amanda. Talk to you soon.