Focus Forward: Flynn’s 2026 Priorities

Katie Flynn: the second season of The Flynn Effect, the 45th episode that Heather is going to be on. We made it. I’m officially the co-host now. You wish, man. But it is New Year, New Us. You got bangs. I got a big old baby bump that I don’t think was visible on camera before. And yeah, we’re heading into some new agency priorities, some new life being brought into the world, and a new host when I step aside for my maternity leave.

Heather Riexinger: How pumped are you? I am so excited. And I’m sure the viewers are even more excited than I am.

Katie Flynn: They’ve been screaming in the comments. Yes, yes. I don’t even think we get comments. I don’t think so either. I’m going to create a fake account and start putting stuff in there, request.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, nobody’s trolled me yet, though. So that’s kind of disappointing, actually. What would there be to troll?

Katie Flynn: I don’t know. So entertaining and accurate. Yes. Yeah. All right, well, figured today you and I could talk about just kind of kicking off the year. So yesterday– was this yesterday? Yeah. We had our 2026 kickoff meeting with the full agency staff. We’ve been doing this now probably for five years. Yeah, I think so. It used to be in December. Now we do it in January. It’s just like laying the groundwork for what are our overall objectives and how are we going to achieve them. And you and I oft discuss pop culture and relevant, timely things. But figure why not give people a glimpse into what we are focusing on as an agency, and we’ll try not to make it too long or boring. Yeah, sounds fun. OK. Now the first topic that I think is worth just noting– and it makes sense to talk about it too because you spearheaded it– is client onboarding. We’re trying to streamline that process a little bit. You want to talk about it?

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, so we are very fortunate to consistently be bringing on new clients in addition to our longtime clients. And we want to make sure that that process is seamless and that nothing is being missed along the way so that we can have great relationships from the start all the way through. So just documenting a lot of this. We joke all the time here. We’re a smaller agency, and everything’s always in someone’s head. And so a lot of the client onboarding, I oversee most of it along with you. And so I’m like, I know what I need to do. I know what boxes I need to check. But it’s never actually been on paper. So some things like that where it just is a good reminder, and there’s a lot of nice touch points in there. And just to make sure that our clients are really feeling the love as we kick off the relationship. Because a lot of times, it can feel like you give this white glove treatment as you are looking to bring on a client. And then some people go away, which is understandable, and others come on. And we want to– You’ve built a relationship with them already. You’ve built a relationship with them. And you want to make sure that that continues and gets even stronger. That they don’t feel in any way like there’s a bait and switch, which we would never, ever do.

Katie Flynn: Well, honestly, I think the need has arisen because of the fact that you and I are– we’re pretty neutral on process. You want to add process? Great. You don’t want to add process? Fine.

Heather Riexinger: Just get the work done however it makes sense for you. But the team

Katie Flynn: would like some process.

Heather Riexinger: So it’s a process you may have. My process has always been, what works for you? That’s great. And I think that that works well for certain things. And then other things, there’s still a lot of flexibility within our onboarding process. It’s really more to make sure that nothing’s missed and that as we go through, no clients are getting 45 emails with, oh, and I forgot this thing. And oh, what accounting system do you use? So it’s really a way to say, can we get all of this streamlined and send clients one or two emails, have a couple phone calls, and get all of the nitty gritty details that none of us really want to work through as we’re starting to kick off the fun work. One fell swoop.

Katie Flynn: Easier for us, easier for that.

Heather Riexinger: Nobody wants to talk about accounting when you can talk about branding.

Katie Flynn: That’s– I’m sorry to Kelly, but that is true. That is true. That is a more fun part of the job. And I think along that same vein, we also had a discussion around process, which was a really great discussion for everybody. We have evolved so much in terms of process over the years. Sometimes we’ve had more stringent processes and dedicated resource managers and dedicated traffic people. And stripped down a little bit, we decided let’s keep it more flexible. But as you grow, sometimes that does require a little bit more structure. And so that’s what we heard from everybody. We had a great open– what do you even call that? It wasn’t a workshop. It was just kind of like an open brainstorm session where some folks shared some pain points. And hopefully we can streamline those things too and make the work even better.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, I think process is always great if it leads to efficiency. And I think that that’s what– everyone’s just always been very cautious that we don’t want to add steps that add time. And most of the work that we’re doing– it’s 2026, everything’s so quick turn– that we don’t want process to get in the way of it. But we need process to support great work and make sure that there’s– you never want to send something out that hasn’t been proofread or that hasn’t been approved by the senior team or reviewed. So just having those checks in place and making sure that nothing gets missed as we’re all moving so quickly.

Katie Flynn: Especially while everything lives on our computers. It sounds silly, but nine years ago, yes, we were on our computers all day. But also we had physical job jackets with the latest version clipped onto the front that would get walked to my desk with the changes that I would go to the copywriter. It is wild to me how much things have evolved, even in my tenure here, which is only nine years. But it’s a very different way of functioning.

Heather Riexinger: Oh, yeah. I mean, I used to red pen everything. I still do for certain people. It makes me feel like a salad dick. Because I feel comfort. I feel comfort in marking it up with a red pen. But yeah, it used to be print it out, write on it, bring it. And now with everything being digital, I think some of those check boxes and things that used to seem so silly with having a paper that had everyone sign off on it, you don’t have those signatures and things now. So it’s easy to miss a step here or there. And that’s what we want to make sure we’re not doing.

Katie Flynn: Agreed. Yeah. And it’s just less obvious in a team’s chat or something like that. So I’m totally with you. Well, yeah. So we’ll be working on that. And then one thing we did from an actual workshop perspective is we came up with a bunch of use cases for creating custom GPTs or agents that could be shared across the agency. And I’m really excited about that. One, it’s just fun to do those types of workshops. I don’t know why it feels like you’re doing some special activity just because you’re putting post-its on a paper with your team. But we came up with a bunch of different use cases. Some are department specific. Some are things that just better utilizing our AI tools will help us with. But there was a large stack. Michelle was thumbing through them for me. And I was like, wow, OK, there’s a lot here that we can do to make our lives easier.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, and I think that that’s– we said we weren’t going to talk about AI in 26. But I’m sure every podcast, we will talk about AI. Yeah, this is the first episode. Yeah, we’re already deep into it. But the nice thing is we’re really diving into how can we have it take away what we all dislike doing. So all those mundane tasks, we’ve been using it forever almost for the fun tasks. Using mid-journey and generative. And now I’m like, how can it build a to-do list for me that I don’t have to manually write? And can it pull– go through my emails and tell me what’s most urgent? And things like that that really make our lives easier and don’t take away the fun stuff.

Katie Flynn: Well, and I think Heather, you just made a really good point. Because of the industry that we work in, when AI first hit the scene, we were all like, oh, we have to use it for creative, creative, creative, instead of admin, make my life easier stuff. So I almost feel like we’re doing well on the creative side and a little behind on the other part. We have to remember to use it for administrative tasks because you totally can. So I’m really excited about that too. Again, it’s kind of like– so far, the big theme is structure. We’re just trying to put some good guardrails in place to make people’s lives easier, which I don’t think you can go wrong. Well, I said a mouthful there, but you know what I mean.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, and I think one of the things that we were joking about is even just we can use AI to take notes, but then all of the AEs organize their notes differently. So some of this is just when we talk about process. It’s like, do you put the action items at the top of the document or at the very end of the document? And we all have different opinions on it.

Katie Flynn: I put them in the body of the email because it makes me feel like people actually see them.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, see, there you go. So it’s just everything is– can we just streamline some of these to save those couple of seconds even when a team member’s looking back at notes? Where are the action items? And you know– Oh, is it– So some of it’s just silly things that will save us time.

Katie Flynn: Yeah, this is going to probably sound like a strange comparison that I’m drawing. Have you ever heard of people who are like– who give them– well, OK, I’m going to– I guess like the Theranos lady. But people who wear the same thing every day or like a uniform. I’m always going to wear a jeans and a solid color t-shirt and a cardigan because then it just takes that cognitive burden away from having to make those choices. I kind of feel like it like that. Let’s just simplify the decision tree that you have to do every single day so that we can focus on the fun stuff. Exactly. Yeah. All right, what other topics? I feel like– oh, one fun thing that we’re doing is bringing the brand to life in our space. Oh, yes. So we probably didn’t share that we went from one space that we had been in for 20 some odd years to one floor up in the same building. But it’s a great space. We moved there in November. And right now, it’s just a great blank slate. Lots of white walls, lots of windows, which is fantastic. So we don’t have so much stuff to decorate, but it needs our personality desperately. And so I started working with the designers on that. We did like a full walkthrough of the office, have thrown out a bunch of ideals already. And I am consistently– surprise isn’t the right word, but excited every time I sit down with them to review, because these ideas come up that I just would never have thought of. And they’re already mocked up. And they’re already in Photoshop. And you can see what the wall is going to look like. I don’t have to imagine. And so that’s going to be fun, I think, to bring that to life.

Heather Riexinger: I think it’ll energize the space and it feel homey. We’re here for eight plus hours a day. Let’s make the space fun.

Katie Flynn: Yeah, because so across from my office is there’s a couple white walls. There’s windows. But listen, we live in Rochester, New York. It’s gray out there most of the time. So it would be nice to look at something 40 hours a week that’s like– Not snow. Less sad than that. A nice wallpaper, a fun color, something like that. So I think it’ll bring a little joy. Yeah, for sure.

Heather Riexinger: I agree. And it also adds a little fun to meetings and things like that. When everyone’s sitting in a conference room and the walls behind us are white, when you add some color and you add a little flair, it helps bring that out there. Now I’m showing my age.

Katie Flynn: What’s that movie with Ryan Reynolds? Waiting? Waiting.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, it’s such a good movie if no one’s watched it. It is a good movie. Solid.

Katie Flynn: Totally offensive, but solid. Yes. And then at the same time, while we’re doing other brand stuff, we are going to reimagine the website, which as any person who’s ever worked at an agency knows or worked on an agency website knows, Cobber’s kids have their shoes. It takes forever. It’s just such a thing. So we’re really trying to do it before I go out on maternity leave.

Heather Riexinger: And we’re going to do it. We would be so annoyed with a client if– Oh, if they acted how we’re acting. If they acted how we’re acting about the website. 100%.

Katie Flynn: It’s like 15 hands in it. I’ll get to it. I said I was going to do the copy in December. It’s January 15. Yeah. But it’s fine. It’s fine. It’ll get done. They happen in their own time. But that’s another one. We just want to make sure everything’s consistent there. Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything major. But it was nice to get everybody on the same page and having an understanding of what’s going to go down in these next few months.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve got a lot on the client side. There’s a lot of really, really interesting things going on with our clients from expansions to introducing new products. So it’s going to be a really, really fun year.

Katie Flynn: I think so too. I will be gone for April, May, and June. I know I will be so, so missed. I’m sure you’ll be here all the time. I are a massive online community. Probably. I got pretty bored last time.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, we’ll see you coming in with the stroller.

Katie Flynn: I just wanted to check it out. What’s going on, everybody? Now, because we always touch on pop culture, just like, real quick, I’ve got a good list going. There’s a lot of new content, like TV and movies and such, coming out in January. Anything that you are looking forward to.

Heather Riexinger: Right now, I mean, TV and movies, no. But all of the NFL coaching moves have been– I don’t know. It’s like drama. It’s almost like a reality TV show for men. Where is this man going to go next? And who does he fight with? And what’s going to happen? So as a Steelers fan, Tomlin’s gone. And so there’s a lot of really interesting moves happening. So that has been my reality TV drama. As of late is just–

Katie Flynn: I’m watching Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Heather Riexinger: And I’m watching– And I felt coaching someone. I love that. I feel like, where are they going to go? But I did just watch All Her Fault. Which was I loved.

Katie Flynn: Everybody loved it. Why didn’t I love it? I don’t know why. And I thought maybe it’s because I’m a newer mom. And then I was like, no, it didn’t land for me. Whatever, not everything’s for everyone. But I had a couple of girlfriends who were obsessed with it.

Heather Riexinger: Thought it was so good. I thought it was great. Also, His and Hers, which embarrassingly came out last week. And I’ve already watched all of it. What network is it on? It is on Netflix. So it’s also a book. So a lot of the books turning into shows or movies have been great.

Katie Flynn: I did watch People You Need On Vacation over the weekend, which I had read. So that was a fun one. And saw The Housemaid over the break. Yes, I saw The Housemaid, too.

Heather Riexinger: I also thought that was fun. I thought that was fun. I thought the– I thought it actually did the book justice. I did, too. Changed it a little bit. And obviously, I can’t go into as many details. But I thought the movie was very good.

Katie Flynn: Wait, we’re talking about The Housemaid, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought so, too. And I thought Amanda Seyfried did a great job. Like, she was so crazy. Yeah. But in a good way. Well, I will say the one thing that I’m liking in new content is the Pittsburgh.

Heather Riexinger: Yes. I haven’t watched any of season two. Oh, I thought we were going to say season one. I watched some of season one. But I actually didn’t watch all of season one. I know.

Katie Flynn: Then you didn’t finish the shift? No. Well, you must. OK, well, I’ll go back and watch it, then. It’s so good. Yeah. You’re not a big medical show person? Not a big medical show person. It’s ironic, because you’ve done a lot of work in medical advice and health care here.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, I feel like, though, a show like The Pit gets depressing, because it’s like what’s really going on in our medical system.

Katie Flynn: Sure. However, it’s less depressing than like A Grey’s Anatomy was. I actually can’t go back and watch that, because it is just pure depression. Well, that was every episode. Great days raining in Seattle with the theme song. Yeah. Immediate mood dropper for me. Well, in every episode, dead. They’re all– yes. But in The Pit, they tend to live a little more.

Heather Riexinger: Yes, they do. You think they’re going to die, and then they don’t. So it’s great. Anyways. But yeah, a lot of good stuff, though. A lot of– I’m in that stage of life where there’s a lot of good kids movies coming out.

Katie Flynn: Ah, yeah. Utopia 2 came out.

Heather Riexinger: Utopia 2, spectacular. I think it’s as good, if not better, than the first. So check it out.

Katie Flynn: OK. All right, I’ll add it to my list. We’re going on vacation next week, so maybe I’ll let Grace and watch it in 20-minute increments.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, it has a good message.

Katie Flynn: OK, I love it. Well, yeah, so people will be seeing a lot more of you this year. I know you’re already planning out your bits and your content.

Heather Riexinger: Oh, yeah, everyone’s very excited. Yes. I’m going to– You’re totally. No, internally, externally. It’s going to be great. So I apologize to all the clients when I’m not around next year because I get a big deal. Oh, my god.

Katie Flynn: Well, I certainly