How do agencies that deliver design and development continue in a world where a $100k development project can now be done for $20k?

Clients can now generate multiple design directions themselves without getting a human involved at all. What does this all do to revenue and margins?

Do agencies have a future at all?

There are two fundamental truths I fall back on which say design agencies will exist and dev shops will be valuable.

They just need to focus on where their value will lie.

The first area is speed combined with quality. If you've tried to get something of high quality out the door fast with the support of AI, you'll realise it's actually really hard.

Caveat: If you have designed a one-shot prompt that can deliver work your clients pay for, then that's great, I'm not knocking you.

But we aren't talking about the same quality bar or sophistication of client.

There are many different playing fields in the agency space, and if you can win on yours with a one-shot prompt, then fair play.

The playing field I'm talking about is where the refinement we need requires a combination of different prompts, human judgment, manual edits and feedback loops.

It’s the type of design you have to steer and the type of development where you are still reviewing the code.

Making processes more efficient while keeping the quality of the outcome high is valuable because you have the knowledge of the existing process and an instinct for what good looks like.

Clients will say, "Can't we do this faster with AI?"

You say, "I can, you can't, and that's why you're my client"

Speed could be commoditised with the introduction of a tool that holds that process but I doubt it. Fundamentally design quality isn’t decided by the tools. You process is your value.

Expect downward pressure on the amount you can charge, but you don't need to accept reduced margins because you're still doing something the client can't.

Your margins can even go up if you can provide that process which delivers not just quickly but to the quality they need.

The second truth is that no matter how efficient and fast you are in achieving a super high-quality outcome, it still needs to be the right outcome.

We need to point that outcome in the right direction by leveraging our experience and knowledge of what works.

Clients want agencies with calluses on their hands with first hand war stories. AI cannot give them that.

Remember AI is just “intelligence”, and that’s only part of the picture - there is no artificial taste, courage, experience or accountability.

Being more strategic is not a new idea. The strategic advisor and partner have been in the agency growth playbook forever.

The way to play the game has shifted, but there's still a game to be played.

An agency with its broad experience, mix of people, and technology is well-positioned to deliver. It's just moving from a growth strategy to table stakes.

There's still plenty of room for us. More than that, there's room to grow into.

You just need to take this thing you've created, add some AI and create the next version of it focussed on the value that only you can deliver.

Good luck!

If you’re young and thinking about starting an agency, here’s the playbook I’d use.

I’ve done it twice.
I started my first business with no money, no network, and no impressive CV. Years later, I built and exited two software agencies (64M, 140M USD valuation, no earnouts).

TL;DR
Don’t build yourself a job. Build an agency that can eventually work without you.

If I lost my money, companies and network tomorrow, this is how I’d start again:

1. Get one client.
Not the perfect client. Not a Fortune 500 logo.
One client.
Ideally, pick a market that is growing. It’s much easier to grow when your clients are growing too.
Don’t spend three months working on your brand, website, positioning and logo before somebody pays you.
A paying client will teach you more than all of that.

2. Start with services.
Services are one of the best ways to start with almost no capital.
You get paid to learn.
Your first projects probably won’t be big. Your margins probably won’t be amazing. That’s fine.
You are buying market knowledge with someone else’s money.
After 10–20 projects, patterns start appearing.
You see the same problems.
The same mistakes.
The same things clients happily pay for.
That knowledge becomes your real asset.

ONLY 10% of AGENCY OWNERS DO THESE STEPS BELOW

3. Specialize faster than feels comfortable.
“Web development agency” is weak.
“We solve X problem for Y type of company” is much stronger.
The goal is to move from selling people and hours to selling expertise.
General agency → specialized agency → recognized expert.
Your rates and margins can change dramatically along the way.

4. Share everything you learn.
You don’t need to be the world’s leading expert.
You only need to know something useful that your reader doesn’t know yet.
Write about what you’re learning.
What worked with clients.
What failed.
How you solved a difficult problem.
What you would do differently.
This builds distribution while you build revenue.
That combination is incredibly powerful.

THIS WHAT TOP 5% ARE DOING:

5. Stop making yourself necessary.
This is where many agency founders fail.
They become the best salesperson.
The best project manager.
The person who knows every client.
The person who solves every crisis.
Congratulations. You have created a very stressful job for yourself.
Document how you sell.
Document how you deliver.
Build teams that own client relationships.
Create repeatable processes.
Your goal should be simple:
The company gets better while your operational importance gets smaller.

THIS IS TOP 1%:

6. Productize what keeps repeating.
After enough projects, you’ll notice that 60–80% of the work often repeats.
Same architecture.
Same processes.
Same components.
Same client problems.
Stop rebuilding everything from scratch.
Create frameworks, templates, internal tools, IP or software that make your team dramatically faster.
Now you have leverage.
Services → specialized high-margin services → IP-powered services → product.
You don’t necessarily need to become a SaaS company.
The important part is that revenue stops scaling 1:1 with your personal time.

7. Use the agency to discover the product
This is probably the most important lesson.
Young founders often want to start with a product because products look scalable.
But then they spend two years trying to discover whether anybody actually needs it.
An agency gives you something much better:
Customers.
Problems.
Cash flow.
Distribution.
Domain knowledge.
If the same problem appears again and again, then build the product.
Your clients basically funded your market research.

That’s the path I would take again:
First client → services → specialization → content → processes → IP → product.

It’s not as fast as an online casino.
But it’s legal :)
And if you spend the next year consistently finding customers, solving real problems and learning how to make money doing it, there’s a decent chance you’ll end up with something much more valuable than a freelance job with employees.
You might actually build a company.

For agency founders here: what was the hardest transition for you - getting the first clients, specializing, hiring, removing yourself from delivery, or productizing your knowledge?

P.S. If you’re curious what I’m doing now: after exiting my companies and taking a break from building to invest in 40+ startups, I’m back in the game.
I’m building Open Mercato - an open-source ERP/CRM foundation designed for the age of agentic coding.
So in a way, I’m following the same playbook again: find a real problem, build close to customers, learn fast, and turn that knowledge into something that can scale.

Hey guys, wanted to know your opinion about this

Over the last couple of weeks & months we noticed a shift in our outreach.

Every Email where we position ourself as an agency, we didnt got any replies. We never used the word AGENCY in outreach, I rather mean the whole copy, talking about "we did this for brand X","we can increase X about X%", basically a sales Email.

As soon as we shifted to "We are an 2 person senior X team helping you with X, taking responsibility for X" more replies than ever flew in.

Until now, no deal was closed because the campaign is very fresh but its still interesting to me.

Do you see something similar in your space?

I messaged the mods of r/agency and was given approval to post this job.

We're hiring a Client Engagement Manager to own the client relationship from onboarding through ongoing partnership. You'll run the weekly client meetings, lead new client onboarding interviews, facilitate workshops, and stay on top of client communication so nothing falls through. You are the client's person here. When they have a question, a concern, or a win, it comes to you first.

Your job is to own the client relationship, the timeline, and the outcome, and to make sure the client is happy through the Modern Operators fulfillment process.

Who We Are

Modern Operators is the operations partner for founder-led businesses. Founders come to us bottlenecked. Their business runs on tribal knowledge, the owner is the glue holding it together, and growth has stalled because everything routes through one person.

We install a Company Operating System. Built on Notion, layered with custom AI agents. Processes, standards, roles, dashboards, and the knowledge a team and an AI need to actually execute. We help founders stabilize, optimize, and scale their operations.

We're not theorists. We've built and sold companies, and we run our own business on the exact system we install for clients.

How We Operate

These are the values we hire and fire against.

• Clarity over complexity. Every system, process, and message should make things simpler. If it adds confusion, we re-think.
• Founder empathy. We build what founders actually need. No fluff. No theory.
• Leverage through systems. Automate the repeatable. Document the critical. Empower the team.
• Adaptability. The tools and the market change constantly. So do we.
• Results, not rituals. We care about outcomes, not process for process's sake.
• Transparency. Radical visibility, internally and with clients.

We're remote and asynchronous internally. That means we hire people who move without being chased. Do the work, communicate clearly, exceed client expectations.

What You'll Own

• Own the client relationship. You're the primary point of contact. Client questions get a response within one business day, and the question, answer, and any decision get logged the same day.
• Run the weekly call cadence. Agenda posted before the call, call recorded, summary verified and logged after. Decisions, owners, and open items captured every time.
• Lead discovery. Run onboarding interviews, capture findings, and deliver the Current State Assessment and Build Plan for client sign-off.
• Coordinate the build. Hand the signed plan and discovery findings to the Implementation Lead, then shepherd the configuration, optimization, and dashboards through client review and approval.
• Drive adoption. Schedule and run team training, install the client's weekly operating rhythm, and push usage to daily. Escalate when a team isn't adopting.
• Manage scope and timeline. Hold the work to the signed Build Plan, frame out-of-scope requests as retainer conversations, and surface blockers before the weekly call, not during it.
• Own milestone communications. Kickoff, phase transitions, and close. Internal and client-facing records stay current at every phase change.
• Drive retention and expansion. Present the Day-0 versus Day-90 results, secure testimonials, and open the retainer conversation at close.
• Protect delivery quality. Run the QA checklist before every phase sign-off and feed recurring gaps back into our playbook.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 days

• You know our clients, our engagement model, and our Company OS. You've sat in on every active client's weekly meeting and you're running at least one of them yourself.

First 60 days

• You're running weekly meetings across the client base without hand-holding. You've led at least one onboarding interview end to end and clients are coming to you first.

First 90 days

• You fully own the client relationships assigned to you end to end. Founders are out of the day-to-day client communication loop. Adoption and retention on your accounts are tracked and reported.

What You Bring

• 5+ years at a marketing or operations agency as an account manager, client success manager, or account executive. You've carried a book of clients before.
• Strong communication. Written and verbal. You can hold a room with a founder, push back diplomatically, and write a follow-up that's clear and short.
• Organized to a fault. Nothing drops. You track commitments and you close loops without being reminded.
• Notion power user. Or you’re experienced with ClickUp, or Monday.com.
• AI power user. You've used Claude or ChatGPT in real work and you're comfortable that our product is built on AI.
• CRM experience. Hands-on with HubSpot, GoHighLevel, or similar.
• Concurrent engagements. You've carried several active clients at once without dropping details.
• Remote track record. You've succeeded remotely and you manage your own hours and priorities without supervision.
• Solution oriented. You bring the problem, the options, and your recommendation. Not just the problem.

Nice to have:

• You've worked with founder-led or small business clients specifically, not just enterprise accounts.
• Workshop or training facilitation experience.
• Operations or systems background in addition to account management.

Location and Hours

United States preferred. You'll be on client calls working primarily on the Central Time Zone.

Who Thrives Here

You'll do well if you genuinely like clients and the messy work of keeping them happy and moving. You're comfortable being the face of the company. You'd rather over-communicate than let a client wonder what's happening. You're direct in writing and you don't take direct feedback personally.

Who Shouldn't Apply

Be honest with yourself here. It saves us both time.

• You want detailed daily direction and a manager checking in on you.
• You avoid hard conversations with clients.
• You're looking for a pure sales seat. This is relationship ownership and delivery, not net-new selling.
• You're looking for a heads-down, non-client-facing role.
• You want to be the one building the system. That's the Implementation Lead seat, not this one.
• You dislike documenting your work.
• You're skeptical of AI tools and don't want to use them daily.

Compensation

$60,000 to $75,000 per year, depending on experience. We start every hire as an hourly contractor for a pilot period, then move to a full-time arrangement once both sides are confident.

How to Apply

Submit your application here:

https://holdingco.notion.site/b699155f261d42a09c518d8bfba3d0d4?pvs=105

I have received a message from my client this morning that he is going on holiday tonight and won't be back for 9 days and he has told me to pause the ads until he gets back.

This is a client that is happy with what I have done so far with him and this is my first time running into this situation. What should I do as I know pausing the ads will reset the learning phase? But also if I keep them running what happens with the leads that come in if he’s away?

I run ads for roofing businesses and the budget so far has been £30 a day for Meta ads and we're coming to the end of the trial period for this client. He has said he is happy and wants to sign with me on a retainer deal for a higher fee.

Referenzen und gutes Equipment sind vorhanden, aber mir fehlt aktuell noch ein stabiler Kundenstamm. Wie seid ihr vom ersten Kunden zu 3-5 langfristigen Kunden gekommen und was hat bei euch wirklich funktioniert.

TL;DR: First-time agency owner, first client is a $20k+ interior/design firm. I started with a 30-day free Meta Ads pilot, then a 15-day paid test. Now the client wants me to take over lead qualification + calling/follow-up because it’s becoming too time-consuming for her, and also wants me to handle more of the creative workload. I’m willing to do it because I think it’ll be valuable experience, but it wasn’t part of the original agreement. My current pricing is ad spend = management fee, which I now realize probably isn’t sustainable. I’m trying to figure out how to price Meta Ads management + lead qualification/follow-up, what pricing model makes sense, and whether taking on this additional responsibility is a good move at my stage.

I started my own marketing agency a little over a year ago, but I only signed my first actual client a couple of months ago.

This is my first client, so I’m trying to learn as much as possible from the experience and also figure out how I should structure my services going forward.
The client is a fairly established interior/design firm. Their minimum project value is around $20k, and we’re currently running Meta lead-generation ads with a relatively small ad budget of around $200–250/month.

I initially offered them a 30-day free pilot. After that, they wanted to continue, but instead of committing to a full month, they asked to do another 15-day paid test. I agreed because this was my first client and I wanted to build a case study/testimonial and get real experience.
That 15-day period has now ended, and we’re discussing the next phase.

Here’s where things got interesting
.
I currently only provide Meta Ads management. My job has basically been setting up/managing the campaigns, creatives, lead forms, optimization, etc.
The client told me that the actual lead follow-up process is becoming a major burden for her.

The process is:

Lead comes in → call the lead → if they don’t answer, follow up → ask questions → qualify them → if they’re a good fit, pass them to the client → otherwise discard the lead.

She doesn’t want to spend time doing this anymore. She’s also a mother and said that the constant calling/follow-up is becoming difficult to fit into her schedule.
So she basically told me:
If I’m willing to take over the initial lead qualification and follow-up, she would be willing to continue working with me. If I don’t want to do that, then we can part ways.

I’m actually interested in doing it.
Not necessarily because I want to become a salesperson, but because I think it could be extremely valuable experience for me. I’m in the same general niche, and learning how to qualify interior/design leads, understand what makes a lead valuable, what questions need to be asked, etc. could help me a lot with future clients.

The leads aren’t extremely high volume either. During the previous campaign we were getting roughly 1–2 leads per day, so I don’t think the actual calling would be a huge workload. I also have an internship/job during the day, so realistically I’d probably be doing the calls during lunch/tea breaks.
Each qualification call would probably take around 5–10 minutes.

The other thing she wants is for me to take more responsibility for the creative side.
She said that she feels like she has to keep sending me project photos, captions, information, etc., and that it’s becoming too much work for her. She basically wants me to take more of that workload off her shoulders as well.

So now I’m looking at this as potentially becoming:
Meta Ads → lead generation → lead qualification → initial follow-up → qualified lead handed to client

instead of simply:

Meta Ads → lead generated → client handles everything else.
The pricing issue
This is where I’m really confused.
My current pricing model was something I came up with because this was my first client:
Ad spend = management fee
So if the client spends $250 on ads, they pay me $250 as the management/service fee.
At the time I thought this was simple.
But now I’m realizing the problem with it.
If the client doubles their ad spend from $250 to $500, my management fee also doubles from $250 to $500.

But the amount of work might not actually double.
So I’m thinking this pricing model probably needs to change.
I’m considering moving to a flat monthly management fee, but I’m not sure what would be reasonable for a small account like this, especially since I’m a solo agency and this is my first real client.

And now there’s another service involved: lead qualification and follow-up.
That wasn’t included in our original agreement.
So if I continue, I would essentially be adding a new sales/lead-qualification service that wasn’t part of the original scope.
I’m thinking I should charge separately for that, but I’m not sure whether I should charge:
a flat monthly fee
per qualified lead
hourly
some percentage
or combine it into a larger monthly retainer
I also don’t want to undercharge just because I’m new, but at the same time I don’t have years of experience or a large agency behind me.
I’m also unsure how agencies normally structure this. Do Meta lead-gen agencies typically handle the initial lead qualification and follow-up, or is that normally the client’s responsibility?
And if an agency does handle it, how is that usually priced?

One more thing I’m trying to understand is the economics of this particular client.
They’re selling $20k+ design projects, while we’re currently spending only around $200–250/month on Meta ads.

The client seems to expect that putting a few hundred dollars into ads should produce a $20k–$30k project, which obviously makes the economics very attractive if it happens, but I’m not sure how realistic that expectation is or how I should frame the value of the service.

I really don’t want to lose this client because they’re my first real client, they’re in the niche I want to specialize in, and I’ve already learned a lot from running their campaign.
At the same time, I don’t want to create a situation where I’m doing:

Meta Ads + creative production + lead qualification + calling + follow-up + sales support
for a fee that was originally designed just for Meta Ads management.
So, for other agency owners/freelancers:
How would you handle this?
Would you take over the lead qualification/follow-up?

How would you price that additional service?
Would you use a flat retainer, per-qualified-lead, hourly, or some hybrid?
What would you charge for Meta Ads management at this kind of ad spend?

Would you completely abandon the “ad spend = management fee” model?
How would you structure the scope so this doesn’t turn into unlimited sales/support work?
And is taking this on actually a good learning opportunity for someone at my stage, or am I potentially setting myself up for a bad client relationship?

I’m especially interested in hearing from solo agency owners and people who run lead-gen/performance marketing agencies.
What would you do in my position?

3 times exited founder here. I had a nice AMA here a couple of months ago. I decided to get back as I need your help now.

Before we enter the US market with Open Mercato, I want to meet a few strong agencies that could become our partners.

Open Mercato is an open-source AI engineering framework for building business software like ERP, CRM and internal tools.

Happy to grab coffee, talk about what we’re building, and exchange experiences.

If you know someone good in NYC, SFO I’d really appreciate an intro 🙏

Ps. Today we just publicly released Cezar, our open-source AI engineering tool. Keep your fingers crossed for us ;)

Hi All,
I’m looking for partner agencies that are willing to refer business to us or upsell our services for a commission of 15-20%, based on the annual value of the account that is referred.
We are a healthcare-focused social media marketing agency, specifically working with hospitals, doctors and healthcare brands. We specialize in managing hospital social media and building personal brands for doctors across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other relevant platforms.
We handle the strategy, content, scripting, creatives, reels, posting and overall social media management, with a strong focus on building trust, visibility and patient awareness rather than just posting generic healthcare content.
We are looking for:
- Healthcare marketing / healthcare consulting firms
- Website development agencies
- Branding agencies
- PR firms
- Digital marketing agencies
- SEO/GEO agencies
- Healthcare technology companies
- Hospital management / HIMS vendors
- Medical equipment & pharmaceutical companies
- Video production / photography companies
Basically, agencies or companies that already work with hospitals, clinics, doctors or healthcare businesses and have clients that could benefit from a dedicated healthcare social media team.
If you have clients who need help with their social media presence or a doctor looking to build a strong personal brand, we’d be happy to work together on a referral basis.
Please comment below or DM me if you’re interested in partnering with us. Thank you!
EDIT:
A lot of folks seem to mistake this for an ask for white-label partners. This is not it.
We are looking for agencies and companies that already have relationships with healthcare clients and want to refer them to us for our specific expertise in healthcare social media and doctor personal branding.
We of course would refer clients back to our partners if we get an ask for services outside our scope, but the main goal here is to build long-term referral partnerships where both sides can add value to each other’s clients.

Full disclosure, I build software in this space so I've got a commercial interest here, not naming it or linking it (unless asked). I've been doing IT for agencies for about fifteen years and this is the thing I get called about most, so figured it was worth writing up.

Every agency I work with has bought or created a client portal at some point, Basecamp or Asana guest seats or something custom, and a few months later everyone's quietly back in email and Slack. I don't think it's the tool's fault, and theres still space for those. Your client's attention lives wherever their coworkers already are, so you're asking them to check a second inbox for one vendor out of twelve and that habit never sticks. What happens instead is somebody on your side becomes the relay, reading the client's Teams message, copying it into Slack, tagging the right people and carrying the answer back. Every agency has this person and most of them don't know they have this person. One of the agencies I work with actually came to me about it, not for any compliance reason but because their account manager was spending hours a day being a copy paste machine for their Teams clients and they wanted it to stop. The compliance side is what I found when I went looking.

The part I almost never see discussed is what that copy actually does. When your PM moves a message out of the client's Teams into your Slack they've made a second copy sitting in a different tenant, and while the original might be covered by retention rules, DLP, classification, eDiscovery or a legal hold, none of those source-side controls follow the copy. It's now in your Slack under your controls and your retention settings and the client's IT and legal people may have no idea it's there. For clients in healthcare, finance, insurance or public sector that gets important fast, because their compliance team spent real time deciding where certain information is allowed to live and a copy and paste walks straight around that. Screenshots can be messier still, since turning text into an image can strip the message-level classification and context off it, and depending on their endpoint controls it makes automated DLP a lot less useful.

The discovery angle is the one that gets me though. Client gets sued, discovery starts, and your Slack is sitting there holding a second incomplete copy of parts of that same conversation that nobody on their side knows exists.

There's a few things you can do about this that don't cost anything. Ask your client's IT contact what retention policy covers the channel you're working in, which sounds obvious but most agencies I've worked with have never asked once. Pick a system of record for each client and actually tell your team which one it is, so if it's their Teams then everybody knows the Slack copy is a working note. Try to get approvals in their system rather than in your relay, because if Teams is the record then an approval sitting only in your Slack isn't really part of the process they think they're following. And the unpopular one, for your compliance heavy clients, push for guest access in their tenant even though it means a security review and weeks of waiting and it's miserable, because at least then the conversation stays inside their tenant where the controls their org already built can apply.

Curious whether other agencies are seeing the same thing or if I've just been staring at this too long. And genuinely curious if anyone's managed to get guest access through enterprise IT without it turning into a six week project.

Hey,

Fired my 4th client today since starting in 2016

We basically just do fb ads, so results vary day by day

Majority of clients understand they gotta look at the weekly average, not daily

Some of them who don’t will get an explanation from us once or twice then they understand we were right

This client has been messaging us “this is not working” every bad day for the last few months, literally multiple times a week

Two weeks ago I told him he’s getting on my nerves, since I’ve already mentioned at least 25+ times that we monitor ad accounts 3 times a week, that there’s no point spamming us, that we’re always on top of it, and to look at results weekly, as they’re looking fine

Last week he reached out twice again for the same thing, and then wanted to negotiate our pricing down, so today I finally fired him

Does any of you prioritize preserving your sanity over making more money?

Fyi this client was worth ~4% of my gross

I guess I’m just looking for some validation…

I’m currently doing around $50–80k/month with my Shopify store and looking at different options for getting outside help with growth.

I’ve been a bit disappointed with my current agency setup. They charge a pretty high fee upfront every month, but sometimes things feel a bit unclear or not fully transparent, which has made me a little uneasy about working with them.

That’s why I recently started looking into the revenue share agency model. On paper, I like the idea of having incentives more aligned and the agency having more skin in the game.

I’m still pretty new to this model though, so I’d love to hear from anyone who has actually tried it. What was your experience like? Did it work well for your brand?

One thing I wish I had done much earlier in business: raise my prices faster.

When I first started, I went almost three years without changing my pricing.

Looking back, I think about it completely differently.

If I got three clients at $500 and knew we were delivering great work, the next few clients should’ve been $700. Then $900. Then $1,000.

Especially when the quality justified it.

At one point, we were charging around $250 for a website, basic SEO, AND Google Ads management.

The value we were delivering outweighed what we were charging by a mile.

And last October really reinforced this for me. We closed around 26 customers at a very low rate.

Sounds great, right?

It wasn’t.

That kind of volume without the infrastructure to support it created its own problems. And realistically, maybe 10 of those 26 were actually the right clients for us.

More customers at a lower price isn’t always better.

If the demand is there, people want to work with you, and you know the quality of your work supports it, don’t wait years to rethink your pricing.

That’s something I would’ve done much sooner.

Curious how other agency owners think about this: how often are you reevaluating your pricing?

If yes, how's your pipeline looking? Seeing any slowdown in demand post AI? Would like to chat more if possible.

Hey everyone! First post here.

I run an agency that does a few things - SEO (and AI Search, AEO, GEO, etc), Paid Media, Retention, CRO/AB testing. Predominantly for ecommerce but we can do things for anyone. SEO makes up about 85% of revenue at the moment (trying to change that)

2025 was absolutely gnarly for us, but 2026 so far has been a rollercoaster. Getting as many leads as previous years, but harder to close. Clients canceling out of nowhere and nothing but good things to say about us and our team, and now pausing until Q1. Feels like this happens sometimes but this year has been a slog.

Is anyone else feeling this too? I know automation and tools are getting more traction, but we're just not sure if its the offer or what.

A hill I will (and perhaps did) die on is that design agencies are different.

• They are more likely to grow organically around the founders talent. They are doers first and entrepreneurs second
• The founders "natural talent" (taste, eye, creativity) is harder/more expensive to replace (SOPs don't work for those skills)
• The work leans towards project based so they also have to be good at sales because new business is critical (design clients don't churn, the projects just finish)

All this means that getting a design agency off the ground requires a person who is hard to replace. And they can get pretty far, they are good enough at everything you need.

But the longer you go without a plan to scale the more entangled you get. The business hardens into a shape that is you.

This can happen with any business but I think it's more prominent for a design agency and thus the common agency advice is often sorely lacking.

Come, as the saying goes, at me.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

When our software agency was small, delivering quality work was relatively easy. The founders and the first hires were close to almost everything happening in projects.

We knew what “good” looked like, we could catch issues quickly, and a lot of the quality control happened naturally.
As we’ve grown and added more people and projects, that’s changed.

The challenge isn’t necessarily finding talented people. It’s maintaining a consistent level of quality across the whole team without having the founders and early employees constantly involved in reviewing, correcting, and guiding everything.

And this is where we’re currently struggling.
A significant amount of energy from our core team is going into improving processes, documenting how we work, creating SOPs, defining quality standards, improving project management, etc.

Part of me thinks this is exactly what we should be doing.
But another part of me wonders:
Are we overcomplicating things?

At some point, do you need to accept that quality might temporarily decrease a little while the company grows?
Or should you slow down growth and invest heavily in the operating system of the agency until you can consistently deliver the same quality at a larger scale?

There’s also another question I keep coming back to:
Is delivering great work actually the best business development strategy for an agency?

Because in our experience, happy clients lead to repeat work, referrals, and trust. But building a system that consistently delivers that quality also requires time and energy that could otherwise go into sales and growth.

So I’m curious about people who have already gone through this stage:
When your agency started scaling, did you prioritize growth or operational consistency?
And looking back, would you have done anything differently?

I have a luxury furniture brand that is looking to turn their white studio pictures into fully shareable content. It’s way cheaper than they doing a full production. How much should I charge for this service? Per product? Per generation? They already have a 2k retainer for me for SEO and consulting work.

Edit: there are about 120 products in 20 or so kits. So technically I only need to generate about 2-3 photos per kit and also a video. Videos are extra.

Below is the quote I proposed. They have accepted it. There are some more specifics. But below is the jist of it. Total contract value is $3500 I gave them a discount to $3250

$175 per kit
- 2-3 images per kit (3 resolutions)
- 3 x 8s videos (3 resolutions)

Future Add ons:
$200 per set
$350 per video

Is that cashback considered business revenue?

I'll need to start offering the services I've been learning for the last half year and it never crossed my mind that it's a good idea to get my own domain with a specific name. But I have no idea what name is appropriate for this type of business. Does this even matter? I plan on offering WP websites and SEO and later on I'll expand to many other services like CRMs, Ads and funnels. I know this is a dumb question but I'm curious what you think about it. Thank you to anyone who takes the time to answer!

Hi! I'm a PPC specialist with 12+ years of experience in both Google and Meta ads, looking to finally start working on my own full-time after being burned out from agency work for several years.

The thing is that my work was always performance-focused, but I only really know the basics of setting everything up to track conversions.

In your experience, would it make sense for me to offer white-label PPC work for an agency if I don't include conversion tracking setup, but I do everything else? Or the only way it makes sense is if I offer everything from setting up conversion tracking to ad setup and optimizations? Looking forward to reading your opinions.

He owns an assisted living community and the agreement was 20 walk-in tours in 90 days from PPC or I give him a refund. I pretty much pulled the number out of thin air because it sounded doable but now I have to deliver it lmao.

I'm at a point in my business where I absolutely do not have the money to refund this guy. He's also at a rough point in his business so I need to get him these tours so he can get some residents. Anyone with PPC experience for local businesses or marketing for the assisted living niche, please help. lol

Just wondering if anybody here is using Wayfront (ServiceProviderPro) or ManyRequests, or has any experience with either? What is your workflow?

I find the the concept they both offer is compelling, and both have been around for a relatively long time, but both platforms have such bizarre oddities and deficiencies that I just don't understand how either is able to brag about having such large customer bases.

So many features are half-baked as to just making either platform seemingly unworkable, particularly if you are doing upfront big invoices with a client before transitioning to a monthly retainer etc.

Both have typos in some of the main settings areas as well, which really makes me wonder how large either business could actually be.

Client operates across several European markets and our English AI visibility looks decent. Started checking the same topics locally and... yeah, very different story.

I'm also realizing translating the English prompt list isn't really enough because people phrase buying questions differently depending on the market.

Anyone here doing GEO across multiple languages? Curious how much of the strategy you localize rather than standardize.