Why AI Is Creating a Massive Opportunity for Agencies
I recently sat down with Scott Brinker, a leading voice in marketing technology, to discuss how AI is changing opportunities for agencies. Brinker has spent over two decades in marketing technology, leading strategy at HubSpot, founding a SaaS company, advising startups, and publishing chiefmartec for 80,000+ industry leaders. He’s best known for creating the Marketing Technology Landscape annual report. He’s seen every major wave of change in how marketing gets done. That’s what made his perspective on AI stand out. While much of the conversation has focused on disruption and replacement, Brinker sees something else emerging — something that could drive significant demand for agencies. AI Isn’t Just Disrupting. It’s Overwhelming. One of the first things Brinker pointed to is the speed of change. Unlike past technology shifts that took years, AI is compressing transformation into months or even less. That compression is putting pressure on organizations. Companies are being forced to rethink their technology, customer engagement models, and how work gets done internally. Most aren’t set up to manage that level of change. As Brinker put it, “overwhelming is an understatement.” This shift in behavior is critical: instead of trying to figure everything out internally, many companies are now looking outward for guidance. For agencies, that shifts the role. It’s less about executing predefined work and more about helping clients determine what they should be doing in the first place. The Structural Advantage Agencies Have In Brinker’s view, agencies are uniquely positioned in this environment because of how they accumulate experience. A brand may face a transformation once. An agency does it repeatedly across clients. Each engagement provides lessons that can be reused. He describes this as a form of arbitrage. Companies get one version of the transformation. Agencies get many. In a moment where there is no clear playbook, that repetition becomes valuable. It allows agencies to move faster, avoid common pitfalls, and bring a level of pattern recognition that most internal teams don’t yet have. A Delivery Model Under Pressure Yet, as agencies find themselves in this evolving role, the way they deliver work is also beginning to change. Historically, much of an agency’s value came from execution: the production, coordination, and manual work needed for campaigns. Pricing often relied on time and resources. AI is starting to absorb a meaningful portion of that execution layer. As that happens, the traditional time-and-materials model becomes harder to defend. Not because the work itself is less valuable, but because the inputs have changed. “The time and materials basis of this has become irrelevant,” Brinker said. What clients still want is the outcome. Strategy, creativity, and orchestration remain central, but the way those are packaged and priced is shifting toward impact rather than effort. Why This Isn’t a Simple Race to the Bottom One concern that comes up frequently in conversations about AI is commoditization. If the tools are widely accessible, does everything become interchangeable? Brinker’s perspective is more nuanced. While AI may standardize parts of execution, companies aren’t hiring agencies for sameness. They’re hiring them to differentiate. That puts more weight on imagination, judgment, and the ability to translate ideas into something that actually works within a business. Not all strategy is equal. As AI improves, some structured analysis is easy to replicate. The defensible work is original thinking, clear positioning, and tying ideas to real-world needs. A Shift Beneath the Surface: From Applications to Infrastructure Another change Brinker highlighted is happening at the technology level. For years, marketing has been built around packaged applications—tools with fixed capabilities that companies assemble into stacks. That model is evolving as AI makes it easier to build custom workflows, tools, and agents on top of broader platforms. In this environment, technology becomes less about individual applications and more about infrastructure. For agencies, this creates new opportunities. They help design how systems are built, connected, and used, extending work beyond campaigns into internal marketing operations. Multiple Transformations Happening at Once Part of what makes this moment so complex is that it isn’t just one shift. It’s several things happening at once. Brinker pointed to three in particular: the transformation of technology and data infrastructure, the transformation of buyer behavior, and the transformation of how work gets done inside organizations. Each of these would be significant on its own. Together, they create a level of change that most companies struggle to manage internally. That complexity is what’s driving demand—not just for execution, but for guidance. The Gap Between Strategy and Execution Is Shrinking AI is also compressing the distance between strategy and execution. In the past, there was a clear separation between the two. Strategy was developed first, and execution followed over weeks or months. That gap is now shrinking. What once took months can now be built, tested, and iterated in days or even hours. That creates a different operating model, one where thinking and doing are much more closely connected. For agencies, the ability to move fluidly between strategy and execution becomes increasingly important. Why Smaller Agencies May See New Opportunities One of the more interesting implications of this shift is what it means for smaller agencies. Historically, larger agencies benefited from scale: more people, more resources, and broader capabilities. AI begins to level parts of that equation by making advanced capabilities more accessible to smaller teams. That said, the advantage isn’t absolute. While the capability gap may narrow, other factors, such as visibility, reputation, and access to enterprise clients, remain significant. For many smaller agencies, the challenge isn’t whether they can deliver the work, but whether they can consistently get in the room to compete for it. The Real Challenge: Managing Change Despite all of these opportunities, most organizations are still behind. Not because the technology isn’t available, but because adapting to it is difficult. Even companies making decisions in response to AI often haven’t fully figured out how they will operate differently as a result. That points to a broader issue. The challenge isn’t just adopting AI. It’s managing
What Agencies Still Don’t Understand About Today’s CMO
As part of the upcoming CMO Lab at POSSIBLE (April 27–29 in Miami Beach), I sat down with Nadine Dietz, who is leading the initiative and has spent years working closely with CMOs across the industry through her work at Virtuosi League, Adweek, and Marketers That Matter. The conversation quickly moved beyond the event itself and into something more telling. On paper, the CMO role hasn’t changed. The mandate is still growth, customer, and brand. But in practice, the role is operating in a completely different environment than it was even a few years ago. That gap between what the role looks like and how it actually operates is where much of the friction is today. And it’s also where many agencies are falling behind. The Shift Isn’t Marketing. It’s Enterprise. One of the biggest changes Nadine pointed to is where CMOs are actually spending their time. It’s less about managing marketing execution and more about navigating the enterprise. CMOs today are expected to operate across the C-suite by aligning teams, influencing decisions, and helping define what growth actually means across the organization. That kind of alignment work isn’t always visible, but it’s now central to the role. A major driver of this is AI. Not because of the tools themselves, but because AI decisions don’t live in one function. They impact operations, finance, product, and HR, forcing CMOs into conversations that go well beyond marketing. They’re no longer just running a function. They’re helping shape the system in which the function operates. Why Good Ideas Aren’t Enough Anymore This is where the gap between CMOs and agencies starts to show up. From Nadine’s perspective, the issue isn’t that agencies aren’t capable. It’s that many are still approaching problems in ways that don’t reflect the reality CMOs are operating in. Ideas alone don’t move things forward the way they used to. Strategy can look great on paper, but it breaks down when it doesn’t fit into the broader organization, doesn’t align with other priorities, or can’t scale across teams and systems. In practice, that breakdown shows up in subtle ways. An agency might bring a strong campaign idea, but executing it requires new data flows, coordination across product and sales, or approvals that take months to navigate. The idea isn’t wrong. It’s just not deployable in that environment. And that’s often where momentum dies. CMOs aren’t just asking, “Is this a good idea?”They’re asking, “Will this actually work here?” A Model That’s Starting to Break There’s also a more fundamental shift happening in how work gets done. The traditional agency model: long timelines, structured campaigns, and clearly defined scopes, is under pressure. The pace of change, combined with the expectation for real-time responsiveness, is forcing companies to rethink how they operate. That shift is showing up in team structure as well. More work is being broken into tasks rather than roles. More talent is being brought in on a fractional basis. And more capabilities that once lived outside the organization are being pulled in-house, often supported by AI. For agencies, this creates a different kind of challenge. It’s not just about doing the work better. It’s about fitting into a system that is actively being rebuilt. What the Best CMOs Are Doing Differently What’s becoming clear is that the CMOs gaining traction aren’t just focused on marketing outcomes. They’re focused on alignment. They’re thinking about how decisions are made across the organization, how teams work together, and how to build systems that actually support growth—not just campaigns that aim to drive it. It’s a more complex job than it was even a few years ago. And it requires a different kind of partner. Where Agencies Need to Rethink Their Approach If there’s one theme that came through clearly, it’s this: agencies need a deeper understanding of the environment in which their clients operate. That starts with empathy, but not in the abstract. In practice, it looks like shifting the conversation. Instead of leading with ideas, the most effective agencies are spending more time diagnosing constraints: How do decisions actually get made inside this organization? What would prevent this from working? Where are the bottlenecks likely to be? It also means pressure-testing ideas before presenting them. Not just “here’s what we’d do,” but “here’s how this would realistically get implemented given your current structure.” Because from the CMO’s perspective, time is limited and the margin for error is small. Every initiative has to fit within a broader set of priorities that agencies don’t always see. In many cases, the agencies that stand out aren’t the ones with the boldest ideas. They’re the ones whose ideas actually work inside the system. The Part No One Talks About Toward the end of the conversation, the focus shifted from strategy to something less discussed. People. Teams are being asked to do more with less. Roles are evolving faster than people can adapt. And there’s a constant level of pressure that sits underneath all of it. In Nadine’s view, the mental health impact across the industry is significant and growing. And yet, most organizations are still focused on chasing the next opportunity rather than investing in the people who deliver it. That disconnect matters. Because in a moment like this, the strength of the team is what determines whether any strategy actually works. Why Spaces Like the CMO Lab Are Emerging That shift is also what led to the creation of the CMO Lab at POSSIBLE. The idea isn’t to add more content to an already crowded conference schedule. It’s to create space for CMOs to step back, compare notes, and work through challenges that don’t yet have clear answers. Because that’s the reality right now. There isn’t a clear playbook for navigating AI transformation, organizational alignment, and evolving expectations simultaneously. Most CMOs are figuring it out as they go. And increasingly, the most valuable insights aren’t coming from the
Scaling Business Development Beyond the Agency Founder
At most agencies, “scaling BD” looks like this: the founder hires a Head of Business Development, hands them a vague mandate to build pipeline, and hopes the problem goes away. Six months later, the pipeline is thin, close rates are bad, the founder is back in every deal, and the hire is gone. I’ve watched this happen across countless agencies I’ve advised, and I’ve done it myself. The instinct to find one person who can take over BD makes sense on paper. But it almost never works, because the problem isn’t the hire. It’s that you’re trying to outsource something you haven’t even broken apart yet. The Founder Is Wearing Five Hats When a founder says they “do business development,” what they really mean is they’re doing five or six jobs at once under one label. They’re working events. They’re posting on LinkedIn and sending the newsletter. They’re keeping up with referral partners. They’re running discovery calls and writing proposals. They’re upselling existing clients. It works because the founder is scrappy and has good instincts, but it’s held together with scotch tape and none of it is getting more than 20% of the attention it needs. You can’t just hand that to someone. The job as it exists today is five jobs. Nobody you hire is going to seamlessly bounce between brand-building, partnerships, prospecting, sales, and account expansion the way a founder does. So the founder’s real job isn’t to find a replacement. It’s to take the work apart. The Five BD Functions After spending years talking to agency founders, fractional BD consultants, and sales leaders, and going through our own experience at Barrel Holdings, I’ve started thinking about agency BD as five separate functions: Marketing and Awareness is the long game. Content, LinkedIn, newsletters, conferences, webinars. All the stuff that keeps you top of mind so when a prospect has a need, they think of you. Some of this may stay with the founder for a while, especially thought leadership. Partnerships is about cultivating referral relationships with other agencies, consultants, and platform ecosystems. It’s relationship management, not sales. It has its own rhythm that includes check-ins, co-marketing, and mutual referral loops. From my BD observations, this kept coming up as the thing that moves the needle most, especially when your agency’s tight positioning makes it easy for partners to send opportunities your way. Outbound is cold email, LinkedIn outreach, direct mail. A targeting-and-volume discipline that needs its own process, its own lists, and constant iteration on messaging. It requires a special set of skills and it’s bound to struggle when you lump it together with inbound. We’ve experienced this firsthand and it’s something I heard over and over from experienced BD folks: split inbound and outbound, even if one is just a part-time role. The Sales Process covers everything that happens once a real opportunity shows up — discovery calls, framing the problem, scoping the engagement, building the proposal, negotiating, and getting to a signed contract. For most founders, this is where their credibility and trust matter most, which is why they’re so reluctant to let go. But the sales process isn’t one monolithic job. Qualification alone could be its own role — someone managing inbound referrals, running the initial discovery, researching the prospect, and determining fit before the broader team gets activated. Scoping might pull in a solutions consultant or subject matter experts from across the agency. The proposal itself can be a team effort. The founder doesn’t need to own every step; they just need to show up at the moments where their presence tips the deal. Account Growth is upsells, cross-sells, and expanding existing client relationships. This is probably the best ROI BD activity and the one most agencies often overlook. You already have the trust. The question is whether you’ve actually designed what comes next after the initial project. Get the Sequencing Right Most founders get the order wrong. They want to hand off outbound first because it feels like the grind. But outbound without positioning, proof points, and case studies just doesn’t land. Here’s the order that’s worked for us and for the agencies I’ve talked to: Start with Account Growth. You already have people in client relationships such as account managers and project managers. Make account expansion part of their job description. Design the path after the core project. Give them ownership and variable comp for growing accounts. You’re monetizing relationships you’ve already earned. Then Partnerships. Investing in a dedicated partnerships lead who knows the ecosystems your agency plays in can really pay off. While you may not get opportunities right away, monitor the inputs (co-marketing, sending opportunities to other partners) and let the relationships take root. Then Marketing Execution. Hire someone to own the content calendar, post consistently, manage the newsletter, keep the website updated. The founder still brings the ideas and the point of view, but the week-to-week execution is off their plate. This is what builds the top-of-funnel engine that feeds everything else. Encourage other qualified members of the team to contribute and develop an authoritative voice as well. Then Outbound. Only once you have the positioning, the case studies, and the proof points that give cold outreach some teeth. You might invest in a GTM engineer or work with an outbound specialist agency. The sales process comes off the founder’s plate last. It’s what they’re best at and what’s hardest to transfer. But remember, you don’t have to hand off the whole thing at once. Start by peeling off qualification and scoping to people on your team. Let an account exec handle the early stages while the founder weighs in with insights and key appearances to help close. Over time, maybe 80% of opportunities can be run end-to-end by a BD manager, and the founder only steps in for the high-stakes deals where their presence really matters. One thing worth calling out: you’ll be tempted to bundle a few of these functions into one hire.
How Agencies Should Use Conferences for Business Development
Marketing conferences have long competed on scale: bigger expo halls, bigger stages, and bigger attendance numbers. But according to Christian Muche, founder of POSSIBLE and co-founder of DMEXCO, that model is changing quickly. In a conversation with NextBigWin, Muche shared how he believes agencies should approach conferences as a business development channel, and why the most valuable resource events compete for today isn’t budget, but time. “The most valuable thing is asking for people’s time, not their budget,” Muche says. As companies become more selective about how they spend both time and money, conferences are increasingly expected to deliver something far more tangible than exposure or networking — they must help drive real business outcomes. From Trade Shows to Curated Experiences Marketing conferences didn’t always look the way they do today. In the early days of the digital marketing industry, events were largely large-scale trade shows built around exhibitor floors and massive attendance. Companies built booths, scanned badges, and hoped to capture leads from thousands of attendees walking the expo floor. Muche experienced that model firsthand while building DMEXCO. “When we launched DMEXCO, it was designed as a trade show… a mass event, 60,000 people at the peak time,” he says. But attendees’ expectations have changed significantly. Executives today expect events to deliver more curated experiences, targeted conversations, and a better return on the time they invest in attending them. “Today the expectations are far higher,” Muche says. Instead of simply gathering thousands of people in a convention center, modern events increasingly focus on smaller sessions, curated meetings, and more structured opportunities for interaction. The Three Jobs Conferences Serve Today For agencies and brands, conferences now serve three distinct purposes. First, they provide content and inspiration through speakers, panels, and industry insights. Second, they create opportunities for networking and relationship building. And third, increasingly, they generate business opportunities. “Content and inspiration… networking… and the third part is business opportunities,” Muche says. That third category is becoming more important as companies scrutinize the return on their event investments. As companies become more selective about where they spend their time and budgets, events are increasingly expected to generate tangible outcomes, from partnerships and collaborations to new business opportunities. Designing Conferences Around Business Opportunities That shift toward business outcomes influenced how Muche designed POSSIBLE. Launched in Miami in 2023, the conference was designed to combine inspiration, networking, and structured business interactions in one environment. Rather than simply hosting keynote sessions, Muche wanted POSSIBLE to actively facilitate business connections between brands, agencies, and technology partners. One of the ways the event does that is through curated meeting programs designed to connect agencies, vendors, and brand marketers. “We organize up to 3,000 meetings in this space on the beach over three days,” Muche says. These types of structured meetings are becoming increasingly common across the events industry as organizers try to deliver measurable value to attendees rather than simply providing networking opportunities. For agencies, that shift turns conferences from marketing moments into potential business development engines. Why Showing Up Isn’t Enough Despite the growing focus on outcomes, many companies still approach conferences the wrong way. One of the most common mistakes Muche sees is companies showing up without a clear strategy for how they’ll use the event. “You cannot just show up and say I’m looking forward to letting people stop by,” he says. Instead, the companies that generate the most value from conferences treat them like structured business development opportunities. “As soon as the door opens, you have to set up your meetings,” Muche says. That preparation often begins weeks or months before the event. Successful companies schedule meetings in advance, plan client gatherings, and coordinate internal teams so they can capture insights from sessions while others focus on networking or meetings. For agencies, that preparation can be the difference between leaving an event with a few new business conversations or leaving with nothing more than a stack of business cards. Why Agencies Need to Be Where Their Clients Are For agencies specifically, conferences often serve to strengthen relationships with existing clients while also meeting potential new clients. Muche points out that events like POSSIBLE attract a significant number of brand-side marketing leaders. “Agencies have to follow where the clients are,” he says. With roughly a third of attendees representing brand marketers, conferences can offer agencies direct access to the people responsible for major marketing decisions. That proximity can make events one of the most efficient ways for agencies to stay connected to their clients while also building new relationships. What Smaller Agencies Should Do Not every agency has the budget to sponsor an event or create large activations. But that doesn’t mean smaller firms can’t benefit from attending conferences. “At least show up and bring your team,” Muche says. However, simply attending is often not sufficient. “It’s not enough to come with five people and wait to run into people in the hallway,” he says. Instead, smaller agencies should focus on scheduling meetings in advance, attending targeted sessions aligned with their expertise, and taking advantage of structured networking opportunities offered by event organizers. Even without large sponsorship budgets, conferences can still provide opportunities to build meaningful relationships. The Future of Conferences: Quality Over Scale Looking ahead, Muche believes conferences will continue evolving toward more curated, higher-value experiences. The era of massive industry gatherings built purely around scale may be fading. “I don’t believe in pure mass events anymore,” he says. Instead, he believes the future of conferences lies in delivering higher-quality interactions between the right people. “It’s all about quality,” Muche says. That focus on quality over quantity could shape the next generation of industry events. POSSIBLE returns April 27–29, 2026, in Miami Beach and is expected to bring together thousands of senior marketers, agencies, media leaders, and technology companies from across the industry. More information about the event, including registration details, is available at possibleevent.com. A Fast-Changing Landscape If there’s one
Why Growing Is Not the Same Thing as Scaling
Ask ten agency leaders about their plans for the year ahead, and nine will tell you they’re focused on “scaling” their business. Press them on what that actually means, and you’ll discover they’re really just talking about adding more clients and hiring more people. That’s not scaling. That’s just getting bigger. The difference matters more than most firm leaders realize. One path leads to perpetual complexity and margin pressure. The other leads to sustainable profitability and genuine enterprise value. Unfortunately, the vast majority of professional service firms are on the wrong path, mistaking expansion for transformation. Here’s the distinction: expansion happens when your revenue grows in direct proportion to your resources. You double your headcount, you double your revenue. That’s addition. Scaling happens when revenue grows faster than costs. You double your revenue while your costs increase by only 50%, or 30%, or not at all. That’s multiplication. The traditional “growth” model has dominated professional services for decades, and it’s rooted in a simple but destructive premise: selling time. When your inventory is hours and your product is labor, growth becomes a numbers game that you can never truly win. Why the Traditional Model Fails Consider a firm generating $10 million in annual revenue with a team of 50 professionals. Leadership sets an ambitious goal: reach $20 million within three years. Under the conventional approach, achieving this target means recruiting another 50 people. Same ratio of revenue to headcount. Same office space needs. Same everything, just more of it. You’ve hit your revenue target, but what have you actually accomplished? Your payroll has doubled. Your real estate footprint has expanded. Your management burden has increased exponentially — because managing 100 people isn’t twice as hard as managing 50, it’s considerably more complex. You’re running twice the business but not necessarily making twice the profit. This is what happens when you build your business model around selling hours. Revenue and costs move in lockstep. The relationship is rigid and unforgiving. Become more efficient, and you earn less money because you have fewer hours to bill. That’s perverse. Your economic model should reward effectiveness, not penalize it. The arrival of artificial intelligence has exposed just how broken this system is. Firms across the professional services spectrum report that AI tools are reducing project delivery time by 20-30%. That’s good news for productivity. It’s terrible news for firms still billing by the hour. The better you get, the less you earn. The math doesn’t work anymore — if it ever did. The Economics of Leverage The firms positioned to win in the next decade are those reimagining their capabilities as repeatable solutions rather than custom services. They’re building intellectual property. They’re creating proprietary frameworks and methodologies. They’re developing platforms and programs that can be deployed across multiple clients without rebuilding them from scratch each time. This isn’t about cookie-cutter work or sacrificing creativity. It’s about recognizing that much of what agencies do involves solving similar problems repeatedly. Smart firms capture that knowledge, systematize the best approaches, and turn expertise into assets that compound in value over time. Take the case of Fig, an award-winning independent agency that turned its revenue model on its head by trading traditional agency services for a productized offering called “StoryData,” a creative intelligence solution that transforms ads into data using AI tools. This unique platform uses a proprietary classification system that enables the agency to quantify essential variables like meaningfulness, brand identify, emotion and differentiation. StoryData then helps diagnose what story to tell, what the topic of the story should be, and how the story should be expressed for maximum effectiveness. StoryData is a repeatable, high-value product offering that enables the agency to scale its revenues without a commensurate increase in labor costs. Building the Foundation for Scaling What separates firms that successfully make this transition from those that remain stuck in the old model? Several key elements consistently appear: Systems over heroics. Scalable firms document how work gets done. They build playbooks, frameworks, and decision-making models that ensure consistency and quality without requiring the founder or senior partner to personally oversee every project. This isn’t bureaucracy for its own sake — it’s the infrastructure that allows good work to happen efficiently and repeatedly. Technology as a multiplier. When AI reduces the time required to complete a project by 30%, a time-based business sees 30% less revenue. A value-based business captures 30% more profit. The difference lies in how technology is integrated into the business model. Progressive firms are building AI capabilities directly into their solutions, using it to enhance quality and speed while maintaining or increasing pricing based on client outcomes. Ownable differentiation. The firms that command premium prices — and achieve the best margins — are those that can point to something unique they’ve developed. A proprietary methodology. A specialized technology platform. A unique approach to solving a particular business problem. These assets create both competitive advantage and genuine scalability because they can be applied broadly without starting from zero each time. Economics that reward excellence. None of this works if you’re still selling hours. A scalable business model requires pricing mechanisms that capture value rather than track costs. Whether through fixed-fee programs, subscription arrangements, performance-based compensation, or licensing intellectual property, the economic model must break the link between time invested and revenue earned. The Choice Ahead The shift from expansion to scalability isn’t a minor adjustment. It requires rethinking what you sell, how you package it, and how clients pay for it. It demands investment in systems and intellectual property development. It means making difficult choices about which opportunities to pursue and which to decline. Most critically, it requires confronting the reality that a labor-intensive business built on selling hours cannot evolve into a scalable enterprise through incremental changes. The foundation itself must be rebuilt. Firms that cling to the traditional model will find themselves trapped in an increasingly untenable position. They’ll work harder to maintain revenue as AI continues
The Agency Lifecycle: Why Your $10M Strategy Will Kill Your $1M Business
There’s a myth in agency land. That growth is linear. The assumption goes like this: If you hustled yourself to $1M, you hustle 10x harder to get to $10M. Founders can imagine the revenue chart as a smooth line, up and to the right. More leads. More bodies. More hours. This is what I refer to as the Linear Growth Fallacy. If you study the path of successful agencies, as I did with nearly 70 founders who’ve grossed hundreds of millions in revenue, then the growth isn’t linear. It is a step-function. The “operating model” needed to run a $1M agency and the “operating model” needed to serve a $10M agency are different. In fact, they might be different companies altogether. Ryan Watson of Upsourced, who scaled one agency to $45M, describes this as Lifecycle Modeling. Paul Wilson, who helped sell his $30M agency to Merkle, calls it “breaking the ceiling.” The central thesis remains the same: The strategy that is your rocket fuel at Stage 1 becomes your anchor at Stage 3. You’re not only required to grow; you’re required to evolve in order to survive. This is my GTM framework outlining the four distinct stages of agency maturity, as well as the “brick walls” that define them. Stage 1: Validation ($0–$1M) The Hustle Operating Model. In its early stages, you don’t have a business; you have a hypothesis that you and your team must validate with cash. The pivotal characteristic of this stage is existential anxiety. You’re fighting for oxygen nonstop. Many founders succumb to this anxiety by “playing business.” They spend weeks designing logos, 5-year strategic plans, or building complex HubSpot automations. This is “fake work.” It looks like it is productive work, but has no value in terms of asset value. The Strategy: At this stage, the founder is the product and the sales channel. Asset type: personal reputation Key metric: cash flow Mason Cosby, founder of Scrappy ABM, demonstrates that very well. He completely disregarded the “agency playbook.” He didn’t wait for a brand deck. Using a high-friction, unscalable approach, podcasting, and direct networking, he successfully produced $4.5M in pipeline with $0 ad spend. Stage 1’s rule is pretty simple: Your 80% time is spent on sales and delivery. If you are automating a process you haven’t sold yet, you are just playing business. Stage 2: Standardization ($1M–$3M) The “Positioning” Operating Model If the theme of the first stage is saying ‘Yes’, the theme of the second is saying ‘No.’ You have survived the hustle by now, yes. You have revenue. But you are probably in the “Generalist Trap.” You arrived here by taking every single client request, which means your delivery team is reinventing the wheel every week. You don’t establish a system for “we do whatever you want.” The Brick Wall: The founder is the bottleneck; you hit a revenue ceiling. You wear 1,000 hats, and no one can replace you with a new one due to “process,” which lives in none other than your head. The Strategy: You’re moving from a service business to a productized firm. Travis McAshan of Glide notes that a great example of real expertise is being able to drop 20 insights off the cuff. Generalists can’t do that. If you want to scale past $3M, you need to embrace Ruthless Positioning. By focusing (as Ben Zettler did with his ecommerce ecosystem), you can standardize your delivery. Standardization generates an asset, a process that transcends the brain of the founder. Stage 3: Delegation ($3M–$10M) The “Management” Operating Model This is the agency “Valley of Death.” Between revenues of $3M–$4M, a “Brick Wall” emerges, Ryan Watson argues. The informal communication structures that worked for a team of 10 disintegrate at a team of 30. Quality slips. Culture frays. Old employees start to resent new hires. Now, the mistake founders make here is applying Stage 1 logic (work harder) upon a Stage 3 problem (complexity). The Strategy: They need to establish a Second Layer of Leadership. You are no longer pitching projects. Instead, like Adam Kurzawa says, you’re selling enterprise value instead. This involves moving from “Founder-with-Helpers” to “Company-with-Departments.” You need to bring on high-priced management layers that will temporarily weigh on your margins. This feels bureaucratic. You are losing the “soul” of the agency. But unless you are able to add this layer, the founder is the bottleneck, and the business effectively becomes unsellable. Stage 4: Liquidity ($10M+) The “Engine” Operating Model At $10M+, your difficulty transforms from delivery to volume. To simply stay flat, you would have to replace $2M–$3M in churned revenue annually. You are feeding a beast. The peril here is commoditization, turning into a “vendor” who competes on price instead of a “partner” who competes on value. The Strategy: You need to have that revenue decoupled entirely from the founder. Paul Wilson, who took his agency to a $30M exit, states that a founder must move from the “Closer” to the “Brand.” The business must have a Diversified Sales Engine: a combination of inbound, outbound, and partnerships operated by a specialized CRO. At the end of the day, Private Equity firms pay for “Engines,” not “Hustlers,” in terms of premiums. If the revenue stops when the founder leaves the room, you don’t have a business; you have a high-paying job. The Mental Model: Act Your Age The most dangerous thing an agency owner can do is take a playbook from the wrong stage. Hiring a CRO at Stage 1 is suicide (no, you need hustle, not management). Hustling at Stage 3 is negligence (you need process, not heroics). Growth is not the addition of more numbers to the top line. It’s about identifying what game you are playing and having the discipline to alter the rules when that game stops playing.
Why Agency–Client Performance Appraisals Are Now a Business Development Imperative
For years, agency–client relationship reviews were treated as something you did after things went wrong: a precursor to an RFP, a response to friction, or a defensive exercise once revenue was already at risk. That framing is no longer just outdated. It’s commercially reckless. In today’s market—where budgets are scrutinized line by line, procurement is deeply embedded, and clients expect measurable impact—waiting for a problem before evaluating performance is a failure of leadership. Agency–client performance appraisals must be treated as a core management discipline, not a damage-control tactic. Agencies that embrace this shift aren’t just retaining more clients. They are fundamentally changing how they are perceived: from interchangeable suppliers to accountable, strategic partners. As Denis Budnieski, former Verizon executive and PwC agency consultant, puts it: “A 360-degree review of the relationship is not a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have.” The data—and the market—back him up. “Assumptions” Are the Termites of Relationships. One of the most dangerous assumptions agency leaders make is that silence equals satisfaction. It doesn’t. In reality, many agency–client relationships don’t fail loudly. They decay quietly: Expectations drift but are never explicitly reset Perceived value erodes while scope remains unchanged Frustrations build across teams but never reach senior leadership Performance is discussed tactically, not relationally By the time these issues surface as declining revenue, reduced scope, or a surprise RFP, the outcome is often already decided. According to an ANA 2024 case study: “Brands that adopted formal evaluations saw an improvement in agency retention and project turnaround time by up to 35% in just one year.” That is not a “soft” cultural benefit. It is a measurable operational and financial advantage created by structure, transparency, and disciplined relationship management. Agencies that rely on intuition instead of evidence are effectively choosing to find out where they stand when it’s too late to change the outcome. What Makes an Appraisal Valuable—and What Makes It a Waste of Time Not all agency–client evaluations are useful. In fact, poorly designed appraisals can do more harm than good—reinforcing bias, triggering defensiveness, or generating feedback so generic it’s unusable. The appraisals that actually drive performance share three defining characteristics. They Are Data-Driven, Not Opinion-Driven High-value appraisals integrate both quantitative and qualitative inputs, including: Structured surveys across both organizations Role-based scoring (leadership, day-to-day teams, cross-functional partners) Thematic analysis of interviews Trend analysis over time This shifts the conversation away from personalities and anecdotes toward evidence. Data doesn’t eliminate hard conversations—but it makes them unavoidable and productive. They Deliver Value to Both Sides Many reviews are still framed as a one-way evaluation: the client grades the agency. That approach limits insight and undermines trust. The most effective appraisals are intentionally bi-directional, addressing questions such as: How is the agency performing against expectations? How effective is the client as a partner? Where do process breakdowns actually occur? Which behaviors on both sides enable—or block—success? When agencies are willing to be evaluated alongside their clients, defensiveness drops, credibility increases, and the discussion shifts from blame to improvement. That shift alone can change the trajectory of a relationship. They Are Conducted Consistently One-off reviews generate insight. Consistent reviews generate performance. Annual—or biannual—appraisals allow agencies and clients to: Track progress against prior benchmarks Validate whether changes actually worked Identify early warning signs before revenue is at risk Institutionalize “ways of working” that scale across accounts Consistency turns evaluation from an event into a management system—and systems, not intentions, drive results. Why This Is Now a Business Development Advantage For agency leaders focused on growth, disciplined performance appraisals are not just a retention tool. They are a competitive weapon. Agencies that run rigorous, data-driven appraisals are better positioned to: Expand scope based on demonstrated value Defend fees with evidence, not anecdotes Onboard new client stakeholders faster Reduce exposure to surprise reviews and competitive pitches Differentiate credibly in new-business conversations Increasingly, leading agencies are using appraisal outputs directly in business development: as proof points in credentials decks, as evidence of operational maturity, and as tangible demonstrations of partnership effectiveness. In a market where nearly every agency claims to be “strategic,” measured relationship performance is one of the few ways to prove it. The Bottom Line Agency–client relationships are among the most valuable—and fragile—assets an agency has. Yet many firms still manage them informally, intuitively, or reactively. That approach no longer works. A disciplined, data-driven, 360-degree performance appraisal—conducted consistently and designed to deliver value to both agency and client—is no longer optional. It is a leadership responsibility and a growth lever. Agencies that act on this insight won’t just protect revenue. They will build stronger partnerships, earn deeper trust, and create a durable advantage in an increasingly unforgiving market
What Do We Do Next? Your Rapid-Response Guide to Your Agency’s Next Client Contract Negotiation
New business feels like a game of “hurry up and wait” for agencies. Until you’ve landed the client or the account—when it’s all hurry, no wait. Your team is excited to start work, and your accountant is eager to see revenue. All as soon as possible. What nobody wants? A drawn-out contract negotiation that slows down progress. So, in the spirit of closing agreements promptly, without sacrificing your agency’s leverage in the process, here are some suggested “rapid responses” to a few of the common deal points most agencies encounter frequently in new business. The Challenge: Payment Terms That Aren’t Reasonable for Your Agency Agencies are generally protective of their payment terms in client contracts. The challenge usually arises when you are onboarding a new client whose payment policies don’t align with the agency’s needs. One part of the problem is lengthy pay terms. The other, less-noticed part of the problem is contingencies that can draw a payment term out even longer than it looks on its face—terms like invoice approval rights, charge dispute provisions, or unreasonable pass-through cost reimbursement rules. Your Agency’s Rapid Response: Long payment terms are a business problem, not necessarily a legal issue. Know your agency’s benchmarks and its capacity to financially tolerate payment terms that don’t accommodate your overhead cycles and profitability targets. Beyond that, consider some of the following responses: Ensure that the payment term clock begins to run on the date of invoicing. Not on the date of “approval” of the invoice. Require that any objections or errors in agency billing be raised promptly by the client, or waived if not prompt. Bill in advance for all third-party expenses, such as media or production. If you bill in arrears for agency services, consider “split billing” for expenses vs. agency services—one invoice for expenses, one for services, on different remittance schedules. The Challenge: Standard “Work for Hire” IP Language and Restricted Portfolio Rights Most client-provided services contracts will address IP rights in agency work with a broad brush—the agency creates, the client owns. Many brands now also default to prohibiting the agency from displaying samples of the work it creates for them. Sometimes the restriction covers even mentioning the brand as a client. Imagine the impact this has on your ability to attract new clients in the future. These IP defaults and work display restrictions have real-world consequences for your agency’s revenues and future business development efforts. And there may be some work that the agency doesn’t intend to transfer to the client (like your proprietary knowledge, software, methodologies, etc.), or cannot transfer to the client (like third-party licensed assets or anything generated by AI). Your Agency’s Rapid Response: Address this deal point with these recommended responses: Include terms that the rights to work your agency agrees the client will own do not transfer until the agency is paid in full. Carve out rights transfers in any work that is proprietary to the agency (this gets licensed, not transferred), or work that is third-party created (like stock assets). Reserve a license for the agency to display portions of the work that are not confidential for its promotional and marketing purposes—including the right to share the client’s brand name. If you’re unable to secure this term, negotiate instead for a “disclose/display with permission” term to share this information in your agency’s marketing. This is a midpoint on the issue that at least keeps the door open to the possibilities for promotional use cases later. The Challenge: Exclusivity Demands by The Brand One outcome of agency specialization and niching is that clients have increased their expectations about restricting your agency’s ability to serve other similar businesses or product categories. Brands want to guard against their agencies working for perceived competitors. But your agency needs flexibility to pursue these other opportunities, or an economic incentive to agree to exclusivity. Your Agency’s Rapid Response: If you’ve made the decision that your agency will accept some exclusivity requests in order to serve the client, consider these response options: Request, and expect, minimum spend requirements and/or premium pricing from the client. Choose your language as carefully as you like; however, the agency deserves a premium for foregoing other business opportunities to serve the client. Suggest limitation of the exclusion to a narrowly defined list of competitors. Suggest limitation of the exclusion to as short a list as possible of product or service categories. Request that the exclusivity end as soon as the agency’s services to the client do, not for any “tail” period after they conclude. The Challenge: AI Compliance and Responsibility Expectations Increasingly, agency-client agreements are addressing the responsibility of agencies when using AI. This is particularly true in the case of the agency using GAI to create deliverables, but is also an increasingly recurrent challenge when it comes to data privacy compliance and confidentiality. This is a balancing act during your contract negotiations. AI’s presence in the work stream is dynamic, and the law around the legal issues it can create is still unsettled in many areas. Meanwhile, the agency wants to display proactivity in AI adoption, and the client has risk management concerns and likely has more conservative organization policies around AI use. Your Agency’s Rapid Response: The client will expect your agency to share some of the risk when using AI to create and deliver work. Your role in the negotiation process is to balance the risk as fairly as possible, given the legal unknowns. Here are the starting points for responding: Require the client to acknowledge the agency’s use of AI in writing. Include the acknowledgment in the contract. Include approval and legal review of all deliverables by the client as a defined client responsibility. Require the client to disclose its AI use policies to the agency before work is performed. Expect the agency to have to assume some part of the responsibility if any of the work it creates (using generative AI, especially) infringes someone’s intellectual property or data privacy
The Generalist Trap: Why Saying Yes to Everyone is Sinking Your Agency
Let me guess: You started your agency by saying yes to everyone. The local lawyer. The fitness coach. That friend-of-a-friend with a “cool app idea.” It felt like momentum. Like you were building something. But here’s the thing: That “something” was a trap. Let’s call it what it is: the Generalist Trap. You know the symptoms: Context-switching chaos. Employees pleading with you not to sell another deal. A team stretched thin, relearning new industries every week. You—the founder—becoming the bottleneck, the only one who “gets” every client. Work that’s good, not great. And clients who leave because they don’t see the difference between you and the next agency on Google. Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Most agency founders fall into this trap early on. And it makes sense: generalists survive. They hustle. They scrape by. But they don’t scale. The Generalist Trap is a Cycle—And It Feeds Itself Here’s what most agency owners miss: each “yes” sets off a chain reaction that circles right back to more “yeses.” It’s not just inefficient—it’s a loop. And if you don’t break it, it’ll run your agency into the ground. Let’s walk through the cycle: 1. It starts with “Yes to Everyone.” That random inbound lead? You take it. That one-off project in a new niche? Why not. But this isn’t building a business—it’s building a time bomb. 2. Next comes Context Switching. Now you’re building a funnel for a SaaS startup on Monday, running local SEO for a dentist on Tuesday, and launching a paid media campaign for a nonprofit on Wednesday. No momentum. No rhythm. Just whiplash. 3. Which leads to Operational Inefficiencies. No repeatable systems. No SOPs. No leverage. Your team spends more time learning than executing. Your margins vanish. 4. Then the Founder Becomes the Bottleneck. You know every client’s backstory because you sold them. So you become QA, strategist, firefighter. Growth stalls because nothing scales without you. 5. You Become a Commodity. Generic agencies get generic results. You’re not known for solving a specific problem, so you blend into the crowd—and clients start shopping on price. 6. Client Churn Kicks In. Without deep expertise, your results are average. Clients leave. Retainers die. And your team starts wondering if this is really worth it. 7. You Chase Revenue. Churn hurts. Cashflow gets tight. So you do what you’ve always done: you say yes to anyone. And the whole thing starts again. And that’s the trap. A hamster wheel disguised as hustle. Here’s the visual to drive it home: You Can’t Grow What You Can’t Systemize This isn’t just a list of problems—it’s a feedback loop. The longer you stay in it, the more it costs you: in time, in energy, in sanity. And the only way out is to specialize in a vertical market. Vertical specialization gives you: Clear positioning Tighter processes A more empowered team Higher margins Clients who stick around And a business that doesn’t rely on you doing everything Want Out of the Cycle? The first step to breaking free from the Generalist Trap is getting clear on where you are today—and what’s holding you back. That’s why I built a quick, powerful assessment to help agency founders like you spot the hidden gaps in your positioning, marketing, and sales systems. In just a few minutes, you’ll get a personalized snapshot of where you stand—and your best next moves to scale with less chaos and more momentum. Take the free Agency Growth Scalability Assessment here → https://geni.us/eY3xB Let’s stop the cycle—and start building the agency you actually want.
It’s Not About You: Winning New Business in a Crowded Agency World
(Exclusive excerpts prior to January 20 Publication, Preorder here) There are 17,000 agencies in the U.S. Or maybe 37,000. It depends on the source. Let’s put it this way: there are a lot of agencies! And winning new business is tough. With so many options available, prospects often feel overwhelmed and unsure of where to turn. Meanwhile, agencies are scrambling to differentiate themselves and emerge as the obvious choice. After all, every agency needs new business to thrive. But in a sea of thousands of firms offering help, how do you get your agency front and center of that consideration? Amid all of this competition, agencies often face three challenges that weaken their success rate: Agencies aren’t ready to be found. Agencies don’t know how to be found. Agencies don’t effectively pitch once they are found. Agencies that know how to address each of these challenges land more new business. Let’s talk about these challenges. Challenge 1: Be Ready to Be Found We’ve frequently heard agencies say, “If we can just get in the room, we’ll prove we’re the best agency for the job.” So, how do you get in the room? You can’t showcase your strength if you’re not even invited to the party. Preparing for that opportunity means investing in your agency first. Several critical readiness steps are essential for growth — steps you overlook at your own risk. The first step in this journey is to define your agency’s positioning, making it crystal clear what kind of agency you are and why you stand out. This involves two key elements: understanding your agency’s identity (your frame of reference) and articulating your distinctiveness – what makes your shop unique and appealing from a prospect’s perspective. The second step is to make sure your website is prospect-friendly, so when a prospect does discover you, they immediately see you as a potential partner. A prospect-friendly website allows visitors to find the information they’re looking for quickly and effortlessly. Of course, all of this requires time and resources — and many agencies operate on razor-thin margins with lean teams. Challenge 2: Know How to Be Found You might be the perfect agency for a prospect in need, but that opportunity vanishes if they can’t find you. That’s why it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of the marketer’s customer journey for agency services. Marketers don’t think about agencies until they must. They are focused on their business. And since they don’t think about agencies very often, most marketers also have very low unaided awareness of specific agencies. Even with agencies they may have heard of, their knowledge is limited. When we interview clients during an agency search process, we typically ask which agencies they would like us to consider. They can rarely name more than one or two agencies. Often, they will say things like “that Nike agency” or “the agency that did the Apple work.” Prospects often have little awareness of where to even begin searching for the right agency. Most clients don’t pore over Ad Age, Adweek, or Campaign from cover to cover. They might subscribe, but they don’t engage with these publications with the same frequency or depth as agency professionals do. If they reach out to their personal networks, they’ll find little help. Clients simply don’t know where to begin, so they behave much like any B2B buyer these days. They do much of their research online, and most of it before an agency even knows that the client or prospect is looking for help. What happens behind the scenes when a marketer needs to find a new agency? Typically, a middle manager is assigned the task of researching agencies and compiling a shortlist of potential candidates. Often, they start with a simple web search. A Google search for “advertising agencies” can return millions of results. Or they might turn to an AI tool to research the industry. In a market flooded with thousands of agencies, there’s a good chance your agency won’t even surface in the results of a search or AI prompt. Clearly, the odds are against any one agency. But they don’t have to be – there are steps agencies can take that will enhance their odds of being found when the right prospect is looking. The key is to develop and execute a marketing plan that elevates your agency’s brand. By making strategic and focused choices, you can balance limited resources with the most impactful marketing efforts, whether that’s submitting award applications, creating compelling content, engaging in PR, participating in trade shows, or securing speaking engagements. Marketing your agency is a critical foundation for your agency’s success! Challenge 3: Pitch Well Once You’re Found “Pitching” can take on many forms and meanings. For our purposes, we’re not focused simply on competitive opportunities. Rather, we are referring to any conversation you have as a representative of your agency that can yield new business. A conversation over coffee, an introduction at a conference, a call about something else that leads to a question about your agency. These all have the potential to lead to new business, so they can certainly be “pitches.” We’ve observed thousands of formal and informal pitches, and the unfortunate truth is that most of them end up looking the same — to us and to our clients. These pitches often fail to excite or inspire the client or prospect. Someone wins simply because a decision has to be made — but it’s frequently not the right agency, and sometimes not even the best one. And most of the agencies that make it to a presentation probably can do the work. They have the capability; that’s how they got in the room. But it’s a shame to see a good agency — the agency that has the strongest skillset to meet the prospect’s specific needs — lose the prospect by not being properly prepared for or delivering a customer-centric pitch. And, unfortunately, there’s little opportunity for an agency to learn