Getting Out of Delivery
16 articles
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Why design agencies are different
Design agency founders get stuck in ways other founders don't: selling is harder, talent is scarce and stepping back feels impossible. Here's the way out.
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You don't have to get out of delivery
Founder reliance is a problem of accountability, not delivery. Split out the bits of you, hire for those, and step back when you're worth more out than in.
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Redefine your Ops
Ops isn't a set of systems, it's a set of responsibilities. The depth of your Ops is how many of them the business handles rather than you.
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An expected bonus isn't a bonus
An expected bonus stops working as a bonus. How to actually incentivise an agency team: commission, profit share, ad hoc rewards, training and equity.
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How I built pipeline and stepped out of delivery
How I built pipeline and stepped out of delivery: the luck, and what made it stick. Compounding marketing, knowing your numbers, the right people.
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Why design agency founders get trapped
Design agencies are built differently - and that makes them uniquely vulnerable to four traps that stop talented founders from growing beyond themselves.
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Track time for now. Tomorrow it will be tokens.
As an agency founder your most important job is allocating resource. Time is your unit - imperfect but essential - and knowing what it costs tells you which clients make real money and how to build a business that doesn't need you billing.
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Steal my forecasting template to see your future
A practical guide to building a financial forecast for your agency, starting simple and adding sophistication over time, so you can see the impact of your decisions before you make them.
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Why small agencies should hire in the Goldilocks Zone
The highest-ROI hires for small agencies are people with just enough experience who are on the cusp of becoming authoritative, they bring passion and loyalty in exchange for mentorship and opportunity.
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The three seats of marketing
Marketing feels overwhelming when you treat it as one thing; breaking it into market insights, strategy, and execution reveals which parts the founder must own and which can be outsourced.
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Your best people aren't unicorns
Treating your best employees as irreplaceable unicorns keeps you relying on luck; breaking down what actually makes them great gives you a repeatable way to find more of them.
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The places SOPs won't reach: why standard operating procedures have limits
Standard operating procedures can only handle the predictable parts of agency work; the real value lies in the complex, non-linear problem-solving that can't be documented, and scaling means finding people who can do that too.
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The curse of the doer: why your greatest skill might be holding your agency back
Being skilled at the work lets you start an agency, but it also lets you get away with being bad at running one, and the habits that form in the early days become the culture that holds you back.
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Don't get stuck in the valley of low profit
Agency profitability follows a predictable curve, small founder-led agencies and large structured ones both thrive, but the messy middle is a valley of rising costs, harder sales, and squeezed margins that demands intentional navigation.
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Why agency founders resist essential business practices (and why you shouldn't)
Agency founders often resist fundamental business practices like line management and sales, mistaking avoidance for innovation. Knowing the difference between genuine innovation and uncomfortable avoidance is critical to sustainable growth.
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How many hats are you wearing?
Agency founders wear every hat by default, but choosing which roles to hand off, and which to keep, shapes your culture, your growth, and your sanity.