From mad marketeer to industry leader: a roadmap to scale your agency.

Growing to infinity and beyond (while enjoying the process).

An interview in a podcast about agency growth gave me the perfect excuse to write some reflections slowly brewed over years of managing an agency. Good Rebels has over 130 people today and many ask us how we got there. The hard truth is that the answer is a unique mix of mistakes, learnings, strokes of luck and bold moves impossible to replicate. But I nonetheless wanted to put together some structured and general ideas about managing growth gathered from many readings about the art of managing professional services firms and from endless conversations with seasoned practitioners in this field.

Wait but… why growing? A common question with lots of answers. Pure ambition might be one: money or fame or both. Though you could earn enough of that while keeping your agency or studio small. But if you love working with outstanding people and making them partners in life, you must make your project bigger to provide them with development opportunities without having to leave somewhere else to pursue professional growth. And most importantly, if you have a strong purpose and believe that the work of your firm can change the world for the better (our purpose at Good Rebels is “inspiring organisations to become more human-centred”) the bigger your project, the bigger the impact.

A Roadmap for growth.

Moving up, teams of 10, 30, 70 and 120+ coworkers are my suggested thresholds. The ingredients of this growth recipe are intertwined and all of them are relevant at any stage of growth. Things like culture, team leadership, talent, financial management, thought leadership cannot be skipped at any time. But focus may vary moving from one stage to the next. This is a roadmap I’ve come up with after some days tinkering with different ideas. I hope you find it useful.

Most of it is self-explanatory, but I want to go into more detail, exposing afterwards some of my core beliefs regarding this industry. Core enough to change them at any moment, as events develop in front of our eyes.

Disclaimer: this is not a Good Rebels story. We are a 130+ coworkers agency and consultancy at this moment. We mingled with many of these ingredients, we put lots of effort, common sense and hard work. Furthermore, we are still quite deficient at a few of them, and we applied some of them at earlier stages, by mere luck. Like when we launched a blog in 2005 that became a hit and saved our life when in trouble after the 2008 economic crisis. Putting thought leadership first made us bad at commercial planning after. We are still trying to recover from it.

A.- Scaling to 30 coworkers.

To get to 30 coworkers at Good Rebels, we put in lots of hard work but we also benefited from a stroke of luck: the social media wave in the late 2000’s took us from 3 to 30 in hardly 18 months. But you cannot rely on luck alone and hard as it sounds, many founders won’t get to 30 coworkers. In fact, reaching this threshold might be the most difficult stunt of the whole growth journey.

1. Founder personality.

• Hunter, farmer, or poet. The founder's personality plays a pivotal role at the beginning. It doesn’t matter if you are a 'hunter,' driven by acquiring new clients. Or a 'farmer,' focused on nurturing existing relationships and excelling at work delivery. Or just a 'poet,' crafting innovative and creative strategies and gaining trust by your craft or intellect. Clients will come and stick because of you. You cannot hide.
• Trusted advisor. Become a trusted advisor to your clients. Being there whenever they need you, committing to their cause and not letting them down. It’s more efficient to maintain existing clients than fight for new ones.

2. Nurturing the network.

Building strong connections with fellow industry professionals, mentors, and peers can provide insights and support. And attract talent for current and future stages. It is hard for a small agency to compete for talent to deliver outstanding work. Networking fosters word of mouth and could get you to the next level even if the quality of your work is not top notch.

B.- From 30 to 70 coworkers.

Agency growth is limited by the founder's incompetence. Understand your own limitations and let some space so that others can thrive. It might also require giving away or selling equity. Make sure you find the right partners in crime.

1. Senior leadership

Founders don't scale. And building trust in clients and coworkers is key to growth. Having 1 senior leader for every 7-10 coworkers looks like an optimal ratio. This team of seniors are the foundation of your culture and your future.

2. Cultivating the agency culture

• Building rituals and storytelling. Rituals and storytelling help cement your agency's beliefs and inspire desired behaviours. Create traditions and narratives that resonate with your team, clients, and partners.
• Hiring (and firing) according to culture. Culture is about beliefs and coworkers’ behaviours. Ensure that your hiring and firing decisions align with your agency's culture. It helps maintain consistency between beliefs and behaviours.

3. Founder Vision and Commitment

• Consistency. We all (included clients and employees) value consistency. Staying true to your beliefs and building a long term vision help navigate day to day strong waters. But consistency is not stubbornness: vulnerability and willingness to listen and change can be the plot twists that will make you human.
• Inspiration. Keep learning (not just about business or marketing), be curious, connect with experts, become the leader your team wants to listen to. The great conversational peer everybody will be happy to have some drinks with. Passion is contagious.

C.- From 70 to 120 coworkers.

Agencies suck at following procedures. They all use nice methodology slides in their credential decks but very few actually follow them. Many even despise established processes and see them as an evil killing creativity and genius. Something that gets to mantra level in latin agencies (no wonder so few of them are able to manage international projects). Processes and middle management should be the focus of this stage. Including structuring the commercial process.?

1. Establishing Processes

• Methodologies and knowledge sharing. At this size, lots of different clients and projects are going on. Foster a culture of sharing knowledge, promoting internal communication, document transparency (as long as the client allows it) and peer to peer support. Learning from each project by creating to-do lists, client cases and key methodologies that can be reused is the way to tap into the collective expertise of the whole company.
• Key Performance Indicators and OKRs. Measure KPIs and follow them on a monthly and quarterly basis. Establishing OKRs might also help at this stage.

2. Middle Management

• Performance appraisals. Performance goes down a slippery slope as teams grow. Empower middle management to strive for high performance with every one of the members of your teams.
• Culture & fun. Procedures harm fun. Continue fostering a positive work culture that encourages creativity and enjoyment. Work on having fun together . A bit of love in the workplace might help too. At this stage, middle managers are the ones spinning the 7 to 10 coworker circles.?

3. Commercial Planning

• Client Service. As it happens with performance, clients suffer from not having the owners involved in day to day operations. It’s time to put some structure in managing clients and measuring their satisfaction.
• Outbound Sales. Don’t be shy. Reach out and tell the world about your brilliance. If you haven’t done it yet, this is the moment to establish a strong commercial culture, and a dedicated team that coordinates inbound plus outbound mechanisms.

D.- From 120 coworkers on.

What creatives and engineers don’t accept alike, and sometimes don’t even grasp, is that the professional services industry? is driven by money, not passion. Look at big consulting and audit firms and multinational communication conglomerates. They are all managed by CFOs. Sir Sorrell, not Mr. Ogilvy, invented the advertising industry. The creative spark, the founder’s passion, the technical expertise, the operational strength are all part of the specific service that clients need, value and buy. But competing at this stage has to do with finance excellence, cashflows, access to capital, a laser focus on profits and mergers and acquisitions. Take or leave it. If you want to grow from here, you’ll have to learn to play this game. Or… you can just sell your agency.

1. Profit Excellence

Finances eat passion for breakfast. I don’t know exactly how much ebitda is ok. But I’m sure that it is not enough. What’s your agency's core service? Social media? Aim for a 15% ebitda (it’ll be hard, social is less profitable of all digital marketing services). SEO? About 20%. Creativity? Advertising agencies longed for 25-30% some decades ago, but now they are happy with that 15%, too. Media buying? Well, this is especially tricky, if you are not willing to be opaque about media commissions you’ll be outcompeted. This is changing , but not fast enough. Of course, the bigger the more difficult it is to get to higher profit. But at this stage, having an ebitda under average for your industry makes you a fish, not a fisher.

2. Mergers and Acquisitions

Consider “acquihiring” smaller teams or integrating other agencies to further expand your reach and capabilities. Or just for the sake of growth. Integration failure is common. Learning to grow inorganically becomes a skill that has to be honed. At some point, the opposite point of view might also apply. You could decide to become part of something bigger to keep growing. Egos won’t help.

3. Strategic Communications

• Thought Leadership. We started early because of a blog. But investing lots of effort in writing articles, whitepapers, podcasts, … won’t usually pay if you’re small and lack the brand and the capacity to distribute the content. But at this stage, your marketing budget must be ready to spread the word. Just do it.
• Institutional Relations. Informal networks must now become formal relationships with key institutions and stakeholders that will enhance your agency's reputation and opportunities.

I tried to use ChatGPT to avoid the writing, but it didn’t work. Bullets were mine, its words were too dull. I haven’t used it though to check if this is a comprehensive recipe. But I guess it’s more than enough. Mostly because I want to explain some of my core beliefs about the agency world.?

Some of my beliefs about the agency world.

TL;DR, agencies are part of the professional service industry, not the tech or the creative industries. We have to learn to work in a perfect market and our positioning efforts won’t create a competitive advantage. A culture of service, caring for each other, avoiding strong hierarchies (even hierarchies of expertise) and transparency can help. Unfair as it seems, luck? will always play a role too important. And talent is not on our side anymore.?

• An agency belongs to the professional services industry. An agency is a company hired to achieve (or do) what clients ask them to achieve (or do).? Coming from the glamorous age when a TV commercial could help you sell your mother and fees were linked to media buying (the famous 15% agency commission) allowing copywriters earn the money AI engineers make nowadays, the advertising agency has been very influential in the marketing and communications world. But we are in a different era now. Agencies are, whether they like it or not, part of the professional services industry. We don’t make films, video games, digital products though these might be part of any project for our clients. Our value lies in helping our clients achieve their goals, not in doing work that wins prizes or earns praise from our colleagues.
• Services, not products. In the agency world, we sometimes feel tempted to create products because "the grass is greener on the other side". And you could find some success stories about agencies that have built their own consumer packaged goods or even digital products. But it is statistically irrelevant. An agency is an agency. If you are not happy with it, you can always shut up shop and start something else (good luck).
• Quite a perfect market. The agency world is one of nearly perfect competition. Anybody can start one. No entry barriers, no moats to protect clients or methodologies. No intellectual property: don’t be fooled if someone tells you that you have to develop some, I don't think it is worth it. In a western country of about 40 million inhabitants, there could be about 50.000 agencies. Even if you create an excellent one you’ll be competing against tens of similarly great firms. Let’s admit it, it’s a buyer’s world. Bad luck. And there’s no magic trick. Connections, a bit of strategy (but don’t overthink), company culture, financial discipline, founder’s charisma and leadership, talent, … That's all it takes (haha).
• Positioning is not that important. I know this is against common wisdom. Yes, we all want to live in a category of one, but as I said, there is nearly perfect competition. Don’t spend too much time finding a truly original statement for your website or agency presentation decks. We all end up saying more or less the same. Especially, once we reach a certain size. Positioning in a crowded market doesn’t pay. Client and talent management, strategic comms, processes, profit management,... do. Curiously in our case, Good Rebels grew a lot by focusing on one single service: social media marketing. But picking a niche at the beginning is not without risks. We started praying about social media marketing in 2005 and we nearly died after years of wait and see. Let’s admit it: we were lucky. And once we reached a certain size and the niche disappeared, it didn’t work anymore. We needed to change our strategy to become less specialised, more of a 360 digital agency. Right away, we started feeling undifferentiated. After a certain size, being niche is not even necessary. And overthinking about your unique value proposition won’t save you and can even frustrate you. Look again at the last stages of growth of our roadmap: processes, profit, inorganic growth, thought leadership and institutional relations. That’s all it takes (haha again).
• Connections help you get long-listed. If you work with big brands and corporations (the blue chips we all hunt) you are used to dealing with procurement departments that force a shortlist for any commercial opportunity. Being shortlisted is great, but the real conundrum is how to get long-listed. In any market/country we’ve worked, connections will help you getting there. Nurturing these connections becomes paramount.
• Luck and randomness are unavoidable. Our brains are not wired for statistics. I guess my industrial and operations engineering background makes it easier for me to understand the role of luck in our lives. Reading John Allen Paulos or Nassib Taleb can help you too. Lots of things we cannot control make our lives quite chaotic. Learning to play with unexpected events and statistical process control will make your agency’s life easier. Believe me. Plan for randomness.
• Talent is more common than we think. Attracting talent is difficult for any industry, but even more so for ours. The age of mad men and big pay checks are over. And on top of that, clients expect us to do lots of menial work. The good news is that talent is more widespread than we think. And also, we don’t need so much brilliance. It’s easier to uncover hidden talent in your ranks than poaching great professionals outside. To do it, your culture has to promote "intrapreneurship" and failure, and avoid strong pecking orders. Senior leadership must be caring and nurturing. Inspirational too, but in the style of good professors, not brilliant jerks.
• Collective beats individuals in the digital era. I don’t buy the putting-excellence-first mantra. From our experience, team players with a strong will to serve are more important nowadays than all-star individuals. Creating a shared purpose and a feeling of belonging to a great team will uncover hidden talent, raise engagement and spark momentum. Then, growth and engagement will end up bringing great players and genius on board.
• Not the best agency, just a great one. Don’t think of Apple. Think statistically. They told us that many successful entrepreneurs didn’t go to the University. But data doesn't support that. People with university degrees end up with better salaries. And then, push it a bit. In a crowded environment, moving a few points to the right of the Gauss curve will get you lots of rewards. Walking the extra mile is not for everyone. Push for the right amount of greatness so that people want to be part of your dream.
• Vision and purpose. Establishing a long term vision and a compelling purpose for Good Rebels helped us surprise some clients, unveil great talent and keep voluntary attrition low. In the hectic agency world, forcing teams to stop (and tell clients so) and find moments to think long term and look further than our day to day is uncommon. Thus, valuable as well.
• Keep voluntary attrition in mind. It’s the only piece of data that I keep for myself. No entry barriers, no moats or intellectual property. People are all we have. Our unwanted attrition is in the range of 10 to 15% (some years even less). In big cities, average attrition in medium to big sized digital agencies might be closer to 25-30%.
• Don’t talk about culture, work on it. Everybody agrees that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Yet, very few are willing to work on it. Show me your agenda and I’ll tell you how much you really care about culture. Our Rebel culture is not a by-product or the result of strong leadership. It is robust because we’ve worked hard to make it that way. If you don’t really know how to work on it, you can start by reading this .

If you’ve gotten this far, you are surely infected with the agency disease. If that is the case, your head must be abuzz with ideas. You might disagree with some of my beliefs or have a different take on how to grow an agency. I would be delighted to hear your thoughts, and turn this long post into a vibrant conversation. If you prefer to do it in Spanish, please do it! I just wanted to keep my English writing alive and kicking in these Generative Pretrained Transformer days.