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Your agency isn’t scaling because your gross-margin is worse than you think and therefore you can’t afford to hire the talent you need to elevate as the founder. Simple but not easy.

Major evolutionary splits in history: -> Marsupial / Placental Mammals -> Humans / Chimpanzees -> People who can smell AI slop a mile away / Others

I've hung my own shingle in one shape or form since 2012. Well over a decade of entrepreneurship. In that time it has become so clear to me that truly success as an entrepreneur is about being the last man standing. Entrepreneurship is a game of last man standing. If you can stay in the game for long enough, things tend to work out. Don't compare your year three to someone else's year 10. Don't worry about competitors. Most of them disappear. Just stay in the game, keep playing, and good things happen. Obviously you need to have certain fundamentals.Have good unit economics, not burn out, etc., to stay in the game. Some businesses fail because they're not run well. Other businesses fail just because you, as the founder, get burnt out. You have to protect your energy and motivation. In addition to cash on hand and cashflow It's your greatest resource.

When you take money from investors, you are just a bet in someone else's portfolio. They expect the majority of their portfolio to fail and a few companies to succeed and will push you to binary go-big-or-blow-up outcomes. There is nothing wrong with that because that is the game they are playing but is that the game you want to play? Your business is not a bet in your portfolio. It's your main business. Maybe it would be better to take a long-term view and slowly but surely build something great instead of being rushed to either achieve massive success or blow up completely?

Almost everything I know about building B2B agencies in 40 minutes with @MrGube - Agency Outsight Podcast 👇 open.spotify.com/episode/2oh…

Not understanding why gross-margin is WAY MORE important than net margin is what keeps agency founders in failure mode. The next problem is understanding the importance but not correctly calculating it.

Starbucks makes $38B selling cups coffee but you think your agency needs a subscription to hit $1M rev+? Projects can get you pretty far my guy

Agency founder small talk be like: Broke: “MRR” Woke: “LTV” Bespoke: “CAC : LTGP”

“Past a certain age, taking pride in referrals as your primary lead source can be a bad thing”

As a bootstrapped company... don't underestimate the talent recruiting advantage you have of simply not putting your employees through a colossal amount of bullsh*t (compared to most PE & VC backed co's)

Legacy is not the money your great grandkids forget. Legacy is the mindset and values your kids absorb and pass forward. You change your family line more through who you become than what you leave behind.

Most creative agency owners talk about CAC to LTV. It sounds smart. It feels like the metric that matters. But here is the thing most people miss. CAC to LTV is basically irrelevant if you do not know your gross margin. And almost no agencies who are project-based or that collect pre-payments (ie upfront, deposit, or quarterly billing) actually know their gross margin. Why? Because if you are not doing accrual accounting, you literally cannot know it. If you bill a client 30K today but your team does the work over the next 90 days, cash accounting will lie to you every single month. So you end up making decisions off phantom profit. Which means you cannot know CAC to LTGP. And CAC to LTGP is the actual metric that matters for a services business. CAC to LTV works for SaaS Software companies have 85 to 95 percent gross margins. Their cost to deliver for an incremental customer is almost zero. So CAC to LTV is useful. But creative agencies are not SaaS companies. If you have a service business, your cost to deliver is real. Human. Variable. And it eats your lunch if you do not measure it. What your gross margin should be Healthy agencies run at: • Minimum 50 percent gross margin • Ideally 55 to 60 percent • Anything in the 30s or low 40s is a slow bleed If you are sitting at a 35 percent gross margin, the math is brutal. You cannot pay yourself well and reinvest in marketing at the same time. You do not get both. You have to pick one. This is why so many agencies feel stuck. They think they have a marketing problem or a sales problem. But what they really have is a gross margin problem. They are carrying too much delivery cost relative to revenue. They are underpricing. They are overservicing. They are blending production and overhead. They are guessing instead of measuring. The fix: • Switch to accrual accounting • Track delivery cost on a per project basis • Calculate gross margin monthly • Only then decide what you can afford to spend to buy a customer Because CAC to LTGP tells you the real game. It tells you how aggressively you can market. It tells you what your cost to acquire should be. It tells you whether you can scale without blowing up. Most agencies are flying blind. Know your gross margin. Or you do not know your business.

Big news: We’re officially launching Storysnap.com as our parent brand 🚀 For years, many of you have known us through Testimonial Hero and, more recently, Product Hype. But behind the scenes, we’ve actually always been Storysnap, LLC. As we plan for more acquisitions and brand launches, we’re leaning into Storysnap as the umbrella brand that ties everything together. We’re also betting that Storysnap as our holding company brand will strengthen our marketing for M&A and increase dealflow. Speaking of that... If you run a B2B video agency and are exploring acquisition opportunities, I’d love to talk 😎

Who is the best ad copywriter you know with B2B experience? Our new agency Product Hype [.] Com has some use cases for video ads upcoming and we'd like to collab with someone. Looking for concept, copy, and then we'd execute the video.

The invaluable thing to learn from entrepreneur mentors isn't tactics—it's their mindset and their strategy. Tactical knowledge can be learned in a variety of places, but understanding the mindset and strategy of people who exactly where you want to be in 3-5 years is invaluable. It's a cheat code to skip steps and dodge major potholes. These are the very personal things they do no not typically share. If they are outside your own company, expect to have to build a good relationship and/or pay for access. The most I've paid for advice (so far) from a $20M+ agency owner is $2,000/hr and it's been the best money I've spent on coaching or courses.